420 



CONGREVE 



CONIFERS 



the part of the hypocrite condescended to exploit 

 Aristotle's paradox about comedy being an imita- 

 tion of bad characters an imitation with an ethi- 

 cal end ; as if such comedy as his had anything 

 to do with ethical ends ! Notwithstanding the 

 conventional tags at the end of Congreve's plays 

 tags which had no serious meaning, and were 

 meant to have none the ' Seventh Hell ' of the 

 Hypocrite could never claim the author of Love 

 for Love until he set about defending that play. 

 Better to leave ill alone, we say. 



Congreve's last play, the Way of the World, was 

 produced in 1700. Though quite as full of intellec- 

 tual brilliance as Love for Love, and evidently 

 written with more care, not to say labour, it lacks 

 the humorous impulse which we have seen in Con- 

 greve's masterpiece. The glitter is that of icicles 

 in the sunlight. The wit of the dialogue is not 

 sufficiently held in hand to work out the characters 

 and the plot. In a word, it comes more completely 

 than does any other of Congreve's plays within the 

 scope of the Duke of Buckinghamshire's strictures 

 upon the comedy of repartee : 



Another fault, which often does befal, 

 Is when the wit of some great poet shall 

 So overflow, that is, be none at all, 

 That ev'n his fools speak sense, as if possest, 

 And each by inspiration breaks his jest, 

 If once the justness of each part be lost. 

 Well may we laugh, but at the poet's cost. 



Tliis play was received with comparative coldness, 

 and Congreve wrote no more for the stage ; but he 

 lived till January 1729. Socially his life was one 

 unbroken success. Physical suffering he had, but 

 most of it was the result perhaps of his own youth- 

 ful indiscretions. Kneller's portrait shows him to 

 have been a handsome man with dark eyes. His 

 career shows him to have been a man of fine genius 

 who, smitten with the English canker of rank- 

 worship, succeeded in half-misprising his endow- 

 ments and living and dying genteel. He amassed 

 a fortune, and left it not to his greatest friend 

 Mrs Bracegirdle, a woman of genius, of surpassing 

 beauty, and most lovable nature, who had sacri- 

 ficed everything for him, but to the Duchess of 

 Marlborough, who, after his death, had a waxen 

 statue of Mm made a statue which sat at her 

 table in his very clothes, and nodded mechanically 

 over the dinner at Her Grace's smallest joke, even 

 as he had used to nod in the flesh. 



See the Comedies, edited by W. E. Henley (1895) ; the 

 edition by Knight ; the short Life by Gosse (1888) ; and 

 essays by Hazlitt, Swinburne, and others. 



Congreve, SIR WILLIAM, was born 20th May 

 1772, the son of William Congreve, Comptroller 

 of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich. Young 

 Congreve passed through the Royal Academy 

 at Woolwich, and in 1808, after a long series 

 of experiments, contrived the Congreve rocket. 

 It was tried in the Basque roads in 1809, and 

 at Leipzig in 1813, scarcely with the success 

 that was expected. Honours were heaped on 

 Congreve; he was elected F.R.S., and returned to 

 parliament in 1812. Two years later he succeeded 

 to the baronetcy and his father's place. He died 

 at Toulouse, 16th May 1828. See ROCKET. 



Coili, or CUNEO, capital of an Italian province, 

 stands in a fruitful district, 48 miles SW. of Turin 

 by rail. It has a fine cathedral, lately restored. 

 It was once strongly fortified, and a place of great 

 strategic importance. Its chief manufactures are 

 silk, cotton, and paper. Pop. 13,500. 



Conic Sections. See CONE, CIRCLE, ELLIPSE, 

 PARABOLA, and HYPERBOLA. 



