E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
D’Urfey, Thomas
(b. Exeter, 1630; d. 1723). Wrote twenty-six plays (a list of which is given in Lowndes’s “Bibliographer’s Manual”); “Archerie Revived; or, the Bowman’s Excellence: an Heroic Poem” (1676); “The Progress of Honesty: a Pindarique Poem” (1681); “Butler’s Ghost; or, Hudibras, the Fourth Part, with Reflections upon these Times” (1682); “Songs” (1687); “Collins’ Walk through London and Westminster, a Poem in Burlesque” (1690); “Satires, Elegies, and Odes” (1690); “Stories, Moral and Comical” (1691); “Tales, Tragical and Comical” (1704); “A Collection of New Ballads” (1715); “The Merry Musician” (1716); “New Operas” (1721); and “The English Stage Italianized, in a new Dramatic Entertainment called Dido and Æneas” (1727). His Dramatic Works appeared in a collected from in 1676–1709. His poetical pieces were published in six volumes, in 1719–20, under the title of “Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy,” and have since been reprinted.
