FARQUHAR. 123 “The Beaux Stratagem,” which, though composed in six weeks, is decidedly the author's master-piece. This comedy he did not live to enjoy the full success of. To wards the close of his short life he was unhappily oppressed with some debts of magnitude, which obliged him to make application to a courtier who had formerly made him many professions of friendship. His pretended pa tron persuaded him to turn his commission into the money he wanted, and pledged his honour, that in a very short time he would provide him with another. This circumstance appeared favourable, and the unfortunate Farquhar sold his commission; and when he renewed his application to the nobleman, and represented in the most feeling language his distressed situation, his noble patron had totally forgot his promise, and left him to add his name to the long and melancholy list of those who have been ruined by the smiles of the great. This cruel dis appointment so preyed upon his mind, that it occasioned his death in April 1707, before he had attained his thir tieth year, and he was buried in St. Martin's in the Fields. Shortly after his decease the following letter to Mr. Wilks was found among his papers:– “DEAR Bon, “I have not any thing to leave thee to perpetuate my memory but two helpless girls; look upon them sometimes, and think of him that was to the last moment of his life, thine,
- GEORGE FARQUHAR.”
This appeal was duly attended to by Wilks, who pro posed to his brother managers to give them a benefit, which they did, and which was very productive; and when the girls became of an age to be put out into the world in business, they were apprenticed to mantua makers, and in the course of years, one was married to an inferior tradesman, and died soon after; and the other was living in 1764, in indigent circumstances, without any more, who had it from Mr. Blakeway, of Shrewsbury, who had it from an old lady in Shrewsbury, then living (1765), who knew Farquhar inti mately.”—Gents. Mug. 1806.
