"Congreve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... learned Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, shares her husband's tomb in the north transept,—has no real claim to this distinction. Her immortal work, which she bequeathed to an admiring circle of blue-stockings, proved to be a mere book of extracts culled from popular writers. The playwright, Congreve, whose own medallion is below the Abbot's Pew in the nave, showed his want of literary cultivation by not only composing a poem in praise of the young writer, but allowing it to be published as a preface to the book, which went through several editions before the ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... morning of the 11th, as was expected, the flotilla appeared in sight round Cumberland Head, and at nine, bore down and engaged our flotilla at anchor in the bay off the town. At the same instant, the batteries were opened on us, and continued throwing bomb shells, shrapnels, balls, and congreve rockets until sunset, when the bombardment ceased, every battery of the enemy being silenced by the superiority of our fire. The naval engagement lasted but two hours, in full view of both armies. Three efforts ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... of feminine perfection was Rousseau's Sophia. Though this was an advance from the conception of the sex which inspired Congreve, when he made the women of his comedies mere targets for men's gallantries, or Swift, when he wrote his "Advice to a Young Married Lady," it was still a low estimate of woman's character and sphere of action. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... written form. Oh, for a look at the prompter's copy, the corner of which I could see when I leaned forward! At last I discovered in Galignani's library a copy of Leigh Hunt's edition of the old dramatists, and after a month's study of Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, I completed a comedy in three acts, which I entitled "Worldliness." It was, of course, very bad; but, if my memory serves me well, I do not think it was nearly so bad as might ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... its own deformity,' as mere cant, which the men themselves must have spoken tongue in cheek. It was as much an insincere cant in those days as it was when, two generations later, Jeremy Collier exposed its falsehood in the mouth of Congreve. If the poets had really intended to show vice its own deformity, they would have represented it (as Shakspeare always does) as punished, and not as triumphant. It is ridiculous to talk of moral purpose in works in which there is no moral justice. The only ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... course of some literary criticisms of his, turned his thoughts to the subject of puns. He at once plunged into the history of puns. He quoted Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, Cicero. He brought forward illustrations from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Puritan, writers, Congreve, Cowper, and others, until he concluded with Hood, who he declared had first unfolded to the human mind ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Berlichingen and Werther. There was in Tieck's early works the promise, and far more than the promise, of the greatest dramatic poet whom Europe had seen since the days of Calderon; there was a rich, elastic, buoyant, comic spirit, not like the analytical reflection, keen biting wit of Moliere and Congreve, and other comic writers of the satirical school, but like the living merriment, the uncontrollable, exuberant joyousness, the humour arising from good humour, not, as it often does, from ill humour, the incarnation, so to say, of the principle ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... garden- wall, a female voice, in a whisper, cried out, 'Mr. Booth.' The person was extremely near me, but it was so dark I could scarce see her; nor did I, in the confusion I was in, immediately recognize the voice. I answered in a line of Congreve's, which burst from my lips spontaneously; for I am sure I had no intention to quote plays at ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... century appeared the Nabob. These characters in their zenith in turn merged in the land, and became English aristocrats; while the Levant decaying, the West Indies exhausted, and Hindostan plundered, the breeds died away, and now exist only in our English comedies from Wycherly and Congreve to Cumberland and Morton. The expenditure of the revolutionary war produced the Loanmonger, who succeeded the Nabob; and the application of science to industry developed the Manufacturer, who in turn aspires to be "large-acred," and always will, as long as we have a territorial constitution; ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... it deserves. The characters of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson are, indeed, discriminated with much skill; but surely something might have been said, if not of Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher, yet at least of Congreve and Otway, who are involved in the sweeping censure passed on "the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... cavalry, and seventy-five pieces of cannon. At Cambray he divided them into three columns; the one marched by Ligny, and attacked the redoubt at Troisoille, which was most gallantly defended by Col. Congreve against this column of 10,000 men. The second column was then united, consisting of 12,000 men, which marched on the high road as far as Beausois, and from that village turned off to join the first column; and the attack recommenced against ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... on most pleasantly, Mrs. Dalrymple, I could perceive, did not entirely sympathize with our projects of amusement. As an experienced engineer might feel when watching the course of some storming projectile—some brilliant congreve—flying over a besieged fortress, yet never touching the walls nor harming the inhabitants, so she looked on at all these demonstrations of attack with no small impatience, and wondered when would the breach be reported practicable. