No More Learning

The artifice-disguise-upon
which its plot turns is borrowed from comedy, with the simple
difference that the wrong man is not married but murdered.
In other words, Manuel, king of Granada, personates Alphonso
for jealousy of Zara:
There with his bombast, and his robe arrayed,
And laid along as he now lies supine,
I shall convict her to her face of falsehood.
-
Were it not that Manuel is decapitated by his favourite, we might
be assisting at captain Bluffe's marriage with the masked Lucy.
But the taste of the time hailed it as a masterpiece. It was heard
with enthusiasm, and held the stage for many years. Stranger
still is it that Dr Johnson pronounced the description of the temple
in the second act 'the finest poetical passage he had ever read. '
It is idle to discuss the vagaries of criticism, though few will be
found now to mistake the pompous platitude of Congreve for
poetry. For the rest, the play opens with one of the oftenest
quoted lines in English-Music hath charms to soothe a savage
breast'; its third act concludes on a famous tag, the sense of
which is borrowed from Cibber:


## p. 153 (#175) ############################################

The Way of the World
153
Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned ;
and its production was but an interlude in the career of
Congreve.
Three years later, in 1700, Congreve's masterpiece, The Way of
the World, was played at the theatre in Lincoln's inn fields. That
it was a failure on the stage is not remarkable. It was written to
- please its author's fastidious taste not to chime with the humour
of the age. It was, in brief, a new invention in English literature.
It is deformed neither by realism nor by farce. The comic spirit
breathes freely through its ample spaces. "That it succeeded on
the stage,' says Congreve, 'was almost beyond my expectation. '
There is no hint of grossness in the characters. They are not of
the common sort, 'rather objects of charity than contempt,' which
were then popular on the stage. In brief, it was Congreve's
purpose
to design some characters, which should appear ridiculous, not so much
through a natural folly (which is incorrigible, and therefore not proper to the
stage) as through an affected wit, a wit, which at the same time that it is
affected is also false.
And so,
he set upon
the boards a set of men and women of quick
brains and cynical humours, who talked with the brilliance and
rapidity wherewith the finished swordsman fences. They are not
at the pains to do much. What Congreve calls the fable is of small
account. It is difficult to put faith in the document which un-
ravels the tangle and counteracts the villainy of Fainall. The trick
played upon lady Wishfort, that most desperate of all creatures,
a lady fighting an unequal battle with time, does no more than
interrupt the raillery, which, with a vivid characterisation, is the
play's excuse. The cabal nights, on which they come together,
and sit like a coroner's inquest on the murdered reputations of
the week, and of which Sheridan's imitation fell far below the
original, demonstrate at once what manner of men and women are
the persons of the drama. Witwoud, indeed, is the very triumph
of coxcombry, with Petulant for his engaging foil. He never
opens his lips without an epigram, and in his extravagant chatter
climbs to the topmost height of folly. 'Fainall,' says he, how's
your lady. . . I beg pardon that I should ask a man of pleasure and
the town, a question at once so foreign and domestic. ' And again:
'A wit should be no more sincere than a woman constant; one
argues a decay of parts, as t'other of beauty. How light, and
cynical, and wellbred it all is, in spite of its purposed affectation!


## p. 154 (#176) ############################################

154
The Restoration Drama
>
And the other characters, Mrs Marwood and the Fainalls, though
the deeper seriousness of intrigue inspires them, are drawn with
a perfect surety of skill and knowledge.
But Mrs Millamant and Mirabell overtop them all. The warfare
of their wits and hearts is the very essence of the drama. George
Meredith has said with justice that the play might be called 'The
Conquest of a Town Coquette'; and, when the enchanting Millamant
and her lover are on the stage, our interest in the others fades to
nothingness. By a happy stroke, Millamant does not appear until
the second scene of the second act, but Mirabell has discoursed of
her qualities, and you are all expectancy. And nobly does the
love-sick Mirabell hail her approach. 'Here she comes, i'faith,
full sail, with her fan spread and her streamers out, and a shoal of
fools for tenders; ha, no, I cry her mercy! ' It is impossible to
think of anything save the apparition of Dalila, in Samson
Agonistes,
That so bedeckt, ornate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing
Like a stately Ship
Of Tarsus, bound for th’Isles
Of Javan or Gadier
With all her bravery on and tackle trim,
Sails filli'd, and streamers waving.
And Mrs Millamant reveals herself at once as a woman of fashion,
sated with life. Instantly she strikes the note of nonchalance in
her famous comment upon letters. "Nobody knows how to write
letters and yet one has 'em, one does not know why. They serve
one to pin up one's hair. ' Then, she and Mirabell fall bravely to
the encounter. 'Nay, 'tis true,' says he, you are no longer hand-
some when you've lost your lover; your beauty dies upon the
instant; for beauty is the lover's gift. ' 'Lord, what is a lover, that
it can give,' asks Millamant. "Why, one makes lovers as fast as
one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die
as soon as one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more. '
Whenever Millamant is upon the stage, Congreve is at his best.
The speeches which he puts in her mouth are all delicately
turned and finely edged. She is a personage by and of herself.
She comes before you visibly and audibly. She is no profile,
painted upon paper, and fitted with tags. Her creator has made
her in three dimensions; and, as she always differs from those
about her, so she is always consistent with herself. Mirabell
knows her when he says that 'her true vanity is in her power of
pleasing. ' She is, indeed, a kind of Beatrice, who strives with a
6


