The dazzle of Congreve's wit has perhaps blinded critics to his more serious powers, and it may be that its brilliancy has been even exaggerated. What is chiefly admirable is perhaps not so much the occasional flashes and strokes, felicitous as they are, as the unflagging verve, energy, and gaiety. His plays are not of the kind that keep the audience in a roar from first to last, but they never cease to stimulate the spirits; the fire does not always blaze, but it never burns low: there is not a dull scene, or a tiresome or useless character. The general tone of good breeding, if it does not purify the pervading atmosphere of profligacy, at any rate prevents it from becoming offensive. In verbal impropriety and _double entendre_ Congreve is even worse than Wycherley, but his plays are far from giving the same impression of a thoroughly obnoxious state of society. It is true that the pursuit of women seems the sole business of the men, and the pursuit of men the business of half the women; but the universal passion is so pleasantly variegated with extraneous humours and oddities that it is far from producing the monotony of a modern French novel. Thus, there is an amourette between Brisk and Lady Froth in _The Double Dealer_, but the pair are æsthetic as well as amorous, and the blue-stocking is more conspicuous than the unfaithful wife. The scene where Brisk corrects Lady Froth's poetry, imitated but not servilely copied from one in _Les Femmes Savantes_, is a good specimen of the humour and sparkle of Congreve's dialogue: '_Lady Froth._ Then you think that episode between Susan, the dairy-maid, and our coachman, is not amiss; you know I may suppose the dairy in town as well as in the country. _Brisk._ Incomparable, let me perish!--But then being an heroic poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? charioteer sounds great; besides, your ladyship's coachman having a red face, and you comparing him to the sun; and you know the sun is called heaven's charioteer. _Lady Froth._ Oh, infinitely better! I am extremely beholden to you for the hint; stay, we'll read over those half a score lines again. [_Pulls out a paper._] Let me see here, you know what goes before,--the comparison, you know. [_Reads._ For as the sun shines every day, So, of our coachman I may say-- _Brisk._ I'm afraid that simile won't do in wet weather;--because you say the sun shines every day. _Lady Froth._ No, for the sun it won't, but it will do for the coachman; for you know there's more occasion for a coach in wet weather. _Brisk._ Right, right, that saves all. _Lady Froth._ Then, I don't say the sun shines all the day, but that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day too, you know, though we don't see him. _Brisk._ Right, but the vulgar will never comprehend that.