Mr.
Gosse, with his information, in ours, to give 'salient points' to
Congreve's character, proves in itself an essential characteristic, which
need be negatively stated only by choice. That no amusing eccentricities
are recorded, no ludicrous adventures, no persistent quarrels, implies,
taken with other facts we know, that he was a well-bred man of the world,
with the habit of society: that in itself is a definite personal quality.
One supposes him an ease-loving man, not inclined to clown for the
amusement of his world. He was loved by his friends, being tolerant, and
understanding the art of social life. He was successful, and must
therefore have had enemies, but he was careless to improve hostilities.
For the temperament which is so plain in the best of his writings must
have been present in his life--an unobtrusive, because a never directly
implied, superiority and an ironical humour. The picture of swaggering
snobbishness which Thackeray was inspired to make of him is proved bad by
all that we know. A swaggerer could not have made a fast friend of
Dryden--grown mellow, indeed, but by no means beggared of his fire--on
his first coming to town, nor kept the intimacy of Swift, nor avoided the
fault-finding of Dennis. It is quite unnecessary to suppose that
Congreve's famous remark to Voltaire, that he wished to be visited as a
plain gentleman, was the remark (if it was made) of a snob: it was
clearly a legitimate deprecation, spoken by a man who had written nothing
notable for twenty-six years, which Voltaire misunderstood in a moment of
stupidity, or in one of forgetfulness misrepresented. His superiority
and his irony came from a just sense of the perspective of things, and,
not preventing affection for his friends, left him indifferent to his
foes. Probably, also, a course of dissipation (at which Swift hints) in
his youth, acting on a temperament not particularly ardent, had left him
with such passions for war and love as were well under control. The two
women with whom his name is connected were Mrs. Bracegirdle and the
Duchess of Marlborough; but nobody knew--though the latter's mother
hinted the worst--how far the intimacy went. That is to say, no patent
scandal was necessary to the connexion, if in either case Congreve was a
lover. And (once more) Congreve was a gentleman.

But why did he become sterile at thirty? Where, if not in dealing with
motives and causes, may one be fancy-free? Here there