Thomas D’Urfey, born in Devonshire about 1630, lived to be very old, was known in the reign of George I. as one of the wits of the time of Charles II., and was “Tom” to the last, so that even the stone over his grave recorded of him “Tom D’Urfey: died February 26, 1723.” He wrote plays, operas, poems, and songs, and was a diner-out among great people, whom he entertained by singing his own songs to his own music. That was his chief title to honour, and he was so well known that a country gentleman who came to London must not go home till he was able to say that he had met Tom D’Urfey. In 1676, D’Urfey began with “Archery Revived,” a heroic poem; a tragedy, “The Siege of Memphis;” and a comedy, “The Fond Husband; or, The Plotting Sister.” Comedies, with an occasional tragedy or tragi-comedy, then followed one another fast. In 1682, D’Urfey, who had nothing of Butler’s substance in him, published a satire, called “Butler’s Ghost; or, Hudibras, the Fourth Part: with Reflections on these Times.” A volume of songs by D’Urfey appeared in 1687, and the collection made from time to time was completed in six volumes by the year 1720, as “Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy: being a large Collection of Ballads, Sonnets, etc., with their Tunes.”

Personal

  The two poets I have mentioned, are Pindar and Mr. D’Urfey. The former of these is long since laid in his urn, after having, many years together, endeared himself to all Greece by his tuneful compositions. Our countryman is still living, and in a blooming old age, that still promises many musical productions; for if I am not mistaken, our British swan will sing to the last…. I myself remember King Charles the Second leaning on Tom D’Urfey’s shoulder more than once, and humming over a song with him. It is certain that monarch was not a little supported by “Joy to great Cæsar,” which gave the whigs such a blow as they were not able to recover that whole reign…. As my friend, after the manner of the old lyrics, accompanies his works with his own voice, he has been the delight of the most polite companies and conversations, from the beginning of King Charles the Second’s reign to our present times. Many an honest gentleman has got a reputation in his country, by pretending to have been in company with Tom D’Urfey…. I must not omit that my old friend angles for a trout the best of any man in England. May-flies come in late this season, or I myself should, before now, have had a trout of his hooking.

  Mr. Rowe, the poet laureate, is dead, and has left a damned jade of a Pegasus. I’ll answer for it, he won’t do as your mare did, having more need of Lucan’s present than Sir Richard Blackmore. I would fain have Pope get a patent for life for the place, with a power of putting in Durfey his deputy.

  D’Urfey, Thomas, the, poet, ingenius for witty madrigals, buried Tuesday 26 day of February, 1722–3, in St. James’ Church in Middlesex, at the charge of the Duke of Dorset.

  He existed, or rather, I might say, flourished for forty-six years or more, living chiefly on the bounty of his patrons. He was always a welcome guest wherever he went, and even though stuttering was one of his failings, he could sing a song right well, and greatly to the satisfaction of the Merry Monarch. His publications are numerous; but Tom, it may be surmised, did not make much by his “copy.” The chance profits of benefit nights brought more into his pockets than the sale of his plays to the booksellers. Tom was at home—perfectly at his ease—in three noble houses: Knowle, in Kent, the princely seat of the witty Earl of Dorset; Leicester House, in Leicester Square; and Winchendon, in Bucks, the stately residence of the licentious but gifted Philip, Duke of Wharton. Many are the stories on record of his sayings and doings at these places, and the revelry that took place at the jovial meetings of Tom and his great companions must have been of rich order.

  And this it is to be an immortal bard! For bays so perishable and laurels that withered so soon, Tom gave up the labours of a long and industrious life. He discounted his own glory, it is true, and had that enjoyment of fame in his lifetime which many a better bard only gets after death. It is something, even if you are put away on the shelves and forgotten as soon as the funeral-service has been read over you, to have been compared by Addison with Pindar, and honourably mentioned in the same sentence with Terence and Horace. Very few of his contemporaries were so fortunate, and most of them cultivated the divine art without meeting any such reward either in life or after it. It is thus that Tom had one immense advantage over his fellows: he made the world laugh, while they only made the world yawn…. In Tom D’Urfey’s nature there was not an ounce of malice; little as we know of him, there is yet enough to justify, amply and entirely, Addison’s recommendation, that the world could not possibly do kindness to a more diverting companion, to a more cheerful, honest, and good-natured man. With lower aims and lower ideas he was the Hood of his period. It is well for our age, that modern humorists have discovered the art of promoting laughter by the employment of drugs less noxious than those with which poor Tom was fain to compound his “Pills.” And after all, as we need not take this medicine of his, and there is no fear that it will ever be prescribed to melancholy boys and girls, it really doesn’t matter any longer.

