which some have accused him, in a bantering copy of verses upon her, in which Lord Scarsdale is encouraged not to be ashamed to marry her, though her father did keep an inn at Northampton.

"Do not, most fragrant Earl, disclaim

Thy bright, thy reputable flame,

To Bracegirdle the brown;

But publicly espouse the dame,

And say, G— d- the town," &c.

It had not been discovered in those days, that a charming actress was worth marrying for her own sake, in proportion to the evidences she had given of genius and a good heart. Rowe, with a spite that would hardly have been found in a greater poet, and that is doubly revolting if he had loved her, compliments her upon the offers of wealth and rank which she had rejected, in the very lines which ridicule her parentage and her profession. Even one of these grounds of objection is said to have been false. A commentator in Nichols's edition of the Tatler (vol. i. p. 215), designates her father as "Justinian Bracegirdle of Northamptonshire, Esquire," who "ruined himself, among other ways, by becoming surety for some friends." Be this as it may, hear Davies's account of the share which Rowe as well as Congreve had in the admiration which she excited :—

“Mrs. Bracegirdle was the favourite actress of Congreve and of Rowe. In the several lovers they gave her in their plays, they expressed their own passion for her. In 'Tamerlane,' Rowe courted her Selima in the person of Axalla; in the Fair Penitent,' he was the Horatio to her Lavinia; and in Ulysses,' the Telemachus to Bracegirdle's Semanthe. Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in 'Love for Love ;' in his Osmyn to her Almeria, in the Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the Way of the World.'"*

"Honest Tom Davies" proceeds to vindicate his heroine from the scandals of lawless "Tom Brown," who tells us that Congreve "dined with her every day, and visited her in public and private." The deduction thus intended to be implied cannot, argues Davies, be true, because Mrs. Bracegirdle was visited to the last moment of her life by "persons of the most unblemished character and the most exalted rank." He admits, at the same time, that Congreve's "assiduous courtship did not pass unnoticed; that he was constantly in her lodgings, and often rode out with her." Mr. Davies's gentle mystifications may be safely left to the reader's "candour” (to use a favourite word of those times). The toleration of polite life for temptations of the heart on the stage, has not been one of the least redeeming or sincere of its own claims to indulgence. Mrs. Bracegirdle's successor in the public admiration, Mrs. Oldfield, who was counted a model even to the fashionable world on every point but one, was intimate with the people of the "most unblemished character and exalted rank.” Mr. Davies subsequently tells us so himself; adding, that the royal family did not disdain to see her at their levees: and he repeats an amusing instance of her address. The Princess of Wales (afterwards queen of George the Second) told her one day that she

* 16 Miscellanies," ut sup., vol. ii. p. 360.

had heard that General Churchill and she were married. "So it is said, may it please your highness," said Mrs. Oldfield; "but we have not owned it yet."

From collateral as well as other circumstances that transpire in the literature of the period, we take the conclusion respecting Bracegirdle to be, that she was more truly in love with Congreve than he with her; that it is probable she expected him to marry her; that her expectations gradually gave way before his worldlier heart, probably to the ultimate consolation of her own, when he went to live with another; and that sufficient friendship was retained on both sides, to maintain an affectionate interest in one another for life;-in Congreve, because he was a gentleman and a man of sense; and in the mistress, because the memory of the very dreams of a real regard is too sweet, to let the bitterness even of its waking turn angry. Congreve visited her to the last, and remembered her in his will, though not generously. And his kinder friend took what care she could of his reputation. "When Curll, whom Dr. Arbuthnot (says Davies) termed one of the new terrors of death, from his constantly printing every eminent person's life and last will, published an advertisement of Memoirs of the Life of Congreve, she (Mrs. Bracegirdle) interested herself so far in his reputation, as to demand a sight of the book in manuscript. This was refused. She then asked, by what authority his life was written, and what pieces contained in it were genuine. Upon being told that there would be several of his letters, essays, &c., she answered, 'Not one single sheet of paper, I dare say.' And in this (rightly concludes Davies) she was a true prophet; for in that book there is not a line of Congreve which had not been printed before *.”

Cibber speaks of her in advanced life as retaining her usual agreeable cheerfulness. Some few years before her death, she retired, Davies informs us, to the house of W. Chute, Esq., and died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age, bequeathing "her effects" to a niece, "for whom she expressed great regard."

