poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. The dialogue is
one constant reciprocation of conceits or clash of wit, in which
nothing flows necessarily from the occasion, or is dictated by
nature. The characters, both of men and women, are either
fictitious and artificial, as those of Heartwell and the ladies, or
easy and common, as Wittol, a tame idiot; Bluff, a swaggering
coward; and Fondlewife, a jealous Puritan; and the catastrophe
arises from a mistake, not very probably produced, by marrying a
woman in a mask. Yet this gay comedy, when all these deductions are
made, will still remain the work of very powerful and fertile
faculties; the dialogue is quick and sparkling, the incidents such
as seize the attention, and the wit so exuberant that it "o'er-
informs its tenement."

Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in The Double
Dealer, which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to
his patron the Lord Halifax a dedication, in which he endeavours to
reconcile the reader to that which found few friends among the
audience. These apologies are always useless: de gestibus non est
disputandem. Men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased,
against their will. But though taste is obstinate, it is very
variable, and time often prevails when arguments have failed. Queen
Mary conferred upon both those plays the honour of her presence; and
when she died soon after, Congreve testified his gratitude by a
despicable effusion of elegiac pastoral, a composition in which all
is unnatural and yet nothing is new.

In another year (1695) his prolific pen produced Love for Love, a
comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners,
than either of the former. The character of Foresight was then