## p. 155 (#177) ############################################

The Comedy of Manners
155
-
willing Benedick. But, though she loves her Mirabell, yet will she
not submit. When he, lacking humour as a lover would in the
circumstances, complains that 'a man may as soon make a friend
by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman by plain-
dealing and sincerity,' how deftly she turns his gravity aside!
'Sententious Mirabell! ' And it is to Mrs Fainall, not to her lover,
that at last she acknowledges, well, if Mirabell should not make
a good husband, I am a lost thing-for I find I love him
violently. '
But, before the end, there is many a battle to be fought. In
her contest with Mrs Marwood, the spurned beauty, she hides her
passion behind a veil of malicious merriment. 'I detest him, hate
him, madam,' declares Mrs Marwood. 'O madam, why so do I,'
answers the defiant Millamant, and yet the creature loves me,
ha! ha! ha! how can one forbear laughing to think of it. ' Nor
will she dwindle into marriage without an exaction at every step.
She'll be solicited to the very last, nay, and afterwards. It is not
for her to endure 'the saucy looks of an assured man. And so she
makes terms with Mirabell, and he, in turn, offers conditions of
matrimony, in a scene which for phrase and diction Congreve
himself has never surpassed. Even at the last, she will yield only
with an impertinence. "Why does not the man take me ? would you
have me give myself to you over and over again ? ' And Mirabell
replies, 'Ay, and over and over again. ' Thus, they share the
victory; and, as you lay down the play, in which incense has been
offered to the muse of comedy, you feel that The Way of the
World, for all its malice, all its irony, all its merriment, is as
austere as tragedy, as rarefied as thought itself.
Congreve, then, carried to its highest perfection what is known
as the artificial comedy or comedy of manners. He regarded
himself as the legitimate heir of Terence and Menander, and
claimed with perfect justice to paint the world in which he lived.
Something, of course, he owed to his predecessors, and to the noble
traditions of the English stage. Shakespeare, as has been hinted,
was ever an example to him, and at the beginning of his career he
worked under the domination of Ben Jonson. Of those nearer to
his own time, he was most deeply indebted to the lighthearted
Etherege. But, being himself a true master of comedy, he took
for his material the life about him, a life which still reflected the
gaiety of king Charles's court. The thirty years which had passed
since the restoration, when Congreve began to write, had not
availed to darken 'the gala day of wit and pleasure. ' A passage,
6


## p. 156 (#178) ############################################

156
The Restoration Drama
in which he describes the composition of The Way of the World,
reveals in a flash his aim and ambition.
'If it has happened,' he writes in a dedication addressed to Ralph earl
Montague, 'in any part of this comedy, that I have gained a turn of style or
expression more correct, or at least more corrigible, than in those that I have
formerly written, I must with equal pride and gratitude ascribe it to the honour
of your Lordship's admitting me into your conversation, and that of a society
where everybody else was so well worthy of you, in your retirement last
summer from the town. '
a
a
When due allowance is made for the terms of a dedication, in
which accuracy is asked of no man, it is easy to believe that, in lord
Montague's country house, he found that wit and sparkle of life
which he transferred to his scene, 'as upon a canvas of Watteau'
a Watteau, whose gaiety and elegance are tempered by malice.
But the life which he painted was not the life of common day.
It was a life of pleasure and gallantry, which had a code and speech
of its own. No man ever selected from the vast world of experience
what served his purpose more rigorously than Congreve. He
never cared for seeing things that forced him to entertain low
thoughts of his nature. 'I don't know how it is with others,' said
he, “but I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a
monkey, without mortifying reflections. Nor was he one who saw
life whole. His sympathy was for 'persons of quality,' and he lived
in a world situate on the confines of cynicism and merriment.
Had he ever descended to realism his comedies might have been
open to reproach. But the scene, in which his Plyants and Froths,
his Mirabells and Millefonts, his Millamants and Angelicas, his
Brisks and Tattles, play their parts, is, like their names, fantastic
enough half to justify the famous paradox of Charles Lamb. Even
while we admit that Congreve painted what he chose to see, we
may yet acknowledge that the persons of his drama ‘have got out
of Christendom into the land of—what shall I call it ? -of cuckoldry
-the Utopia of gallantry, whose pleasure is duty, and the manners
perfect freedom? '
It is in the interpretation of this gallantry that Congreve
displayed his true genius. He was, above and before all, a man
of letters. It was not enough for him, as for most of his con-
temporaries, to devise an ingenious situation or to excite the
laughter of the pit by the voice of boisterous fun. He had a
natural love and respect for the English tongue. He cared
supremely for the making of his sentences. His nice scholarship
· See Lamb's essay on the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century.
.


