Lady Plyant.—Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault; but, my honour. Well, but your honour, too—but the sin! Well, but the necessity. O Lord, here's somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against it—strive, be sure; but don't be melancholick—don't despair; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no: but be sure you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me; yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don't hope; but don't despair neither. They're coming; I must fly.—The Double Dealer, act II, scene v, page 156.
It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.
The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished “to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity”, is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire's Letters concerning the English Nation, published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's Memoir of Voltaire. But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's Œuvres Complètes in the Panthéon Littéraire, Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)
“Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloire du théâtre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n'a fait que peu de pièces, mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre.... Vous y voyez partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie.”—Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 19.
On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral—“The Mourning Muse of Alexis.” Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called Pastora.
“I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn,
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,”
says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that—
With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,—
(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period.... It continues—)
Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,
Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face,
Scalding with tears the already faded grass.