Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/309

Rh yet, so universal a favourite as he was, towards the latter part of his life he stood in need of assistance to prevent his passing the remainder of it in a cage like a singing-bird; for, to use his own words, "after having written more odes than Horace, and about four times as many comedies as Terence, he found himself reduced to great difficulties by the importunities of a set of men who of late years had furnished him with the accommodations of life, and would not, as we say, be paid with a song."

Addison, to relieve the old man, whose sight was then failing, but whose spirits had not been extinguished, applied to the directors of the play-house, and they agreed to act The Plotting Sisters, one of his earliest productions, for the benefit of the author. What the result of this benefit was does not appear, but it was probably sufficient to make him easy, as we find him living and continuing to write with the same humour and liveliness to the time of his death, which happened on 26 February, 1723. He was buried in the churchyard of St. James's, Westminster, against the wall on the south-west angle of which church, on the outside, was erected a stone to his memory, with this inscription: "Tom Durfey died Feb. 26, 1723."