imputation. In 1700 Congreve thus replied to Collier with The Way of the World—the unequalled and unapproached masterpiece of English comedy, which may fairly claim a place beside or but just beneath the mightiest work of Molière. On the stage which had recently acclaimed with uncritical applause the author’s more questionable appearance in the field of tragedy, this final and flawless evidence of his incomparable powers met with a rejection then and ever since inexplicable on any ground of conjecture. During the twenty-eight years which remained to him, Congreve produced little beyond a volume of fugitive verses, published ten years after the miscarriage of his masterpiece. His even course of good fortune under Whig and Tory governments alike was counterweighed by the physical infirmities of gout and failing sight. He died, January 19, 1729, in consequence of an injury received on a journey to Bath by the upsetting of his carriage; was buried in Westminster Abbey, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber; and bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to the chief friend of his last years, Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the great duke, rather than to his family, which, according to Johnson, was then in difficulties, or to Mrs Bracegirdle, the actress, with whom he had lived longer on intimate terms than with any other mistress or friend, but who inherited by his will only £200. The one memorable incident of his later life was the visit of Voltaire, whom he astonished and repelled by his rejection of proffered praise and the expression of his wish to be considered merely as any other gentleman of no literary fame. The great master of well-nigh every province in the empire of letters, except the only one in which his host reigned supreme, replied that in that sad case Congreve would not have received his visit.
The fame of the greatest English comic dramatist is founded wholly or mainly on but three of his five plays. His first comedy was little more than a brilliant study after such models as were eclipsed by this earliest effort of their imitator; and tragedy under his hands appears rouged and wrinkled, in the patches and powder of Lady Wishfort. But his three great comedies are more than enough to sustain a reputation as durable as our language. Were it not for these we should have no samples to show of comedy in its purest and highest form. Ben Jonson, who alone attempted to introduce it by way of reform among the mixed work of a time when comedy and tragedy were as inextricably blended on the stage as in actual life, failed to give the requisite ease and the indispensable grace of comic life and movement to the action and passion of his elaborate and magnificent work. Of Congreve’s immediate predecessors, whose aim had been to raise on French foundations a new English fabric of simple and unmixed comedy, Wycherley was of too base metal and Etherege was of metal too light to be weighed against him; and besides theirs no other or finer coin was current than the crude British ore of Shadwell’s brutal and burly talent. Borrowing a metaphor from Landor, we may say that a limb of Molière would have sufficed to make a Congreve, a limb of Congreve would have sufficed to make a Sheridan. The broad and robust humour of Vanbrugh’s admirable comedies gives him a place on the master’s right hand; on the left stands Farquhar, whose bright light genius is to Congreve’s as female is to male, or “as moonlight unto sunlight.” No English writer, on the whole, has so nearly touched the skirts of Molière; but his splendid intelligence is wanting in the deepest and subtlest quality which has won for Molière from the greatest poet of his country and our age the tribute of exact and final definition conveyed in that perfect phrase which salutes at once and denotes him—“ce moqueur pensif comme un apôtre.” Only perhaps in a single part has Congreve half consciously touched a note of almost tragic depth and suggestion; there is something well-nigh akin to the grotesque and piteous figure of Arnolphe himself in the unvenerable old age of Lady Wishfort, set off and relieved as it is, with grace and art worthy of the supreme French master, against the only figure on any stage which need not shun comparison even with that of Célimène.
The Works of William Congreve were published in 1710 (3 vols.). The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve . . . edited by Leigh Hunt (1840), contains a biographical and critical notice of Congreve. See also The Comedies of William Congreve (1895), with an introduction by W. G. S. Street; and The Best Plays of William Congreve (1887, 1903), edited for the Mermaid Series by A. C. Ewald. The Life of William Congreve (1887) by Edmund Gosse, in E. S. Robertson’s Great Writers, contains a bibliography by J. P. Anderson. (A. C. S.)
CONGREVE, SIR WILLIAM, Bart. (1772–1828), British artillerist and inventor, was born on the 20th of May 1772, being the eldest son of Lieutenant-General Sir William Congreve
(d. 1814), comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich,
who was made a baronet in 1812. He was educated at Singlewell
school, Kent, and (1788–1793) at Trinity College, Cambridge,
taking the degrees of B.A. in 1793 and M.A. in 1795. In the
latter year he entered the Middle Temple, and up to 1808 he
lived in Garden Court, at first studying law, later editing a
political newspaper, and in the end devoting himself to the
development of the war rocket, for which he is chiefly remembered.
Through his father he enjoyed many opportunities of experimenting
with artillery material, and finally in 1805 he was able to
demonstrate to the prince regent, Pitt and others the uses of
the new weapon. In 1805 he accompanied Sir Sidney Smith in
a naval attack on the French flotilla at Boulogne, but the
weather prevented the use of rockets. In another attack on
Boulogne in 1806, however, the Congreve rockets, which were
fired in salvos from boats of special construction, were very
effectual, and in 1807, 1808 and 1809 they were employed with
excellent results on land and afloat at the siege of Copenhagen,
in Lord Gambier’s fight in the Basque Roads and in the Walcheren
expedition. Congreve himself was present in all these affairs.
In 1810 or 1811 he became equerry to the prince regent, with
whom he was a great favourite, and in 1811 he was elected a
fellow of the Royal Society; in the same year he at last
received military rank, being gazetted lieutenant-colonel in the
Hanoverian artillery. In 1812 he became member of parliament
for Gatton. In 1813, at the request of the admiralty, he designed
a new gun for the armament of frigates, which was adopted and
very favourably reported on. In the same year the newly formed
“Rocket Troop” of the Royal Artillery was sent to serve with
the Allies in Germany, and this troop rendered excellent service
at the battle of Leipzig, where its commander Captain Bogue
was killed. In recognition of their services Congreve was shortly
afterwards decorated by the sovereigns of Russia and Sweden.
Many years later the Congreve rocket was superseded by Hale’s,
which had no stick.
In 1814, on the death of his father, Colonel Congreve succeeded to the baronetcy and also to the office of comptroller of the Royal Laboratory. He also became inspector of military machines, but his Hanoverian commission did not (it seems) entitle him to command troops of the Royal Artillery, and there was a certain amount of friction and jealousy between Congreve and the Royal Artillery officers. During the visit of the allied sovereigns to London in this year, Congreve arranged the fêtes and especially the pyrotechnic displays which the prince regent gave in their honour. In 1817 he became senior equerry to the prince and a K.H., and in 1818 major-general à la suite of the Hanoverian army. In 1820 Sir William Congreve was elected M.P. for Plymouth (for which constituency he sat until his death), and in the following year, at the coronation of George IV. (whose senior equerry he remained), he arranged a great pyrotechnic display in Hyde Park. In his later years Congreve took a prominent part in various industrial ventures, such as gas companies, which, however, were for the most part unsuccessful. He died at Toulouse on the 16th of May 1828.
Congreve was an ingenious and versatile man of science. Besides the war rocket he invented a gun-recoil mounting, a time-fuze, a parachute attachment to the rocket, a hydropneumatic canal lock and sluice (1813), a perpetual motion machine (see Perputual Motion), a process of colour printing (1821) which was widely used in Germany, a new form of steam-engine, and a method of consuming smoke (which was applied at the Royal Laboratory); he also took out patents for a clock in which time was measured by a ball rolling on an inclined
