dverse party might naturally expect
to be advanced when his friends returned to power; and he was,
accordingly, made secretary for the island of Jamaica[16], a place, I
suppose, without trust or care, but which, with his post in the customs,
is said to have afforded him twelve hundred pounds a year.

His honours were yet far greater than his profits. Every writer
mentioned him with respect; and, among other testimonies to his merit,
Steele made him the patron of his Miscellany, and Pope inscribed to him
his translation of the Iliad.

But he treated the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed
familiarly with the great, he wished to be considered rather as a man of
fashion than of wit; and, when he received a visit from Voltaire,
disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not
as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, "that if
he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him."

In his retirement he may be supposed to have applied himself to books;
for he discovers more literature than the poets have commonly attained.
But his studies were, in his latter days, obstructed by cataracts in his
eyes, which, at last, terminated in blindness. This melancholy state was
aggravated by the gout, for which he sought relief by a journey to Bath;
but, being overturned in his chariot, complained from that time of a
pain in his side, and died, at his house in Surrey-street, in the
Strand, Jan. 29[17], 1728-9. Having lain in state in the
Jerusalem-chamber, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument
is erected to his memory by Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, to whom,
for reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of
about ten thousand pounds; the accumulation of attentive parsimony,
which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great
assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time,
by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.

* * * * *

Congreve has merit of the highest kind; he is an original writer, who
borrowed neither the models of his plot nor the manner of his dialogue.
Of his plays I cannot speak distinctly; for, since I inspected them many
years have passed; but what remains upon my memory is, that his
characters are commonly fictitious and artificial, with very little of
nature, and not much of life. He formed