The same year he distinguished himself in another kind of poetry, viz. an irregular Ode on the taking Namure, which the critics have allowed to contain fine sentiments, gracefully expressed.  His reputation as a comic poet being sufficiently established, he was desirous of extending his fame, by producing a tragedy.  It has been alledged, that some, who were jealous of his growing reputation, put him upon this task, in order, as they imagined, to diminish it, for he seemed to be of too gay and lively a disposition for tragedy, and in all likelihood would miscarry in the attempt.  However,

In 1697, after the expectation of the town had been much raised, the Mourning Bride appeared on the New Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields:  few plays ever excited so great an ardour of expectation as this, and very few ever succeeded to such an extravagant degree.  There is something new in the management of the plot; after moving the passions of the audience to the greatest commiseration, he brings off his principal characters, punishes the guilty, and makes the play conclude happily.

The controversy we have just now mentioned, was thought to have occasioned a dislike in Mr. Congreve towards the stage; yet he afterwards produced another comedy called The Way of the World, which was so just a picture of the world, that, as an author prettily says,

  The world could not bear it.

The reception this play met with, compleated our author’s disgust to the theatre; upon which Mr. Dennis, who was a warm friend to Congreve, made this fine observation, ’that Mr. Congreve quitted the stage early, and that comedy left it with him.’

It is said that when Congreve found his play met with but indifferent success, he came in a passion on the stage, and desired the audience to save themselves the trouble of shewing their dislike; for he never intended to write again for the Theatre, nor submit his works to the censure of impotent critics.  In this particular he kept his word with them, and as if he had foreseen the fate of his play, he took an ample revenge, in his Epilogue, of the race of Little Snarlers, who excited by envy, and supported by false ideas of their own importance, dared to constitute themselves judges of wit, without any just pretensions to it.  This play has long ago triumphed over its enemies, and is now in great esteem amongst the best judges of Theatrical Entertainments.

Though Mr. Congreve quitted the stage, yet did not he give up the cause of poetry; for on the death of the marquis of Blandford, the only son of the duke of Marlborough, which happened in 1705, we find him composing a pastoral to soften the grief of that illustrious family, which he addressed to the lord treasurer Godolphin.

About the same time, the extraordinary success of the duke of Marlborough’s arms, furnished him with materials for an Ode to Queen Anne.  In another Pindaric Ode he celebrates the lord Godolphin; taking occasion from that nobleman’s delight in horse-racing to imitate the Greek Poet in his favourite manner of writing, by an elegant digression; to which he added a criticism on that species of poetry.