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... wit, and no less truth, by Pope. To Sophia's historical illustrations he opposes female types named Tremula, Bellnina, Novilia, etc. But in truth the production is so excessively scurrilous that one needs to remember that those were the times of Congreve and Fielding to believe that the author could have the right to style himself "A GENTLEMAN." We shudder with pity for poor Sophia, who had such a mass of filth flung at her. But that decorous personage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Macaulay's blood warms with the mere prospect of a fight. "It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies formidable separately, and, it might have been thought, irresistible when combined; distributes his swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet; and strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." That is exactly where Macaulay is great; because he is almost Homeric. The whole triumph ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of all sizes, for the most part in bronze, mounted on siege-carriages, and seventy mortars. Besides these, there were in the castle by the lake, independently of the guns in position, forty field-pieces, sixty mountain guns, a number of Congreve rockets, formerly given him by the English, and an enormous quantity of munitions of war. Finally, he endeavoured to establish a line of semaphores between Janina and Prevesa, in order to have prompt news of the Turkish fleet, which was expected ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this serene frame of mind he died on the 13th of December 1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been the historian,—Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I am very shy of 'The Greatest Poem,' The Greatest Picture, Symphony, etc., but one single thing I always was assured of: that 'The School' was the best Comedy in the English Language. Not wittier than Congreve, etc., but with Human Character that one likes in it; Charles, both Teazles, Sir Oliver, etc. Whereas the Congreve School inspires no sympathy with the People: who are Manners not Men, you know. Voila de suffisamment ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the early volumes of Punch is in the last stages of decrepitude. Watch an actor struggling to conceal from his audience the fact that he is repeating one of Shakespeare's puns. We tolerate the humour of Congreve, not because it is thoroughly amusing, but because it has survived better than most. Humorous verse stands a slightly better chance of evoking smiles in its old age. There is always its unalterable verbal neatness; ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... forgave Mr. Addison for killing stout, old Sir Roger de Coverley, and would never listen to the butler's account of his death. Mr. Carvel, too, had walked in Gray's Inn Gardens and met adventure at Fox Hall, and seen the great Marlborough himself. He had a fondness for Mr. Congreve's Comedies, many of which he had seen acted; and was partial to Mr. Gay's Trivia, which brought him many a recollection. He would also listen to Pope. But of the more modern poetry I think Mr. Gray's Elegy pleased him best. He would laugh over Swift's gall and wormwood, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a tempest," thought Lord Etherington, as, with slow step, folded arms, and his white hat slouched over his brows, he traversed the short interval of space betwixt his own apartments and those of the Lady Penelope. In a buck of the old school, one of Congreve's men of wit and pleasure about town, this would have been a departure from character; but the present fine man does not derogate from his quality, even by exhibiting all the moody and gentlemanlike solemnity of Master ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... alarmed for the 'God of his idolatry,') we know not the extent and variety of his powers. We are to suppose there are such passages in his works. Shakspeare must not suffer from the badness of our memories.' Johnson, diverted by this enthusiastick jealousy, went on with greater ardour: 'No, Sir; Congreve has NATURE;' (smiling on the tragick eagerness of Garrick;) but composing himself, he added, 'Sir, this is not comparing Congreve on the whole, with Shakspeare on the whole; but only maintaining that Congreve has one finer passage than any ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of a Public School boy's honour is very elastic. Masters are regarded as common enemies; and it is never necessary to tell them the truth. Expediency is the golden rule in all relations with the common room. And after a very few weeks even Congreve would have had to own that the timid new boy could spin quite as broad a yarn as he. The parents do not realise this. It is just as well. It is a stage in the development of youth. Everyone must pass through it. Yet sometimes it leads to ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Newgate. He was, however, a man of real learning. His chief writings are his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1708-1714), and especially his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1699), on account of which he was attacked by Congreve and Farquhar, for whom, however, he showed himself more than a match. The work materially helped towards the subsequent purification of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... us, but we escaped without injury. We made but little progress against the wind and tide; and we had the pleasure to run the gauntlet among all the other fire-ships, which had been ignited, and bore down on us in flames fore and aft. Their rigging was hung with Congreve rockets; and as they took fire, they darted through the air in every direction with an astounding noise, looking like ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... their time "Nothing new under the sun" The power of steam known to the ancients Passage from Roger Bacon Old inventions revived Printing Atmospheric locomotion The balloon The reaping machine Tunnels Gunpowder Ancient firearms The steam gun The Congreve rocket Coal-gas Hydropathy Anaesthetic agents The Daguerreotype anticipated The electric telegraph not new Forgotten inventors Disputed inventions Simultaneous inventions Inventions made step by step James Watt's difficulties