remunerative sale. The poet lived to the
good old age of seventy-four, and was buried
in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, where a
stone with the simple inscription: "Tom
D'Urfey, dyed Feb. ye 26th, 1723,"
points out the spot where he lies. He
was not in such favour with the gloomy
James the Second and the taciturn William
the Third as he was with the merry
monarch; but in the reign of Queen Anne
he was again taken notice of by the Court,
and received fifty guineas from Her
Majesty for writing some verses in ridicule of
the Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess-
Dowager of Hanover, and mother of
George the First. A sample verse will suffice:

The crown's far too weighty
For shoulders of eighty;
She could not sustain such a trophy.
Her hand, too, already
Was grown so unsteady;
She can't hold a sceptre,
So Providence kept her
Away—poor old Dowager Sophy!

Ten times as much for this poor doggerel as
Milton received for Paradise Lost! But
Tom's songs were better than his satirical
pieces, and had a joyous ring about them,
which commended them to the gay
cavaliers of the period. Four of them out of a
vast multitude have survived in a lingering
state of quasi-vitality to our day—The
Brave Men of Kent, Dame Durden, The
Bonny Milk Maid, and Within a Mile of
Edinburgh Town. In our day the Kentish
men sometimes sing the song that Tom
wrote in their honour, with its roystering
chorus:

The men of Kent,
So loyal, brave, and free,
'Mong Britain's race, if one surpass,
A man of Kent is he.

Dame Durden makes a capital glee, and
the words and music rattle along together
in a manner that King Charles heartily
approved, and which will long preserve the
little ditty in popular favour:

Dame Durden kept five serving girls
To carry the milking pail;
She also kept five labouring men
To use the spade and flail.
'Twas Moll and Bet, and Doll and Kate, and Dorothy
Draggletail,
And Tom and Dick, and Joe and Jack, and Humphrey
with his flail.
And Kitty is a charming girl to carry the milking pail.

The Bonny Milk Maid is a good description
of a country lass by a poet who was
pre-eminently a Cockney. But like other
Cockneys of his day and ours, he took much
real enjoyment in rural scenes; and his
milkmaid is a true picture of a rustic, and
not such a caricature of a high-born damsel
masquerading as a shepherdess, as was the
fashion of that very artificial age:

When cold bleak winds do roar,
And flowerets spring no more.
The fields that were seen,
So pleasant and green,
By winter all candied o'er.
Oh, how the town lass
Looks with her white face
And lips so deadly pale;
But it is not so with those that go
Through frost and snow, with cheeks that glow,
To carry the milking pail.

Within a Mile of Edinburgh Town was
written to please Queen Anne, who was
fond of Scottish music, as became a scion
of the House of Stuart. But little of it, as
now sung, was written by D'Urfey, and
the air, in imitation of the Scottish manner,
was composed for Vauxhall Gardens
towards the end of the last century by Hook,
the father of Theodore Hook, the wit and
novelist.

Tom, who had ceased to be able to sing
in the sere and yellow leaf of his age, fell
into neglect, if not into penury, and a
benefit was arranged for him at Drury
Lane Theatre, which both Steele and Addison
recommended and publicly supported.
The latter was particularly cordial in the
Spectator. "Tom D'Urfey," he said, "has
made the world merry; and I hope they
will make him easy as long as he stays
amongst us. This I will take upon me to
say: they cannot do a kindness to a more
diverting companion, or a more cheerful,
honest, or good-natured man." Tom was
never married, and as a man about town,
and a frequenter of the coffee-houses, was
the best known personage of his day. But
he long outlived his popularity, and his
name and his works are now scarcely
known except to literary antiquaries.

The second of the popular poets of the
time was a young Welsh lady, a Mrs.
Katherine Phillips, who went under the
pseudonym of "Orinda." By her
contemporaries she was called "the matchless
Orinda," and "the most deservedly
admired Mrs. Katherine Phillips." John
Evelyn in his Diary, under date of the 4th
of February, 1667-8, records that he "saw
the tragedy of Horace, written by the
virtuous Mrs. Phillips, acted before their
majesties." He underscored and emphasised
the word "virtuous" to give point to the
statement that Lady Castlemaine, the
king's mistress, who was present, wore
diamonds worth forty thousand pounds,
"far outshining those of the queen." Pepys
in his Diary, expresses his opinion that