The question brings one to an attempted appreciation of the man.  Mr. Gosse, for whose Life I would express my gratitude, confesses that ‘it is not very easy to construct a definite portrait of Congreve.’  But that it baffled that very new journalist, Mrs. Manley, in his own day, and Mr. Gosse, with his information, in ours, to give ‘salient points’ to Congreve’s character, proves in itself an essential characteristic, which need be negatively stated only by choice.  That no amusing eccentricities are recorded, no ludicrous adventures, no persistent quarrels, implies, taken with other facts we know, that he was a well-bred man of the world, with the habit of society: that in itself is a definite personal quality.  One supposes him an ease-loving man, not inclined to clown for the amusement of his world.  He was loved by his friends, being tolerant, and understanding the art of social life.  He was successful, and must therefore have had enemies, but he was careless to improve hostilities.  For the temperament which is so plain in the best of his writings must have been present in his life—an unobtrusive, because a never directly implied, superiority and an ironical humour.  The picture of swaggering snobbishness which Thackeray was inspired to make of him is proved bad by all that we know.  A swaggerer could not have made a fast friend of Dryden—grown mellow, indeed, but by no means beggared of his fire—on his first coming to town, nor kept the intimacy of Swift, nor avoided the fault-finding of Dennis.  It is quite unnecessary to suppose that Congreve’s famous remark to Voltaire, that he wished to be visited as a plain gentleman, was the remark (if it was made) of a snob: it was clearly a legitimate deprecation, spoken by a man who had written nothing notable for twenty-six years, which Voltaire misunderstood in a moment of stupidity, or in one of forgetfulness misrepresented.  His superiority and his irony came from a just sense of the perspective of things, and, not preventing affection for his friends, left him indifferent to his foes.  Probably, also, a course of dissipation (at which Swift hints) in his youth, acting on a temperament not particularly ardent, had left him with such passions for war and love as were well under control.  The two women with whom his name is connected were Mrs. Bracegirdle and the Duchess of Marlborough; but nobody knew—though the latter’s mother hinted the worst—how far the intimacy went.  That is to say, no patent scandal was necessary to the connexion, if in either case Congreve was a lover.  And (once more) Congreve was a gentleman.

But why did he become sterile at thirty?  Where, if not in dealing with motives and causes, may one be fancy-free?  Here there are many, of which the first to be given is mere conjecture, but conjecture, I fancy, not inconsistent with such facts as are known.  When Congreve produced his first comedy, he was but twenty-three, fresh from college and the country, ignorant, as we are told, of the world.  He discovered very soon that he had an aptitude for social life, that, no doubt, living humours and follies were as entertaining as printed ones, that for a popular and witty man the world was pleasant.  But no man may be socially finished all at once.  In the course of the seven years between The Old Bachelor and The Way of the World, Congreve must have found his wit becoming readier, his tact surer, his appreciation of natural comedy finer and (as personal keenness decreased) more equable, his popularity greater, and—in fine—the world more pleasant and the attractions of the study waning and waning in comparison.  He was a finished artist, he was born, one might almost say, with a style; but his inclination was to put his art into life rather than into print.  Even in our days (thank God for all His mercies!) everybody is not writing a book.  There are people whose talk has inimitable touches, and whose lives are art, but who never sit down to a quire of foolscap.  I believe that Congreve naturally was one of these, that his literary ambition was a result of accidental necessity, and that had he lived as a boy in the society he was of as a very young man—for all its literary ornaments—we should have had of him only odes and songs.  His generation was idler and took itself less seriously than ours.  The primal curse was not imposed on everybody as a duty.  In seven years of growing appreciation Congreve came to think the little graces and humours the better part.  That I believe to have been the first cause of his early sterility; but others helped to determine the effect.  A certain indolence is of course implied in what has been said.  There was the gout, and there were his unfortunate obesity and his failing sight.  There was Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, an absorbing dame.  There were the success of Love for Love and the failure of The Way of the World.  For all that may be said of the indifference of the true artist to the verdict of the many-headed beast—and Congreve’s contempt was as fine as any—it is not amusing when your play or your book falls flat, and Congreve must have known that he might write another, and possibly a better, Way of the World, but no more Love for Loves.  Not to anticipate a later division of the subject, it may be said here that a man of thirty, of a fine intellect and a fine taste, of a languid habit withal, and with an invalided constitution, while he might repeat the triumphs of diction and intellect of The Way of the World, was most unlikely to return to the broader humours and the more popular gaiety of the other play.  Congreve, like Rochester before him, despised the judgment of the town in these matters, but by the town he would have to be judged.

He was a witty, handsome man of the world, of imperturbable temper and infinite tact, who could make and keep the friendship of very various men, and be intimate with a woman without quarrelling with her lovers.  He had a taste for pictures and a love for music.  He must have hated violence and uproar, and liked the finer shades of life.  He wore the mode of his day, and was free from the superficial protests of the narrow-minded.  Possibly not a very ‘definite portrait,’ possibly a very negative characterisation.  Possibly, also, a tolerably sure foundation for a structure of sympathetic imagination.