## p. 157 (#179) ############################################

Congreve's Comic Art
157
had taught him the burden of association which time had laid
upon this word or that. He used the language of his own day like
a master, because he was anchored securely to a knowledge of the
past. In point and concision, his style is still unmatched in the
literature of England. There is never in his writing a word too
much, or an epithet that is superfluous. He disdains the stale
artifices wherewith the journeyman ties his poor sentences
together. As a stern castigator of prose, he goes far beyond the
example of his master, Molière. And this sternly chastened prose,
with its haunting memories of Shakespeare and Jonson, its flashing
irony, and its quick allusiveness, is a clear mirror of Congreve's
mind. The poet's phrase is penetrated and informed by the wit
.
and raillery of the poet's thought.
In nothing does Congreve prove his art more abundantly
than in the rhythm and cadence of his speech. His language
appeals always to the ear rather than to the eye. So fine a
master of comic diction was he, that, in every line he wrote, you
may mark the rise and fall of the actor's voice. His words, in
brief, were written to be spoken; he sternly excludes whatever
is harsh or tasteless; and we in our studies may still charm our
ears with the exquisite poise of his lines, because the accent still
falls where he meant that it should fall, the stage effect may still be
recovered in the printed page. He arranges his vowels with the
same care which a musician gives to the arrangement of his notes.
He avoids the clashing of uncongenial consonants, as a maker of
harmonies refrains from discord. Open Love for Love or The Way
of the World, where you will, and you will find passages which, by
the precision wherewith they fit the voice, would give you pleasure,
were they deprived of meaning.
Congreve was thirty when he gave The Way of the World
to the theatre. He wrote no more for the stage? The history of
letters shows no other instance of defection so great as this.
Several reasons for his sudden abandonment of letters have been
suggested—the cold reception of The Way of the World, or the
blundering attack of Jeremy Collier. The reasons are insufficient.
The natural aristocracy of Congreve's mind makes light of such
1 We cannot reckon in his work the share he had in Squire Trelooby. Here
for the sake of completeness is his account of the matter, given in a letter to Joseph
Keatly on 20 May 1704: "The translation you speak of is not altogether mine ; for
Vanbrugh and Walsh had a part in it. Each did an act of a French farce. Mine, and
I believe theirs, was done in two mornings ; so there can be no great matter in it. It
was a compliment made to the people of quality at their subscription music, without
any design to have it acted or printed further. '


## p. 158 (#180) ############################################

158
The Restoration Drama
rebuffs as these. “A better reason is not far to seek. In depicting
society Congreve had fallen in love with it. He turned willingly
from art to life, for which his character and his studies alike fitted
him. He was by temperament what himself would have called a
man of quality. He might have sat for the portrait of Valentine
or Mirabell. He lavished in talk his incomparable gifts as an
intellectual gladiator, choosing only a quieter field for their dis-
play. The generosity of his friends placed him above and beyond
the irking of want or debt. Soon after the production of Love
for Love he was appointed commissioner for the licensing for.
hackney coaches, an office which he held until 1707. Com-
missioner of wine licences from 1705 to 1714, secretary for
Jamaica from 1714 onwards, he enjoyed also a place in the Paper
office, and lived in comfortable affluence upon £1200 a year.
Taking but a modest interest in politics, he kept aloof from the
strife of parties, and neither side was urgent to strip him of his
emoluments. When-in 1711-he feared to be deprived of his
commissionership of wine licences, Swift waited upon ‘my Lord-
Treasurer,' successfully pleaded the cause of Congreve, and was
able to reassure his friend. 'So I have made a worthy man easy,'
a
he writes, “and that is a good day's work. ' Few of his contem-
poraries had more or more closely attached friends. - Halifax
accepted his dedication and guarded his interests. Of Dryden's
generous sympathy towards him something has already been said.
It was to him that Steele dedicated his Miscellanies, and that
Pope addressed the famous epilogue of his Iliad, which does equal
honour to himself and to Congreve.
Such were some of Congreve's intimates, nor did his wealth of
friendship proceed from mere complacency. He was not every
man's friend because he was no man's enemy. The social graces
were active in him. His talk must have been an easy echo of his
comedies. Swift, the sternest of judges, ‘dined with him and
Estcourt' on one occasion, 'and laughed till six. Though long
before his death he was acclaimed the greatest man of letters in
his time, though he lived in an atmosphere of grandeur, his kindly
services were always at the disposition of others. “On another
visit he gave me a Tatler,' says Swift, 'as blind as he is, for
little Harrison. The courage and gaiety of his heart were un-
diminished by gout or by that fiercest scourge of a scholar, the
loss of his eyesight. As the passage of the years separated him
further from the triumphs of the stage, the writer was lost in the
man of the world. 'He is so far from being puff'd up with vanity,'
>
6


