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Updated: June 13, 2025
On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountain could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and not very delicate lover in Congreve's lively song valued the conquest of a prostitute of a different kind. Barère was, like Chloe, false and common; but he was, like Chloe, constant while possessed; and they asked no more.
Very rarely does the playwright succeed in weaving a web which is at once intricate, consistent, and clear. In nineteen cases out of twenty there are glaring flaws that have to be overlooked; or else the pattern is so involved that the mind's eye cannot follow it, and becomes bewildered and fatigued. A classical example of both faults may be found in Congreve's so-called comedy The Double-Dealer.
In Congreve's plays he recognised the wit but condemned the morals, and in the case of Blackmore the regard for the religious purpose of Blackmore's poem on "The Creation" gave to Johnson, as to Addison, an undue sense of its literary value. With his "Life of Pope," which occupies more than two-thirds of this volume, Johnson took especial pains.
William Prynne was celebrated for his writings against the immorality of the stage, and the furious invectives of Jeremy Collier, are still extant; his pen was roused by Dryden's Spanish Friar, and Congreve's witty, but licentious comedies. Collier inveighed without mercy, but he certainly did much to reform the stage.
One of his repartees we will quote, not as a favourable specimen of his manner, but because it was called forth by Congreve's characteristic affectation. The poet spoke of the Old Bachelor as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which had become public by a sort of accident, "I wrote it," he said," to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit of sickness."
Swinburne; in my innumerable gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the first draft of The King's Pardon, a tragedy, I was on the trail of no less a man than John Webster; in the second draft of the same piece, with staggering versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and of course conceived my fable in a less serious vein for it was not Congreve's verse, it was his exquisite prose, that I admired and sought to copy.
He therefore made no scruple to repeat the same jests in many dialogues, or to entangle different plots by the same knot of perplexity, which may be at least forgiven him, by those who recollect, that of Congreve's four comedies, two are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a deception, which perhaps never happened, and which, whether likely or not, he did not invent.
I do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of Congreve's nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's comedies. I am the gayer at least for it; and I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy-land.
But he is shocked at the advice. He was far more of Othello's opinion than Congreve's in such matters; and declared, that he would not have shared his mistress' good-will with Jupiter himself. Towards the year 1504, the poet entered the service of the unworthy prince, Cardinal Ippolito of Este, brother of the new Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the First.
I question very much the propriety of your course in urging this match upon her, and you know that from the beginning I have discouraged the whole scheme. She is vastly Congreve's superior, and I confess I do not relish the idea of seeing her sacrifice herself so completely.
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