with his workmen Improvements in modern machine-tools ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... italics to the audience. This secret correspondence with the company before the curtain (which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe in such characters as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... critical distinction in ce qui remue from ce qui emeut—that which agitates from that which touches with emotion. In the realistic comedy it is an incessant remuage—no calm, merely bustling figures, and no thought. Excepting Congreve's Way of the World, which failed on the stage, there was nothing to keep our comedy alive on its merits; neither, with all its realism, true portraiture, nor much quotable fun, nor idea; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which are odes in form and style, although differing from their Greek prototype and from one another. Of all English poets, none have worked so thoroughly on the ancient model as Gray, although to Congreve must be given the honor of being the first to attempt ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden, Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... armour and the "Wife of Bath" in hat and wimple, than—for instance—about Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman? Can we not hear "Madame Eglantine" lisping her "Stratford-atte-Bowe" French as if she were a personage in a comedy by Congreve or Sheridan? Is not the "Summoner" with his "fire-red cherubim's face" a worthy companion for Lieutenant Bardolph himself? And have not the humble "Parson" and his Brother the "Ploughman" that irresistible ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... whom Bolingbroke characterized as "silver-tongued Hammond." Charles Hopkins has been suggested as the probable author of the pamphlet (E.N. Hooker, Modern Language Notes, LIV [1939], 388). Hopkins was a wit, a friend of Hammond, as of Dryden, Congreve, Dorset, Southerne, and Wycherley, a clever fellow who loved the bottle and the ladies so much that, according to Giles Jacob, he died at 36, "a Martyr to the cause." His Epistolary Poems, published in 1694, had been dedicated to Hammond and had included an effusive ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... will observe that they are lighting the lamps with Congreve matches—at least with matches of the same sort, supplied by the Dutch and Chinese. Many of their old customs have passed away (among others that of procuring fire by friction), and now we have the appliances of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with the ribbon of my cane,—"imprimis, early study of the best authors,—Congreve and Farquhar, Etherege and Rochester; secondly, the constant intercourse of company which gives one the spleen so overpoweringly that despair inspires one with boldness—to get rid of them; thirdly, the personal example of Sir William Devereux; and, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hath," so CONGREVE stated, "Charms to soothe the savage breast"; Numismatic art is fated May ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... the sworn enemy of ennui or boredom, and the demons of melancholy. It "hath charms," wrote William Congreve (1670-1729), "to soothe the savage breast."[177:1] Orpheus with his lyre was able to charm wild beasts, and even to control the forces of Nature; and because of its wonderful therapeutic effects, which were well known to the Greeks, they associated Music with Medicine as an attribute ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... stage, or in his sacred chair at Will's Coffee-house in Covent Garden (near the fire-place in winter, and carried into the balcony in summer), "Glorious John" was the observed of all observers. Of Will's Coffee-house, Congreve says, in Love for Love, "Oh, confound that Will's Coffee-house; it has ruined more young men than the Royal Oak Lottery:" this speaks at once of the fashion and social ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... not taken large quantities of them." Mais voila le mot d'enigme. "'The Anglomania,"' was the answer to a query of the author, "'is nowhere stronger than in this part of the world. Whatever comes from England, be it Congreve rockets or vegetable pills, must needs be perfect. Dr Morison is indebted to his high office (!) for the enormous consumption of his drugs. It is clear that the President of the British College must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the government and the faculty of medicine; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... both in men and books, which was so much remarked in Charles Lamb, and was, in so good a man, really remarkable. His toleration of it in books is conspicuous in the view he takes of the writings of Congreve and Wycherley, in his essay on the artificial comedy of the last century ("Works", vol. ii, p. 322), and in many of his other literary criticisms. His toleration of it in men—at least his faculty of merging some kinds and degrees ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... lover Antonio. How they were cast away on the shores of Barbary, where the mermaids are seen floating upon the sea and singing in the rocks, foretelling their danger.' This little piece gave me keener pleasure than ever in after years I received from the grandest comedies of Mr. Congreve and of Mr. Dryden, though acted by Kynaston, Betterton, and the whole strength of the King's own company. At Chichester once I remember that I paid a penny to see the left shoe of the youngest sister of Potiphar's wife, but as it looked much ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Here Alphonso, under the assumed name of Osmyn, was imprisoned, but made his escape, and at the head of an army invaded Granada, found Manuel dead, and "the mournful bride" became converted into the joyful wife.