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Congreve   Listen
noun
Congreve  n.  
1.
Short for Congreve rocket, a powerful form of rocket formerly used in war, either in the field or for bombardment. In the former case it was armed with shell, shrapnel, or other missiles; in the latter, with an inextinguishable explosive material, inclosed in a metallic case. It was guided by a long wooden stick.
2.
Short for Congreve match, an early friction match, containing sulphur, potassium chlorate, and antimony sulphide.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Congreve" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... was impossible that troops could live in the open by the guns. He sanctioned a series of gallant attempts being made by volunteers to withdraw them. Limber teams were collected for this purpose, in the rear donga. The first of these attempts was made by Captains Schofield and Congreve, both serving on Sir Redvers' staff, Lieut. the Hon. F. H. S. Roberts (who was acting as an extra A.D.C. to General Clery, until he could join Sir George White's staff), Corporal Nurse and others, gathered from the drivers of the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... of locomotives traveling twice as fast as horses?" asked a writer in the English "Quarterly Review" for March, 1825. "We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's 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 ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... speak my mind modestly, and without injury to his sacred ashes, somewhat of the purity of English, somewhat of more sweetness in the numbers, in a word, somewhat of a finer turn and more lyrical verse is yet wanting;" and Mr. Congreve having excepted against the irregularity of the measure of the English Pindaric odes, yet observes, "that the beauty of Mr. Cowley's verses are an attonement for the irregularity of his stanzas; and tho' he did nor imitate Pindar in the strictness of his numbers, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... direction. The tendency of modern free thought is more and more visibly towards the extraction of the first and more permanent elements of the old faith, to make the purified material of the new. When Dr. Congreve met the famous epigram about Comte's system being Catholicism minus Christianity, by the reply that it is Catholicism plus Science, he gave an ingenious expression to the direction which is almost necessarily taken by all who attempt, in however informal a manner, to construct for themselves some ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... indicated such corrections as are necessary to prevent the student from thinking that in reading Defoe he is drinking from a "well of English undefiled." The art of writing an English prose at once scholarly, clear-cut, and vigorous, was well understood by Defoe's great contemporaries, Dryden, Swift, and Congreve; it does not seem to have occurred to Defoe that he could learn anything from their practice. He has his reward. "Robinson Crusoe" may continue to hold the child and the kitchen wench; but the "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," "The Battle ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... Hammond, pamphleteer, small poet, and politician, 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 poem addressed to him. Some ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous

... 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 marked ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... placed for satisfying such curiosity as he may have about Comte's philosophy. Miss Martineau condensed the six volumes of the Philosophie Positive into two volumes of excellent English (1853); Comte himself gave them a place in the Positivist Library. The Catechism was translated by Dr. Congreve in 1858. The Politique Positive has been reproduced in English (Longmans, 1875-1877) by the conscientious labour of Comte's London followers. This translation is accompanied by a careful running analysis and explanatory summary of contents, which make the work more readily intelligible ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley

... fell from the old gentleman's lips. Soon a correspondence began, in which Pope adopts a less jaunty air than that of his letters to Cromwell, but which is conducted on both sides in the laboured complimentary style which was not unnatural in the days when Congreve's comedy was taken to represent the conversation of fashionable life. Presently, however, the letters began to turn upon an obviously dangerous topic. Pope was only seventeen when it occurred to his friend to turn him to account as a literary assistant. The lad had already ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... 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

