In the summer of 1728, Congreve was ordered to try the Bath waters.During his excursion he was overturned in his chariot, and received some severe internal injury from which he never recovered.He came back to London in a dangerous state, complained constantly of a pain in his side, and continued to sink, till in the following January he expired.
He left ten thousand pounds, saved out of the emoluments of his lucrative places.Johnson says that this money ought to have gone to the Congreve family, which was then in great distress.Doctor Young and Mr.Leigh Hunt, two gentlemen who seldom agree with each other, but with whom, on this occasion, we are happy to agree, think that it ought to have gone to Mrs.Bracegirdle.
Congreve bequeathed two hundred pounds to Mrs.Bracegirdle, and an equal sum to a certain Mrs.Jellat; but the bulk of his accumulations went to the Duchess of Marlborough, in whose immense wealth such a legacy was as a drop in the bucket.It might have raised the fallen fortunes of a Staffordshire squire;it might have enabled a retired actress to enjoy every comfort, and, in her sense, every luxury: but it was hardly sufficient to defray the Duchess's establishment for three months.
The great lady buried her friend with a pomp seldom seen at the funerals of poets.The corpse lay in state under the ancient roof of the Jerusalem Chamber, and was interred in Westminster Abbey.
The pall was borne by the Duke of Bridgewater, Lord Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington, who had been Speaker, and was afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and other men of high consideration.
Her Grace laid out her friend's bequest in a superb diamond necklace, which she wore in honour of him, and, if report is to be believed, showed her regard in ways much more extraordinary.
It is said that a statue of him in ivory, which moved by clockwork, was placed daily at her table, and that she had a wax doll made in imitation of him, and that the feet of the doll were regularly blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from the gout.Amonument was erected to the poet in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by the Duchess; and Lord Cobham, honoured him with a cenotaph, which seems to us, though that is a bold word, the ugliest and most absurd of the buildings at Stowe.
We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve.There was, indeed, a remarkable analogy between the writings and lives of these two men.Both were gentlemen liberally educated.Both led town lives, and knew human nature only as it appears between Hyde Park and the Tower.Both were men of wit.Neither had much imagination.Both at an early age produced lively and profligate comedies.Both retired from the field while still in early manhood, and owed to their youthful achievements in literature whatever consideration they enjoyed in later life.Both, after they had ceased to write for the stage, published volumes of miscellanies which did little credit either to their talents or to their morals.Both, during their declining years, hung loose upon society; and both, in their last moments, made eccentric and unjustifiable dispositions of their estates.
But in every point Congreve maintained his superiority to Wycherley.Wycherley had wit; but the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every comic writer, except Sheridan, who has within the last two centuries.Congreve had not, in, a large measure, the poetical faculty; but compared with Wycherley he might be called a great poet.Wycherley had some knowledge of books; but Congreve was a man of real learning.
Congreve's offences against decorum, though highly culpable, were not so gross as those of Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like Wycherley, exhibit to the world the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage.Congreve died in the enjoyment of high consideration; Wycherley forgotten or despised.Congreve's will was absurd and capricious; but Wycherley's last actions appear to have been prompted by obdurate malignity.
Here, at least for the present, we must stop.Vanbrugh and Farquhar are not men to be hastily dismissed, and we have not left ourselves space to do them justice.
