: Queen Mary conferred upon both thofe plays the honour of her prefence; and when the died, foon after, Congreve teftified his gratitude by a despicable effufion of elegiac paftoral; a compofition in which all is unnatural, and yet nothing is new.

In another year (1695) his prolifick pen produced Love for Love; a comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners, than either of the former. The character of Forefight was then common. Dryden calculated nativities; both Cromwell and king William had their lucky days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was faid to regard predictions. The

Sailor

Sailor is not accounted very natural, but

he is very pleasant...

With this play was opened the New Theatre, under the direction of Betterton the tragedian; where he exhibited, two years afterwards (1697), The Mourn ing Bride, a tragedy, fo written as to fhew him fufficiently qualified for either kind of dramatick poetry.

In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the verfification to greater regularity, there is more bustle than fentiment; the plot is bufy and intricate, and the events take hold on the attention; but, except a very few paffages, we are rather amused with noise, and perplexed with ftratagem, than entertained with any true delinea

tion of natural characters. This, however, was received with more benevolence than any other of his works, and ftill continues to be acted and applauded.

But whatever objections may be made either to his comick or tragick excellence, they are loft at once in the blaze of admiration, when it is remembered that he had produced thefe four plays before he had paffed his twenty-fifth year; before other men, even fuch as are some time to fhine in eminence, have paffed their probation of literature, or presume to hope for any other notice than fuch as is bestowed on diligence and inquiry. Among all the efforts of early genius which literary history records, I

doubt

doubt whether any one can be produced that more furpaffes the common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.

About this time began the longcontinued controverfy between Collier and the poets. In the reign of Charles the First the Puritans had raised a violent clamour against the drama, which they confidered as an entertainment not lawful to Chriftians, an opinion held by them in common with the church of Rome; and Prynne published Hiftriomaftix, a huge volume, in which stageplays were cenfured. The outrages and crimes of the Puritans brought afterwards their whole fyftem of doctrine. into disrepute, and from the Restoration the poets and the players were left at quiet;

quiet; for to have molefted them would have had the appearance of tendency to puritanical malignity.

This danger, however, was worn away by time; and Collier, a fierce and implacable Nonjuror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would never make him suspected for a Puritan; he therefore (1698) published A fhort View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English. Stage, I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honest indignation. He was formed for a controvertift; with fufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often, vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and farcaftick; and with

all