collection have ever been reprinted, nor is there anything in them worth preservation, though the prose maxims are better than the verse. Pope said that this volume was derogatory to Wycherley's memory, and unfair to himself (Works, v. 282, vi. xxxviii), and made it the excuse for the publication of his correspondence with the dramatist. Collected editions of Wycherley's plays appeared in 1713, 1720, 1731, 1735, and 1768. They were included by Leigh Hunt in an edition of the plays of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar (1840 and 1849), which formed the text of Macaulay's well-known essay; and they were carefully edited by Mr. W. C. Ward in 1893 for the ‘Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists.’
Wycherley was painted by Lely when he was twenty-eight, and this portrait of a ‘very genteel’ man (Spence, p. 215), in a flowing wig, was reproduced in mezzotint by Smith in 1703, and prefixed to the ‘Miscellany Poems’ of 1704. The original was in Sir Robert Peel's collection at Drayton Manor, and was sold in London on 11 May 1900. The motto to the engraving (‘Quantum mutatus ab illo’) was, says Pope, ordered by Wycherley himself (ib. p. 13). The same painting was reproduced by M. Van der Gucht for the collected edition of the plays. Another painting, by Kneller, is at Knole Park. It was drawn at first with the old man's straggling grey hair, but, as Wycherley could not bear it when done, the painter was obliged to draw a wig to it (ib. p. 255).
Lord Lansdowne said that, ‘pointed and severe as he is in his writings, in his temper he had all the softness of the tenderest disposition; gentle and inoffensive to every man in his particular character.’ He wrote lines in defence of Buckingham (‘Your late disgrace is but the court's disgrace’) when that nobleman was in prison in the Tower; and he did his utmost to interest the duke on behalf of Samuel Butler when that poet was in want. He was much attached to his friends; Dryden called him his ‘dear friend’ (Dennis, Letters on Several Occasions, 1696, p. 57), and Wycherley wrote of ‘my once good friend Mr. Dryden, whose memory will be honoured when I have no remembrance’ (Posthumous Works, ‘Essay against Pride and Ambition’). After their reconciliation in 1711, Wycherley and Pope dined together, and when Pope said ‘To our loves,’ the old man replied, ‘It is Mr. Pope's health.’ Writing in 1705 or 1706, Lord Lansdowne asked a friend to meet Wycherley and ‘a young poet, newly inspired’—Pope—whom Wycherley and Walsh had ‘taken under their wing.’ He added that it was impossible not to love both Congreve and Wycherley ‘for their own sakes, abstracted from the merit of their works.’ Rochester (Poems on Several Occasions, 1680, p. 42) spoke of ‘Hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley:’
But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains,
He wants no judgment and he spares no pains.
On this Lord Lansdowne remarked, ‘If it had been a trouble to him to write, I am much mistaken if he would not have spared himself that trouble.’ Pope said that he was far from being slow, and wrote the ‘Plain Dealer’ in three weeks (Spence, pp. 151–2). Steele tells us that Wycherley once gave a sarcastic definition of ‘easy writing.’ ‘That,’ said he, ‘among these fellows is called easy writing which any one may easily write’ (Tatler, No. 9). Dryden spoke of Wycherley as ‘so excellent a poet, and so great a judge’ (Prose Works, iii. 335); and from an ‘Epistle to Mr. Dryden’ in Wycherley's ‘Posthumous Works’ it appears that Dryden asked his friend to join with him in writing a comedy. Elsewhere Dryden speaks of ‘the satire, wit, and strength of manly Wycherley.’ Evelyn said that ‘as long as men are false and women vain … In pointed satire, Wycherley shall reign.’ It is Wycherley's serious intentness that at once marks him off from the brilliance of Congreve, the boisterousness and humour of Vanbrugh, and the pleasing good fellowship of Farquhar. As Hazlitt says, in Congreve the workmanship is more striking than the material, but in Wycherley's plays we remember the characters more than what they say. But it is harder to agree with Hazlitt that the ‘Plain Dealer’ is worth ten volumes of sermons, and that ‘no one can read this play attentively without being the better for it as long as he lives.’ Lamb said that he always felt better because gayer for reading ‘one of Congreve's—nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's comedies?’ In Wycherley's plays the immorality is more realistic, and therefore more harmful, than in other Restoration dramas; but his vigour and clearness of delineation are his greatest merits.
