les Anglais_, Let. 20.

58 He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard
Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire--a very
ancient family.

59 "PIPE.--_Pipe_, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the
_great roll_.

"PIPE-_Office_ is an office in which a person called the _Clerk of
the Pipe_ makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the
Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of
the Exchequer.

"Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."--REES,
_Cyclopaed._ Art. PIPE.

"PIPE-_Office_.--Spelman thinks so called because the papers were
kept in a large _pipe_ or cask.

"These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's
Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the _pipe_ ... because
the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers
small _pipes_ or quills."--BACON, _The Office of Alienations_.

[We are indebted to Richardson's _Dictionary_ for this fragment of
erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these
points--by experience.]

60 "It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in
the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to
him, 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 twelve hundred a year."--_Biog. Brit._, Art. CONGREVE.

61 Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend Mr.
Congreve," on his comedy called _The Double Dealer_, in which he
says--

Great Jonson did by strength of judgement please;
Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his case.
In differing talents both adorn'd their age:
One for the study, t'other for the stage.
But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
One match'd in judgement, both o'ermatched in wit.
In him all beauties of this age we see, &c. &c.

The _Double Dealer_, however, was not so palpable a hit as the _Old
Bachelor_, but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having
fallen foul of it, our "swell" applied the scourge to that
presumptuous body, in the _Epistle Dedicatory_ to the "Right
Honourable Charles Montague."

"I was conscious," said he, "where a true critic