Stella's sweet smile came and shone | to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mention none I think, however, so great or so gloomy.

upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems

CONGREVE AND ADDISON.

time? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene compli

in power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an Embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in our time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire

A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the Union;" and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man dis-mented, or the reverse; and the party tinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed the legend said that one or two young Cambridge men, orators of the "Union" were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary chariot.

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of Peers and Members of Parliament in Anne's and George's

but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse. The wits

*The following is a conspectus of them :—

ADDISON.

Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Prin cipal Secretaries of State, successively. STEELE.-Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians;

temps que celui de ces fables!" Men Congreve has done me the favor to of letters there still be: but I doubt review the 'Eneis,' and compare my whether any Pipe Offices are left. version with the original. I shall The public has smoked them long never be ashamed to own that this ago. excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavored to correct.

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary "swell" of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives," Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. "I am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve. From the beginning of his career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Drydent declared that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him: "Mr.

pipes or quills.'-BACON: The Office of

Alienations."

[We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points-by experience.]

was

The "excellent young man
but three or four and twenty when the
great Dryden thus spoke of him:
the greatest literary chief in England,
the veteran field-marshal of letters,
himself the marked man of all Europe,
and the centre of a school of wits who
daily gathered round his chair and
tobacco-pipe at Wills'. Pope dedi-

on his comedy called the "Double Deal-
er," in which he says:-
“Great Jonson did by strength of judg-
ment please;

Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants

his ease.

In differing talents both adorned their age:

One for the study, t'other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit,

One matched in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit.

In him all beauties of this age we see," &c., &c.

The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the "Old Bachelor," but, at first, met with opposition. The critics first having fallen foul of it, our "Swell" applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the " Epistle Dedicatory" to the "Right Honorable Charles Montague."

true critic might have put me upon my "I was conscious," said he, "where a defence. I was prepared for the attack,

but I have not heard any thing said sufficient to provoke an answer." He goes on

more concerned than all the false critiBut there is one thing at which I am cisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world "It has been observed that no change than one of the fair sex. They are conof Ministers affected him in the least; nor cerned that I have represented some wowas he ever removed from any post that men vicious and affected. How can I was given to him, except to a better. His help it? It is the business of a comic place in the Custom House, and his office poet to paint the vices and follies of huof Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have | man kind. I should be very glad of brought him in upwards of twelve hun- an opportunity to make my compliments dred a year." But Biog. Brit., Art. CON- to those ladies who are offended. they can no more expect it in a comedy than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood.”

GREVE.

Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend, Mr. Congreve,"

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. "In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla. | Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in his 'Love for Love;' in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel, to her Millamant, in the Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve." - Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. 1784.

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favorite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.