The men who took up dramatic authorship seriously as a vocation, during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to something more than two dozen. They begin with Davenant and Dryden; include Tate and Brady,[58] Lee and Otway, Wycherley, Congreve, Cibber, and Vanbrugh; and conclude with Farquhar, and with Rowe. I include Sir John Vanbrugh because he preferred fame as an author to fame as an architect, and I insert Congreve, despite the reflection that the ghost of that writer would daintily protest against it if he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in London, the Frenchman intimated that his visit was to the "author." "I am a _gentleman_," said Congreve. "Nay," rejoined the former, "had you been only a gentleman, you would never have received a visit from me at all." Let me here repeat the names:--_Davenant_, _Dryden_, Shirley, Lee, Cowley, _Shadwell_, Flecknoe, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Otway, Durfey, Banks, Rymer, _Tate_, Brady, Southerne, Congreve, _Cibber_, Dilke,[59] Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis, and _Rowe_. The half dozen in italics were poets-laureate. All of them were sons of "gentlemen," save three, Davenant, Cowley, and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a hatter,[60] and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate education. Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Davenant left Oxford without a degree, and from the former University Dennis was expelled, in March 1680, "for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword." Besides Cowley and Dennis, we are indebted to Cambridge for Dryden, Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford University came Davenant, and Settle, degreeless as Davenant, with Shirley, whose mole on his cheek had rendered him ineligible in Laud's eyes, for ordination; Wycherley, Otway, Southerne, and Dilke. Dublin University yielded Tate and Brady; and better fruit still, Southerne,[61] Congreve, who went to Ireland at an early age, and Farquhar. Douay gave us Gildon, and we are not proud of the gift. Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowne's father was an Independent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory there--unjustly made over by the English Government to the French. Cibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statuary, and a "gentleman" by his mother. It may be said of a good number of these gentlemen that idleness and love of pleasure made them dramatic poets. Shadwell, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Durfey, Bankes, Southerne, Congreve, and Rowe, were all apprenticed to the law; but the study was one too dull for men of their vivacious temperament, and they all turned from it in disgust. According to their success, so were they praised or blamed.