that I ever heard." The next year
he characterizes _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ as "the most ridiculous
play that I ever saw." He liked the variety in _Macbeth_, and calls
_The Tempest_ "the most innocent play that I ever saw."

The Restoration dramatists, who were dominated by French influence, so
often sneered at morality and the virtues of the home, that they have
paid the penalty of being little read in after times. The theater has
not yet entirely recovered from the deep-seated prejudice which was so
intensified by the coarse plays which flourished for fifty years after
the Restoration.

Although John Dryden is best known among a large number of Restoration
dramatists,[2] he did better work in another field. William Congreve
(1670-1729) made the mast distinctive contribution to the new comedy
of manners. Descended from an old landowning family in Staffordshire,
he was for a while a mate of Jonathan Swift at Trinity College,
Dublin. In 1691 Congreve was entered in the Middle Temple, London, to
begin the study of law, but he soon turned playwright. His four
comedies,--_The Old Bachelor, The Double Dealer, Love for Love, The
Way of the World_,--and one tragedy, _The Mourning Bride_, were all
written in the last decade of the seventeenth century. After 1700 he
wrote no more plays, although he lived nearly thirty years longer. On
his death, in 1729, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Congreve attempts to picture the manners of contemporary society, and
he does not penetrate far below the surface of life. He is not read
for the depth of his thought, but for his humor and for the clear,
pointed style of his prose comedies. George Meredith says:--

"Where Congreve excels all his English rivals is in his literary
force, and a succinctness of style peculiar to him... He is at once
precise and voluble. If you have ever thought upon style, you will
acknowledge it to be a signal accomplishment. In this he is a
classic, and he is worthy of treading a measure with Moliere."

Congreve's best comedies are _Love for Love_ and _The Way of the
World_. The majority of critics agree with Meredith in calling Miss
Millimant, who is the heroine of the latter play, "an admirable,
almost a lovable heroine." Meredith illustrates one phase of his own
idea of the comic spirit, by the language which Miss Millimant uses in
accepting her lover: "If I continue to endure you a little longer, I
may by degrees dwindle into a wife." Con