arse and heavy hand, so
that it became nauseous; Etherege with a light touch and a gay
perception; Congreve with an instinct of good-breeding, with a sure and
extensive observation, and with an incomparable style. But all were
justified in choosing for their material just what they chose. They
sinned artistically, now here, now there; but to complain of this old
comedy as a whole, that vice in it is crammed too closely, is to forget
that a play is a picture, not a photograph, of life--is life arranged and
coloured--and that comedy of manners is composed of foibles or vices
condensed and relieved by one another. In so far as they overdid this
work, the comic writers were artistically at fault, and Jeremy Collier
was a good critic; but when he and his successors go beyond the artistic
objection, one takes leave to say, they misapprehend the thing
criticised. To complain that 'love' and common morality have no place in
satiric comedy is either to contemplate ridicule of them or to ask comedy
to be other than satiric. We know what happened when the dramatists gave
way: there followed, Hazlitt says, 'those _do-me-good_, lack-a-daisical,
whining, make-believe comedies in the next age, which are enough to set
one to sleep, and where the author tries in vain to be merry and wise in
the same breath.' These in place of 'the court, the gala day of wit and
pleasure, of gallantry, and Charles the Second!' And all because people
would not keep their functions distinct, and remember that at a comedy
they were in a court of art and not in a court of law! The old comedy is
dead, and its spirit gone from the stage: I have but endeavoured to show
that no harm need come to our phylacteries, if a flame start from its
ashes in the printed book.

II.

William Congreve was born at Bardsey, near Leeds, and was baptized on
10th February 1669 [1670]. The Congreves were a Staffordshire family, of
an antiquity of four hundred years at the date of the poet's birth.
Richard, his grandfather, was a redoubtable Cavalier, and William, his
father, an officer in the army. The latter was given a command at
Youghal, while his son was still an infant, and becoming shortly
afterwards agent to Lord Cork, removed to Lismore. So it chanced that
the poet had his schooling at Kilkenny (with Swift), and proceeded to
Trinity College, Dublin, in 1685, rejoining Swift, and like his friend
becoming a pupil of St. George Ashe, the mathematician. In 168