Wid. Fy! fy! I neglect my business with this foolish discourse of love. Jerry, child, let me see the list of the jury: I'm sure my cousin Olivia has some relations amongst them. But where is she? Free. Nay, widow, but hear me one word only.

Wid. Nay, sir, no more, pray. I will no more hearken to your foolish love-motions, than to offers of arbitration.

WILLIAM CONGREVE.

IT was no slight honor for this English playwright to receive a visit of homage from the brilliant Voltaire, to whom he offensively said, "I am not a literary man, I am a gentleman." This incident throws light on the social status of the man of genius then as compared with that of the man of rank. The possibility of being both could scarcely have occurred to superfine danglers on the court, but they did not foresee how "Time, Life's fool," would play topsy-turvy with their misconception as to which was the gentleman. Congreve is entitled to precedence as a literary man over all his contemporary countrymen in his particular line, for he was not too grand to drive bargains in the vulgar market-place.

Where the wittiest of comedy writers was born is not certain, but the date was 1670, and he was educated in Kilkenny and Dublin. Dryden helped to get his first play, "The Old Bachelor," performed in 1693, which was at once hailed as equal to Etherege's best piece, which had outshone the best of Wycherley's popular but gross comedies. This won him patronage at court. "The Double-Dealer" came next, which Dryden warmly defended against adverse criticism, and a year later came a master-piece, "Love for Love," a sparkling play, overflowing with genuine wit and comedy spirit, though soiled by the inevitable vulgarity. His attempt at tragedy in "The Mourning Bride," showed more versatility than power, but won high praise from Dr. Johnson. Then in defiance of the severe but reasonable censures of the nonjuror bishop, Jeremy Collier, on the vicious drama of the time, Congreve issued his master-piece, "The Way of the World," which stands at the head of all English comedies by sterling literary quality and absolute insight into human nature. Still,

on the stage it was a comparative failure, and it ended his dramatic career when he was only thirty. From then until his death, in 1729, Congreve published only a volume of poems. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

SCANDAL AND LITERATURE IN HIGH LIFE.

(From "The Double-Dealer.")

Lady Froth. Then you think that episode between Susan the dairy-maid and our coachman is not amiss. You know, I may suppose the dairy in town, as well as in the country.

Brisk. Incomparable, let me perish! But, then, being an heroic poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? Charioteer sounds great. Besides, your ladyship's coachman having a red face, and you comparing him to the sun-and you know the sun is called "heaven's charioteer."

Lady F. Oh! infinitely better; I am extremely beholden to you for the hint. Stay; we'll read over those half-a-score lines again. (Pulls out a paper.) Let me see here; you know what goes before the comparison you know. (Reads.)

For as the sun shines every day,

So of our coachman I may say.

Brisk. I am afraid that simile won't do in wet weather, because you say the sun shines every day.

Lady F. No; for the sun it won't, but it will do for the coachman; for you know there's most occasion for a coach in wet weather.

Brisk. Right, right; that saves all.

Lady F. Then I don't say the sun shines all the day, but that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day, too, you know, though we don't see him.

Brisk. Right; but the vulgar will never comprehend that.
Lady F. Well, you shall hear. Let me see-

For as the sun shines every day

So of our coachman I may say,
He shows his drunken fiery face

Just as the sun does, more or less.

Brisk. That's right; all's well, all's well. More or less.

Lady F. (Reads.)

And when at night his labor's done,

Then, too, like heaven's charioteer, the sun

Aye, charioteer does better

Into the dairy he descends,

And there his whipping and his driving ends;
There he's secure from danger of a bilk;

His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.

For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so

333

Brisk. Incomparable well and proper, egad! But I have one exception to make: don't you think bilk (I know it's a good rhyme) but don't you think bilk and fare too like a hackney coachman?

Lady F. I swear and vow I'm afraid so. And yet our John was a hackney coachman when my lord took him.

Brisk. Was he? I'm answered, if John was a hackney coachman. You may put that in the marginal notes; though to prevent criticism, only mark it with a small asterisk, and say, "John was formerly a hackney coachman."

Lady F. I will; you'd oblige me extremely to write notes to the whole poem.

Brisk. With all my heart and soul, and proud of the vast honor, let me perish!