... 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 western civilisation ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... 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 ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... we continued to carry 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. Another ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the club, of the college, of society, even as they lived and moved. I see the gallant and unselfish men whom I have loved, and the snobs whom I have hated. I see strangely mingling with them, and now and then blending with their forms, our old friends Dick Steele, Addison, and Congreve. I observe, though, that these gentlemen have a habit of getting too much in the way. The royal standard of Queen Anne, not in itself a beautiful ornament, is rather too prominent in the picture. The long ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... gown,—as Cato, moralizing on the soul's eternity, and halting between Plato and the dagger. There was Woodward as "The Fine Gentleman," with the inimitable rake-hell in which the heroes of Wycherly and Congreve and Farquhar live again. There was jovial Quin as Falstaff, with round buckler and "fair round belly." There was Colley Cibber in brocade, taking snuff as with "his Lord," the thumb and forefinger raised in air, and looking at you for applause. There was Macklin as Shylock, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Helicon; but if ever they catch me there again—sir, the town have a prejudice to my family; for, if any play could have made them ashamed to damn it, mine must. It was all over plot. It would have made half a dozen novels: nor was it crammed with a pack of wit-traps, like Congreve and Wycherly, where every one knows when the joke was coming. I defy the sharpest critick of them all to have known when any jokes of mine were coming. The dialogue was plain, easy, and natural, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... more, perhaps, than any other, to require that knowledge of human nature and the world which experience alone can give, it seems not a little extraordinary that nearly all our first-rate comedies should have been the productions of very young men. Those of Congreve were all written before he was five-and-twenty. Farquhar produced the Constant Couple in his two-and-twentieth year, and died at thirty. Vanbrugh was a young ensign when he sketched out the Relapse and the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners—of course he had, the dog! And we all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and failed to pay his creditors. Sterne—now really I know what Club life is, ladies and gentlemen, and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Hall performed a gallant act, which probably saved the lives of Captains Elliot and Herbert and all standing near. A congreve rocket had been placed in a tube and ignited, when it hung within it instead of flying out. In another moment it would have burst, scattering destruction around, had not Mr Hall thrust his arm into the tube ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... house. This address has been commended quite as much as 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 ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, What has America done for mankind? let our answer be this:—America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the French? In what siege were they employed with success by the native troops of India? What was the nature of their war-rocket? What is the murdering rocket of the French? Is the conical head hollow, solid, blunt, or pointed? Why is it called the murdering rocket? What is the Congreve rocket? Is Congreve the inventor or improver of this rocket? What are Congreve rockets loaded or armed with? In what part is the load placed? Is the case made up of paper or sheet-iron? What are the ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith

... MOLIERE and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their dramatic career; it was BOILEAU who ceaselessly animated their languor: "Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the injustice of our age!" And CONGREVE'S comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears the author was extremely mortified, and on the ill reception of The Way of the World, determined to write no more for the stage. When he told ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... ends of selfish spite and injured vanity, makes him, as all great men can be (in words at least, for in life he was far better than the men around him), worse than his age. He can out-rival Dennis in ferocity, and Congreve in filth. So much the worse for him in that account which he has long ago rendered up. But in all times and places, as far as we can judge, the man was heart-whole, more and not less righteous than his fellows. With his whole soul he hates what is evil, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... passing tragically to destruction. Yet, Heaven knows, Julia was no fool. A sharper woman at a bargain did not exist. She was always punctual. The watch on her wrist gave her twelve minutes and a half in which to reach Bruton Street. Lady Congreve expected her ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... sing before their feet had strength to tread the 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 we find theatrical instinct ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... 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, so to speak, for we have ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard

... disposed for enjoyment," should find himself his own master, in London, almost presupposes a too liberal indulgence in the follies that must have so easily beset him. When the great and cold Mr Secretary Addison, no less than that "very merry Spirit," Dick Steele, and the splendid Congreve, drank more than was good for them, what chance would there be for a brilliant, ardent lad of twenty, suddenly plunged into the robust society of that age? If Fielding, like his elders, indisputably loved good wine, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... the 'Iliad' appeared in the spring of 1720, and in it Pope gave a renewed proof of his independence by dedicating the whole work, not to some lord who would have rewarded him with a handsome present, but to his old acquaintance, Congreve, the last survivor of the brilliant comic dramatists of Dryden's day. And now resting for a time from his long labors, Pope turned to the adornment and cultivation of the little house and garden that he had ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... variety of naval warfare,) at the time of the last Copenhagen 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 of a morning's sporting. It seems strange that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... the stream pursues: Ixion's wondrous wheel its whirl suspends, And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends; No more the Bel'i-des their toil bemoan, And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the stone. —Trans. by CONGREVE. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... "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 ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... but for the Tarentines, the Consentines, and the Sicilians. Montaigne has complained that he found his readers too learned, or too ignorant, and that he could only please a middle class, who have just learning enough to comprehend him. Congreve says, "there is in true beauty something which vulgar souls cannot admire." Balzac complains bitterly of readers,—"A period," he cries, "shall have cost us the labour of a day; we shall have distilled into an essay the essence of our mind; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... the government appointed a committee to examine into it. The chairman was the Duke of York, commander-in-chief of the army, said to be the ablest administrator of military affairs of that time. Also there were Admirals Lord Keith and Exmouth and the Congreve brothers of the ordnance department. A more competent committee of five could not have been gathered in the world. This board would not recommend the adoption of the scheme. Why? They reported that there was no question that the invention would ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... 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 ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... French poet crossed Twickenham ferry and offered a handmade sonnet in admiration of the "Essay on Man," which he had probably never read. Gay gave Voltaire "The Beggar's Opera," in private, and together they called on Congreve, who interrupted the Frenchman's flow of flattery long enough to say that he wished to be looked on as a gentleman, not a poet. And Voltaire replied that there were many gentlemen but few poets, and if Congreve had had the misfortune to be simply a gentleman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 father of modern comedy, believed that if some of Theophrastus's characters ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... and see what can be done; and while a small throng of early idlers are staring up at him from Gospeler's Gulch, Mr. BUMSTEAD, with his coat on in the wrong way, and a wet towel on his head, comes tearing in amongst them like a congreve rocket. ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various

