owed its author the privilege of the house.

Few plays have ever been so beneficial to the writer; for it procured
him the patronage of Halifax, who immediately made him one of the
commissioners for licensing coaches, and soon after gave him a place in
the pipe-office, and another in the customs, of six hundred pounds a
year. Congreve's conversation must surely have been, at least, equally
pleasing with his writings.

Such a comedy, written at such an age, requires some consideration. As
the lighter species of dramatick poetry professes the imitation of
common life, of real manners, and daily incidents, it apparently
presupposes a familiar knowledge of many characters, and exact
observation of the passing world; the difficulty, therefore, is to
conceive how this knowledge can be obtained by a boy.

But if the Old Bachelor be more nearly examined, it will be found to be
one of those comedies which may be made by a mind vigorous and acute,
and furnished with comick characters by the perusal of other poets,
without much actual commerce with mankind. The dialogue is one constant
reciprocation of conceits, or clash of wit, in which nothing flows
necessarily from the occasion, or is dictated by nature. The characters,
both of men and women, are either fictitious and artificial, as those of
Heartwell, and the ladies; or easy and common, as Wittol, a tam idiot;
Bluff, a swaggering coward; and Fondlewife, a jealous puritan; and the
catastrophe arises from a mistake not very probably produced, by
marrying a woman in a mask.

Yet this gay comedy, when all these deductions are made, will still
remain the work of very powerful and fertile faculties; the dialogue is
quick and sparkling, the incidents such as seize the attention, and the
wit so exuberant, that it "o'er-informs its tenement."

Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in the Double
Dealer, which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to his
patron, the lord Halifax, a dedication, in which he endeavours to
reconcile the reader to that which found few friends among the audience.
These apologies are always useless: "de gustibus non est disputandum;"
men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased, against their will.
But, though taste is obstinate, it is very variable; and time often
prevails when arguments have failed.

Queen Mary conferred upon both those plays the honour of her presence;
and when she died, soon after, Congreve testified his gr