debts. He laboured under the weight of
these difficulties 'till his father died, and then the estate that
descended to him, was left under very uneasy limitations, he being only
a tenant for life, and not being allowed to raise money for the payment
of his debts: yet, as he had a power to make a jointure, he married,
almost at the eve of his days, a young gentlewoman of 1500 l. fortune,
part of which being applied to the uses he wanted it for, he died eleven
days after the celebration of his nuptials in December 1715, and was
interred in the vault of Covent Garden church.

Besides the plays already mentioned, he published a volume of poems
1704, which met with no great success; for, like Congreve, his strength
lay only in the drama, and, unless on the stage, he was but a second
rate poet. In 1728 his posthumous works in prose and verse were
published by Mr. Lewis Theobald at London in 8vo.

Mr. Dennis, in a few words, has summed up this gentleman's character;
'he was admired by the men for his parts, in wit and learning; and
he was admired by the women for those parts of which they were more
competent judges.' Mr. Wycherley was a man of great sprightliness,
and vivacity of genius, he was said to have been handsome, formed for
gallantry, and was certainly an idol with the ladies, a felicity which
even his wit might not have procured, without exterior advantages.

As a poet and a dramatist, I cannot better exhibit his character than
in the words of George lord Lansdowne; he observes, 'that the earl of
Rochester, in imitation of one of Horace's epistles, thus mentions our
author;

Of all our modern wits none seem to me,
Once to have touch'd upon true comedy
But hasty Shadwel, and slow Wycherley.
Shadwel's unfinish'd works do yet impart
Great proofs of nature's force; tho' none of art.
'But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains,
He wants no judgment, and he spares no pains.'

'Lord Lansdowne is persuaded, that the earl fell into this part of the
character (of a laborious writer) merely for the sake of the verse; if
hasty, says he, would have stood as an epithet for Wycherley, and slow,
for Shadwel, they would in all probability have been so applied, but the
verse would have been spoiled, and to that it was necessary to submit.
Those, who would form their judgments only upon Mr. Wycherley's
writings, without any personal acquaintance with him, might indeed be
apt to conclude, that such a diversity of im