... from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought in vain ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... rancour that afterwards gained him the nickname of "Furius," are the best. They are Remarks ... (1696), on Blackmore's epic of Prince Arthur; Letters upon Several Occasions written by and between Mr Dryden, Mr Wycherley, Mr Moyle, Mr Congreve and Mr Dennis, published by Mr Dennis (1696): two pamphlets in reply to Jeremy Collier's Short View; The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701), perhaps his most important work; The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... personification of the nourishing publisher and patron of authors, with the pleasant air of the happy discoverer of genius, and the maker of its fortune as well as of his own. He holds a folio copy of "Paradise Lost"; it is Tonson patting Milton on the back. Dryden, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Steele, Addison, and Lord Chancellor Somers are the other five of these celebrated portraits. What a congress of wits! But we have besides, Atterbury, and Pope, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and Prior, and Tickell, and Swift. Pope's face, as given in Kneller's portrait, (which recalls the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... there are 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; ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... in Spanish; 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 it all. It passed the time, however, and went far to persuade them that they really were in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... of the play, and wondering how far Shakespeare was responsible for what we had heard. Everybody knows that Colley Cibber improved upon the text of the old folios and quartos: for what was listened to with delight by Ben Jonson could not satisfy Congreve, and William III. needed better verses than those applauded by Queen Elizabeth. None of us knew how great or how many these improvements were. I doubt whether many of the audience that crowded the theatre that evening were wiser ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... you have marble to cut out, and he has only clay .... Do you think that if the Council do ask me to give up I might fairly ask Lord Brougham as their President to get me helped instead to ever so poor an honest living in the Colonies? I can't turn hack writer, and I must have something fixed to do. Congreve is down-hearted about Oxford: not so I. I quite look to coming back in a very ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... return to Mourzuk en route. First for the Sheikh of Bornou, I am to bring a small coining-machine to make a copper-currency, replacing the present inconvenient system of pieces of cotton called Ghubgha[118]. Next, I am to bring Congreve-rockets, by which the Sheikh may set on fire the straw-hut cities of his enemies; but I should think a good drill-serjeant would be better than rockets. Finally, some instructions, in the Arabic language, for preparing indigo, and bees'-wax, and tanning leather. This ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... For sterling wit and manly sense combin'd, Where, Congreve, shall I find thy parallel? For charming ease, who equals polish'd Vanbrugh? Where shall we see such graceful pleasantry As Farquhar's muse with lavish bounty scatters? But yet, ye great triumvirate—I fear To call you back to earth, for ye debas'd With vile ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... the coast and to London. Martello towers were erected along the coast from Harwich to Pevensey Bay, at the points where a landing was easy. Numerous inventors also came forward with plans for destroying the French flotilla, but none was found to be serviceable except the rockets of Colonel Congreve, which inflicted some damage at Boulogne and elsewhere. Such were the dispositions of our chief naval forces: they comprised 469 ships of war, and over 700 ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... after having 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 ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... 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