—W. Congreve, The Mourning ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the "Pindaric" English ode, we must remember that a few scholars, like Ben Jonson, Congreve and Gray, took peculiar pleasure in reproducing the general effect of the Greek strophic arrangement of "turn," "counterturn" and "pause." Ben Jonson's "Ode to Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison" (Oxford, No. 194) has been thought to be the first strictly Pindaric ode in English, and ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... and white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the future,—these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte,—one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old acquaintance of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and character,—are among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... if we once entangle you in the net, 'tis ten to one but the sight of a new face will be sufficiently tempting to break the mesh—you're just as true as the smoke of your cannon, and you fly off at the sight of novelty in petticoats, like one of your Congreve rockets—No, I ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... were still distinguished those who encouraged the pursuit of mystical prescience, the most opposite possible to exact science. Elias Ashmole, the "most honourable Esquire," to whom Lilly's life is dedicated, seldom failed to attend; nay, several men of sense and knowledge honoured this rendezvous. Congreve's picture of a man like Foresight, the dupe of astrology and its sister arts, was then common in society. But the astrologers of the 17th century did not confine themselves to the stars. There was no province of fraud which they ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... said, "we are apt to boast of our virgin city and its quays, a mile long as you will perceive, at which sixty sail of vessels can unload at a time; of our dry dock, lately built by our townsman Mr Congreve; of our conduits, which supply both our houses and the shipping with water; of the privileges enjoyed by our citizens; and of our militia, mustering five hundred men, and capable of giving a good account of any enemy who may dare to invade our shores. You will, I hope, meet some of ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the wealthy dead? Shall authors smile on such illustrious days, And satirize with nothing—but their praise? Why slumbers Pope, who leads the tuneful train, Nor hears that virtue, which he loves, complain? Donne, Dorset, Dryden, Rochester, are dead, And guilt's chief foe, in Addison, is fled; Congreve, who, crown'd with laurels, fairly won, Sits smiling at the goal, while others run, He will not write; and (more provoking still!) Ye gods! he will not write, and Maevius will. Doubly distrest, what author shall we find Discreetly daring, and severely kind, The courtly(6) ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... generals of the old caste. I liked him, though I was always conscious of that flame and steel in his nature which made his psychology a world away from mine. He was hit hard—in what I think was the softest spot in his heart—by the death of one of his A. D. C.'s—young Congreve, who was the beau ideal of knighthood, wonderfully handsome, elegant even when covered from head to foot in wet mud (as I saw him one day), fearless, or at least scornful of danger, to the verge of recklessness. General Haldane had ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the first edition of Peignot's Manuel du Biblioplide, published in 1800, the title of Congreve's "Mourning Bride" is rendered "L'Epouse du Matin." Can any of your readers inform me whether it is in the same work that the title of "Love's Last Shift" is translated by "Le dernier Chemise de l'Amour?" if not, in what ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... shall not Sir— You, the Town, are a Monstor, made up of Contrarieties, Caprice Steers— Steers your Iudgement— Fashion and Novelty, Your Affections; Sometimes so Splenitic, as to damn a Cibber, and, even a Congreve, in the Way of the World;— And some times so good-Natured as to run in Crowds after a Queen Mab, or a Man in ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... a dedication of the comedy of the Drummer, to Mr. Congreve, gave the first insight into that business. He says, in a style of anger and resentment: "If that gentleman (Mr. Tickell) thinks himself injured, I will allow I have wronged him upon this issue, that, if the reputed translator of the first book of Homer shall please to ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... undisturbed; while, that it might characterise, where it had once personified, it renounced, in our own age, all that inherited subject matter which we have named poetry. Presently I was indeed to number character itself among the abstractions, encouraged by Congreve's saying that 'passions are too powerful in the fair sex to let humour,' or as we say character, 'have its course.' Nor have we fared better under the common daylight, for pure reason has notoriously made but light of practical reason, and has been made but light of ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... Pope himself, is to ridicule all the false tastes in learning under the character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each. It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age—Lord Oxford, the Bishop of Rochester, Pope, Congreve, Swift, Arbuthnot, and others. Gay often held the pen; and Addison liked it very well, and was not ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... should always be found; Boswell's Johnson, of course, but Blackstone's "Commentaries" also; Plutarch's "Lives" and Increase Mather's witches; all of Fielding in four stately quarto volumes; Sterne, stained and shabby; Congreve, in red morocco, richly gilt; Moliere, pocket size, in an English translation; Gibbon in sober ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... Mrs. Needler Hughes Prior Centlivre Mrs. Brady Stepney Pack Dawes Arch. York Congreve Vanbrugh Steele Marvel Thomas Mrs. Fenton Booth Sewel Hammond Eusden Eachard Oldmixon Welsted Smyth More Dennis Granville L. Lansdowne Gay Philip D. Wharton Codrington Ward L'Estrange Smith Edmund De Foe Rowe Mrs. Yalden ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Aspects of Positivism." (A Reply to Mr. Congreve's Attack upon the Preceding Paper. Published in the "Fortnightly Review" 1869.) ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... these which he lived to execute. It further contains a brief exposition of his final doctrines, in the form of a Dialogue, or, as he terms it, a Catechism, of which a translation has been published by his principal English adherent, Mr Congreve. There has also appeared very recently, under the title of "A General View of Positivism," a translation by Dr Bridges, of the Preliminary Discourse in six chapters, prefixed to the Systeme de Politique Positive. ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... monuments are met with in places widely removed from each other in the vast Indian Empire. Captain Congreve, after describing the cairns with their rows of stones ranged in circles, the kistvaens or dolmens, the huge rocks placed erect as at Stonehenge, the barrows hollowed out of the cliffs, declares with undisguised astonishment that there is not a Druidical monument ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... they had a thousand charming ciphers; they made the columns of the "Times" and the "Post" play the unconscious role of medium to appointments; they eclipsed all the pages of Calderon's or Congreve's comedies in the ingenuities with which they met, wrote, got invitations together to the same houses, and arranged signals for mute communication: but there was not the slightest occasion for ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in England, Nelson took command off Cadiz on September 28, eager for a final blow that would free England for aggressive war. There was talk of using bomb vessels, Congreve's rockets, and Francis's (Robert Fulton's) torpedoes to destroy the enemy in harbor, but it soon became known that Villeneuve would be forced to put to sea. On October 9, Nelson issued the famous Memorandum, or battle plan, embodying what he called ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Charles II was bigotted to judicial astrology, a man, though a king, whose mind was by no means unenlightened. The most respectable characters of the age, Sir William Dugdale, Elias Ashmole,[77] Dr. Grew, and others, were members of the astrological club. Congreve's character of Foresight, in Love for Love, was then no uncommon person, though the humour, now, is scarcely intelligible. Dryden cast the nativities of his sons; and what is remarkable, his prediction ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... were different every day of the week, and yet, to his mind, each day like something—like Horace, like Lucian, like the "Tales of Scheherezade." He draws long comparisons between Walpole and Townshend, between Congreve and Wycherley, between Essex and Villiers, between the fall of the Carlovingians and the fall of the Moguls. He follows up a general statement with swarms of instances. Have historians been given to exaggerating the villainy of Machiavelli? Macaulay can name you half a dozen who did ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... law-colleges. Something of this power the young lawyers retained beyond the middle of the last century. Fielding and Addison caught with nervous eagerness the critical gossip of the Temple and Chancery Lane, just as Congreve and Wycherly, Dryden and Cowley had caught it in previous generations. Fashionable tradesmen and caterers for the amusement of the public made their engagements and speculations with reference to the opening of term. New plays, new books, new ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of Charles II. Wycherley led the brutes, but Congreve came up and combatted with his brilliant comedies the vileness of the Restoration school, and Hallam says of him that he introduced decency to the stage that afterward drove his own comedies off it. A little after Congreve, the school, ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... disgraced the literature of a nation. They are excellent specimens of that which has been called the comedy of manners; vice is inextricably interwoven in the texture of all alike, in the broad humor of Wycherly (the most vigorous of the set), in the wit of Congreve, in the character painting of Vanbrugh, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a part of the masquerade. In such a figurehead you could be as licentious as you chose—and you were; you could only be serious in satire. The perruque accounts for Dryden and his learned pomp, for Rochester and Sedley, and for Congreve, who told Voltaire that he desired to be considered as a gentleman rather than poet, and was with a shrug accepted on that valuation: it accounts for Timotheus crying Revenge, and not meaning it, or anything else except display; it accounts for Pepys thinking King Lear ridiculous. Let me ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... he drew his inspiration: but not the poet—not, at least, the poet of these days. He goes not to the town, but nature, for his inspirations, and to nature when he dies he should return. Such men—artificial, and town-bred—however brilliant, or even grand at times—as Davenant, Dryden, Cowley, Congreve, Prior, Gay—sleep fitly in our care here. Yet even Pope—though one of such in style and heart—preferred the parish church of the then rural Twickenham, and Gray the lonely graveyard of Stoke Pogis. Ben Jonson has a right to lie with us. He was a townsman to the very heart, and a court-poet ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... prosperity, That though but a yeoman. he gave his daughters five pounds each for her portion. At the latter end of Elizabeth, seven hundred pounds were such a temptation to courtship, as made all other motives suspected. Congreve makes twelve thousand pounds more than a counterbalance to the affectation of Belinda. Ho poet would now fly his favourite character ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... design'd, In person graceful, and in sense refined; Her art as much as Nature's friend became, Her voice as free from blemish as her fame, Who knows so well in majesty to please, Attemper'd with the graceful charms of ease? When, Congreve's favoured pantomime[65] to grace, She comes a captive queen, of Moorish race; 810 When love, hate, jealousy, despair, and rage With wildest tumults in her breast engage, Still equal to herself is Zara seen; Her passions are the passions of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the early seventeen hundred and thirties when Allan Ramsay, "in fear and trembling of legal and