Of the two writers I have named, Congreve was the most witty[1] and brilliant. His style is sparkling and effervescent; as different from the solid and weighty diction of the Elizabethan dramatists as champagne is from port. I think we English have a preference for the Lusitanian grape.
"The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame,
Nor wish'd for Jonson's art, or Shakespeare's flame.
Themselves they studied; as they felt, they writ:
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.
Vice always found a sympathetic friend;
They pleased their age, and did not aim to mend.
Yet bards like these aspired to lasting praise,
And proudly hoped to pimp in future days.
Their cause was general, their supports were strong;
Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long:
Till shame regained the post that sense betray'd,
And virtue call'd oblivion to her aid."[2]
Wycherley's writing was slow and laboured: many of his scenes are adapted from French plays. His humour was soon exhausted; all that he had to impart to the world is imparted in his four comedies: base coin enough, but undoubtedly showing the cleverness of the coiner. To his other writings, however, even this dubious praise cannot be accorded. His verses are feeble as well as obscene; and Pope, to whom Wycherley in his old age confided the task of their correction, was obliged almost to remodel the majority of them previous to their publication.
The talent of Congreve, on the other hand, was exuberant and versatile. Besides his four comedies he produced a tragedy to which Johnson has accorded high praise,[3] and two masques. He could write elegant stanzas as well as witty dramas, and his prefaces and dedications—as also his reply to
- ↑ Witty, that is, as wit goes: "what," as Carlyle says (Frederick, i.204), "is called 'wit' in modern times."
- ↑ Johnson—Prologue at the opening of the Theatre Royal (Poems, 1785, pp. 49—50).
- ↑ Johnson said there was nothing finer in Shakespeare than the lines in The Mourning Bride, beginning
