Never in nature were such beauties joined;
Without—all shining, and within—all white;
Pure to the sense, and pleasing to the sight;
Like some rare flower, whose leaves all colors yield,
And—opening—is with sweetest odors filled.”
Yet all this would have comforted the King not half so much as a whiff of smoke from the pipe of one of his Dutch dragoons. He never went to see one of Mr. Congreve’s plays, though the whole town was talking of their neatness, and their skill, and their wit. That clever gentleman’s conquests on the stage, and in the social world—lording it as he did among duchesses and countesses—would have weighed with King William not so much as the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly.
Yet Congreve was in his way an important man—immensely admired; Voltaire said he was the best comedy writer England had ever known; and when he came to London this keen-witted Frenchman (who rarely visited) went to see Mr. Congreve at his rooms in the Strand. Nothing was too good for Mr. Congreve; he had patronage and great gifts; it seemed always to be raining roses on his head. The work he did was not great work, but it was exquisitely done; though, it must be said, there was no preserving savor in it but the art of it. The talk in his comedies, by its pliancy, grace, neat turns, swiftness of repartee, compares with the talk in most comedies as goldsmith’s work compares with the heavy forgings of a blacksmith. It matches exquisitely part to part, and runs as delicately as a hair-spring on jewelled pinions.
I gave my readers a bit of the “Pandora Lament,” which Sir Richard Steele thought one of the most perfect of all pastoral compositions. And the little whimsey about Amoret, everybody knows; certainly it is best known of all he did:
“Coquet and coy at once her air,