The effect produced by the Short View was immense.The nation was on the side of Collier.But it could not be doubted that, in the great host which he had defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet.The general belief was that Dryden would take the field; and all the wits anticipated a sharp contest between two well-paired combatants.The great poet had been singled out in the most marked manner.It was well known that he was deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations had formerly roused him to violent resentment, and that there was no literary weapon, offensive or defensive, of which he was not master.But his conscience smote him; he stood abashed, like the fallen archangel at the rebuke of Zephon,--"And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and pined His loss."At a later period he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his Fables.He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation.But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved."If," said he, "Mr.Collier be my enemy, let him triumph.If he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance."It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master's example.He was precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a vindication; for his guilt was so clear, that no address or eloquence could obtain an acquittal.On the other hand, there were in his case many extenuating circumstances which, if he had acknowledged his error and promised amendment, would have procured his pardon.The most rigid censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of a vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause.The esteem, as well as the admiration, of the public was still within his reach.He might easily have effaced all memory of his transgressions, and have shared with Addison the glory of showing that the most brilliant wit may be the ally of virtue.But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him from encountering Collier.The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit, for polemical dispute.
Congreve's mind, though a mind of no common fertility and vigour, was of a different class.No man understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue.In this sort of jewellery he attained to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable.But he was altogether rude in the art of controversy; and he had a cause to defend which scarcely any art could have rendered victorious.
The event was such as might have been foreseen.Congreve's answer was a complete failure.He was angry, obscure, and dull.Even the Green Room and Will's Coffee-House were compelled to acknowledge that in wit, as well as in argument, the parson had a decided advantage over the poet.Not only was Congreve unable to make any show of a case where he was in the wrong; but he succeeded in putting himself completely in the wrong where he was in the right.Collier had taxed him with profaneness for calling a clergyman Mr.Prig, and for introducing a coachman named Jehu, in allusion to the King of Israel, who was known at a distance by his furious driving.Had there been nothing worse in the Old Bachelor and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper himself, who, in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton, calls a fox-hunting squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of Smug.Congreve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether it might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges were made, there were no very serious charges to make.Instead of doing this, he pretended that he meant no allusion to the Bible by the name of Jehu, and no reflection by the name of Prig.
Strange, that a man of such parts should, in order to defend himself against imputations which nobody could regard as important, tell untruths which it was certain that nobody would believe!
One of the pleas which Congreve set up for himself and his brethren was that, though they might be guilty of a little levity here and there, they were careful to inculcate a moral, packed close into two or three lines, at the end of every play.Had the fact been as he stated it, the defence would be worth very little.For no man acquainted with human nature could think that a sententious couplet would undo all the mischief that five profligate acts had done.But it would have been wise in Congreve to have looked again at his own comedies before he used this argument.Collier did so; and found that the moral of the Old Bachelor, the grave apophthegm which is to be a set-off against all the libertinism of the piece is contained in the following triplet:
"What rugged ways attend the noon of life!
Our sun declines, and with what anxious strife, What pain, we tug that galling load--a wife.""Love for Love," says Collier, "may have a somewhat better farewell, but it would do a man little service should he remember it to his dying day":
