confess that I have not read more
than a chapter of it, and hope I never may be forced to do so--great
rubbish, with good store of villains and ruffians, love-sick maidens who
tune their lutes--always conveniently at hand--and love-sick gallants
who run their foes through the body with the greatest imaginable ease.
It was, in fact, such a novel as James might have written, had he lived
a century and a half ago. It brought its author but little fame, and
accordingly he turned his attention to another branch of literature, and
in 1693 produced 'The Old Bachelor,' a play of which Dryden, his friend,
had so high an opinion that he called it the 'best first-play he had
ever read.' However, before being put on the stage it was submitted to
Dryden, and by him and others prepared for representation, so that it
was well fathered. It was successful enough, and Congreve thus found his
vocation. In his dedication--a regular piece of flummery of those days,
for which authors were often well paid, either in cash or interest--he
acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Lord Halifax, who appears to have
taken the young man by the hand.

The young Templar could do nothing better now than write another play.
Play-making was as fashionable an amusement in those days of Old Drury,
the only patented theatre then, as novel-writing is in 1860; and when
the young ensign, Vanbrugh, could write comedies and take the direction
of a theatre, it was no derogation to the dignity of the Staffordshire
squire's grandson to do as much. Accordingly, in the following year he
brought out a better comedy, 'The Double Dealer,' with a prologue which
was spoken by the famous Anne Bracegirdle. She must have been eighty
years old when Horace Walpole wrote of her to that other Horace--Mann:
'Tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this
morning. As she went out and wanted her clogs, she turned to me and
said: "I remember at the playhouse they used to call, Mrs. Oldfield's
chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!"' These three
ladies were all buried in Westminster Abbey, and, except Mrs. Cibber,
the most beautiful and most sinful of them all--though they were none of
them spotless--are the only actresses whose ashes and memories are
hallowed by the place, for we can scarcely say that they do _it_ much
honour.

The success of 'The Double Dealer,' was at first moderate, although that
highly respectable woman, Queen Mary, honoured