CONGREVE.

WILLI

LLIAM CONGREVE, defcended from a family in Staf

fordfhire, of fo great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line beyond the Norman Conqueft; and was the fon of William Congreve, fecond fon of Richard Congreve of Congreve and Stratton.

He

vifited, once at leaft, the refidence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than one are still fhewn, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have written his Old Batchelor.

Neither the time nor place of his birth are certainly known: if the inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the place; it was said by himself that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southerne mentioned him with fharp cenfure, as a man that meanly difowned his native country. The biographers affign his nativity to Bardfa, near Leeds in Yorkfhire, from the account given by himfelf, as they suppose, to Jacob.

To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long with

* The Villare has no Bardfa, nor a Bardfey, in Yorkshire.

out knowing that falfehoods of convenience or vanity, falfehoods from which no evil immediately vifible enfues except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and, once uttered, are fullenly fupported. Boileau, who defired to be thought a rigorous and fteady moralift, having told a petty lie to Lewis XIV. continued it afterwards by falfe dates; thinking himself obliged in honour, fays his admirer, to maintain what, when he said it, was fo well received.

Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dublin, his father having fome military employment that ftationed him in Ireland: but after having paffed through

the ufual preparatory ftudies, as may be reasonably fuppofed with great celerity and fuccefs, his father thought it proper to affign him a profeffion, by which fomething might be gotten; and about the time of the Revolution fent him, at the age of fixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple, where he lived for feveral years, but with very little attention to Statutes or Reports.

His difpofition to become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and poffeffed that copiousness of fentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His firft performance was a novel, called Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled: It is praised by the biographers, who quote

4

quote fome part of the preface, that is indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it.

His firft dramatick labour was the Old Batchelor; of which he fays, in his defence against Collier,, " that comedy "was written, as feveral know, fome

years before it was acted. When I

" wrote it, I had little thoughts of the "ftage; but did it, to amufe myself, in "a flow recovery from a fit of ficknefs. "Afterwards through my indifcretion it "was feen, and in fome little time more "it was acted; and I, through the re"mainder of my indifcretion, fuffered "myself to be drawn in, to the profe"cution of. a. difficult and thankless