Lord F. Hee, hee, hee! my dear, have you done? Won't you join with us? We were laughing at my Lady Whister and Mr. Sneer.

Lady F. Aye, my dear, were you? Oh! filthy Mr. Sneer; he's a nauseous figure, a most fulsamic fop. Foh! He spent two days together in going about Covent Garden to suit the lining of his coach with his complexion.

Lord F. O silly! Yet his aunt is as fond of him as if she had brought the ape into the world herself.

Brisk. Who? my Lady Toothless? Oh, she's a mortifying spectacle; she's always chewing the cud like an old ewe. Lord F. Foh!

Lady F. Then she's always ready to laugh when Sneer offers to speak; and sits in expectation of his no-jest, with her gums hare, and her mouth open.

Brisk. Like an oyster at low ebb, egad! Ha, ha, ha!

Cynthia (aside). Well, I find there are no fools so inconsiderable in themselves but they can render other people contemptible by exposing their infirmities.

Lady F. Then that t'other great strapping lady; I can't hit of her name; the old fat fool that pants so exorbitantly.

Brisk. I know whom you mean. But, deuce take me, I can't hit of her name either. Paints, d'ye say? Why, she lays it on with a trowel. Then she has a great beard that bristles through it, and makes her look as if she were plastered with lime and hair, let me perish!

Lady F. Oh! you made a song upon her, Mr. Brisk!
Brisk. Her, egad! so I did. My lord can sing it.

Cynthia. O good, my lord; let us hear it.

Brisk. 'Tis not a song neither. It's a sort of epigram, or rather an epigrammatic sonnet. I don't know what to call it, but it's satire. Sing it, my lord.

Lord F.

(sings).

Ancient Phyllis has young graces;

'Tis a strange thing, but a true one;
Shall I tell you how?

She herself makes her own faces,

And each morning wears a new one.

Where's the wonder now?

Brisk. Short, but there's salt in 't. My way of writing, egad!

THOMAS OTWAY.

HERE is a brief life flickering against the clouded horizon of the Restoration like a candle in an April gale. Otway left · his father's village rectory, after his training for the Church in Winchester and Oxford, to become an actor in London. He was only twenty, having been born in 1651, and his acting was a failure. He went back to the university, but after

three years' further study he refused holy orders and enlisted in the army. Within a year he sold out and began his literary

vagabondage in London. In 1675 a play of his was produced, and being a disciple of Dryden, he needs must follow with a rhymed tragedy in the master's most robustious manner. This was "Don Carlos," which made a great hit, though poor stuff indeed as literature. To this succeeded a licentious comedy taken from Molière and a drama from Racine. After a wild turn at soldiering with the army in Flanders Otway came back and wrote "The Soldier's Fortune." Next year, 1680, he wrote "The Orphan," and for the first time it was seen that a true genius and great poet was wearing his heart out in battling with evil fate. His supremacy in natural and profound pathos was heightened by his own deep draughts of the bitter cup. All was not gold, nor golden illusion, in the glitter of city life. Whether his was the temperament that impatiently flies to worse ills to drown those of the moment, or the desponding sort that shuns the crowd to brood in concealed despair over unconquerable impediments to success, we cannot know. He was in utter poverty, that is certain, and kindred miseries flocked around him. He was thirty-one when his "Venice Preserved" asserted itself as one of the great master-pieces of the poetical drama. In it the best gifts of a much-troubled mind took wing above the fogs of London into the clear expanse of poetry. The tragedy was broken with episodes of licentious comedy to meet the theatre demand, but since these have been eliminated it has commanded, and will long command, the enthusiasm of lovers of the sublime in pure pathetic verse. Otway's greatness here is discounted by his mediocrity as a depicter of character for dramatic purposes, and his humorous attempts are ghastly. His life was made up of hollow gaieties and a gnawing core of remorse that turned all to gloom. Tender-hearted beyond most his home letters show him to have been, and the one woman whose reciprocal love might have transformed everything for good refused it and spurned him. She was one who acted in his plays. After the "Venice," by which he profited little or nothing, he wrote nothing worthy of his talent, but sank lower and lower, from actual privation, perhaps because of weak-spiritedness, and perished in some undecided miserable way on Tower Hill, April 14, 1685, aged thirty-four.