author, my old friend Mr. D'Urfey.’ Another benefit for D'Urfey was given at Drury Lane on 3 June 1714, when he appeared and spoke an ‘Oration on the Royal Family and the prosperous state of the Nation,’ being his second appearance, before the performance of ‘Court Gallantry; or, Marriage a-la-Mode.’ In 1721 William Chetwood, at the Cato's Head, Covent Garden, published a volume entitled ‘New Operas and Comical Stories and Poems on Seueral Occasions, neuer before printed. Being the remaining pieces written by Mr. D'Urfey.’ Among these were ‘The Two Queens of Brentford; or, Bayes no Poetaster,’ a comic opera, a sequel to ‘The Rehearsal,’ ‘The Grecian Heroine,’ ‘The Athenian Jilt,’ ‘Ariadne,’ and a few miscellanies.
D'Urfey died, ‘at the age of seventy,’ on 26 Feb. 1723, and was buried at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, where a Yorkshire slab tablet to his memory was placed on the south wall outside, with the concise inscription, ‘Tom D'Urfey, dyed Febry ye 26th, 1723.’ He was buried handsomely at the expense of the Earl of Dorset (Le Neve, MS. Diary; Genest writes ‘on March 11’). On the 17th D'Urfey's ‘Don Quixote’ was revived for Miss Willis's benefit, her mother resuming her old favourite part of Mary the Buxom.
A good copper-plate portrait of D'Urfey, handsome and good-humoured, in a full-bottomed wig, is prefixed to vol. i. of the ‘Pills,’ 1719, engraved by G. Vertue, after a painting by E. Gouge. E. Gouge adds these lines below the portrait:—
Whilst D'Urfey's voice his verse does raise,
When D'Urfey sings his tunefull lays,
Give D'Urfey's Lyrick Muse the bayes.
In another print, engraved from a sketch taken at Knole, he is represented looking at some music, with two large books under his arm. Although of convivial habits he was never drunk. His love and reverence for his mother are shown in his ‘Hymn to Piety, to my dear Mother, Mrs. Frances D'Urfey, written at Cullacombe, September 1698,’ beginning ‘O sacred Piety, thou morning star, that shew'st our day of life serene and fair.’ She was then living, ‘to age example, and to youth a guide,’ and it ends,
Still may your blessing, when your life is done,
As well as now, descend upon your son.
Abraham de la Pryme in 1697 recorded that he had been that day with a bookseller at Brigg, who had been ‘apprenticed to one who printed that scurrilous pamphlet against Sherlock intitled “The Weesels” (the author of which was Durfee). He says it is certain that his master got about 800l. for it. He says that Durfee was forced to write an answer to it intitled “The Weesel Trapped.”’ D'Urfey made frequent attacks on ‘Popery,’ subjecting Bellarmine and Porto-Carrero to short satirical attacks. He satirised the Harley-Bolingbroke ministry, taking the Huguenot ‘refugee view of the peace of Utrecht as a bad bargain for Britain and for the protestant interest,’ saying that they deserved a ballad because they had ‘given all to Louis for a song.’
His comedies were not more licentious than Dryden's or Ravenscroft's, or others of their day, but few kept possession of the stage, although ‘The Plotting Sisters’ was revived in 1726, 1732, and 1740. Three editions of it appeared in his lifetime, but no modern reprint of his dramas has been attempted, the contemporary issue having been large enough to keep the market supplied. His songs have never lost popularity, and many are still sung throughout Scotland under the belief that they were native to the soil. D'Urfey certainly visited Edinburgh, perhaps more than once, and made close acquaintance with Allan Ramsay, early in the eighteenth century, at his shop in the Luckenbooths. Addison's testimony is complete: ‘He has made the world merry, and I hope they will make him easy so long as he stays among us. … They cannot do a kindness to a more diverting companion, or a more cheerful, honest, good-natured man.’ Again in the ‘Tatler’ he is praised: ‘Many an honest gentleman has got a reputation in this country by pretending to have been in the company of Tom D'Urfey. Many a present toast, when she lay in her cradle, has been lulled asleep by D'Urfey's sonnets.’ Steele followed him to the grave, and wore the watch and chain which D'Urfey bequeathed to him. Printed three years later in ‘Miscellaneous Poems,’ i. 6, 1726, is an ‘Epitaph upon Tom D'Urfey:’—
Here lyes the Lyrick, who, with tale and song,
Did life to three score years and ten prolong;
His tale was pleasant and his song was sweet,
His heart was cheerful—but his thirst was great.
Grieve, Reader, grieve, that he, too soon grown old,
His song has ended, and his tale is told.
Most fluent of song-writers, his verses long continued to fill the books of a later day.
Richard Steele praised him, and cold, stately ‘Atticus,’
Old Rowley lean'd on Tom's shoulder, our king!
D'Urfey, who mock'd all the noisy fanatic fuss;
Plot-bigots moved him to jest and to sing.
Among his fugitive works was ‘Collin's Walk through London and Westminster, a Poem in Burlesque,’ 1690; and he wrote a ‘Vive le Roy’ for George I in 1714.
