His life is his character and his panegyric. It ceased abruptly, but it will never be forgotten.*

[This memoir terminates as abruptly as the life which it records. Perhaps the writer was unwilling to follow the body of his hero after the life was fled. It was perversely dealt with, if it be true that the flesh was devoured by those savages, into whom the great navigator had vainly endeavoured to infuse somewhat of his spirit. It is of more consequence to add, that "an account of the voyage was published, from Cook's Journal, continued by Lieutenant King. Charts and plates were executed at the expense of Government, and one-half of the profits of the work was bestowed upon Cook's widow and children, upon whom a pension was settled."-Penny Cyclop.-D. C.]

There is one circumstance connected with Cook's last voyage so honourable to human nature, that it must not be omitted. England was then at war with France. But the French King, considering the purely pacific and benevolent purpose for which Cook had braved the sea, ordered that the Resolution and Discovery should be treated as neutral vessels. Franklin, who was then Ambassador in France from the Congress, recommended that the United States should issue similar orders, but it does not appear that Congress attended to the suggestion.

WILLIAM CONGREVE.*

His

YORKSHIRE claims but little in this fortunate wit, and her claim to that little has been litigated. family was of Staffordshire, his education was in Ireland; he led a town life, and acquired a town celebrity. Yorkshire could only boast the place of his nativity—the hedge-sparrow's nest wherein the cuckoo was hatched-and this modest pretension has been controverted by the isle of wits, for so might the country of Swift, Farquhar, Sheridan, and Moore be rightly denominated, rather than the isle of saints, seeing that for the Irish saints the Acta Sanctorum itself will not vouch, while the Irish wits need no vouchers. We have ourselves heard it vehemently asserted, that all the writers of the middle comedy

• It may be interesting to compare with this biographical and critical essay the life of Congreve by Mr. Leigh Hunt, prefixed to the edition of his dramas, published with those of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar by Mr. Moxon, and the review of that work by Mr. Macaulay, contributed to the Edinburgh Review in May, 1840, and republished in the general collection of his essays.-D. C.

+ The terms old, middle, and new, applied to the dynasties of Greek Comedy, may with little violence be transferred to the English stage. It must, however, be remarked, that of the two latter races, each originated in the life-time of its predecessor. The old or poetical comedy, composed of a mixture of blank verse and prose, often with a strong

VOL. III.

U

were Irishmen, of course including Congreve in the number. It is true, that he called himself an

infusion of pathetic interest, and very frequently interspersed with songs, dances, &c., flourished under Elizabeth and James. Fine specimens of it are found in Fletcher and Massinger, but perhaps the very finest in Shakspeare's "Twelfth Night," and "As You Like It." It has been revived or imitated by Tobin, in his "Honey-Moon." The second, or middle style, was first perfected by Ben Jonson, though chronology would rather class him with the writers of the old comedy. But he seems to have been the earliest dramatist who, in a regular composition, relied for effect entirely on the representation of contemporary life and manners. The middle comedy became predominant after the Restoration, and numbers many writers of unequal merit; the last were Cumberland and Sheridan. It has many minor varieties, of which the most considerable are the moralising genteel comedy, introduced by Cibber, and the Spanish intriguing comedy, of which the principal writers have been female. The new comedy, of which the principal masters are Colman, Morton, Reynolds, Dibdin, Diamond, &c., has been denominated sentimental, or by a French expression, comédie larmoyante, crying comedy, an apparent contradiction. It is, in truth, the comic correlative to Lillo's tragedy. Much as it is reviled by the critics, something very like it is occasionally to be found in old Heywood, the prose Shakspeare. Perhaps its just distinction is the democratic comedy, for the virtuous characters are almost always operatives, or shopkeepers, or small farmers. However inferior it may be to the middle or legitimate comedy as a work of art, and still more to the poetic comedy as a birth of imagination, we cannot think it deserves all the vitupera tion that has been heaped upon it. Its worst defect is, that

1 This note has less of Hartley's tact and discrimination than, from such a subject, I should have expected. Surely a prose Shakspeare is not only an over-load for old Heywood, but something not very unlike a square circle.-S. T. C.

66

Englishman, and expressly mentioned Bardsey, in Yorkshire, as his birth-place; but then a man may be mistaken as to the place he was born in, or he may be ashamed of it. Dr. Johnson's judgment in this matter is a singular instance of that leaning against the subjects of his biography, of which he is justly accused by Mr. Roscoe.-"It was said by himself," observes the Doctor, that he owed his nativity to England, and by everybody else, that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country. To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth, is in appearance to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and when once uttered are sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralist, having told a petty lie to Louis XIV., continued it afterwards by false dates, thinking himself obliged in honour, says his admirer, to maintain what, when he said it, was so well received."

It is a pity that the Doctor, who, like Boileau, aimed at the character of "a steady and rigorous moralist," did not reflect that sophistry is first cousin, only once removed, to lying, and that an uncharitable piece of special pleading, intended to injure the reputation of the illustrious dead, is not a very white

it does not represent the actual manners of any class,-its characters are unreal without being imaginative. Still, a composition which excites laughter mixed with kindliness can never be worthless, for kindness is always worth something, and laughter is always good when it does not proceed from scorn.

lie.* Congreve, whatever his faults might be, was not a fool; nor was his convenience or vanity at all concerned in proving himself a Yorkshireman rather than an Irishman. To be born in Ireland was never disreputable, and to be born in Yorkshire is an honour too common to be worth contending for. Were there decisive evidence that Congreve was wrong as to the fact, it had been candid to suppose him mistaken, which the son of an officer in a marching regiment might easily be, about the year and place of his nativity. But there is decisive evidence that he was right,—to wit, the parish register of Bardsey, and the matriculation book of Trinity College, Dublin. An extract from the former runs thus:-" William,

Very sensible. I could wish to have preserved a lively and spirited conclusion of one of my Courses of Lectures, on the sycophancy and cynic assentation of Dr. Johnson, both as a critic and a moralist, and most strongly as a critico-moral biographer, to the plebeian envy of the patrician mediocres, and the reading public.-S. T. C.

The notice of Congreve's matriculation, in the College Register, is as follows:

"1685, die quinto Aprilis horâ diei pomeridianâ Gulielmus Congreve, Pensionarius, filius Gulielmi Congreve, Generosi de Youghaliâ, annos natus 16, natus apud Bardsagram in Comitatu Eboracensi, educatus Kilkenniæ, subferulá Doctoris Hinton, Tutor. St. George Ash."

"1685. On the fifth day of April, at one o'clock in the afternoon, William Congreve, Pensioner, son of William Congreve, gentleman, of Youghal, aged sixteen, born at Bardsey, in the county of York, educated at Kilkenny, under the rod of Dr. Hinton. Tutor, St. George Ashe."

It may be observed, that his age in 1685 (sixteen) tallies with the Bardsey register, which fixes his birth somewhere about 1669. Yet the inscription on his monument states his age at fifty-six at the time of his death (January 29th 1728-9), which would bring down his birth to 1771 or 1772.