lyre enfante marquez en bien la cadence, et vous vents, faites silence! je vais parler de Louis !" Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses.

William Congreve's* Pindaric Odes are still to be found in "Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poets'-corner, in which so many forgotten big-wigs have a niche; but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded that his first play, the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax-who, being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe Office, and likewise a post in the Custom House of the value of 600/.

A commissionership of hackney-coaches-a post in the Custom House-a place in the Pipe Office, and all for writing a comedy ! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe Office? "Ah,

* He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire-a very ancient family.

✦ “PIPE.—Pipa, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll. "Pipe Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of Crown lands, by warrant from the Lord Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."-REES: Cyclopæd. Art. PIPE.

[Pipe Office

l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables!" Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any Pipe Offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago.

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary swell" of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives" Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. "I am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve.* From the beginning of his career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden † declared "Pipe Office.-Spelman thinks so called, because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask.

“These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills.'—Bacon : The Office of Alienations."

[We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points-by experience.]

* "It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least ; nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year."-Biog. Brit., Art. CONGREVE.

† Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend, Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called the "Double Dealer," in which he says:

"Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please;
Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease.

[In

that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him: "Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the 'Æneis,' and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct."

The "excellent young man was but three or four and twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Will's. Pope dedicated his "Iliad" to him; Swift, Addison, Steele, all acknowledge

In differing talents both adorned their age:
One for the study, t'other for the stage.

But both to Congreve justly shall submit,

One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit.

In him all beauties of this age we see," &c. &c.

The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the “Old Bachelor,” but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "Swell" applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "Right Honourable Charles Montague."

"I was conscious," said he, "where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, but I have not heard anything

said sufficient to provoke an answer.”

He goes on

"But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex.

They are concerned

that I have represented some

It is the business of a comic

. . . I should be very glad of

...

women vicious and affected. How can I help it? poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind. . an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood."

* "Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country-one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer-and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, there

Congreve's rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one of the Representatives of Literature; and the man who scarce praises any other living person-who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison-the Grub Street Timon, old John Dennis,* was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve; and said that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him.

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses; as much beloved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,† the heroine of all his plays, the favourite of all the town of her day; and the Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,‡ and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe Office, and his Custom House office, and his Hackney Coach office, and nobly

fore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of—A. POPE.”—Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer Mar. 25, 172

* "When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generously took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner."-THOS. DAVIES: Dramatic Miscellanies.

+ "Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed me a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle."Dr. YOUNG. Spence's Anecdotes.

"A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it."-THOS. DAVIES: Dramatic Miscellanies.

left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it, but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't. †

How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him such a reputation? Nell Gwynn's servant fought the other footman for having called his mistress a bad name; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve, and others, defended themselves with the same success,

The sum Congreve left Mrs. Bracegirdle was 2007., as is said in the "Dramatic Miscellanies" of Tom Davies ; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman.

She had a "lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and "such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire." "Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers."

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. “In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla. . . . ; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in 'Love for Love;" in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the 'Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the 'Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve."-Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. 1784.

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favourite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.

+ Johnson calls his legacy the "accumulation of attentive parsimony, which," he continues, "though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress."--Lives of the Poets.

He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined :—

"The greater part of these examples which he has produced are only demonstrations of his own impurity: they only savour of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.

"Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit; he possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies.

"If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not