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 complimented, or the reverse; and the party 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 an empire-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 of whose 1 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 Principal 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; Commissioner of "Forfeited Estates in Scotland." PRIOR.-Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France; Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France. TICKELL.-Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland. GAY.-Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover). "En Angleterre . . . . les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici.”—VOLTAIRE, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 20. names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them. They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. "Accourez, chastes nymphes de Permesse," says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. "Des sons que ma lyre enfante, marquez en bien la cadence, et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de Louis!" School-boys' themes and foundation-exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians remain quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses. William Congreve's' Pindaric Odes are still to be found in "Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poet's corner, He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire-a very ancient family. in which so many forgotten big-wigs have a niche-but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his first play, the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of the English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post in the Custom-house of the value of 6001. A commissionership of hackney-coaches-a post in the Custom-house-a place in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy! Does not it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe-office? Ah, l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables! Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago. Words, like men, pass current for a while with the pub 1 66 PIPE.-Pipe, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll. "PIPE-Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."-REES. Cyclopæd. Art. PIPE. PIPE-Office.-Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask." "These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe . . . . . because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small 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.] lic, 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. Dryden' declared 1 "It has been observed that no change of ministers affected him in the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year."-Biog. Brit., Art. CON GREVE. * Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called the "Double Dealer," in which he says— "Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please; Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. In differing talents both adorn'd their age; But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match'd 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," that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him, "Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the 'Eneis,' and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct." The "excellent young man" was but three or four-andtwenty 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 dedicated his "Iliad" to him;' Swift, Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "swell" applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "Right Honourable Charles Montague." "I was conscious," said he, "where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack,..... but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer." He goes on "But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.. I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood." 1 "Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country-one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer-and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Con |