Tom was very irregular in his metres. He had the art of jumbling long and short quantities so dexterously together that order resulted from confusion. Of this happy talent he gave various specimens, in adapting songs to tunes, composing his songs in such measures as scarcely any instrument but a drum could accompany; as to the tune, it had to take care of itself. To be even with the musicians who complained of the irregularity of his metres, and their unusual character, he went further, composing songs in metres so broken and intricate, that few could be found who could adapt tunes to them that were of any value. It is said that he once challenged Purcell to set to music such a song as he would write, and gave him the ballad that speedily became popular, “One Long Whitsun Holiday,” which cost the latter more pains to fit with a tune than the composition of his Te Deum.
Tom, at least in the early part of his life, was a Tory by principle, and never let slip an opportunity of representing his adversaries, the Whigs, in a ridiculous light. Addison says that the song of “Joy to Great Cæsar” gave them such a blow that they were not able to recover during the reign of Charles II.
This song was set to a tune called “Farinelli’s Ground.” Divisions were made on it by some English master, and it soon became a favourite air. D’Urfey set words to it in which his old Huguenot execration of the Papists breaks forth. Farinelli was a Papist, a circumstance that gave occasion to Addison to remark that his friend Tom had made use of Italian tunes for promoting the Protestant interest; and turned a considerable part of the Pope’s music as a battery against the chair of St. Peter.
D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy is a book nowadays to be kept under lock and key, or else to be bound and lettered “Practical Sermons,” to avoid its being taken down from its shelf and being looked into by young people. And yet—“Tempora mutantur et nos mutantur in illis.” Addison speaks of his songs in No. 67 of The Guardian thus: “I must heartily recommend to all young ladies, my disciples, the case of my old friend, who has often made their grandmothers merry, and whose sonnets have perhaps lulled to sleep many a pleasant toast, when she lay in her cradle.” In No. 29, 1713, Addison wrote: “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 numerous productions so many rural squires in the remotest parts of the island are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them.”
D’Urfey was the last English poet that appeared in the streets attended by a page. Many an honest gentleman, it is said, got a reputation in his county by pretending to have been a boon companion of D’Urfey; 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.”
THE BIRD OF THE OXENHAMS
The Lysons brothers, in their Magna Britannia, Devon, tell the following story, under the head of South Tawton: “Oxenham gave its name to an ancient family, who possessed it at least from the time of Henry III till the death of the late William Long Oxenham, Esq., in 1814. Captain John Oxenham, who had been the friend and companion of Sir Francis Drake, and who, having fitted out a ship on a voyage of discovery and enterprise on his own account, lost his life in an engagement with the Spaniards in South America, in 1575, is supposed to have been of this family. The family has been remarkable also for the tradition of a bird having appeared to several of its members previously to their death. Howell, who had seen mention of this circumstance on a monument at a stonemason’s in Fleet Street, which was about to be sent to Devonshire, gives a copy of the inscription in one of his letters. It is somewhat curious that this letter proves the fact alleged by Wood, that Howell’s work does not consist of entirely genuine letters, but that many of them were first written when he was in the Fleet prison to gain money for the relief of his necessities. This letter, dated July 3, 1632, relates that, as he passed by the stonecutter’s shop ‘last Saturday,’ he saw the monument with the inscription relating the circumstance of the apparition. It appears, however, by a very scarce pamphlet ... that the persons whose names are mentioned in the epitaph, given in Howell’s letter, all died in the year 1635, three years after the date of his letter. The persons to whom the apparition is stated in the pamphlet to have appeared were John Oxenham, son of James Oxenham, gentleman, of Zeal Monachorum, aged twenty-one,[11] and said to have been six feet and a half in height, who died Sept. 5, 1635, a bird with a white breast having appeared hovering over him two days before; Thomazine, wife of James Oxenham, the younger, who died Sept. 7, 1635, aged twenty-two; Rebecca Oxenham, who died Sept. 9, aged eight years; and Thomazine, a child in the cradle, who died Sept. 15. It is added that the same bird had appeared to Grace, the grandmother of John Oxenham, who died 1618. It is stated also that the clergyman of the parish had been appointed by the Bishop (Hall) to enquire into the truth of these particulars, and that a monument, made by Edward Marshall, of Fleet Street, had been put up with his approbation, with the names of the witnesses of each apparition.