Brisk. I suppose that’s because you laugh at your own jests.

Sir Paul Plyant in great wroth expresses himself as follows: 

The subjects of Congreve’s Comedies would often be thought objectionable at the present day.  The humour is not in the plot, but in the general dialogue.  In “Love for Love,” Ben Legend, a sailor, speaking of lawyers, says—­

Lawyer, I believe there’s many a cranny and leak unstopt in your conscience.  If so be that one had a pump to your bosom, I believe we should discern a foul hold.  They say a witch will sail in a sieve, but I believe the devil would not venture aboard your conscience.

The last play he wrote, which failed, was deficient in wit, but had plenty of inebriety in it.  After singing a drinking song, Sir Wilful says in “The Way of the World.”

The sun’s a good pimple, an honest soaker, he has a cellar at your Antipodes.  If I travel, Aunt, I touch at your Antipodes—­your Antipodes are a good rascally sort of topsy-turvy fellows.  If I had a bumper I’d stand on my head, and drink a health to them.

* * * * *

Scandal. Yes, mine (pictures) are not in black and white, and yet there are some set out in their true colours, both men and women.  I can show you pride, folly, affectation, wantonness, inconstancy, covetousness, dissimulation, malice and ignorance all in one piece.  Then I can show your lying, foppery, vanity, cowardice, bragging, incontinence, and ugliness in another piece, and yet one of them is a celebrated beauty, and t’other a professed beau.  I have paintings, too, some pleasant enough.

     Mrs. Frail. Come, let’s hear ’em.

     Scan. Why, I have a beau in a bagnio cupping for a complexion,
     and sweating for a shape.

     Mrs. F. So——­

     Scan. Then I have a lady burning brandy in a cellar with a
     hackney coachman.

     Mrs. F. Oh! well, but that story is not true.

Scan. I have some hieroglyphics, too; I have a lawyer with a hundred hands, two heads, and but one face; a divine with two faces and one head; and I have a soldier with his brains in his belly, and his heart where his head should be.

It has been said that Congreve retired on the appearance of Mrs. Centlivre, but so high was the opinion entertained of his genius that he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his pall was supported by noblemen.  Pope was one of his greatest admirers, and dedicated his translation of Homer to him.

Dryden writes on Congreve.

  “In easy dialogue is Fletcher’s praise,
   He moved the mind, but had not power to raise,
   Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please,
   Yet doubling Fletcher’s force, he wants his ease. 
   In differing talents both adorned their age,
   One for the study, t’other for the stage,
   But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
   One matched in judgment, both over-matched in wit.”