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.[1] A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery—a flash of Swift's lightning—a beam 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.[2]
- ↑ It was in Surrey-street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.
The ancedote 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 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 Œuvres Complètes in the Panthéon Litteraire. Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)
"Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloirè 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
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.