General

  I have not quoted one Latin author since I came down, but have learned without book a song of Mr. Thomas Durfey’s, who is your only poet of tolerable reputation in this country. He makes all the merriment in our entertainments…. Any man, of any quality, is heartily welcome to the best toping-table of our gentry, who can roundly hum out some fragments or rhapsodies of his works…. Dares any one despise him who has made so many men drink?… But give us your ancient poet Mr. Durfey.

  A judicious author some years since published a collection of sonnets, which he very successfully called “Laugh and be Fat; or, Pills to purge Melancholy.” I cannot sufficiently admire the facetious title of these volumes, and must censure the world of ingratitude, while they are so negligent in rewarding the jocose labours of my friend Mr. D’Urfey, who was so large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose humorous productions so many rural squires in the remotest parts of this island are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them. The story of the sick man’s breaking an imposthume by a sudden fit of laughter, is too well known to need a recital. It is my opinion, that the above pills would be extremely proper to be taken with asses’ milk, and mightily contribute towards the renewing and restoring decayed lungs.

  Nothing distinguishes his songs more than the uncouthness and irregularity of the metre in which they are written; the modern Pindaric odes, which are humorously resembled to a comb with the teeth broken by frequent use, are nothing to them. Besides that he was able to set English words to Italian airs, as in the instance of “Blouzabella my buxom doxy,” which he made to an air of Bononcini, beginning “Pastorella che trà le selve,” he had the art of jumbling long and short quantities so dexterously together, that they counteracted each other, so that order resulted from confusion. Of this happy talent he has given us various specimens, in adapting songs to tunes composed in such measures as scarce any instrument but the drum would express; and, to be even with the musicians for giving him so much trouble, he composed songs in metres so broken and intricate, that few could be found that were able to suit them with musical notes. It is said that he once challenged Purcell to set to music such a song as he would write, and gave him that well-known ballad “One long Whitsun holiday,” which cost the latter more pains to fit with a tune than the composition of his Te Deum.

  His plays are numerous, his poems less so: the former have not been acted for many years, and the latter are seldom read.

  The secret of D’Urfey’s popularity as a song-writer, lay in his selection of the tunes. He trenched upon the occupation of the professed ballad-writers, by adopting the airs which had been their exclusive property, and by taking the subjects of their ballads; altering them to give them as his own.

  The procession, as it marched, sang “Joy to Great Cæsar,” a loyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey, and which, though, like all Durfey’s writings, utterly contemptible, was, at that time, almost as popular as Lillibullero became a few years later.

  It is singular, when we consider the boldness and uncompromising audacity of Addison’s comparison of D’Urfey with Pindar, to observe how completely posterity has forgotten all about him. He wrote operas which were never sung after his death; comedies which could not hold the stage; tragedies which I believe—for I have actually read one—never did or could please; congratulatory verses which of course no man living or dead ever did read; satires of which the edge is taken off and the point blunted; stories “tragical, moral, and comical,” which are very very dreary; and songs—songs patriotic, humourous, erotic, and anacreontic—still to be read in his famous collection. As it is difficult to pick out his own from the rest, some of his making may yet survive, if only one could recognise them.

  He seems to have derived from his French blood a persistent amiability, which Tom Brown failed to upset and Jeremy Collier could scarcely disturb. Nor can it be denied that his songs amused four successive monarchs and their lieges, in the houses of the nobility, on the racecourse, in the tavern, and in the theatre. His dramatic activity proper, however, calls for no detailed review. He adapted, or borrowed from, Shakspere, Chapman, Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shirley, Marmion, Dryden, and doubtless many others, besides occasionally attempting original works; and he wrote altogether twenty-nine plays which were acted, and three which were not, comprising tragedies, comedies, operas serious and comical, and burlesques and extravaganzas under divers designations. He appears to have given a large amount of pleasure to great and small in his day—which was a long one—and to have been no very conspicuous sinner against a propriety which could hardly be expected to form part of his stock-in-trade.

  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.

  Collier has not the slightest difficulty in proving the veteran Dryden and the new, brilliant, uncompromising Vanbrugh guilty of an infinite number of breaches of decorum. What is more surprising is that he should have thought it worth while to criticise Tom D’Urfey’s twentieth play, when the nineteen that preceded it did but combine to prove him a scurrilous and witless buffoon, on whose shoulder the king might lean to hum over a song, but whom it was needless to discuss in any grave examination of British dramatic literature.

  Below mediocrity.