exact obfervation of the paffing world; the difficulty therefore is, to conceive how this knowledge can be obtained by a boy.

But if the Old Batchelor be more nearly examined, it will be found to be one of those comedies which may be made by a mind vigorous and acute, and furnished with comick characters by the perufal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. The dialogue is one conftant reciprocation of conceits, or clafh of wit, in which nothing flows neceffarily from the occafion, or is dictated by nature. The characters both of men and women are either fictitious and artificial, as thofe of Heartwell and the Ladies; or eafy and common, as Wittol a tame idiot, Bluff a fwaggering coward, and Fondlewife a jealous puritan ; and the catastrophe arifes from a mistake not very probably produced, by marrying a woman in a mask.

Yet this gay comedy, when all these deductions are made, will ftill remain the work of very powerful and fertile faculties: the dialogue is quick and fparkling, the incidents

fuch

fuch as feize the attention, and the wit fo exuberant that it o'er-informs its tenement.

Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in The Double Dealer, which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to his patron the lord Halifax a dedication, in which he endeavours to reconcile the reader to that which found few friends among the These apologies are always ufelefs; de guftibus non eft difputandum; men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased, against their will. But though tafte is obftinate, it is very variable, and time often prevails when arguments have failed.

audience.

Queen Mary conferred upon both those plays the honour of her prefence; and when fhe died, foon after, Congreve teftified his gratitude by a despicable effufion of elegiac paftoral; a compofition in which all is unnatural, and yet nothing is new.

In another year (1695) his prolific pen produced Love for Love; a comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners, than either of the former. The

character

1

character of Forefight was then common. Dryden calculated nativities; both Cromwell and king William had their lucky days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was faid to regard predictions. The Sailor is not accounted very natural, but he is very pleafant.

With this play was opened the New Theatre, under the direction of Betterton the tragedian; where he exhibited two years afterwards (1697) The Mourning Bride, a tragedy, so written as to fhew him sufficiently qualified for either kind of dramatick poetry.

In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the verfification to greater regularity, there is more buftle than fentiment; the plot is bufy and intricate, and the events take hold on the attention; but, except a very few paffages, we are rather amufed with noife, and perplexed with ftratagem, than entertained with any true delineation of natural characters. This, however, was received with more benevolence than any other of his works, and ftill continues to be acted and applauded.

But whatever objections may be made either to his comic or tragick excellence, they are loft at once in the blaze of admiration, when it is remembered that he had produced these four plays before he had paffed his twenty-fifth year; before other men, even fuch as are fome time to fhine in eminence, have paffed their probation of literature, or prefume to hope for any other notice than fuch as is bestowed on diligence and inquiry. Among all the efforts of early genius which literary history records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more furpaffes the common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.

About this time began the long-continued controversy between Collier and the poets. In the reign of Charles the First the Puritans had raised a violent clamour against the drama, which they confidered as an entertainment not lawful to Chriftians, an opinion held by them in common with the church of Rome; and Prynne published Hiftrio-maflix, a huge volume, in which ftage-plays were cenfured. The outrages and crimes of the Puritans brought afterwards their whole fyfVOL. III.

E

tem

tem of doctrine into difrepute, and from the Restoration the poets and the players were left at quiet; for to have molefted them would have had the appearance of tendency to puritanical malignity.

This danger, however, was worn away by time; and Collier, a fierce and implacable Nonjuror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would never make him fufpected for a Puritan; he therefore (1698) published A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honeft indignation. He was formed for a controvert→ ift; with fufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and farcaftick; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence in his caufe.

Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and affailed at once most of the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was violent: thofe paffages,