What sort of charms the greater lady possessed, for whose society Congreve appears to have forsaken that of Mrs. Bracegirdle, with the exception of her admiration of himself, her rank, and the beauty common to the house of Churchill, we know not. There is nothing to show for her having a grain of the other's sense and goodness. She was daughter and co-heir of the great Duke of Marlborough, and became duchess in her own right, and wife of the Earl of Godolphin. She was at variance with her mother, the famous Duchess; but so was all the world. Congreve was older than she by eight or nine years. Lord Chesterfield, speaking of her husband on a political occasion, calls him "that cypher ;" and intimates, that what ability he possessed consisted in "sleeping t." Now certainly Congreve was a man for keeping a lady's eyes and ears open, however short he might have come of her heart; and accordingly, he seems, for many years, to have been as regular at her Grace's table, as the wine. They had a good deal of music at the house. Bononcini, the rival of Handel, was

*Ut supra, p. 362.-He alludes to "Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Amours of William Congreve, Esq." purporting to be written by a Mr. Wilson, but supposed to be the manufacture of Oldmixon. It contains the novel of the "Incognita," and is still to be met with on the book-stalls. Mr. Wilson himself, in his preface, relates the above anecdote of Bracegirdle.

+ Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, &c.—vol. ii. p. 82.

patronised there. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has a passage on the subject, which reminds us that she too was so intimate an acquaintance of Congreve as to address very Lady-Mary-like verses to him, extremely resembling what in a male writer to a female would have looked like a declaration *. Perhaps this may explain the remainder of the passage:—

"The reigning Duchess of Marlborough (writes her ladyship to her sister) has entertained the town with concerts of Bononcini's composition very often; but she and I are not in that degree of friendship to have me often invited; we continue to see one another like two people who are resolved to hate with civility +.”

Congreve however, though not old, was now growing infirm. He had led a free and luxurious life; had become gouty, and was afflicted with cataracts in his eyes, which terminated in blindness. To relieve his gout, he took a journey to Bath, in the summer of 1728, for the benefit of the waters; but had the misfortune to be overturned there in his chariot, which is supposed to have occasioned some inward bruise; for returning to London, he complained thenceforward of a pain in his side, and died the 19th of January following, of a gradual decay, at his house in Surrey-street, in the Strand, and in the fifty-seventh year of his age.

The Duchess of Marlborough took instant possession of the right of burial. On the Sunday following, the corpse lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber; and the same evening was borne with great solemnity into Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and interred in the south transept of the Abbey. The pall was supported by the Duke of Bridgewater (whose first wife was the Duchess's sister), Lord Cobham (Pope's friend), the Earl of Wilmington (the dull man, whom Thomson took for a patron), George Berkeley (who married Lady Suffolk), and General Churchill (above mentioned, the friend of Mrs. Oldfield, and cousin, we believe, of the Duchess). Colonel Congreve, the deceased's relation, followed as chief mourner. In the Suffolk Correspondence are two short letters to Mr. Berkeley, which may be here given as characteristic of the Duchess :

66

"Jan. 22, 1728-9.

SIR,-I must desire you to be one of the six next Sunday upon this very melancholy occasion. I always used to think you had a respect for him, and I would not have any there that had not.

I am,

&c.,

MARLBOROUGH.”

The next letter appears to have been accompanied with some memorial of Congreve:"Jan. 28, 1728-9.

"SIR,―The last letter I writ to you was upon always having thought that you had a respect, and a kind one, for Mr. Congreve. I dare say you believe I could sooner think of doing the most monstrous thing in the world than sending anything that was his, where I was not persuaded it would be valued. The number of them I think so of, are a mighty few indeed; therefore I must always be in a particular manner,

Yours, &c.

See them in her Works (by Lord Wharncliffe,) vol. iii., p. 401.

Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, vol. i.

MARLBOROUGH." +

† Works, vol. ii., p. 135. P. 330.

The word "him" in the first of these epistles, without any name specified, is touching. The other letter is slip-slop enough. A monument succeeded the funeral, the following inscription upon which was from her own hand :— -"Mr. William Congreve died Jan. the 19th, 1728, aged fifty-six, and was buried near this place; to whose most valuable memory this monument is set up by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, as a mark how deeply she remembers the happiness and honour she enjoyed in the sincere friendship of so worthy and honest a man, whose virtue, candour, and wit, gained him the love and esteem of the present age, and whose writings will be the admiration of the future." The old Duchess her mother, misquoting one of the words of this epitaph, said, "I know not what pleasure she might have in his company, but I am sure it was no honour." But the most curious evidence of her attachment remains to be told. According to Davies, she had an "automaton, or small statue of ivory, made exactly to resemble him, which every day was brought to table. A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace, and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it." +

