But our difficulties are not ended, for there is a similar doubt about the year of his birth.  His earliest biographer assures us he was born in 1672, and others that he was baptized three years before, in 1669.  Such a proceeding might well be taken as a proof of his Hibernian extraction, and accordingly we find Malone supporting the earlier date, producing, of course, a certificate of baptism to support himself; and as we have a very great respect for his authority, we beg also to support Mr. Malone.

This being settled, we have to examine who were his parents:  and this is satisfactorily answered by his earliest biographer, who informs us that he was of a very ancient family, being ’the only surviving son of William Congreve, Esq. (who was second son to Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in that county),’ to wit, Yorkshire.  Congreve pere held a military command, which took him to Ireland soon after the dramatist’s birth, and thus young William had the incomparable advantage of being educated at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Trinity, Dublin, the ‘silent sister,’ as it is commonly called at our universities.

At the age of nineteen, this youth sought the classic shades of the Middle Temple, of which he was entered a student, but by the honourable society of which he was never called to the bar; but whether this was from a disinclination to study ‘Coke upon Lyttleton,’ or from an incapacity to digest the requisite number of dinners, the devouring of which qualify a young gentleman to address an enlightened British jury, we have no authority for deciding.  He was certainly not the first, nor the last, young Templar who has quitted special pleading on a crusade to the heights of Parnassus, and he began early to try the nib of his pen and the colour of his ink in a novel.  Eheu! how many a novel has issued from the dull, dirty chambers of that same Temple!  The waters of the Thames just there seem to have been augmented by a mingled flow of sewage and Helicon, though the former is undoubtedly in the greater proportion.  This novel, called ’Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconciled,’ seems to have been—­for I confess that I have not read more than a chapter of it, and hope I never may be forced to do so—­great rubbish, with good store of villains and ruffians, love-sick maidens who tune their lutes—­always conveniently at hand—­and love-sick gallants who run their foes through the body with the greatest imaginable ease.  It was, in fact, such a novel as James might have written, had he lived a century and a half ago.  It brought its author but little fame, and accordingly he turned his attention to another branch of literature, and in 1693 produced ‘The Old Bachelor,’ a play of which Dryden, his friend, had so high an opinion that he called it the ’best first-play he had ever read.’  However, before being put on the stage it was submitted to Dryden, and by him and others prepared for representation, so that it was well fathered.  It was successful enough, and Congreve thus found his vocation.  In his dedication—­a regular piece of flummery of those days, for which authors were often well paid, either in cash or interest—­he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Lord Halifax, who appears to have taken the young man by the hand.