clerical censure," lent out the plays of Congreve and Farquhar from his famous High Street library. In 1756 it was that the Presbytery of Edinburgh suspended all clergymen who had witnessed the representation of "Douglas," that virtuous tragedy written, to the dismay of all Scotland, by a minister ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... expedition, and he obtained his wish; for the Prometheus had a very distinguished station assigned her on the great night of bombardment, and from her decks, I believe, was made almost the first effectual trial of the Congreve rockets. Soon after the Danish capital had fallen, and whilst the Prometheus was still cruising in the Baltic, Pink, in company with the purser of his ship, landed on the coast of Jutland, for the purpose ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... minutes' notice. The unforeseen and unlucky departure of my only friend gives me occasion for this letter, and opportunity to send it. It is Miss Barker Congreve. She is a woman of uncommon talents, with whom we have been wandering over these magnificent mountains, till she made the greatest enjoyment of the place. I feel a heavier depression of spirits at losing her than I have known since Tom left me ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... believe as much as we please of his assertion that he does not quote himself as an example of genius. He has spoken, he declares, with freedom and power, and will not cease because he is abused for not being a Government tool. He wrote a charming character of Congreve's Millamant, but it was unnoticed because he was not a Government tool. Gifford would not relish his account of Dekkar's Orlando Friscobaldo—because he was not a Government tool. He wrote admirable table-talks—for once, as they are nearly finished, he will ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... witness the contest which the newsmonger promised, and were determined to take his word for their own safety. The sound and sight which had alarmed Demetrius, was the discharge of a large portion of Greek fire, which perhaps may be best compared to one of those immense Congreve rockets of the present day, which takes on its shoulders a small grapnel or anchor, and proceeds groaning through the air, like a fiend overburdened by the mandate of some inexorable magician, and of which the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the time refused to believe in the travels of Mendex Pinto. "He should be called Mendax Pinto," said one, "whose book is one continued chain of monstrous fiction which deserves no credit," while a hundred and fifty years later Congreve wrote— ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... glaring flaws that have to be overlooked; or else the pattern is so involved that the mind's eye cannot follow it, and becomes bewildered and fatigued. A classical example of both faults may be found in Congreve's so-called comedy The Double-Dealer. This is, in fact, a powerful drama, somewhat in the Sardou manner; but Congreve had none of Sardou's deftness in manipulating an intrigue. Maskwell is not only a double-dealer, but a triple—or quadruple-dealer; so that the brain soon grows ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... and stones assailed us from both banks. My friend Brooke's gun would not go off; so giving him the yoke-lines, he steered the boat while I kept up a rapid fire. Mr. Allen, in the second gig, quickly coming up, opened upon them, from a congreve-rocket tube, such a destructive fire as caused them to retire panic-struck behind the temporary barriers where they had concealed themselves previous to the attack upon Patingi Ali, and from whence they continued, for some twenty minutes, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Connaught and Princesses Margaret and Patricia of Connaught, and attended by the following staff: Major-General Sir William Knox, Major-General Sir John Maxwell, Colonel Hammersley, Colonel Davidson, Colonel Dickinson, Colonel Congreve, V.C., and ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... of what is called our French school of poetry, when it aspired above its wit and 'sense'. It sometimes breaks down in a horrible, hopeless manner, as if giving way at the first step. The following ludicrous passage in Congreve, intended to be particularly fine, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... scowl tremendous, fly Fair Comedy's theatric brood, Light satire, wit, and harmless joy, And leave us dungeons, chains and blood. Swift they disperse, and with them go, Mild Otway, sentimental Rowe; Congreve averts the indignant eye, And Shakespeare mourns to view the ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... The birthplace of Congreve is uncertain, but he was born about 1671, and was educated in Kilkenny and Dublin. He is an instance of that union of Irish versatility with English reflection, which has produced the most celebrated wits. We also mark in him a considerable ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... is "the undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely delightful class of character, of the professed men of wit and pleasure about town, which we have in such perfection in Wycherly and Congreve, such as Sparkish, Witwond, Petulant, &c., both in the sentiments and the style of writing"; and Tharsalio in "The Widow's Tears," and Ludovico in "May-Day," have the hard impudence and cynical distrust of virtue, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... when some of the best composers of the day, including Orlando Lasso, competed for the prizes which were offered. It is recorded that the first of these festivals to be held in England was in 1683. For these occasions odes were written by Dryden, Shadwell, Congreve, and other poets, and the music was supplied by such composers as Purcell and Blow. At the Church of St. Eustache, in Paris, on St. Cecilia's Day, masses by Adolphe Adam, Gounod, and Ambroise Thomas have been given their first performance. In Germany, Spohr and Moritz Hauptmann have composed ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very big drink," he said, confidentially, "and the major got more than his allowance. He didn't know what he was talking about at last, and