## p. 159 (#181) ############################################

Congreve's Friends
159
wrote Giles Jacob, that he abounds with humility and good nature.
He does not show so much the poet as the gentleman. It was
this worldly front, which he showed to Voltaire in 1726, and which
shocked the French philosopher, avid of literary fame. Congreve,
in conversation, dismissed his masterpieces as trifles, and received
Voltaire on the foot of a gentleman, who lived very plainly.
Voltaire replied that, had Congreve had the misfortune to be a
mere gentleman, he would not have visited him. Both men spoke
justly. But Voltaire did not sufficiently appreciate the natural
reticence of the Englishman, who, without the slightest vanity, was
still unwilling to discuss the masterpieces, which lay a quarter of
a century behind him.
Thus, he lived a discreet, well ordered life, visiting the country
houses of his friends, gossiping at Will's, seeking such solace as
Bath or Tunbridge Wells might afford him. Of Mrs Bracegirdle,
the enchantress, whose genius embellished his plays, he remained
unto the end the friend and neighbour. To the duchess of Marl-
borough, the wife of Francis Godolphin, he was bound in the bonds
of a close attachment. When he died in 1729 he left £200 to the
actress, and to the duchess £10,000, a sum which might, as Johnson
says, “have given great assistance to the ancient family, from which
he was descended. For this disposal of his wealth Congreve has
been rated by Macaulay in his best Orbilian manner. At this
distance of time and with our imperfect knowledge of his motives,
it seems rash to condemn the poet, whose generosity was rewarded
after her own guise by the duchess of Marlborough. Davies tells
us that she had
an automaton, or small statue of ivory, made exactly to resemble him, which
every day was brought to table. A glass was put in the hand of this statue,
which was supposed to bow to her Grace, and to nod in approbation of what
she spoke to it.
This is the mere frippery of fame. Posterity, content, like Voltaire,
to forget the gentleman, remembers the poet, who used the English
tongue with perfect mastery, and who, alone of his race and time,
was fit to tread a measure in wit and raillery with Molière
himself.
It would be difficult to find a more obvious contrast to Con-
greve than Sir John Vanbrugh. In the sense that Congreve was
a man of letters Vanbrugh was not a man of letters at all. He
was wholly unconscious of the diction, which for Congreve was a
chief end of comedy. Cibber spoke the truth when he said that the


## p. 160 (#182) ############################################

160
The Restoration Drama
best scenes of Vanbrugh's plays 'seem'd to be no more than his
common conversation committed to paper. ' 'In other words, Van-
brugh wrote as he talked, without reflection and with great good
humour. But, if the gift of artistic expression were denied him, he
lacked not compensations. He was a man of a bluff temper and
.
a
vigorous understanding, who easily communicated to his works
the energy and humour of his mind. Like many another of foreign
descent, he was more English than the English, he engrossed in his
own temperament the good and evil qualities of John Bull. Thus
it was that he delighted in farce, not of situation but of character,
and he separated himself from the other writers of comedy by a
vivid talent of caricature. He overcharged the eccentricity of his
personages with so bold a hand as to anticipate the excesses of
Gillray in another art. In brief, he was a highly competent gentle-
man, who found no enterprise too difficult for his courage and
intelligence. He was a man of affairs, a soldier, a herald, an
,
architect; and, no doubt, following the fashion, he sat himself down
to write a comedy with the same easy carelessness wherewith he
undertook to build a palace. Few men known to history were
more of a piece than he. In his life, as in his works, he was a
simple, sturdy, natural Englishman, devoid alike of affectation and
concealment. Pope ranked him among the three 'most honest-
hearted real good men’ of the Kitcat club, and his dignity wrung
from Swift, not apt for apology, a public regret that he had once
satirised 'a man of wit and humour. '
His grandfather, a merchant of Ghent, had found an asylum in
London from the persecutions of the duke of Alva, had followed
his craft with success, and had left two sons, the younger of whom,
Giles, was the father of the dramatist. Nothing is known of Sir
John's youth and training.
In 1691, when he was twenty-seven
years of age, he was clapt up in the Bastille as a suspected spy,
meditated a comedy within its comfortable walls, and, as Voltaire
owns with surprise, was never guilty of 'a single satirical stroke
against the country, in which he had been so injuriously treated. '
Six years later, in 1697, he produced The Relapse or Virtue in
Danger, and instantly established his reputation. This broad and
lively farce, which at once caught the popular favour, owed its
inspiration to Cibber's Love's Last Shift. The character of Sir
Novelty Fashion in that play made an instant appeal to Vanbrugh's
fancy; he raised the beau to the peerage, with the title of lord
Foppington, and converted Cibber's puppet into a brilliant carica-
ture. It is easy to find fault with the fable of The Relapse. It is
1


