lful
says in "The Way of the World."

The sun's a good pimple, an honest soaker, he has a cellar at your
Antipodes. If I travel, Aunt, I touch at your Antipodes--your
Antipodes are a good rascally sort of topsy-turvy fellows. If I had
a bumper I'd stand on my head, and drink a health to them.

* * * * *

_Scandal._ Yes, mine (_pictures_) are not in black and white, and
yet there are some set out in their true colours, both men and
women. I can show you pride, folly, affectation, wantonness,
inconstancy, covetousness, dissimulation, malice and ignorance all
in one piece. Then I can show your lying, foppery, vanity,
cowardice, bragging, incontinence, and ugliness in another piece,
and yet one of them is a celebrated beauty, and t'other a professed
beau. I have paintings, too, some pleasant enough.

_Mrs. Frail._ Come, let's hear 'em.

_Scan._ Why, I have a beau in a bagnio cupping for a complexion,
and sweating for a shape.

_Mrs. F._ So----

_Scan._ Then I have a lady burning brandy in a cellar with a
hackney coachman.

_Mrs. F._ Oh! well, but that story is not true.

_Scan._ I have some hieroglyphics, too; I have a lawyer with a
hundred hands, two heads, and but one face; a divine with two faces
and one head; and I have a soldier with his brains in his belly,
and his heart where his head should be.

It has been said that Congreve retired on the appearance of Mrs.
Centlivre, but so high was the opinion entertained of his genius that he
was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his pall was supported by noblemen.
Pope was one of his greatest admirers, and dedicated his translation of
Homer to him.

Dryden writes on Congreve.

"In easy dialogue is Fletcher's praise,
He moved the mind, but had not power to raise,
Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please,
Yet doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease.
In differing talents both adorned their age,
One for the study, t'other for the stage,
But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
One matched in judgment, both over-matched in wit."

Macaulay says "the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every comic
writer, except Sheridan, who has arisen within the last two centuries."

Lord Dorset of whom we have above spoken deserves some passing notice.
He was high in the favour of Charles II.,