... four hundred and twenty cannons 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 to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... "No poppy-water half so good". Poppy-water, made by boiling the heads of the white, black, or red poppy, was a favourite eighteenth-century soporific:—'Juno shall give her peacock 'poppy-water', that he may fold his ogling tail.' (Congreve's 'Love ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... countenance, and is a princess of royal blood. In the last great battle between the Europeans on the coast and the powerful King of Ashantee (the same who defeated and slew Sir Charles McCarthy), the native army was put to total rout by the aid of Congreve rockets. The king's camp, with most of his women, fell into the hands of the victors. Three of his daughters were appropriated by the English merchants, here and at Cape Coast, and became their faithful and probably happy wives. One of the three ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... on. Most of them contained portraits of real people, and, no doubt, most of them were therefore successful. But where are they now? Lady Mary thought Lady Vane's part of "Peregrine" "more instructive to young women than any sermon that I know." She regarded Fielding as with Congreve, the only "original" of her age, but Fielding had to write for bread, and that is "the most contemptible way of getting bread." She did not, at this time, even know Smollett's name, but she admired him, and, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... better; but second-handed, for he does not choose to give above ten shillings for the book. I want likewise for myself, as you can pick them up, second-handed or cheap, copies of Otway's Dramatic Works, Ben Jonson's, Dryden's, Congreve's, Wycherley's, Vanbrugh's, Cibber's, or any dramatic works of the more modern, Macklin, Garrick, Foote, Colman, or Sheridan. A good copy too of Moliere, in French, I much want. Any other good dramatic authors in that language I want also; but comic authors, chiefly, though I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... witch subdues them all with her voice. What says Will Congreve? Music has charms to soothe a savage ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and denying to those, who would impose on us for what they are not, even the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanburgh, etc. To this succeeds a state of society from which the same sort of affectation and pretence are banished by a greater knowledge of the world or by their successful exposure on the stage; and which by neutralising the materials of comic ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Epistles there is much of the same sort. When he writes to Congreve he speaks of the fathers, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... 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. ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... Behn, he says, with remorseful sincerity: "I confess I am the last man in the world who ought in justice to arraign her, who have been myself too much a libertine in most of my poems, which I should be well contented I had time either to purge or to see them fairly burned." Congreve was less patient, and even Dryden, in the last epilogue he ever wrote, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... calling names. No other English author has ever invented a name of the labelling kind equal to that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman—a character, by the way, who does not appear in the first edition of The Pilgrim's Progress, but came in later as an afterthought. Congreve's "Tribulation Spintext" and Dickens's "Lord Frederick Verisopht" are mere mechanical contrivances compared to this triumph of imagination and phrase. Bunyan's gift for names was in its kind supreme. His humorous fancy chiefly took that form. Even atheists ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... think that church people were justified in their opposition to the drama in the days when Congreve, Wycherley and Ben Jonson were the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... strictly limited to these two purposes. But they seem to have given more umbrage than I intended they should, to the followers of M. Comte in this country, for some of whom, let me observe in passing, I entertain a most unfeigned respect; and Mr. Congreve's recent article gives expression to the displeasure which I have excited among the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... 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 ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... been called in, where difficulties occurred, or improvements were obvious. The preliminary Dissertations, Dedications, and Prefaces, have been corrected from the excellent edition of Mr Malone. Congreve appears deeply to have felt the bequest, left him by his great predecessor, when, "just abandoning the ungrateful stage" he made it his intreaty, that his successor would be kind to his remains. Considerable pains have been bestowed by the present editor in correcting the text. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... opposite discoveries we have seen! (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.) One makes new noses, 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, With which the Doctor paid off an old pox, By borrowing a new one ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... have been its preliminary difficulties, Fielding's first play was not exposed to so untoward a fate. It was well received. As might be expected in a beginner, and as indeed the references in the Preface to Wycherley and Congreve would lead us to expect, it was an obvious attempt in the manner of those then all-popular writers. The dialogue is ready and witty. But the characters have that obvious defect which Lord Beaconsfield recognised when he spoke in later ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... wretched imitation. When a man takes another for his model, he should copy virtues not vices; but unfortunately many English writers reversed the rule, copying the vices of French comedy without any of its wit or delicacy or abundant ideas. The poems of Rochester, the plays of Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, all popular in their day, are mostly unreadable. Milton's "sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine," is a good expression of the vile character of the court writers and of the London theaters for thirty years following the Restoration. Such work can never ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... His rendering of the little part of the chaplain in Otway's Orphan procured him a rise of five shillings; and a subsequent impersonation (1694) on an emergency, and at the author's request, of Lord Touchwood in The Double Dealer, advanced him, on Congreve's recommendation, to a pound a week. On this, supplemented by an allowance of L20 a year from his father, he contrived to live with his wife and family—he had married in 1693—and to produce a play, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... days' work to be done at the comedy, and Darco was resolute not to leave for London until all was finished. The first two acts were already in rehearsal at the Congreve, and Pauer, who was one of those old stagers of the profession who know their business upside down and inside out, was in superintendence until Darco should arrive to mould the whole production to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... literature thrives, Congreve must be read with growing zest, in virtue of qualities which were always rare, and which were never rarer than at this moment. All that is best and most representative of Congreve's genius is included in this latest edition, wherein for the first time the chaotic ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... 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

