ing to affociate; and though he lived many years after the publication of his Miscellaneous Poems, yet he added no-thing to them, but lived on in literary indolence; engaged in no controverfy,. contending with no rival, neither foliciting flattery by publick commendations, nor provoking enmity by malignant criticifim, but paffing his time among the great and fplendid, in the placid enjoyment of his fame and for-

tune.

Having owed his fortune to Halifax, he continued always of his patron's party, but, as it feems, without violence or acrimony; and his firmnefs was naturally esteemed, as his abilities were re-verenced.

His fecurity therefore was.

never violated; and when, upon the extrufion of the Whigs, fome interceffion was used left Congreve fhould be dif placed, the earl of Oxford made this anfwer:

Non obtufa adeo geftamus pectora Pœni,

Nec tam averfus equos Tyriâ fol jungit ab urbe.

He that was thus honoured by the adverse party, might naturally expect to be advanced when his friends returned to power, and he was made fecretary for the ifland of Jamaica; a place, I fuppofe, without truft or care, but which, with his poft in the cuftoms, is faid to have afforded him twelve hundred pounds

a year.

His honours were yet far greater than his profits. Every writer mentioned him

with refpect; and, among other teftimonies to his merit, Steele made him

the patron of his Mifcellany, and Pope infcribed to him his tranflation of the Iliad.

But he treated the Mufes with ingratitude; for having long converfed familiarly with the great, he wifhed to be confidered rather as a man of fashion than of wit; and when he received a vifit from Voltaire, difgufted him by the defpicable foppery of defiring to be confidered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, "that, if he had been only a gentleman, "he fhould not have come to vifit "him."

In his retirement he may be fuppofed to have applied himself to books; for he difcovers more literature than the poets have commonly attained. But his fludies were in his latter days obftructed by cataracts in his eyes, which at last terminated in blindness. This melancholy ftate was aggravated by the gout, for which he fought relief by a journey to Bath; but being overturned in his. chariot, complained from that time of a pain in his fide, and died at his house in Surrey-ftreet in the Strand Jan. 29, 1728-9. Having lain in ftate in the Jerufalem-chamber, he was buried in Westminster-abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory by Henrietta dutchefs of Marlborough, to whom, for

rea

reafons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds; the accumulation of attentive parcimony, which, though to her fuperfluous and useless, might have given great affistance to the ancient family from which he defcended, at that time by the imprudence of his relation reduced to difficulties and diftrefs..

Congreve has merit of the higheft 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 fpeak diftinctly; for fince I infpected them many years have paffed; but what remains upon my memory is, that his characters are com monly fictitious and artificial, with very little

4