418 



CONGRESS 



CONGREVE 



After a bill has been passed by both houses, it is 

 presented to the' president of the United States for 

 his approval and signature. If he approves and 

 signs it, it becomes a law. If he does not approve 

 it, the president returns it, with his objections, to 

 the house in which it originated ; and that house 

 must enter his objections at large upon its journal, 

 and proceed to reconsider it. If after reconsider- 

 ation it is passed by a two-thirds vote, it is sent to 

 the other house with the president's objections, by 

 which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if 

 approved by two-thirds of that house, it becomes a 

 law ; the vote in both houses must be taken by 

 yeas and nays, and the names of the voters for or 

 against are entered upon the journal of each house 

 respectively. If the bill is not returned by the 

 president within ten days (Sundays excepted), it 

 becomes a law in the same manner as if he had 

 signed it, unless congress by adjournment prevents 

 its return, in which case it does not become a law. 



Every order, resolution, or vote to which the 

 concurrence of both houses is necessary (except 

 adjournment) must likewise be presented to the 

 president after passage, and in case of his dis- 

 approval (or veto) must be repassed by a two- 

 thirds vote in the same manner as bills, in order 

 to become a law notwithstanding his objections. 



Congress is usually in session during several* 

 months, but can adjourn at any time by the con- 

 currence of a majority in both houses. A special 

 session may be called by the president of the 

 United States, however, in cases of emergency, or 

 if congress has adjourned without passing the ap- 

 propriation bills necessary for the expenses of gov- 

 ernment. Each congress ends on 4th March, every 

 second year, at twelve o'clock noon. See J. W. 

 Moore, The American Congress ( 1895). 



Coilgreve, RICHARD, Positivist, born at Leam- 

 ington, Sept. 4, 1818, and educated under Arnold 

 at Rugby, became a scholar, fellow, and tutor of 

 Wad ham College, Oxford, but resigned after having 

 become definitively a disciple of Comte. He died 

 July 5, 1899. In 1855 he published a good edition 

 of Aristotle's Politics. Later works are Lectures on 

 the, Roman Empire of the West (1855); Elizabeth 

 of England (1862); The Catechism of Positivist 

 Religion (1858); Essays: Political, Social, and 

 Religious (1874); besides many propagandist ser- 

 mons and addresses. 



Congreve, WILLIAM, the greatest master of 

 the English comedy of repartee, as distinguished 

 from the humoristic or Jonsonian comedy which 

 it replaced, was born at Bardsey, near Leeds, and 

 baptised on February 10, 1669 ( 1670). As a school- 

 boy he was educated at Kilkenny, and as an under- 

 graduate at Trinity College, Dublin. And if this 

 does really make an English gentleman an Irish 

 one, as certain writers learned in ' racial mixings ' 

 have generously assumed, Congreve's genius may 

 be taken as another proof that English wit, like 

 English poetry, is the outcome of that mysterious 

 'Celtic element,' or breath of the 'Celtic Titan' 

 discovered by the late Matthew Arnold. After the 

 completion of his education, Congreve returned to 

 England, and began life in London, where, like 

 Wycherley, and, indeed, like many another man of 

 letters, he entered upon the study of the law an 

 arid study, as is generally supposed, for a wit, and 

 yet one which ( being the study of the practical logic 

 of life) does more than any other, it has been 

 said, to solidify and strengthen the disparate forces 

 of the intellect in whatsoever field those forces may 

 afterwards come to be exercised. Entered at the 

 Middle Temple, but finding, as Leigh Hunt says, 

 that ' having family as well as wit and scholarship,' 

 he could 'make way in life without a profession,' 

 Congreve invaded Very early the literary arena 



where ' family and wit and scholarship ' were in 

 those old days of more account than would now 

 seem possible. His first publication was Incognita, 

 or Love and Duty Reconciled, a novel of cross-pur- 

 poses and disguises, based partly on reminiscences 

 of the method of Shakespeare's fancy-plays, and 

 partly on reminiscences of a very different dramatic 

 method, that of the new prose comedy which, 

 invented by Etheredge, had been very greatly 

 strengthened by Wycherley. When Dr Johnson 

 said of this novel that he ' would rather praise it 

 than read it,' he spoke with his usual sagacity 

 indeed, he may be said to have marked out a course 

 of criticism which has found high favour among 

 succeeding critics of fiction a course which is, no 

 doubt, as wise as amiable in regard to nine novels-' 

 out of any given ten. But whether the tenth, the 

 novel to be read as well as praised, should properly 

 be Rasselas or Incognita seems to depend, now as 

 then, on the temper and the constitution of the 

 praiser. If Rasselas is the more instructive, Incog- 

 nita is the more amusing. For though to laugh 

 with the author is difficult, to laugh at him is easy- 

 enough , and laughter is certainly good. Congreve s 

 novel is rich in ' cultismo ' of that highly ornate 

 kind which has at intervals illuminated modern 

 literature from Gongora to Dr Chivers. Such a 

 passage as that in which Congreve talks about his 

 heroine's employing one of Cupid's pen-feathers ' to 

 pick her teeth ' would have satisfied even such 

 masters of style as the author of Polyphemus and 

 the author of Eonchs of Ruby. 



That a story so full of that silly mock-sentiment 

 then in vogue stuff' which would now make even 

 school-girls laugh should have been written by the 

 great wit and numorist of Love for Love that the 

 story should have had a very great success among 

 those same cynical beaux and brazen belles who- 

 were in the habit of sitting out She Would if She 

 Could and the Country Wife would be incredible 

 did we not remember the still more astonishing fact 

 that the love-passion the passion which Shake- 

 speare and Ford and the rest of the Shakespearians 

 had delineated so powerfully was, judging from 

 the literature of Congreve's time, wiped out as- 

 by a sponge from the English character. It is not 

 enough to say that as soon as the wits of the 

 coffee-houses attempted to touch the love-passion 

 their sense of humour straightway fled : their 

 common sense fled too ; they became idiots, posi- 

 tive idiots. As far as date of publication goes, 

 Congreve's novel was followed by his translation of 

 the eleventh satire of Juvenal. This appeared in 

 Dryden's Juvenal and Persius, dated 1693, but 

 actually published in 1692. From Dryden, to 

 whom he had been introduced it is said by 

 Southerne, Congreve received unvarying kindness- 

 kindness which was answered by unvarying 

 gratitude, or rather by that generosity of recogni- 

 tion among fine spirits the sublimation of grati- 

 tude which is said to be undreamed of by smaller 

 souls. In January 1693 appeared Congreve's comedy 

 the Old Bachelor, under the auspices of Dryden 

 ' then as now a living and immortal witness to the 

 falsehood of the vulgar charge which taxes the 

 greater among the poets with jealousy or envy, the 

 natural badge and brand of the smallest that would 

 claim a place among their kind.' But if Dryden 

 was free from envy, the disease which, according 

 to the above skilful diagnosis by Mr Swinburne, 

 afflicts poetasters and criticasters alone, not less 

 free from this literary leprosy was Congreve him- 

 self. This is what makes him, notwithstanding his 

 rank-worship, so interesting as a personality ; this 

 is what also makes the other comic dramatists 

 Etheredge and Vanbrugh interesting, so interesting, 

 that we would fain, if we dared, condone even such 

 sins against the sanctities of art as theirs ; they 