... 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 quite a ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... the strongest name in tragedy was Thomas Otway, who smacks of true Elizabethan genius in the Orphan and Venice Preserved. In comedy we receive the brilliant work of Etheridge, the vigor of Wycherley, and, as the century drew near its close, the dashing wit of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. This burst of brilliancy, in which the Restoration drama closes, was the prelude to the Augustan Age of Queen Anne and the first Georges, the period wherein flourished ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... 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 in the rostrum is not different from Thackeray ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... page but one, Boswell describes Thrale as presenting the character of a plain independent English squire, she writes: "No, no! Mr. Thrale's manners presented the character of a gay man of the town: like Millamant, in Congreve's comedy, he abhorred the ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... march or sit in the saddle, with only brief halts, for twenty-four hours at a stretch; our quick firing yielded a very respectable number of hits at a distance of eleven hundred yards; and our grenade firing was not to be despised. We were quite as skilful with a small battery of Congreve rockets which Johnston had had sent after us from Trieste, on the advice of an Egyptian officer who had served in the Soudan—a native of Austria, and a frequent witness of our practising at Alexandria. The language of command, as well as that of our general intercourse, was English. As ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... 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 possibility ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... 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 gray; ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us, and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said it would either take greatly or be damned confoundedly. We were all, at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... and soured against the whole male sex. She says, "I have done hating those vipers—men, and am now come to despise them;" but she thinks of marrying to keep her husband "on the rack of fear and jealousy."—W. Congreve, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... letters. I can not agree with you in thinking that critics are more abundant now than formerly. More books are written, and consequently more are tabooed; but the history of literature proves that, from the days of Congreve, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... than they did. It behoved them to gain possession of Leipzig at any rate; and this object they might have accomplished in the shortest way, and with inconsiderable loss to themselves, if they had bombarded it for one single hour with shells, red-hot balls, and Congreve rockets, with which an English battery that accompanied them was provided. Their philanthropic spirits, on the contrary, revolted at the idea of involving the innocent population of a German city in ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... immoralities that the female good society of England in these latter years has delighted in witnessing, without the help of the mask which enabled their great-grandmothers to sit out the plays of Wycherley, Congreve, and Farquhar, chaste and decorous in their crude coarseness compared with the French operatic burlesques of the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... 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

... 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

... the Quarterly Review had declared in 1825, 'than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage-coaches! We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate.' And the Quarterly was not alone in its scepticism. The directors of the new railway had found great difficulty in obtaining a charter from parliament—a difficulty registered ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... the gateway; give the bearing rein of the near leader one twist more, and pole up the off wheeler a link or two. All right, Tom—all right—stand away from the horses' heads, there—ehewt, fee'e't!"—smack goes the whip, and away goes the Brighton Times like a Congreve rocket, filled with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... 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 ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... scorching fire, and the smoke so baneful to the eyes and the complexion, are continual and inevitable dangers: and a cook must live in the midst of them, as a soldier on the field of battle surrounded by bullets, and bombs, and CONGREVE'S rockets; with this only difference, that for the first, every day is a fighting day, that her warfare is almost always without glory, and most praiseworthy achievements pass not only without reward, but frequently without thanks: ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... the marble busts and tablets, yellow with time, that cover the three walls of the nook up to a height of about twenty feet. Prior's is the largest and richest monument. It is observable that the bust and monument of Congreve are in a distant part of the Abbey. His duchess probably thought it a degradation to bring a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... appeared in a seventh edition in 1729. Nor was Echard's audience merely made up of students. If one of his main targets was contemporary dramatists, he would have been elated to learn that William Congreve owned a copy of the first edition of ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... 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 ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... eight in the 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 were ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... they only lick one another, for they seldom go into any other company. They know nothing but the English world, and the worst part of that too, and generally very little of any but the English language; and they come home, at three or four-and-twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve's plays) like Dutch skippers from a whale-fishing. The care which has been taken of you, and (to do you justice) the care that you have taken of yourself, has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire but ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... sets out with the assertion of a fact of which I was profoundly ignorant, namely, that the Physical Constitution of the Globe is subject to constant changes and revolution. Of constant changes I never heard, except in one of Congreve's plays, in which the fair sex is accused of constant inconstancy; but suppose that for constant you read frequent. I should wish you, for my own particular information, to add in a note a few instances of the Physical Changes in the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... Tree if he be a Tory, or to St. James's if he be a Whig, and it is ten to one if the talk turn not upon the turning of alcaics, or the contest between blank verse or rhyme. Then one may, after an arriere supper, drop into Will's or Slaughter's and find Old John, with Tickell and Congreve and the rest of them, hard at work on the dramatic unities, or poetical justice, or some such matter. I confess that my own tastes lay little in that line, for about that hour I was likely to be worse employed ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... heart is a suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne are vain and conceited poseurs. After a year or so, when he has recovered from the discouragement caused by Sir Thomas Browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with Congreve or Addison. Same sequel! And so on for perhaps a decade, until his commerce with the classics finally expires! That, magazines and newish fiction apart, is the literary history of the ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... 'It is surprising,' says Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, 'how much English Comedy owes to Irishmen.' Nearly fifty years ago Calcraft enumerated eighty-seven Irish dramatists in a by no means exhaustive list, including Congreve, Southerne, Steele, Kelly, Macklin, and Farquhar—the really Irish representative amongst the dramatists of the Restoration, the true prototype of Goldsmith and Sheridan. Thoroughly Irish by birth and education, Captain George ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... yet a great general and unduly pressed by the Tories; and the volatile Earl of Peterborough, "above fifty, and as active as one of five-and-twenty"—"the ramblingest lying rogue on earth." We meet poor Congreve, nearly blind, and in fear of losing his commissionership; the kindly Arbuthnot, the Queen's physician; Addison, whom Swift met more and more rarely, busy with the preparation and production of Cato; Steele, careless as ever, neglecting important appointments, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... around its history by many eminent lawyers and jurists, the Middle Temple has numbered among its students several great poets and dramatists, notably John Ford, William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe, Thomas Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Moore. But, as their literary remains prove, few or none of them prosecuted their legal studies with that sedulous devotion which the law, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... 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 ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... given earlier, with more brevity and 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

