Congreve, to whom Pope dedicated his Iliad and Dryden submitted his poems for criticism before giving them to the public, was extremely popular, witty, and original as a dramatist. Congreve was a slow writer, and was the father, as it were, of that style of writing which died with Sheridan. He wrote only a few dramas, but those were incomparable for the brilliancy of the dialogue; yet the brilliancy was obtained by the hardest intellectual _work_. According to Macaulay, no English author except Byron had at so early an age stood so high in the estimation of his contemporaries. But the licentiousness and general immorality of the works of Congreve are without excuse.[93] He had not even the paltry plea of necessity, which might lead him to pander to a vitiated taste in seeking a market for his wares, as was evidently the case with Fielding. He was very desirous to pass for a man of fashion, and affectedly sneered at his own literary productions, declaring them to be produced simply to while away his idle hours. Vanity seems to have completely overshadowed any spirit of ambition which may have originally inspired him. Flattery and royal patronage were the ruin of Congreve so far as his after fame is concerned. Had he known the wholesome spur of necessity, his grand powers would have shone with surpassing lustre. He had the genius, but not the incentive, wherewith to make a great name. Pope is said, on a certain occasion, to have hinted as much to Congreve, whom he really reverenced for his ability, and to have incurred his partial enmity thereby. "Oh that men's ears should be to counsel deaf," says Shakespeare, "but not to flattery." The broad inconsistency of Congreve's dramas is the fact that all his characters are equally endowed with wit, culture, and genius. Collier, in his review of the profaneness of the English stage, administered to Congreve a merited castigation, to which the dramatist attempted to reply, but without success.