CONOREVE, WILLIAM, was the second son of Richard Congreve of Congreve in Staffordshire, and was born at Barden, near Leeds, in Yorkshire. His father, who held a commission in the army, took him over to Ireland at an early age, and plecad him first at the Great School at Kilkenny, and afterward, under the direction of Dr. St. George Arlie, in the University of Dublin. After the revolution in 1088 he returned to England, and was entered as a student in the Temple. Ilia first play, written at the age of nineteen, was the 'Old Bachelor,' which was produced with great applause at Drury-Lane in 1093; and Dryden is said to have remarked that he bed never seen such a first play. The next year he produced The Double-Dealer,' and in 1095, joining with Betterton, they commenced their campaign at the new house in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a new comedy written by Congreve, called 'Love for Love.' In 1697 he produced his tragedy of ' The Mourning Bride,' and two years afterwards the comedy of ' The Way of the World.' The indifferent autocue of this last play disgusted him with the theatre, and he determined to write no more for the stage. Through the friendship of his patron the Earl of !labial, he was first made one of the commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, then presented with a place in the I'ipe Office, and after that with ouc in the Customs, worth 600/. per annum. On the 14th of November 1714 he was appointed commissioner of wine licences, and on the 17th of December, in the same year, nominated secretary of Jamaica. The last twenty years of his lift were spent in retirement, and towards its clone he was much afflicted with tho gout end with blindness. Being
overturned In his chariot on a journey to Bath, he received, it Is supposed. some internal injury, and, gradually declining in health, died on the 19th of January 1729, at his house in Surrey-street in the Strand, London, aged fifty-seven, and was buried on the 26th of January in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Congrevo as also the author of a romance called ' The Incognita, or Love and Duty recouciled,' written at the age of seventeen ; ' The Judgment of Pares,' a masque ; ' Seinele,' an opera, and several poems. Congreve was as Johnson truly enough observed, undoubtedly an 'original' writer, as he "bor rowed neither the models of plot, nor the manner of his dialogue." But the plot is coofused, and in the conduct of it little attention is given to propriety or probability. his characters are untrue, and artificial, with very little of nature, and not much of life. ilk scenes seldom exhibit humour or passion ; his personages are a kind of intel lectual gladiators—every sentence is to ward or strike ; tho contest of smartneas is never intermitted ; his wit is a meteor, playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. lie has abundant wit, but it is ueithqr very original nor very choice, and as cold and feeble as genuine wit can well be. His only tragedy, 'The Mourning Bride,' although very successful, is a piece of unrelieved bombast. 'Love for Love' is the only play of Congreve's which has still possession of the stage, and even that is rarely acted, as its wit cannot atone for the exceeding grossness of the dialogue.