... directed to oil gas was the erection of the patent apparatus at Apothecary's Hall, by Messrs. Taylors and Martineau; and the way was prepared for an application to parliament for the establishment of an Oil Gas Company by sundry papers in journals, and by the recommendations of Sir William Congreve, who had been employed by the Secretary of State to inspect the state of the gas manufactories in the metropolis. This application, made in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... an individual, "that the Anglo-mania 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. Morrison 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 ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... doorway bowing gracefully, his hat held before him and his hand on his stick as though it were resting on a foil. He had the face and carriage of a gallant of the days of Congreve, and he wore his modern frock-coat with as much distinction as if it were of silk and lace. He was evidently amused. "I couldn't help overhearing the last line," he said, smiling. "It ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... some valuable improvements to the classical Dr. Friend, and the elegant Dr. Mead. Among the poets of this era, we number John Philips, author of a didactic poem, called Cyder, a performance of real merit; he lived and died in obscurity—William Congreve, celebrated for his comedies, which are not so famous for strength of character and power of humour, as for wit, elegance, and regularity—Vanburgh, who wrote with more nature and fire, though with less art and precision—Steele, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... 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

... Mr. Congreve did not know exactly what to say next. He hadn't expected this kind of a widow; his mind had pictured one in bushels of crape, with a drenched, woe-begone face, who would scream when she saw him, fall on his neck, in lieu of his purse, and gasp out dramatically: ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... that, among the stores sent with Parry, there would be a supply of Congreve rockets,—an instrument of warfare of which such wonders had been related to the Greeks as filled their imaginations with the most absurd ideas of its powers. Their disappointment, therefore, on finding that the engineer had come unprovided with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... occasion of our first meeting, that he would be glad to continue to make the acquaintance of Lord and Lady Gules—in other words, to continue the political discussion he then commenced with you. Singular to state, he is an admirer of Congreve and all that school, so I am sure you will have plenty of topics in common. Mr Plumper has made an enormous fortune as a contractor, and now chiefly occupies himself with works of charity and benevolence. One ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... of them. Indeed, 'twas the fashion of the day, as I must own; and there's not a writer of my time of any note, with the exception of poor Dick Steele, that does not speak of a woman as of a slave, and scorn and use her as such. Mr. Pope, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Addison, Mr. Gay, every one of 'em, sing in this key, each according to his nature and politeness, and louder and fouler than all in abuse is Dr. Swift, who spoke of them as he ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... evening with Sergeant Clews—carrying ammunition from a dump near White Chateau to a Brigade dump further on to the left, behind Congreve ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... of 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. His brother sold the estate. There was also Lowe, afterwards ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... 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 turns upon mere names; but men are commanded ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... persons; but it is a trifle exasperating when Johnson's authority is brought forward at second hand in order to convince us that a poem in which many people delight is disgusting. Again, the dictator said that a passage in Congreve's "Morning Bride" was finer than anything in Shakspere. Very good; let Johnson's opinion stand so far as he is concerned, but let ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... reign. Thus Addison was Secretary of State; Steele, Commissioner of Stamps; Prior, Under-Secretary of State, and afterwards Ambassador to France; Tickell, Under-Secretary of State, and Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland; Congreve, Secretary of Jamaica;, and Gay, Secretary of Legation ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... 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 relating to his son Charles, was accomplished. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... the offence had been given. The angry friends were afterwards reconciled; and Dryden, listening more to the feelings of former kindness than of recent passion, cancelled the Defence, which was never afterwards reprinted, till Congreve collected our author's dramatic works. It is worthy of preservation, as it would be difficult to point out deeper contempt and irony, couched under language so ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... the timber duties have brought the match market into a very unsettled state, and Congreve lights seem destined to undergo a still further depression. This state of things was rendered worse towards the close of the day, by a large holder of the last-named article unexpectedly throwing an immense quantity into the market, which went ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... 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

