, is an entertaining, and correct piece of
criticism: All his other Letters are written with a great deal of wit
and spirit, a fine flow of language; and are so happily intermixt with
a lively and inoffensive raillery, that it is impossible not to be
pleased with them at the first reading: we may be satisfied from the
perusal of them, that his conversation must have been very engaging,
and therefore we need not wonder that he was caressed by the greatest
men of his time, or that they courted his friendship by every act of
kindness in their power.

It is said of Mr. Congreve, that he was a particular favourite with
the ladies, some of whom were of the first distinction. He indulged
none of those reveries, and affected absences so peculiar to men of
wit: He was sprightly as well as elegant in his manner, and so much
the favourite of Henrietta duchess of Marlborough, that even after
his death, she caused an image of him to be every day placed at her
toilet-table, to which she would talk as to the living Mr. Congreve,
with all the freedom of the most polite and unreserved conversation.
Mrs. Bracegirdle likewise had the highest veneration for our author,
and joined with her Grace in a boundless profusion of sorrow upon his
death. Some think, he had made a better figure in his Last Will, had
he remembered his friendship he professed for Mrs. Bracegirdle, whose
admirable performance added spirit to his dramatic pieces; but he
forgot her, and gratified his vanity by chusing to make a rich duchess
his sole legatee, and executrix.

Mr. Congreve was the son of fortune, as well as of the muses. He was
early preferred to an affluent situation, and no change of ministry
ever affected him, nor was he ever removed from any post he enjoyed,
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 1200 l. a year; and he was
so far an oeconomist, as to raise from thence a competent estate. No
man of his learning ever pass'd thro' life with more ease, or less
envy; and as in the dawn of his reputation he was very dear to the
greatest wits of his time, so during his whole life he preserved the
utmost respect of, and received continual marks of esteem from, men
of genius and letters, without ever being involved, in any of their
quarrels, or drawing upon himself the least mark of distaste, or, even
dissatisfaction. The greatest part of the last twenty years of hi