delight; for amid all that is bad there stand out Trim and
Toby, pure specimens of the best side of human nature, coming home to us
and telling us that the world is not all bad. There may be such touches
in 'Love for Love,' or 'The Way of the World'--I know not and care not.
To my remembrance Congreve is but a horrible nightmare, and may the
fates forbid I should be forced to go through his plays again.

Perhaps, then, Jeremy was not far wrong, when he attacked these
specimens of the drama with an unrelenting Nemesis; but he was before
his age. It was less the obvious coarseness of these productions with
which he found fault than their demoralizing tendency in a direction
which we should now, perhaps, consider innocuous. Certainly the Jeremiad
overdid it, and like a swift, but not straight bowler at cricket, he
sent balls which no wicket-keeper could stop, and which, therefore, were
harmless to the batter. He did not want boldness. He attacked Dryden,
now close upon his grave: Congreve, a young man; Vanbrugh, Cibber,
Farquhar, and the rest, all alive, all in the zenith of their fame, and
all as popular as writers could be. It was as much as if a man should
stand up to-day and denounce Dickens and Thackeray, with the exception
that well-meaning people went along with Jeremy, whereas very few would
do more than smile at the zeal of any one who tilted against our modern
pets. Jeremy, no doubt, was bold, but he wanted tact, and so gave his
enemy occasion to blaspheme. He made out cases where there were none,
and let alone what we moderns should denounce. So Congreve took up the
cudgels against him with much wit and much coarseness, and the two
fought out the battle in many a pamphlet and many a letter. But Jeremy
was not to be beaten. His 'Short View' was followed by 'A Defence of the
Short View,' a 'Second Defence of the Short View,' 'A Farther Short
View,' and, in short, a number of 'Short Views,' which had been better
merged into one 'Long Sight.' Jeremy grew coarse and bitter; Congreve
coarser and bitterer; and the whole controversy made a pretty chapter
for the 'Quarrels of Authors.' But the Jeremiad triumphed in the long
run, because, if its method was bad, its cause was good, and a
succeeding generation voted Congreve immoral. Enough of Jeremy. We owe
him a tribute for his pluck, and though no one reads him in the present
day, we may be thankful to him for having led the way to a better state
of things.[15]

Congrev