suit

such a fashion, with such a splendid embroidered you see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig and delivering a killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina? What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun! The sun gives Sabina the pas, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship: the morn's bright beams are less glorious than her fair eyes: but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances: everybody but one lucky rogue who shall be nameless: Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Garden.*

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong. ** A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth

"Among those by whom it (Wills's') was frequented, Southerne and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship...... But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated 'Old Bachelor' being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen." SCOTT's Dryden, vol. i. p. 370.

**It was in Surrey-street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.

The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished "to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity," is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire's Letters concerning the English

TH

a flash of Swift's lightning

a beam

all his finery of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry play-house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.**

nation, published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's "Memoir of Voltaire." But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's Oeuvres Complètes in the Panthéon Littéraire. Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1737.)

"Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloire du théâtre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n'a fait que peu de pièces, mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre.... Vous y voyez partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie." VOLTAIRE. Lettres sur les Anglais,

Let. 19.

*On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral-"The Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called PASTORA.

"I mourn PASTORA dead, let Albion mourn,
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,"

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that
"With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the
ground,"

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period!).... It continues

"Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,

Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face,
Scalding with tears the already faded grass.

*

*

*

*

*

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come?
And must Pastora moulder in the tomb?

We have seen in Swift a humourous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter

Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far,
Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are;
With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased,
But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized."

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess; that figure of the "Great Shepherd," lying speechless on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit, are to remembered in poetry surely, and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve!

In the "Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas" (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess!

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come in to work here again. At the sight of her grief

"Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego,
And dumb distress and new compassion show,
Nature herself attentive silence kept,

And motion seemed suspended while she wept!"

And Pope dedicated the Iliad to the author of these lines — and Dryden wrote to him in his great hand:

"Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought,
But Genius must be born and never can be taught.
This is your portion, this your native store;
Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,

TO SHAKESPEARE gave as much she could not give

him more.

Maintain your Post: that's all the Fame you need,
For 't is impossible you should proceed;
Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning th' ungrateful Stage:
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expence,
I live a Rent-charge upon Providence:

makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a humourous observer of another school to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a different heart and spirit a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good and happy; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever had, and I believe you have divined already that I am about to mention Addison's honoured

name.

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we have of him, amongst which the famous

But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains, and oh defend
Against your Judgment your departed Friend!
Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue;
But shade those Lawrels which descend to You:
And take for Tribute what these Lines express;
You merit more, nor could my Love do less."

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must buss thee;" or "Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad.” And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now; I wonder if they love each other better.

Steele calls Congreve "Great Sir" and "Great Author;" says, "Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name,' and addresses him as if he were a prince; and speaks of "Pastora" as one of the most famous tragic compositions.

article in the Edinburgh Review* may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our own; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fancy that this great man, in this respect, like him of whom we spoke in the last lecture, was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they don't herd with those. It is in the nature of such lords of intellect to be solitarythey are in the world but not of it; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under them.

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond easy endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his family, and his society was in public; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more

"To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey..." "After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race." - MACAULAY.

"Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence.". JOHNSON.