## p. 161 (#183) ############################################

Vanbrugh’s The Relapse
161
less a play than two plays spliced into one. Loveless, 'resolved
this once to launch into temptation,' and Berinthia, willing to abet
him, cannot engage our interest. The farce exists for the proper
display of lord Foppington, Sir Tunbelly Clumsey and Miss Hoyden.
Here, indeed, are three caricatures after Vanbrugh's own heart.
What they do matters not. It is what they say that reveals their
eccentricities. - Lord Foppington is the true fop of the period, with
all his qualities exaggerated. His title gives him unfeigned delight.
'Strike me dumb-my Lord-your lordship-. . . Sure whilst I
was a knight, I was a very nauseous fellow. Well 'tis ten thousand
pawnd well given-stap my vitals. ' He has the idle elegance of
his kind. When the tailor tells him that if his pocket had been an
inch lower down, it would not have held his pocket-handkerchief,
'Rat my pocket-handkerchief l’he exclaims, 'Have I not a page to
carry it? ' So he finds his life a perpetual 'raund of delights,' and
believes himself acceptable to all. When Amanda strikes him in
her defence, 'God's curse, madam,' he cries, 'I am a peer of the
realm! ' No better foil could be found for him than Sir Tunbelly,
the ancestor in a direct line of squire Western. That he bears a
close resemblance to nature need not be admitted. That he is an
excellent piece of fooling cannot be denied. He holds siege in his
country house, asks at the approach of a stranger whether the
blunderbuss is primed, and, when he and his servants at last appear
on the scene, they come armed with guns, clubs, pitchforks, and
scythes. ' Miss Hoyden is first cousin to Prue, and shows you in a
phrase her true character. 'It's well I have a husband a coming, ,
or i'cod, I'd marry the baker, I would so. While these immortal
three are on the stage, they excite our whole-hearted mirth. Their
fate cannot touch us, for in ridicule they transcend the scale of
human kind.
The Provok'd Wife, produced in 1697, is, in all respects, a better
play. Sir John Brute is Vanbrugh’s masterpiece. Caricature
though he be, there are many touches of nature about him. He is
the beau inverted, the man of fashion crossed with the churl. And
he is fully conscious of his dignity. "Who do you call a drunken
fellow, you slut you ? ' he asks his wife. 'I'm a man of quality;
the King has made me a knight. He would not give a fig for
a song that is not ‘full of sin and impudence. ' His cry is 'Liberty,
and property, and old England, Huzza l' He stands out in high
relief by the side of lady Brute and Belinda, who speak with the
s, accent of everyday, and who are far nearer to common life than
are the fine ladies of Congreve. His servants rival their masters
11
6
a
6
E. L. VIII.
OH. VÌ.


## p. 162 (#184) ############################################

162
The Restoration Drama
in impudence; and Rasor and Mademoiselle are worthy all the
praise which Hazlitt' has bestowed upon them.
It has been Sir John Vanbrugh’s fate to prove an inspiration
to our English novelists. Sir John Brute has long been a common-
place of fiction, and made a last appearance as Sir Pitt Crawley in
Vanity Fair. Still more vivid as a painting of life than The Pro-
vok'd Wife is the fragment, A Journey to London, left unfinished
at Vanbrugh’s death. There is very little that is dramatic in this
masterly sketch. It is but a picture of manners, of the impact of
the country opon the town. How well are the characters drawn!
Sir Francis Headpiece, a softened Sir Tunbelly; John Moody, his
servant, who'stumps about the streets in his dirty boots, and asks
every man he meets, if he can tell him where he may have a good
lodging for a parliament man'; young Squire Humphrey, the
unlicked cub of the country side-are painted in colours fresh to
the drama. They have taken their place, one and all, in English
fiction, and it is easy to measure the debt which Fielding and
Smollett owed to Vanbrugh's happy fragment.
Like many others of his contemporaries, Vanbrugh did a vast
deal of journeywork. He botched a comedy of Fletcher's; he
translated plays from Boursault, from d'Ancourt, from Molière,
and, through Le Sage, from the Spanish. None of his versions
is memorable, save The Confederacy (1705), englished from
d'Ancourt's Les Bourgeoises à la Mode, and completely trans-
formed in the process. As mere sleight of hand, The Confederacy
claims our admiration. Closely as it follows the original, it is racy
of our soil. As you read it, you think, not of the French original,
but of Middleton and Dekker. It is as though Vanbrugh had
breathed an English soul into a French body. Though he added
but three scenes, though he never strays far, even in word, from
the prose of d’Ancourt, he has handled his material with so deft a
hand that he has made another man's play his own and his
country's. Dick Amlet and Brass are of the true breed; Mrs
Amlet would not have disgraced the earlier age of comedy; and
the quickness of the dialogue, the speed of the action carried
the play for many a year down the current of success.
The last years of Vanbrugh's life were devoted to architecture,
and to its consequent disputes. His first experiment in the art
-Castle Howard – was finished under happy auspices. The
theatre, which he built in the Haymarket, the single failure of a
fortunate life, involved him in disaster, because he forgot that the
1 See Hazlitt's lectures on The English Comic Writers.