he told me more of his affairs than most people ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... been handed about in MS., and shewn to such reputed judges as Lord Halifax, Lord Somers, Garth, Congreve, &c., were at last, in 1709, printed in the sixth volume of Tonson's "Miscellanies." Like all well-finished commonplaces, they were received with instant and universal applause. It is humiliating to contrast ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... into his pocket L2,500 of this money, and afterwards L1,500 as profit upon shares, although he had not paid for those shares, but still owed L375 for them. That individual, he continued, was Sir William Congreve, a member of parliament: and was not, he asked, parliament called upon to do something towards an inquiry into conduct so dishonourable? Never had there been a fouler stain upon the house. After some remarks on the Equitable Loan Company, the alderman moved, "that a select committee be appointed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the time that Johnson was at school[144]. Then came Hague, of whom as much might be said, with the addition that he was an elegant poet. Hague was succeeded by Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, whose character in the learned world is well known[145]. In the same form with Johnson was Congreve[146], who afterwards became chaplain to Archbishop Boulter, and by that connection obtained good preferment in Ireland. He was a younger son of the ancient family of Congreve, in Staffordshire, of which the poet was a branch. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... not to exaggerate like Tapage, it was only reasonable that owing to the excessive speed the work of the suspensory screws should be somewhat lessened. The "Albatross" glided on its bed of air like a Congreve rocket. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... stage, before their hands had skill to paint or carve figures from the life. With Shakespeare it was so as certainly as with Shelley, as evidently as with Hugo. It is in the great comic poets, in Moliere and in Congreve, {42} our own lesser Moliere, so far inferior in breadth and depth, in tenderness and strength, to the greatest writer of the "great age," yet so near him in science and in skill, so like him in brilliance and in force;—it is in these that ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the number of starts and attitudes that may be introduced into it that elicits applause. I have known a piece, with not one jest in the whole, shrugged into popularity, and another saved by the poet's throwing in a fit of the gripes. No, Sir, the works of Congreve and Farquhar have too much wit in them for the present taste; our modern ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... opposite discoveries we have seen! (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.) One makes new noses[63], one a guillotine, One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets; But Vaccination certainly has been A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets,[64] With which the Doctor paid off an old pox, By borrowing a new one ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Congreve Rockets.—When the Congreve rockets were first introduced into the navy, the admiral on the Brazil station proposed to exhibit to the king, Don Juan VI., the effect of these formidable projectiles. His majesty consented, and the whole court were accordingly assembled in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... lectures on the English Humorists. The lectures are received with great favor by an audience fit and not few. The first was upon Swift, and was a striking portraiture of that able, unscrupulous, and baffled clerical adventurer. The second lecture was upon Congreve, the most worthless, and Addison, the most amiable of the English Humorists. His treatment of Addison is characterized as more brilliant than any thing Addison himself ever produced. His appearance is thus described: "Thackeray ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... dollars frustrated the success of a great object. The consequence to poor Goldsack was utter ruin, though of his capability there could be no question, he having for many years been one of the principal assistants of Sir W. Congreve ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... you find several of your countrymen [he had Shakspeare, Milton, Congreve, Rochester, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Robertson, Hume and others]. Robertson is your Livy; his CHARLES FIFTH is written with truth. Hume wrote his History to be applauded, Rapin to instruct; and both obtained ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Sir Win. Congreve, 1819, prepared a colored layer of pulp in combination with white layers, also by printing upon one sheet and covering it with an outer layer, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... soon as they left the war zone and have been cruising wildly ever since. We remember that for a brief period in the England of Charles II, James II, and William and Mary, rakishness in the plays of Wycherley and Congreve had a glamour of romance upon it and was popular. Indeed, the novel or drama that gives to a generation the escape it desires will always be popular. Test Harold Bell Wright or Zane Grey, Rudyard Kipling ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... March, 1825. Among other things it said: "What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as horses. We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's richochet rockets as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate. We trust that Parliament will, in all the railways it may grant, limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour, which we entirely agree with Mr. Sylvester is ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of her sex." She "will provoke her Benedicke to give her much and just conjugal castigation," says Campbell. Is he right, and will Benedicke feel so?