The Comedies of William Congreve: Volume 1 [of 2]

Transcribed from the 1895 Methuen and Co. edition (English Classics, edited by W. E. Henley) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
in two volumes
VOL. I.
METHUEN AND CO. 36 ESSEX STREET: STRAND LONDON 1895
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
Before repeating such known facts of Congreve’s life as seem agreeable to the present occasion, and before attempting (with the courage of one’s office) to indicate with truth what manner of man he was, and what are the varying qualities of his four comedies, it seems well to discuss and have done with two questions, obviously pertinent indeed, but of a wider scope than the works of any one writer.
The first is a stupid question, which may be happily dismissed with brief ceremony. Grossness of language—the phrase is an assumption—is a matter of time and place, a relative matter altogether. There is a thing, and a generation finds a name for it. The delicacy which prompts a later generation to reject that name is by no means necessarily a result of stricter habits, is far more often due to the flatness which comes of untiring repetition and to the greater piquancy of litotes. I am told that there are, or were, people in America who reject the word ‘leg’ as a gross word, but they must have found a synonym. So there is not a word in Congreve for which there is not some equivalent expression in contemporary writing. He says this or that: your modern writers say so-and-so. One man may even think the monosyllables in better taste than the periphrases. Another may sacrifice to his intolerance thereof such enjoyment as he was capable of taking from the greatest triumphs of diction or observation: he is free to choose. It may be granted that to one unfamiliar with the English of two centuries since the grossness of Congreve’s language may seem
excessive—like splashes of colour occurring too frequently in the arrangement of a wall. But that is merely a result of novelty: given time and habit, a more artistic perspective will be achieved.