## p. 163 (#185) ############################################

Jeremy Collier
163
chief end of a theatre is to transmit what was spoken on the stage
to the audience, and because he did not foresee that the Hay-
market would prove inaccessible to the quality. Blenheim, inter-
rupted though it was by the meanness and temper of the implacable
duchess, was one of the triumphs of his career. Confused in
construction, like The Relapse, it is as vividly effective as the
most brilliant of the author's comedies. A finished artist in neither
medium, he was lifted high above such difficulties as perplex
smaller men, by his courage and good temper. He suffered the
fate of the great Perrault, with whom he may fittingly be com-
pared, from the wits of his time. But detraction never checked
the buoyancy of his spirit, and he died, still untouched by the
years, in 1726.
Twenty-eight years before the death of Vanbrugh-in 1698—
Jeremy Collier had startled the town with his Short View of
the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, and as
Congreve and Vanbrugh are arraigned therein with especial
bitterness, something must here be said of this unforgotten, acrid
controversy. The attack upon literature was not new. Evelyn
had already deplored the license of the stage. In his preface to
Prince Arthur, Sir Richard Blackmore had complained that the
poets used 'all their wit in opposition to religion, and to the
destruction of virtue and good manners in the world. ' The old
question of art and morals had been debated with rare intelligence
by Robert Wolseley in 1685, by way of preface to Valentinian,
and Joseph Wright, in his Country Conversations (1694) bad
protested against the attacks made by the stage upon virtue and
the clergy. Jeremy Collier, then, addressed a public inured to his
argument, which he pressed with a ferocity beyond the reach of
his immediate predecessors. A clergyman and non-juror, Collier
was indicted for absolving Friend and Parkyns at Tyburn, and,
refusing to give himself up, was outlawed. As a critic, if critic he
may be called, Collier was a patient pupil of Thomas Rymer, whose
style, method and paraded erudition he most faithfully mimicked.
He did but apply the 'good sense,' wherewith Rymer demolished
Shakespeare, to the comedies of his time. Indeed, it is not too
much to say that had the Short View of Tragedy not been written,
we never should have seen the Short View of the Immorality and
Profaneness of the English Stage. When Rymer says: 'Should
the Poet have provided such a husband for an only daughter of
any noble Peer in England, the Blackamoor must have changed
1 As to Jeremy Collier's general activity as a historian and essayist, see post, vol. I.
>
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164
The Restoration Drama
6
1
his skin to look our house of Lords in the face,' and roundly de-
clares that there is not a monkey that understands nature better,
not a pig in Barbary that has not a truer taste of things' than
Othello, you see the cupboard from which Jeremy Collier filched
his good things.
Relying upon Rymer, Collier went boldly to the attack. The
playwrights, he asserted, were immodest, profane, and encouragers
of immorality. He made an appeal to universal history, that he
might prove the baser wickedness of Englishmen. As little a
respecter of persons as Rymer, he lets his cudgel fall indis-
criminately upon the backs of great and small. Aristophanes
his own plays,' says he, ‘are sufficient to ruin his authority. For
he discovers himself a downright atheist. ' He shares his master's
contempt of Shakespeare, who, says he, 'is too guilty to make an
evidence: but I think he gains not much by his misbehaviour; he
has commonly Plautus' fate, when there is most smut there is least
sense. ' His comment on Ophelia matches Rymer's demolition of
Desdemona. Having extolled Euripides for seeing to it that
Phaedra's 'frenzy is not lewd,' he proceeds:
Had Shakespeare secur'd this point for his young virgin Ophelia, the play
had been better contrivd. Since he was resolved to drown the lady like a
kitten, he should have set her swimming a little sooner.
There we have the key to his 'criticism. ' Again, he will not
permit the smallest reference to the Bible in a comedy. When
Sir Sampson in Love for Love says, 'your Sampsons were strong
dogs from the beginning,' Collier's comment is characteristic:
'Here you have the sacred history burlesqu’d, and Sampson once
more brought into the House of Dagon to make sport for the
Philistines. ' He is indignant that lord Foppington should confess
that ‘Sunday is a vile day,' though the statement is perfectly con-
sonant with the part. That Valentine, in Love for Love, should
murmur 'I am truth,' fills the non-juror with fury. 'Now a poet,'
says he, 'that had not been smitten with blasphemy would never
have furnished frenzy with inspiration. The thought of The
Relapse drives him to the verge of madness: 'I almost wonder,'
says he, the smoke of it has not darkened the sun, and turned the
air to plague and poison. '
The worst offence of all committed by the dramatists is, in his
eyes, the abuse of the clergy. “They play upon the character and
endeavour not only the men but the business. If he had his way,
he would forbid the introduction of any priest, heathen or Christian,
into literature. The author of Don Sebastian,' says he, 'strikes
1
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## p. 165 (#187) ############################################