"

This is as fantastic though not half so sensible as the whim of the cobbler, mentioned in the "Tatler," who had a lay-figure which reverently bowed and held out one shoe to him, while he was mending its fellow. A more particular account of this folly is given by a correspondent of the "Biographia Britannica:"

"This lady (he says), commonly known by the name of the young Duchess of Marlborough, had a veneration for the memory of Mr. Congreve, which seemed nearly to approach to madness. Common fame reports, that she had his figure made in wax after his death, talked to it as if it had been alive, placed it at table with her, took great care to help it to different sorts of food, had an imaginary sore on its leg regularly dressed; and to complete all, consulted physicians with relation to its health." As there seems however no better ground for these particulars than "common fame," most likely they are exaggerated. Some of them, from what we have seen of the Duchess's turn of mind, may easily enough be believed. Nor were they wholly to be despised. There is something touching, notwithstanding their absurdity, in the poorest whims connected with death and the affections; though they generally evince a want of imagination, and of faith in the spiritual and exalted. What the spirit has done with, had better be put away; and the thought be contented to wander where the survivor's own spirit must follow. Love is more in company there with what it has loved, unless it has been of the most material description, and is tied and bound to what its companion has forsaken. The probability, we think, considering the characters of both parties, is, that Congreve's wit and conversation were necessary to the slow yet sensitive mind and humorous habits of the Duchess, and that she consequently loved him with all the heart she had, and a great deal of obstinacy; while on the other hand, Congreve was grateful for an attachment that glorified him and was convenient, and felt for her all the real tenderness of which a man of the world was capable, and which vanity would exaggerate. His bequest to her was quite as * Walpole's Reminiscences. 1819, p. 68. + Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 407.

Biog. Brit. Second Edit. vol. iv. p. 79.

ridiculous in point of feeling, as her posthumous homage was in respect to the customs of society. With the exception of two hundred pounds to Mrs. Bracegirdle, the like sum to another female of the name of Anne Jellatt, and a few hundreds more to kindred who wanted all he could have given them (for the imprudence of a relation had reduced the family estate), he left her the whole of his property, which amounted to ten thousand pounds, "the accumulation (says Johnson) of attentive parsimony;" and though the "Biographia Britannica" accuses Cibber of mistake in saying that he made her his sole executrix, the sole executor having been the Earl her husband, yet it strangely overlooks in its authority the fact of a codicil amounting to that effect, and revoking every bequest unless she chose to ratify it, with the exception of the two to "Anne Bracegirdle" and "Anne Jellatt"-fair friends whom, in spite of his dotage or his slavery, (for his conduct, next to vanity, looks very like a regular henpecked weakness,) he chose, with the last dying spark of a gentleman in him, not to trust to the tender mercies of the all-grasping Henrietta. Mrs. Bracegirdle, who defended his memory, appears to have been in circumstances to which more than the two hundred would have been welcome. "Congreve," observed Dr. Young, "was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house.* The Duchess showed me a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle! "†

Bravo, Doctor Young! With leave of thy very gloomy, mitre-missing, and most erroneous “Night Thoughts," this is the best and most christian thing thou didst ever say. Few men, if any, thoroughly surmount those prejudices in favour of rank and title in which they have been bred, and for which indeed, as part of the dispensation and progress of things, and as equally gifts after their kind with ascendancies more noble, a hardy logician could say more than would suppose. many The man the most jealous of his independence, had need watch his nature closely, lest he find himself inclined to be more grateful to a duke than to a commoner, and to a duchess than an ordinary mistress. A great and exquisite musician (Corelli) who had the reputation of being a very amiable man, and whose compositions are of a nature to confirm it, left all his property away from poor relations, to a Cardinal who had patronised him. It should be added, however, that Corelli looked upon the property as derived from the patronage. In Congreve's case, (unless indeed the bequest was to pay his bill for wine and dinners!) the ten thousand pounds came, not from the Duchess, but from the island of Jamaica, and the office of hackney-coaches! We are afraid it is not to be defended, except upon the ground of excessive weakness, and of a class of intellect that ended with believing in nothing.

• The house which Young alludes to was in Surrey-street, Strand. Mrs. Bracegirdle lived in Howardstreet, which turns out of Surrey-street. If Congreve left his house at this juncture, he appears to have returned to it in his dying moments. But perhaps he retained though he seldom lived in it.

+ Spence's Anecdotes, ut sup. p. 376.