IT

CHAPTER V.

T is not very easy to construct a definite portrait of Congreve. He was a handsome, plump man, whom Sir Godfrey Kneller painted for the Kit-Cat Club in a velvet coat and in that voluminous fair periwig which delighted Thackeray so much. He looks at us with his fine dark eyes, and he points with bediamonded forefinger towards the beauties of a sylvan scene; but the picture scarcely gives us an indication of what this elegant personage may have been at his ease, and among his intimates. Yet it is certain that it was at the chimney-corner that he showed off to most advantage, commonly in the evening, and after a repast washed down by profuse and genial wines. He was eminently goodnatured, "unreproachful" as Gay called him. No unkind word is recorded of Congreve in all the bitter gossip of two generations. The only moderately unkind thing he is ever reported to have done is told us by a witness whom we need not believe. When Lady Mary Montagu said that Congreve laughed at Pope's verses, she was herself too angry with Pope to be a candid witness. Every one liked Congreve, he had sympathy, urbanity, witty talk, a gentlemanly acquiescence, an ear at every

body's service, while Steele might follow Swift, Dennis succeed Pope, at Congreve's lodgings without a momentary sense of embarrassment or ill-temper.

But when we have said this we have said almost all we know. There were no salient points about Congreve's character. Though an old bachelor, he was not eccentric ; though a man of pleasure, he was discreet. No vagaries, no escapades, place him in a ludicrous or in a human light. He passes through the literary life of his time as if in felt slippers, noiseless, unupbraiding, without personal adventures. Even the too-picturesque Mrs. Delarivière Manley can make nothing of his smiling, faultless rotundity. It is evident, I think, that in this hitherto unnoticed page of her New Atalantis she is endeavouring to draw Congreve and Mrs. Bracegirdle :

Be pleased to direct your eyes towards the pair of beaux in the next chariot. He on the right is a near favourite of the Muses; he has touched the drama with truer art than any of his contemporaries, comes nearer nature and the ancients, unless in his last performance, which indeed met with most applause, however least deserving. But he seemed to know what he did, descending from himself to write to the Many, whereas before he wrote to the Few. I find a wonderful deal of good sense in that gentleman; he has wit, without the pride and affectation that generally accompanies, and always corrupts it.

His Myra is as celebrated as Ovid's Corinna, and as well-known. How happy is he in the favour of that lovely lady! She, too, deserves applause, besides her beauty, for her gratitude and sensibility to so deserving an admirer. There are few women, who, when they once give in to the sweets of an irregular passion, care to confine themselves to him that first endeared it to them, but not so the charming Myra.

Anthony Aston, who calls Mrs. Bracegirdle, "the

Diana of the stage," thought that even to Congreve she was no more than a friend. But he tells us that she was very fond of the poet, and was always uneasy at his leaving her, especially as his presence at her side protected her from the importunities of such fiery lovers as Lord Lovelace. There is no doubt she was a very pure-minded and a very amiable woman, so charitable that the poor of Clare Market were ready to form a bodyguard to shield her from the impertinence of the beaux.

Of Congreve's wit in conversation there is no question. We have seen what Swift thought of it, and Lady Mary, who had had opportunities of judging, told Spence that she never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve. He was one of the celebrated coterie of thirty-nine men of genius and quality, who met in Shire Lane to eat Christopher Katt's mutton-pies, and who became the Kit-Cat Club. From its rise in 1700 to its close about 1710, Congreve was the life of this brilliant gathering. But we possess no record of his colloquial powers; a joke about Gay's voracity is passably funny, but not enough to build a reputation on. We shall not laugh at Congreve's repartees till we can tell what songs the Sirens sang, and we must take the reputation of his good fellowship upon faith. Pope and Tonson agreed that Garth, Vanbrugh, and Congreve were "the three most honest-hearted real good men of the poetical members" of the Club.

One thing which Congreve said, apparently in all seriousness, has become more famous than any example of his wit, and may probably be known to thousands of

persons who never read a line of his writings. This is his remark to Voltaire when that eminent Frenchman went to call upon him. It may be well to quote the whole passage from Voltaire's Letters concerning the English Nation:

Mr. Congreve raised the glory of comedy to a greater height than any English writer before or since his time. He wrote only a few plays, but they are excellent in their kind. The laws of the drama are strictly observed in them. They abound with characters, all which are shadowed with the utmost delicacy, and we don't meet with so much as one low or coarse jest. The language is everywhere that of men of fashion, but their actions are those of knaves, a proof that he was perfectly well acquainted with human nature, and frequented what we call polite company.

He was infirm, and come to the verge of life when I knew him. Mr. Congreve had one defect, which was his entertaining too mean an idea of his own first profession, that of a writer, though it was to this he owed his fame and fortune. He spoke of his works as trifles that were beneath him, and hinted to me in our first conversation, that I should visit him upon no other foot than that of a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity. I answered that had he been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never have come to see him; and I was very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity.

The anecdote is interesting and valuable, but perhaps we need not be so much disgusted at Congreve's attitude as Voltaire was. We must remember that the incident occurred in 1726, very late in Congreve's life, when literary ambition, and, above all, the charming pleasure of easy composition, had long abandoned him. May not what Voltaire took to be vanity have been really modesty? May not the aged and "unreproachful" poet, separated from his own writings by so many sterile years, have

come to think his original gifts mediocre, and have been genuinely a little embarrassed at Voltaire's effusive flattery? A young poet with all the world to conquer, and with the rhymes automatically carolling at the tip of his tongue, can scarcely conceive the indifference, the chagrin, of an aged man of letters, stricken with silence, with never a drop of ichor left in his shrunken vein. I think that the world has judged Congreve very absurdly in so easily accepting Voltaire's account of this interview. The poet can scarcely have been such a snob as Voltaire indicates; if he had entertained a mean idea of the literary profession, we should have heard of it from Swift or Pope. Weary and disappointed, left behind in the race of life by nimbler wits, tortured by that dreadful sterility that had stricken him at thirty, it is probable that Voltaire's voluble literary compliments seemed to Congreve to present an element of possible banter. It was safer, in that case, to pose as "a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity," than as the Apollo of the drama. It was prudence in a gouty old person of quality to avoid being led too far afield by this brilliant and inquisitive Frenchman. It is an odd example of the fate that attends man's words, that this solitary example of reserve has prejudiced Congreve with myriads of readers who would otherwise have no dislike to his character.

In one of his letters to Keally, Congreve says, “You know me enough to know that I feel very sensibly and silently for those whom I love." This word "silently "

seems to express him very well.

He made no protes

tations, he was never a poseur, but all through life his