Fallacies of The Short View 165
at the bishops through the sides of the Mufti, and borrows the
name of the Turk to make the Christian ridiculous. ' Then, with
a tedious circumstance, he discusses the priesthood in all climes
and ages, approves Racine, who brings a high priest into Athalie,
but 'does him justice in his station,' and awards the true palm to
Corneille and Molière, who set no priest upon the stage. This is
certainly the right method, and best secures the outworks of piety. '
And, after a priest, he best loves a man of quality. Plautus wins
his approval because his boldest ‘sallies are generally made by
slaves and pandars. He asks indignantly what quarter the stage
gives to quality, and finds it extremely free and familiar. That
Manly in Wycherley's play should call a duke a rascal he con-
fesses is very much plain dealing. What necessity is there, he
“'
demands, 'to kick the coronets about the stage, and to make a
man a lord, only in order to make him a coxcomb? ' Plainly there
is no necessity; but the fact that Collier should put the question
is the best measure of his irrelevance.
It was Collier's supreme error to confuse art with life. He
had but one touchstone for the drama, and that was the habit of
his kind. He laid it down for an axiom that nothing must be
discussed upon the stage which was contrary to the experience
of his own blameless fireside. He assumed that the poet was an
advocate for all the sins which he depicted; that, if he brought
upon the stage a thief or an adulterer, he proudly glorified theft
and adultery. Never once did he attempt to understand the
artist's motive or point of view, to estimate the beauty and value
of words, to make allowance for the changing manners of changed
times. His mind was not subtle enough to perceive that, in
Congreve's words, it is the business of the comic poet to paint
the vices and follies of human kind. ' As he could see no difference
between art and life, so he could not separate satire from the thing
satirised. That lord Foppington is held up to ridicule did not
hinder his condemnation. His famous comment upon Juvenal
convicts him of absurdity. 'He teaches those vices he would cor-
rect, and writes more like a pimp than a poet. . . . Such nauseous
stuff is almost enough to debauch the alphabet, and make the
language scandalous. ' And he does not understand that, if Juvenal
be not justified, then he himself is guilty of the crimes which he
imputes to Congreve and Vanbrugh.
So the worthy non-juror laid about him, fathering vice upon
blameless words, and clipping wiser, better men than himself
to fit his bed of Procrustes. And even if we allowed that there


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166
The Restoration Drama
a
was no difference between deed and speech, that a writer who
mentioned a crime had already committed it, that, in fact, every
theatre should be supplied with a gallows, and a judge and jury sit
permanently in the Green Room, it would still be easy to convict
Collier of injustice, especially towards Congreve. Nothing can be
said in a critic's favour who detects profaneness and immodesty in
The Mourning Bride, who condemns the mere use of the words
'martyr' and 'inspiration,' who finds a depth of blasphemy in the
sentence 'my Jehu was a hackney-coachman. ' There can be no
doubt, however, that Collier's pamphlet enjoyed all the success
which scandal could bring it. For a while the town talked and
thought of nothing else. The king issued a solemn proclamation
against vice and profaneness. Congreve and D'Urfey were prose-
cuted by the Middlesex magistrates. Fines were imposed upon
Betterton and Mrs Bracegirdle. Then, alarmed at the publicity
of the pamphlet, the poets began to write in their defence. More
wisely guided, they would have held their tongues. The encounter
could not be closely engaged. Jeremy, having said little to their
purpose, should have been ignored. To demolish his principles
might have been worth while. To oppose him in detail was merely
to incur another violent onslaught.
As they used other weapons, and fought another battle than
Collier, neither Congreve nor Vanbrugh emerged with credit from
the encounter. 'Congreve,' said Cibber, 'seemed too much hurt
to be able to defend himself, and Vanbrugh felt Collier so little
that his wit only laughed at his lashes. ' Vanbrugh, indeed, had
put forth an admirable defence in anticipation, and with an
evident reference to Rabelais.
.
• As for your saints,' he wrote in a preface to The Relapse'(your thorough-
pac'd ones, I mean, with skrew'd faces and wry mouths) I despair of them;
for they are friends to nobody: They love nothing but their altars and them-
selves; they have too much zeal to have any charity; they make debauches in
piety, as sinners do in wine; and are as quarrelsome in their religion, as other
people are in their drink: so I hope nobody will mind what they say. '
That is in the right vein. But it was Farquhar, who, in an ingenious
little work, The Adventures of Covent Garden, justly ascribed to
him by Leigh Hunt, made the wisest comment of all, to the effect
that the best way of answering Mr Collier was not to have replied at all; for
there was so much fire in his book, had not his adversaries thrown in fuel, it
would have fed upon itself, and so gone out in a blaze.
The others flung themselves into the controversy with what spirit
they might. Dryden, worn with the battle of life and letters,