Coniferae. This important and interesting 

 order of dicotyledons attained its maximum iinport- 

 mce during past geological periods ; its world-wide 



geographical distribution and strongly marked 

 family and generic differences being in this way 

 explained i.e. when we regard the existing forms 

 as the survivors of a larger and once predominant 

 coniferous flora, which has been in good part dis- 

 placed by the more recent and higher monocotyle- 

 donous and dicotyledonous ( angiospermous ) forms. 

 About 300 species, included in about 33 genera, 

 now remain. Leaving the questions of floral mor- 

 phology and minute structure which separate the 

 conifers (along with Cycads and Gnetaceae) from 

 the remaining phanerogams or ' angiosperms ' to 

 the article GYMNOSPERMS, it may be most profit- 

 able here to make a rapid survey or the most import- 

 ant groups of the order, with their principal types. 

 Various systems of classification have been pro- 

 pounded ; an old and widely adopted one recognises 

 three sub-orders, the pines ( Abietineae ), cypresses 

 ( Cupressinese ), and yews (Taxinere). Since, how 

 ever, the first two of these are much less widely 

 separated from each other than from the third, 

 later systematists are returning to the classification 

 of Lindley, and regard these as making up a single 

 sub-order ( Pinoidere ) equivalent to the yew ( Taxo- 

 idete ). On account of the exceptional importance 

 of this order, alike in forestry and horticulture, 

 a brief enumeration of the families of these sub 

 orders, with mention of their most important species, 

 may now be given. 



Commencing with the Abietinese division of 

 Pinoide;e, we find three families, the pines 

 proper (Abietince], Araucarias (Araucariince), and 

 Taxodiums (Taxodiince). The genus Abies (in- 

 cluding Picea) consists of evergreen trees, or 

 sometimes shrubs, in which the linear and always 

 more or less completely needle-shaped leaves arise 

 singly, and are never clustered in branch lets, while 

 the scales of the cones are not thickened at the tip. 

 The list may be headed by the Spruce Fir, or Nor- 

 way Spruce (A. excelsa), one of our commonest 

 trees, while A. Doiiglasii, A. nobilis, and other 

 Californian species are of special beauty as trees 

 and value as timber, with other species too numer- 

 ous to mention. The old Linnean genus Pinus 

 (from which the firs, larches, and cedars have been 

 separated off as Abies, Larix, and Cedrus respect- 

 ively ) still includes about 100 species, easily dis- 

 tinguished from Abies by the grouping of the 

 leaves upon arrested branchlets, the thickening 

 of the tips of the cone-scales, and other characters. 

 Among the more important species, P. sylvestris 

 ( the Scotch fir ), P. austriaca ( the Austrian pine ), P. 

 Laricio (the Corsican pine), P. Pinaster (the cluster 

 pine), and P. Pinea (the stone pine of southern 

 Europe), may be first mentioned, alike on account 

 of their frequency of occurrence in forests and 

 plantations in Europe, and as agreeing in having 

 usually only two leaves on each branchlet. A 

 large and chiefly Californian series agrees in having 

 three leaves on each sheath. Of these, P. insignis 

 (the Oregon pitch pine), P. Benthamiana, and P. 

 radiata may be mentioned ; finally a series, usually 

 five-leaved, includes the Weymouth Pine and White 

 Pine of North-east America (P. Strobiis), the 

 Siberian Stone Pine (P. Cembra), &c. Of the allied 

 genus Larix (see LARCH) only L. europcea (deci- 

 dua) need here be mentioned, while of Cedrus (see 

 CEDAR) C. Libanus and C. Deodara are of special 

 importance. The Araucariinse are familiarly re- 

 presented by the A. imbricata of Chili, so common 

 in suburban gardens (see ARAUCARIA), and other 

 more graceful but usually less hardy species ; as 

 also by the important Kauri pine and other species 

 of Uammara. See DAMMAR. 



The Taxodiinre include a number of veiy import- 

 ant trees, notably the curious umbrella pine ( Sciad- 

 opitys) of Japan, Cunninglunnia sinensis of China, 

 and the colossal Sequoia ( Wellingtonia gigantea) 



