Our dramatist, therefore, soon discovered that a good play was the key to a good place, and the Whigs took care that he should have it.  Oddly enough, when the Tories came in they did not turn him out.  Perhaps they wanted to gain him over to themselves; perhaps, like the Vicar of Bray, he did not mind turning his coat once or twice in a life-time.  However this may be, he managed to keep his appointment without offending his own party; and when the latter returned to power, he even induced them to give him a comfortable little sinecure, which went by the name of Secretary to the Island of Jamaica, and raised the income from his appointments to L1200 a year.

From this period he was little before the public.  He could afford now to indulge his natural indolence and selfishness.  His private life was perhaps not worse than that of the majority of his contemporaries.  He had his intrigues, his mistresses, the same love of wine, and the same addiction to gluttony.  He had the reputation of a wit, and with wits he passed his time, sufficiently easy in his circumstances to feel no damping to his spirits in the cares of this life.  The Island of Jamaica probably gave him no further trouble than that of signing a few papers from time to time, and giving a receipt for his salary.  His life, therefore, presents no very remarkable feature, and he is henceforth known more on account of his friends than for aught he may himself have done.  The best of these friends was Walter Moyle, the scholar, who translated parts of Lucian and Xenophon, and was pretty well known as a classic.  He was a Cornish man of independent means, and it was to him that Congreve addressed the letters in which he attempted to defend himself from the attacks of Collier.

It was not to be expected that a wit and a poet should go through life without a platonic, and accordingly we find our man not only attached, but devoted to a lady of great distinction.  This was no other than Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, the daughter of ‘Malbrook’ himself, and of the famous ‘Queen Sarah.’  Henrietta was the eldest daughter, and there was no son to inherit the prowess of Churchill and the parsimony of his wife.  The nation—­to which, by the way, the Marlboroughs were never grateful—­would not allow the title of their pet warrior to become extinct, and a special Act of Parliament gave to the eldest daughter the honours of the duchy.[17] The two Duchesses of Marlborough hated each other cordially.  Sarah’s temper was probably the main cause of their bickering; but there is never a feud between parent and child in which both are not more or less blameable.