William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire of so great antiquity, that it
claims a place among the few that extend their hue beyond the Norman Conquest, and
was the son of William Congreve, second son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and
Stratton. He visited, once at least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more
places than one are still shown in groves and gardens, where he is related to have written
his Old Bachelor.
Neither the time nor place of his birth is certainly known. If the inscription upon his
monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the place, it was said by himself that he
owed his nativity to England, and by everybody else that he was born in Ireland.
Southern mentioned him with sharp censure as a man that meanly disowned his native
country. The biographers assigned his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, from
the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob. To doubt whether a man of
eminence has told the truth about his own birth is, in appearance, to be very deficient in
candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or
vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general
degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly
supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralist, having told
a pretty lie to Louis XIV., continued it afterwards by false dates; thinking himself obliged
IN HONOUR, says his admirer, to maintain what, when he said it, was so well received.
[Congreve was baptised at Bardsey, February 10, 1670.]
Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at
Dublin, his father having some military employment that stationed him in Ireland; but
after having passed through the usual preparatory studies, as may be reasonably
supposed, with great celerity and success, his father thought it proper to assign him a
profession, by which something might be gotten, and about the time of the Revolution
sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple, where he lived for
several years, but with very little attention to statutes or reports. His disposition to
become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and
possessed that copiousness of sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His
first performance was a novel called "Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconciled;" it is
praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the preface, that is, indeed, for such a
time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it.
His first dramatic labour was The Old Bachelor, of which he says, in his defence against
Collier, "That comedy was written, as several know, some years before it was acted.
When I wrote it I had little thoughts of the stage; but did it to amuse myself in a slow
recovery from a fit of sickness. Afterwards, through my indiscretion it was seen, and in
some little time more it was acted; and I, through the remainder of my indiscretion
suffered myself to be drawn into the prosecution of a difficult and thankless study, and to
be involved in a perpetual war with knaves and fools."
