immortalised him in his well-known prologue,
spoken by Garrick, at the opening of the
Drury Lane Theatre: —

Perhaps if skill could distant times explore,
New Behns, new D'Urfeys yet remain in store.

New D'Urfeys! "We have in our own time
dramatic productions in every way as low as
D'Urfey's; indeed, if we compare them, and
may be allowed one of Tom's own Newmarket
similies, Tom would distance many competitors
by a length and more.

When Tom D'Urfey represented the lyric
muse of England, Pindarics were at their
highest, and the ever-ready Tom perpetrated
and published Pindarics. He rode, it is true,
a jaded muse, whipt with loose reins, but he
got over a deal of ground notwithstanding,
and received as high fees for what he did
from the patrons of poetry, as the best of the
Pindaric batch. His contemporaries envied
his success, and one (it is said Tom Brown)
wrote the following epigram upon him:

Thou cur, half-French, half-English breed,
Thou mongrel of Parnassus,
To think tall lines run up to seed,
Should ever tamely pass us.

Thou write Pindarics, and be damned,
Write epigrams for cutlers;
None with thy lyrics can he sham'd,
But chamber-maids and butlers.

In t'other world expect dry blows;
No tears can wash thy stains out;
Horace will pluck thee by the nose,
And Pindar beat thy brains out.

Tom's consolation was no doubt the same
as with his plays—"The town may da-da-damn
my Pindarics, but they si-si-sing my
songs for all that."

We have said that Tom subsisted in part by
the dedications to his books. Two anecdotes
are told of his doings in this way. He is
said to have celebrated a certain lord for the
greatest poet and critic of the age, upon a
misinformation in a newspaper that his noble
patron was made lord chamberlain. But
this dedication we cannot find. Of the other
anecdote we have evidence before us. One
of his dedications is to the then Lord Morpeth,
whom he addresses in print as " My
dear Lord."  For this familiarity he was
sadly abused— as Pope was ridiculed not long
after for calling himself in a printed letter
to Lord Burlington his lordship's affectionate
humble servant. Anecdotes, slight even as
these are, illustrate the manners and breeding
of our forefathers.

When old age crept on Tom, and he was no
longer able to cater towards the amusements
of the town, the good-natured Steele stept in
to his assistance, and recommended his claims
to the public, in the Tatler, the Guardian,
and the Lover. Steele had then the ear of
the town, and Tom by the Tatler's influence
obtained some benefits of importance to his
ways and means. There are few pleasanter
papers by Steele than those in which he shows
his interest for Tom D'Urfey. Tom was naturally
fond of Steele, though I can find no mention
of Sir Richard in his works. The common
story is, that Tom was buried at the expense
of Steele, but this is not the case; he was
buried near the stone which suggested this
paper, at the expense of the Duke of Dorset,
— the son of his patron — the duke to whom
Prior has addressed so readable a dedication
of his poems. To Steele, Tom D'Urfey left
his gold watch and chain; and Steele followed
his friend Tom to this very grave in
St. James's, Westminster.

Tom's familiar face and appearance were
missed by many in the cities of London and
Westminster. That his face was not of the
willow-pattern type we may readily gather
from his portrait among the poets at Knowle.
That his appearance was remarkable we may
infer from his being followed in the streets
by a servant under age — for Tom, so we are
told in the notes to the Dunciad, was the last
English poet who appeared in the streets
attended by a page. Few poets have had an
attendant of the kind: we read of Mr. Dryden's
boy, and Mr. D'Urfey's page, and of
these only.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

We have, previously,* given some account
of the Wind-roads of the world, as traced
by that indefatigable navigator and philosopher
Lieutenant Maury, of the United
States navy. We are taught by modern science
to regard the wind no longer as the fickle
element we were once wont to consider it, but
as a beautiful and wonderful agent in the
great economy of our system, controlled and
guided by laws as fixed as those which regulate
the starry firmament, or the movements
of our own globe.

When it is remembered that, according to
the shipping records at Lloyd's, there are, on
an average, fifty vessels annually, of which no
tidings are ever received; eight hundred
total wrecks, and between three and four
thousand casualties of various kinds, amongst
the registered shipping, involving a yearly
loss of from four to five millions sterling, it
must be at once apparent how deeply interesting
the labours of those who are spending a
large portion of their lives in the investigation
of the law of storms must be.

Colonel Reid of the Royal Engineers, and Mr.
Redfield, of New York, were, we believe, the
earliest labourers in this field of research. They
were followed by Mr. Piddington of Calcutta,
who has published a Sailor's Horn-book of the
Law of Storms, in which the plainest instructions
are given for the navigation of ships
through the dangerous cyclones of the Indian
seas. So great have been the advantages
already derived from the study of this subject;

* See "Air Maps." vol. viii. p. 128.