Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/259

 field of poetry.’ His first play was produced at the King's Theatre in 1676, and printed in 4to, a bombastic tragedy entitled ‘The Siege of Memphis; or, the Ambitious Queen.’ He pleased the town more with his comedies of ‘The Fond Husband; or, the Plotting Sisters,’ licensed 15 June 1676, and ‘Madam Fickle; or, the Witty False One,’ 1677. Two more followed in 1678, ‘The Fool turn'd Critic’ and ‘Trick for Trick; or, the Debauched Hypocrite.’ His ‘Squire Oldsapp; or, the Night Adventurers,’ 1679; ‘The Virtuous Wife; or, Good Luck at Last,’ 1680; ‘Sir Barnaby Whig; or, No Wit like a Woman's,’ 1681; and two others in 1682, ‘The Royalist’ and ‘The Injured Princess; or, the Fatal Wager,’ which he called a tragi-comedy, were full of bustle and intrigue, lively dialogue, and sparkling songs set to music by his friends Henry Purcell, Thomas Farmer, and Dr. John Blow. These songs increased his popularity. He was in demand to write birthday odes, epithalamia, prologues and epilogues, many of which are extant. He had joined Richard Shotterel on an heroic poem, ‘Archerie Revived,’ and brought out his ‘New Collection of Songs and Poems,’ 1683, among which was the memorable one beginning ‘The night her blackest sables wore,’ long afterwards erroneously claimed for Francis Semple of Beltrees. Amid all the commotion of the sham popish plot D'Urfey preserved the favour of both the court and the city. He was utterly devoid of malice, his satirical spirit was mirthful and never revengeful. Even when bitterly lampooned by the quarrelsome Tom Brown (1663–1704) [q. v.], as ‘Thou cur, half French, half English breed,’ who mocked him regarding a duel at Epsom in 1689 with one Bell, a musician, ‘I sing of a Duel, in Epsom befell, 'twixt Fa-sol-la D'Urfey and Sol-la-mi Bell,’ Tom made no angry rejoinder, but took the abuse as a joke. He knew that the laugh was always on his side against the heavier hand. Both D'Urfey and Tom Brown were represented as subjected to a mock-trial in the ‘Sessions of the Poets, holden at the foot of Parnassus Hill, before Apollo, July the 9th, 1696.’ It was only by Jeremy Collier [q. v.] that he could be provoked to reply, and even then it was chiefly in a song, ‘New Reformation begins through the nation!’ which he embedded in the preface to his ‘Campaigners,’ a comedy of 1698. Collier had first assailed him in ‘A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,’ &c., 1698, chiefly on account of D'Urfey's play of ‘Don Quixote.’ Of all the combatants the lightest-hearted and least harmed was Tom. Before this date he produced on the stage and in quarto, seriatim, ‘The Commonwealth of Women,’ 1686; ‘Banditti,’ 1686; ‘A Fool's Preferment,’ 1688; ‘Bussy d'Amboise,’ adapted from Chapman's tragedy, and ‘Love for Money; or, the Boarding School,’ both in 1691; ‘The Marriage Hater Matched,’ concerning which he wrote a letter to Mr. Gildon, 1692; and ‘The Richmond Heiress; or, A Woman Once in the Right,’ 1693. His ‘Comical History of Don Quixote’ was in three parts, two of which appeared in 1694, the third in 1696. His ‘Cynthia and Endymion,’ an opera, and ‘The Intrigues of Versailles,’ a comedy, belonged to 1697. On Thursday, 12 May 1698, the justices of Middlesex took proceedings against Congreve and D'Urfey (, iv. 379). In the preface to his ‘Campaigners,’ 1698, he fairly encountered his assailant the nonjuror, and says that ‘the first time he saw Collier was under the gallows, where he pronounced the absolution to wretches justly condemned by law to die for the intended murder of the king [William III] and the subversion of the protestant religion.’ This refers to the execution of Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkyns, in April 1696. D'Urfey's ‘Famous History of the Rise and Fall of Massaniello’ was a play in two parts, the first of which was printed next year, 1699, the second in 1700. His comedy of ‘The Bath; or, the Western Lass,’ followed in 1701. In his burlesque, ‘Wonders in the Sun; or, the Kingdom of the Birds,’ a comic opera, the music composed by Giovanni Battista Draghi [q. v.], he brought on the stage actors dressed as parrots, crows, &c., and the business was farcical in the extreme. This justified the remark of Dryden, that ‘You don't know my friend Tom so well as I do. I'll answer for it he will write worse yet!’ But Dryden, after his own conversion to Romanism, could not feel pleased at D'Urfey's protestant zeal. Moreover, he had in 1693 written a prologue to ‘The Volunteers; or, the Stockjobbers,’ of Dryden's rival, Tom Shadwell; and again in 1694 to J. Lacy's ‘Sir Hercules Buffoon.’ The republication of D'Urfey's own songs, with the music, both in single sheets and in volumes, three collections between 1683 and 1685, had been continually bringing money from John Playford and presents from private patrons. Most of these songs appeared in successive editions of ‘Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy,’ the earliest volume of which, but without music, is dated 1684; the proper series, dated 1699 and 1700, was followed at short intervals in 1706, 1710, &c., by similar collections, some entitled ‘Songs Compleat [sic], by Tom D'Urfey,’ until in 1719, with a