... prefixed to a translation of the satires of Juvenal and Persius, and is dated the 18th of August, 1692, when the poet's age was sixty-one. In translating Juvenal, Dryden was helped by his sons Charles and John. William Congreve translated one satire; other translations were by Nahum Tate and George Stepney. Time modern reader of the introductory discourse has first to pass through the unmeasured compliments to the Earl of Dorset, which ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... 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, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... that 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

... navy, where he served four years. The skill he thus acquired in gunnery, he now gladly used against his former oppressors. It was near nightfall when the British opened fire; and they kept up a constant cannonade with round shot, bombs, Congreve rockets, and carcasses until near midnight, without doing the slightest damage. The bursting shells, the fiery rockets, and the carcasses filled with flaming chemicals, fairly filled the little wooden village with fire; but the exertions of the people prevented the spread of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... when, at the corner of the 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 ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... into un lapin du pays de Galles. Walpole states that the Duchess of Bolton used to divert George I. by affecting to make blunders, and once when she had been to see Cibber's play of Love's Last Shift she called it La dernire chemise de l'amour. A like translation of Congreve's Mourning Bride is given in good faith in the first edition of Peignot's Manuel du Bibliophile, 1800, where it is described as L'pouse de Matin; and the translation which Walpole attributes to the Duchess of Bolton the French say was made ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... 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, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... criticism sought to put Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, and even the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituary to the memory of the ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... father's death. His mother after a time returned to her own family, in Leicester, and the child was added to the household of his uncle, Godwin Swift, who, by his four wives, became father to ten sons of his own and four daughters. Godwin Swift sent his nephew to Kilkenny School, where he had William Congreve among his schoolfellows. In April, 1782, Swift was entered at Trinity College as pensioner, together with his cousin Thomas, son of his uncle Thomas. That cousin Thomas afterwards became rector of Puttenham, in Surrey. Jonathan Swift graduated as B.A. at Dublin, in ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... times, he took the stopper out of the little bottle, from which a strong odour of phosphorus arose, took a match from the box, and thrust it into the bottle, with the result that he brought it out burning, after the fashion of our fathers' time before the invention of lucifer matches and congreve lights—a fashion adopted when a letter had been written and the writer, who knew not adhesive envelopes and desired to seal his missive, made use of the phosphorus bottle instead of producing a light ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... 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— ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... graduates, and country club rakes, who threw the pilot overboard as 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 or Walter Scott, by this maxim, and it will further define itself, and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... a change of Government would make us happier. John is now at the ackma (acme) of Theatrical reputation, and we shall see his name on every rubrick post, I suppose, of all the Booksellers between St. James's and the Temple, with that of Congreve, Otway, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... court, or in the seat of honor on the 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

