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,(64)
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,(65)
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 left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted
it,(66) but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't.(67)

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,(68) and others, defended themselves with the
same success, and for the same cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She
was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic
Muse. She came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose many more
of his female friends there) at the Restoration--a wild, dishevelled Lais,
with eyes bright with wit and wine--a saucy court-favourite that sat at the
king's knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks
at her chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of
the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that
daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell--she was gay and generous, kind,
frank, as such people can afford to be: and the men who lived with her and
laughed with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when the
Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was
indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it.

There is life and death going on in everything: truth and lies always at
battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always
crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writin