(William), a younger brother of an ancient family in Staffordshire. His father was employed in the stewardship of the great estate of the Earl of Burlington in Ireland, where he resided many years; and our author was born there in 1672. Mr Congreve entered into the Middle-Temple when he came to England, and began to study the law; but his bias was toward polite literature and poetry. His first performance was a novel, intituled, Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled. He soon after began his comedy of the Old Bachelor; which was the amusement of some leisure hours during a slow recovery from a fit of illness soon after his return to England; yet was in itself so perfect, that Mr Dryden, on its being shown to him, declared he had never in his life seen such a fine play. When brought on the stage in 1693, it met with such universal approbation, that Mr Congreve, though he was but 19 years old at the time of his writing it, became now considered as a prop to the declining stage, and a rising genius in dramatic poetry. The next year he produced the Double Dealer; which, for what reason is not obvious, did not meet with so much success as the former. The merit of his first play, however, had obtained him the favour and patronage of Lord Halifax, and some peculiar mark of distinction from Queen Mary; on whose death, which happened in the close of this year, he wrote a very elegant elegiac pastoral. In 1695, when Betterton opened the new house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr Congreve joining with him, gave him his comedy of Love for Love, with which the company opened their campaign; and which met with such success, that they immediately offered the author a share in the management of the house, on condition of his furnishing them with one play yearly. This offer he accepted; but whether through indolence, or that correctness which he looked upon as necessary to his works, his Mourning Bride did not come out till 1697, nor his Way of the World till two years after that. The indifferent success this last mentioned play, though an exceeding good one, met with from the public, completed that disgust to the theatre, which a long contest with Jeremy Collier, who had attacked the immorality of the English stage, and more especially some of his pieces, had begun, and he determined never more to write for the stage. However, though he quitted dramatic writing, he did not lay down the pen entirely; but occasionally wrote many little pieces both in prose and verse, all of which stand on the records of literary fame. It is very possible, however, that he might not so soon have given way to this disgust, had not the easiness of his circumstances rendered any subservience to the opinions and caprice of the town absolutely unnecessary to him. For his abilities having very early in life raised him to the acquaintance of the Earl of Halifax, who was then the Mecenas of the age; that nobleman, desirous of raising a genius above the necessity of too hasty productions, made him one of the commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches; or, according to Coxeter, a commissioner of the wine-licence. He soon after bestowed on him a place in the pipe-office; and not long after gave him a post in the customs worth £600 per annum. In the year 1718, he was appointed secretary of Jamaica; so that, with all together, his income towards the latter part of his life was upwards of £1200 a-year.

The greatest part of the last 20 years of his life was spent in ease and retirement; and he either did not, or affected not to give himself any trouble about reputation. Yet some part of that conduct might proceed from a degree of pride; to which purpose, T. Cibber, in his lives of the poets, Vol. IV. p. 93, relates the following anecdote of him: "When the celebrated Voltaire was in England, he waited upon Mr Congreve, and passed some compliments upon the merit and reputation of his works. Congreve thanked him; but at the same time told that ingenious foreigner, that he did not choose to be considered as an author, but only as a private gentleman, and in that light expected to be visited. Voltaire answered, that if he had never been anything but a private gentleman, in all probability he had never been troubled with that visit." He observes, in his own account of the transaction, that he was not a little disgusted with so unseasonable a piece of vanity.

Towards the close of his life he was much afflicted with the gout; and making a tour to Bath for the benefit of the waters, was unfortunately overturned in his chariot; by which, it is supposed, he got some inward bruise, as he ever after complained of a pain in his side; and, on his return to London, continued gradually declining in his health, till the 19th of January 1729, when he died, aged 57; and, on the 26th following, was buried in Westminster Abbey, the pall being supported by persons of the first distinction.