—or is Swinburne right, who says she is "a decidedly more perfect woman than could properly or permissibly have trod the stage of Congreve or Moliere" and who speaks ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... essay, thoroughly conventional in nature, is omitted here. In it Gally, following Casaubon,[2] theorizes that the character evolved out of Greek Old Comedy. The Augustans saw a close connection between drama and character-writing. Congreve (Dedication to The Way of the World, 1700) thought that the comic dramatist Menander formed his characters on "the observations of Theophrastus, of whom he was a disciple," and Budgell, who termed Theophrastus the ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... seventeenth century now found nothing on the boards of the theatre to satisfy their craving after intellectual excitement. The descendants of the men and women who had gone out to welcome the poetry of Shakespeare and the wit of Congreve were now rather readers than play-goers, and were most ready to enjoy an appeal to their feelings when that appeal reached them in book form. In the playhouse they came to expect bustle and pantomime rather ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... and General Clery had been wherever the shots were flying the thickest. Three of the former's staff, Captains Schofield and Congreve, and Lieutenant Roberts, son of Lord Roberts, had ridden forward as volunteers to try and get the guns off. Roberts was fatally wounded, Congreve was wounded and taken prisoner, and Schofield alone escaped unharmed with the two guns ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... man whose thumb-print they took, the man who is wanted as an escaped convict who has broken his parole—No, don't speak; let me finish. For the money you are going to bring me, I'll keep still—to the police. But for the slap you've just given me. . . . Did you ever read that line of Congreve's about a woman scorned? You've had your last little love-scene ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... popularity; because, by this contrivance, he divided the town into two parties; and the irascibility and satire of Pope and Swift were not less serviceable to him than the partial panegyrics of Dryden and Congreve. Johnson revived him, for his minute attack on Addison; and Kippis, feebly voluminous, and with the cold affectation of candour, allows him to occupy a place in our literary history too large in the eye ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... intelligence and integrity. He well knew the difficulties under which he laboured, being unused to speaking in public, and surrounded as he was in the community by the reverend gentlemen and the press, who were avowedly opposed to him, and who had thrown their bomb-shells and Congreve rockets liberally at the gambling fraternity, without mercy, but he regarded these weapons as harmless, for they had fallen at his feet without inflicting ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... language, his doctrine can only fill it with wonder and fury. That mind is essentially moral in cut; it is believing, certain, indignant; it is as incapable of skepticism, save as a passing coryza of the spirit, as it is of wit, which is skepticism's daughter. Time was when this was not true, as Congreve, Pope, Wycherley and even Thackeray show, but that time was before the Reform Bill of 1832, the great intellectual levelling, the emancipation of the chandala. In these our days the Englishman is an incurable foe of distinction, and being so he must needs take in with his mother's milk the delusions ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... extensively in his Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693). No doubt this earlier work assured a ready reception and a quick response to the commentary on Aristotle: how ready and how quick is indicated by the fact that within a year of its publication in France Congreve could count on an audience's recognizing a reference to it. In the Double Dealer (II, ii) Brisk says to Lady Froth: "I presume your ladyship has read Bossu?" The reply comes with the readiness of a cliche: ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... antipathy to the visits of strangers at his chateau, he seems to have met with an equal specimen of that temper from an Englishman. When in London, he waited upon Congreve, the poet, and passed him some compliments as to the reputation and merit of his works. Congreve thanked him; but at the same, time told Voltaire he did not choose to be considered as an author, but only as a private gentleman, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... memorials of little interest nowadays, and the busts of Canon Kingsley and the poet Wordsworth, we now turn along the southern wall of the nave. Here is the monument of the dramatic poet Congreve, and that of Admiral Tyrrell, who was buried at sea in 1766, always attracts the notice of visitors. Many allegorical emblems surround the representation of the Admiral's resurrection from the depths of the sea. The clouds above are so like pancakes as to have given the tomb its familiar ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... In Congreve's plays he recognised the wit but condemned the morals, and in the case of Blackmore the regard for the religious purpose of Blackmore's poem on "The Creation" gave to Johnson, as to Addison, an undue sense ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... powerful form of rocket, invented by the late Sir William Congreve, R.A., and intended to do the work of artillery without the inconvenience of its weight. In its present form, however, the rocket is so uncertain, that it is in little favour save for ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... When this was read—no Congreve rocket Discharged into the Gallic trenches, E'er equall'd the tremendous shock it Produc'd upon the Nursery Benches. The Bishops, who, of course had votes, By right of age and petticoats, Were first and foremost in the fuss— "What, whip a Lama!—suffer ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... heroic plays was the comic drama of the Restoration, the plays of Wycherley, Killigrew, Etherege, Farquhar, Van Brugh, Congreve, and others; plays like the Country Wife, the Parson's Wedding, She Would if She Could, the Beaux' Stratagem, the Relapse, and the Way of the World. These were in prose, and represented ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers |
