roclaim him the equal of
Shakspeare! Perhaps his most famous comedy is _Love for Love_, which is
besides an excellent index to the morality of the age. The author was
quoted and caressed; Pope dedicated to him his Translation of the Iliad;
and Voltaire considered him the most successful English writer of comedy.
His merit consists in some degree of originality, and in the liveliness of
his colloquies. His wit is brilliant and flashing, but, in the words of
Thackeray, the world to him "seems to have had no moral at all."

How much he owed to the French school, and especially to Moliere, may be
judged from the fact that a whole scene in _Love for Love_ is borrowed
from the _Don Juan_ of Moliere. It is that in which Trapland comes to
collect his debt from Valentine Legend. Readers of Moliere will recall the
scene between Don Juan, Sganarelle and M. Dimanche, which is here, with
change of names, taken almost word for word. His men are gallants neither
from love or passion, but from the custom of the age, of which it is said,
"it would break Mr. Tattle's heart to think anybody else should be
beforehand with him;" and Mr. Tattle was the type of a thousand fine
gentlemen in the best English society of that day.

His only tragedy, _The Mourning Bride_, although far below those of
Shakspeare, is the best of that age; and Dr. Johnson says he would go to
it to find the most poetical paragraph in the range of English poetry.
Congreve died in 1729, leaving his gains to the Duchess of Marlborough,
who cherished his memory in a very original fashion. She had a statue of
him in ivory, which went by clockwork, and was daily seated at her table;
and another wax-doll imitation, whose feet she caused to be blistered and
anointed by physicians, as the poet's gouty extremities had been.

Congreve was not ashamed to vindicate the drama, licentious as it was. In
the year 1698, Jeremy Collier, a distinguished nonjuring clergyman,
published _A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English
Stage_; a very vigorous and severe criticism, containing a great deal of
wholesome but bitter truth. Congreve came to the defence of the stage, and
his example was followed by his brother dramatists. But Collier was too
strong for his enemies, and the defences were very weak. There yet existed
in England that leaven of purity which has steadily since been making its
influence felt.

VANBRUGH.--Sir John Vanbrugh (born in 1666, died in 1726) was