Hughes, Fenton, and Gay, came last in the train, Too modest to ask for the crown they would gain: Phœbus thought them too bashful, and said they would need

More boldness, if ever they hop'd to succeed.

Apollo, now driven to a cursed quandary,
Was wishing for Swift, or the fam'd Lady Mary :*
Nay, had honest Tom Southern but been within
call-

But at last he grew wanton, and laugh'd at them all:

And so spying one who came only to gaze,
A hater of verse, and despiser of plays;
To him in great form, without any delay,
(Though a zealous fanatic) presented the bay.

All the wits stood astonish'd at hearing the god
So gravely pronounce an election so odd;
And though Prior and Pope only laugh'd in his face,
Most others were ready to sink in the place.

Yet some thought the vacancy open was kept,
Concluding the bigot would never accept :
But the hyprocrite told them, he well understood,
Though the function was wicked, the stipend was
good.

At last in rush'd Eusden, and cried, 'Who shall have it,

But I, the true laureat, to whom the king gave it ?*
Apollo begg'd pardon, and granted his claim;
But vow'd, though, till then he ne'er heard of his

name.

Wortley Montague.

LIFE OF CONGREVE.

WILLIAM CONGREVE was one of the few who could trace their descent beyond the Norman Conquest. The time and place of his birth have not been ascertained; but the time is conjectured to have been 1672; and the place Ireland. After receiving the elementary parts of education at Kilkenny and Dublin, he was removed to the Middle Temple, where he is said to have studied any thing but law. We believe it is a pretty general mistake, that persons were sent to the Inns of Court for the exclusive purpose of counting Statutes and Reports. Knights, Barons, and the greatest nobility in the kingdom,' says a competent authority, often place their children here, not so much to make the laws their study, as to form their manners, and preserve them from the contagion of vicious habits; for, says Fortiscue, (De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 49.) all vice was there discountenanced, and every thing good and virtuous was taught there; music, dancing, singing, history, sacred and profane, and other accomplishments.'*

Congreve was an author, while yet a boy; and, what is more extraordinary, the author of a novel,—a species of writing, which, to be executed with suc

* Reeve's History of the English Law, vol. iv. 120.

cess, requires perhaps more reflection and more experience than any other whatsoever. A man must live over life before he can describe it. Real history may be decently written by one, who has seen little besides printed volumes; but a history, which is altogether fictitious,-which is to be created by the invention and matured by the imagination of the writer, and which must yet contain such incidents and such actions as might well be supposed to have had a real existence, can only be produced by men who have in person been long acquainted with the affairs of the world, and the characters of mankind. Congreve was bold to rashness, therefore, in attempting to write a novel at twenty; and if, at this day, his Incognita is too appropriately named, there may be good reasons for it, independently of the author's natural abilities. His biographers have praised it; and, for aught we know, their praises are just. His second literary effort was nearly as presumptuous as the first. The Old Bachelor was acted in 1693, when the author was but twenty-one years old; and he tells us in the Preface, that it was written several years before it was acted. Dryden said, he never saw such a first play; and Halifax was so much pleased with it, that he immediately made the author one of the commissioners for licensing hackney coaches, and not long after gave him one place in the pipe-office, with another in the customs, worth 500 pounds year. Thus encouraged, he set forth the Double Dealer in the following year. But success had probably rendered him careless; and, in the dedication to his patron, he was obliged to apologize for the unpopularity of the play. His reputation was partially retrieved by the comedy of Love for Love, in the next year; and was raised higher than ever in 1697, by the production of the Mourning Bride, a tragedy. Considering the age of the author, these are unquestionably wonderful performances;