have in his company, but
I am sure it was no _honour_,' alluding to her daughter's eulogistic
phrases.

Queen Sarah was right, as she often was when condemnation was called
for: and however amusing a companion the dramatist may have been, he was
not a man to respect, for he had not only the common vices of his age,
but added to them a foppish vanity, toadyism, and fine gentlemanism (to
coin a most necessary word), which we scarcely expect to meet with in a
man who sets up for a satirist.

It is the fate of greatness to have falsehoods told of it, and of
nothing in connection with it more so than of its origin. If the
converse be true, Congreve ought to have been a great man, for the place
and time of his birth are both subjects of dispute. Oh! happy Gifford!
or happy Croker! why did you not--perhaps you did--go to work to set the
world right on this matter--you, to whom a date discovered is the
highest palm (no pun intended, I assure you) of glory, and who would
rather Shakespere had never written 'Hamlet,' or Homer the 'Iliad,' than
that some miserable little forgotten scrap which decided a year or a
place should have been consigned to flames before it fell into your
hands? Why did you not bring the thunder of your abuse and the
pop-gunnery of your satire to bear upon the question, 'How, when, and
where was William Congreve born?'

It was Lady Morgan, I think, who first 'saw the light' (that is, if she
was born in the day-time) in the Irish Channel. If it had been only some
one more celebrated, we should have had by this time a series of
philosophical, geographical, and ethnological pamphlets to prove that
she was English or Irish, according to the fancies or prejudices of the
writers. It was certainly a very Irish thing to do, which is one
argument for the Milesians, and again it was done in the Irish Channel,
which is another and a stronger one; and altogether we are not inclined
to go into forty-five pages of recondite facts and fine-drawn arguments,
mingled with the most vehement abuse of anybody who ever before wrote on
the subject, to prove that this country had the honour of producing her
ladyship--the Wild Irish Girl. We freely give her up to the sister
island. But not so William Congreve, though we are equally indifferent
to the honour in his case.

The one party, then, assert that he was born in this country, the other
that he breathed his first air in the Emerald Isle. Whichever be the
true state of th