permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary "swell" of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives" Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. "I am the great Mr. Congreve.[1] he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve. From the beginning of his career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift; he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden[2] declared
- ↑ "It has been observed that no change of ministers affected him in the least, nor was he eyer removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year."—Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve.
- ↑ Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called the "Double Dealer," in which he says—
"Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please;
Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease.
In differing talents both adorn'd their age;
One for the study, t'other for the stage.
But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit.
In him all beauties of this age we see," &c., &c.The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the
