of a mere workman in those days—­no! no!  Yet he does not seem to have repented of this transaction, for soon after he was engaged with Sedley and Ogle in a series of most indecent acts at the Cock Tavern in Bow-street, where Sedley, in ‘birthday attire,’ made a blasphemous oration from the balcony of the house.  In later years he was the pride of the poets:  Dryden and Prior, Wycherley, Hudibras, and Rymer, were all encouraged by him, and repaid him with praises.  Pope and Dr. King were no less bountiful in their eulogies of this Maecenas.  His conversation was so much appreciated that gloomy William III. chose him as his companion, as merry Charles had done before.  The famous Irish ballad, which my Uncle Toby was always humming, ‘Lillibullero bullen-a-lah,’ but which Percy attributes to the Marquis of Wharton, another member of the Kit-kat, was said to have been written by Buckhurst.  He retained his wit to the last; and Congreve, who visited him when he was dying, said, ’Faith, he stutters more wit than other people have in their best health.’  He died at Bath in 1706.

Buckhurst does not complete the list of conspicuous members of this club, but the remainder were less celebrated for their wit.  There was the Duke of Kingston, the father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Granville, who imitated Waller, and attempted to make his ‘Myra’ as celebrated as the court-poet’s Saccharissa, who, by the way, was the mother of the Earl of Sunderland; the Duke of Devonshire, whom Walpole calls ‘a patriot among the men, a gallant among the ladies,’ and who founded Chatsworth; and other noblemen, chiefly belonging to the latter part of the seventeenth century, and all devoted to William III., though they had been bred at the courts of Charles and James.

With such an array of wits, poets, statesmen, and gallants, it can easily be believed that to be the toast of the Kit-kat was no slight honour; to be a member of it a still greater one; and to be one of its most distinguished, as Congreve was, the greatest.  Let us now see what title this conceited beau and poet had to that position.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 13:  The Kit-kat club was not founded till 1703.]

[Footnote 14:  For some notice of Lord Dorset, see p. 61.]

    WILLIAM CONGREVE.

  When and where was he born?—­The Middle Temple.—­Congreve finds his
      Vocation.—­Verses to Queen Mary.—­The Tennis-court
      Theatre.—­Congreve abandons the Drama.—­Jeremy Collier.—­The
      Immorality of the Stage.—­Very improper Things.—­Congreve’s
      Writings.—­Jeremy’s ’Short Views.’—­Rival Theatres.—­Dryden’s
      Funeral.—­A Tub-Preacher.—­Horoscopic Predictions.—­Dryden’s
      Solicitude for his Son.—­Congreve’s Ambition.—­Anecdote of
      Voltaire and Congreve.—­The Profession of Maecenas.—­Congreve’s
      Private Life.—­’Malbrook’s’ Daughter.—­Congreve’s Death and
      Burial.