... anything?" "I don't think we did," was his reply, "because we never saw a Boer the whole day." When the enemy are firing smokeless powder behind their splendidly constructed earthworks they are practically invisible, a fact born witness to by Captain Congreve, V.C., in his account of the first reverse at the Tugela. Now of course when you can't see your enemy you can't very well hit him, so when we clear our minds of fairy-stories about Lyddite and the universal destruction ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... great acting knows that it is illumination. There are those who are born to throw light on the creations of the poets, just as there are others born to be poets. These interpreters give a new life to the works of the masters, AEschylus, Congreve, Tchekhov. When, as more frequently happens, they are called upon to play mediocre parts it is with their own personal force, their atmospheric aura that they create something more than the author himself ever intended or dreamed of. How could Joseph Jefferson play Rip Van Winkle for thirty ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... 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 ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... violent surf delayed the arrival of the British gunboats, but on February 23 Hope sent over a body of his men on a raft of pontoons in the face of the enemy's flotilla, with the aid of a brigade armed with Congreve rockets, which had been first used at Leipzig, and produced the utmost consternation in the French ranks. The gunboats soon followed, but with the loss of one wrecked and others stranded in crossing the bar. By the joint ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... that Monsieur D'Olive, in the comedy of that name, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... the famous portraits of the Club, that hung around it. Their marks and sizes were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guidance of the hanger! Thus was I, as it were, by these still legible names, brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with many hereditary nobles, remembered, only because they were patrons of those natural nobles!—I read their names aloud!—I invoked their departed spirits!—I was appalled by the echo of my own voice!—The ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... manufacture and use of fireworks. But in making war rockets there was no marked progress until the late eighteenth century. About 1780, the British Army in India watched the Orientals use them; and within the next quarter century William Congreve, who set about the task of producing a rocket that would carry an incendiary or explosive charge as far as 2 miles, had achieved such promising results that English boats fired rocket salvos against Boulogne in 1806, The British ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... taken away from me and secreted if I happened to have abstracted some such stray volume from a bookcase; but here I was my own master. My grandfather's library was, as I have said already, particularly rich in literature of this semiforbidden class, and rows of plays and poems by Congreve, Etheridge, Rochester, Dryden, and their contemporaries offered themselves to my study, as though by some furtive assignation. Among other wrecks of furniture with which the worm-eaten floors were encumbered was an old and battered rocking-horse, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... spell; an enthusiasm which lived long after the movement itself was spent, and which—except in so far as it led to absurd comparisons with the Elizabethans—was abundantly justified by the genius of Butler and Dryden, of Congreve and Swift and Pope. Negative, on one side, the ideal of Restoration and Augustan poetry undoubtedly was. It was a reaction against the "unchartered freedom", the real or fancied extravagances, of the Elizabethan poets. But, ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... 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 in that light expected to be visited. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... 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 other ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various

... marks a distinction: it gives a hint as to the departure made by Richardson in 1742, when he published "Pamela." It is not strictly the earliest discrimination between the Novel and the older romance; for the dramatist Congreve at the close of the seventeenth century shows his knowledge of the distinction. And, indeed, there are hints of it in Elizabethan criticism of such early attempts as those of Lyly, Nast, Lodge and others. Moreover, the student of criticism as it deals with ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... confidence to know the author, he will tell him very privately as a friend, naming whichever of the wits shall happen to be that week in the vogue, and if Durfey's last play should be in course, I had as lieve he may be the person as Congreve. This I mention, because I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers, and have often observed, with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-pot will immediately, with very ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... 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

... steadily enough, and there is no denying the fact that several of the worst plays of the Restoration could still claim admirers. Even "Sir Courtly Nice," wherein occurs one of the most indecent passages ever penned, and one of the most suggestive of songs, was received without a murmur. Congreve was pardoned for his breaches of decorum, and Dryden was looked upon as quite proper ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... back to the first series, in which the lecturer treated of Swift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith. All these Thackeray has put in their proper order, placing the men from the date of their birth, except Prior, who was in truth the eldest of the lot, but whom it was necessary to depose, in order that the ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... that warmth with which he always serves his friend. The humanity and frankness of Sir Samuel Garth are what I never knew wanting on any occasion. I must also acknowledge, with infinite pleasure, the many friendly offices, as well as sincere criticisms, of Mr. Congreve, who had led me the way in translating some parts of Homer. I must add the names of Mr. Rowe, and Dr. Parnell, though I shall take a further opportunity of doing justice to the last, whose good nature (to give it a great panegyric), is no less extensive than his learning. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... of the passions, and fills the mind with a wild confusion of mirth and melancholy. The versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the stage, and too little varied in different passions. He made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his persons were wits, and that he always wrote with more art than nature. He considered Cato rather as a poem than a play, and allowed Addison to be the complete master of allegory and grave humour, but paid no great deference to him as a critick. He ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... play is imitated by Congreve in The Old Bachelor, (Act iv., Scene 22) when Mrs. Fondlewife goes and hangs upon her husband's neck and kisses him; whilst Bellmour kisses ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere

... rather than the cold, the sober, though virtuous Lady Grace? How odious ought writers to be who thus employ the talents they have from their maker most traitorously against himself, by endeavouring to corrupt and disfigure his creatures! If the comedies of Congreve did not rack him with remorse in his last moments, he must have been lost to all sense ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson



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