Congreve's muse was about as bad as any muse that ever misbehaved herself,--and I think, as little amusing.

"Reading in these plays now," says Thackeray, "is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing.

What does it mean ?--the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling, and retreating, the cavaliers seuls advancing upon their ladies, then ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated ?" It is always so with Congreve's plays, and Etherege's and Wycherley's.

The world we meet there is not our world, and as we read the plays we have no sympathy with these unknown people.

It was not that they lived so long ago.