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CHAPTER XX.

A VICTORY FOR THE PATRIOTS.

[Sidenote: 1729--Death of Congreve]

Literature lost some great names in the early part of George the
Second's reign. William Congreve and Richard Steele both died in 1729.
Congreve's works do not belong to the time of which we are writing. He
was not sixty years old when he died, and he had long ceased to take
any active part in literature. Swift deplores, in a letter to an
acquaintance, "the death of our friend Mr. Congreve, whom I loved from
my youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a very
agreeable companion." Swift adds that Congreve "had the misfortune to
squander away a very good constitution in his younger days," and "upon
his own account I could not much desire the continuance of his life
under so much pain and so many infirmities." Congreve was beyond
comparison the greatest English comic dramatist of his time. Since the
days of Ben Jonson and until the days of Sheridan there was no one who
could fairly be compared with him. His comedy was not in the least
like the bold, broad, healthy, Aristophanic humor of Ben Jonson; the
two stand better in contrast than in comparison. Jonson drew from the
whole living English world of his time; Congreve drew from the men and
women whom he had seen in society. Congreve took society as he found
it in his earlier days. The men and women with whom he then mixed were
for the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, and rather proud of
their corruption; and Congreve filled his plays with figures very
lifelike for such a time. He has not drawn many men or women whom one
could admire. Even his heroines, if they are chaste in their lives,
{300} are anything but pure in their conversation, and seem to have no
moral principle beyond that which is represented by what Heine calls an
"anatomical chastity." Angelica, the heroine of "Love for Love," is
evidently meant by Congreve to be all that a charming young
Englishwoman ought to be; and she is charming, fresh, and fascinating
even still. But she occasionally talks in a manner which would be a
little strong for a barrack-room now; and nothing gives her more
genuine delight than to twit her kind, fond old uncle with his wife's
infidelities, to make it clear to him that all the world is acquainted
with the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous
agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an English
seaman on the st