## p. 167 (#189) ############################################

Replies to The Short View
167
looked wearily on the fray. He owned that in many things Collier
had 'taxed him justly,' and added 'if he be my enemy, let him
triumph. ' But he did not plead guilty, as is generally supposed,
without extenuating circumstances and without the stern con-
demnation of his adversary.
'It were not difficult to prove,' said he, 'that in many places he has
perverted my meaning by his glosses; and interpreted my words into
blasphemy and bawdry, of which they are not guilty. Besides that he is too
much given to horseplay in his raillery; and comes to battel, like a dictator
from the plough. I will not say, the Zeal of God's House has eaten him
up; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility'
D'Urfey rushed into the field with a preface to The Campaigners,
like the light horseman that he was, and with a song of The New
Reformation dismissed the non-juror from bis mind:
But let State Revolvers
And Treason Absolvers
Excuse if I sing:
The Scoundrel that chooses
To cry down the Muses,
Would cry down the King.
With far greater solemnity did Dennis, who himself was not
attacked by Collier, defend the Usefulness of the Stage, to the
Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion. Collier
replied to Congreve with superfluous violence, to Vanbrugh and
Dennis with what seemed to him, no doubt, an amiable restraint.
For years the warfare was carried on in pamphlet and prologue,
and echoes of it may be heard to-day. The high respect in which
Collier has been held remains a puzzle of criticism. Macaulay, for
instance, finds him 'a singularly fair controversialist,' and at the
same time regards Rymer as the worst critic that ever lived, not
perceiving that their method is one and the same; that, if Collier
is in the right of it, so is Rymer. No doubt, the hand of tradition
is strong, but to forget all that has been said in the non-juror's
favour, and to return to his text, is to awaken rudely from a dream.
There seems to the present writer nothing of worth in Collier's
pamphlet, save the forcible handling of the vernacular, which he
owed, as has been said, to Rymer. Not even is his sincerity
obvious. He strains his sarcasm as he strains his argument. His
object was to abolish not to reform the stage, and he should have
begun, not ended, with his Dissuasive from the Playhouse (1703).
And if the respect lavished upon him is surprising, still stranger
is the conviction which prevails of his influence. Scott and Mac-
aulay, Leigh Hunt and Lecky speak with one voice. Yet a brief
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168
The Restoration Drama
examination of the facts proves that Collier's success was a success
of scandal and no more. The poets bowed their knee not an inch
in obedience to Collier. They replied to him, they abused him,
and they went their way. Congreve's true answer was not his
Amendments but The Way of the World. Vanbrugh showed in
The Confederacy how lightly he had taken his scolding. Farquhar
made his first flight in December, 1698, and nobody can assert that
he clipped the wings of his fancy with Collier's shears. Meanwhile,
the old repertory remained unchanged in the theatres. The pages
of Genest, a much surer guide than tradition or desire, make evi-
dent the complete failure of Collier's attack. Dryden, Shadwell,
Aphra Behn and D'Urfey, Ravenscroft and Wycherley were still
triumphant. In the very year of Collier's supposed triumph, The
Mourning Bride, the peculiar object of his attack, 'brought the
greatest audience they have this winter. ' Congreve, the most
bitterly maligned of all, seized the highest popularity. Love for
Love flourished in the nineteenth century. Don Quixote, which
Collier thought he had left dead on the field, was still played
a quarter of a century after the fray, and The Country Wife long
outlived it. Nor were the alterations, said to have been introduced
into the plays, of a feather's weight. To change Valentine's 'I am
a
truth' into 'I am honest' was to spoil a fine passage, not to recast
the stage; and Vanbrugh's transformation of the drunken clergy-
man, in whose robes Sir John Brute disguised himself, into a
drunken woman, was not made until 1725. The new plays were
of no other fashion than the old. Cibber's Careless Husband
(1704), Charles Shadwell's Fair Quaker of Deal (1710), Gay's
Three Hours after Marriage (1717), the comedies of Mrs Centlivre
and Fielding afford no evidence of a chastened spirit. Sir Richard
Blackmore, who had anticipated Collier, did not conceal his dis-
appointment.
"The stage has become impregnable,' he wrote in 1716, where loose poets,
supported by numbers, power, and interest, in defiance of all rules of decency
and virtue still provide new snares and new temptations to seduce the people,
and corrupt their manners. '
The reformation, in brief, was, as Tom Brown called it, 'a drowsie
reformation, and when it came in fact, it came not from the
admonitions of Jeremy Collier who was remembered only as a
1 Oldmixon, in his History, accurately estimated the effect of Collier's attack.
• Neither the actors nor the poets,' he wrote, “much regarded it. There was a little
awe upon them at first, but it wore off, and this attempt to reform them was the sport
of what wit they had in their plays, prologues, and epilogues. '
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George Farquhar
169
cat-o'-nine-tails of the stage, or as a proper jest for an epilogue,
but from a change in the manners of the people.