him a lieutenant's commission. Other accounts place this earlier. He was in Holland, as appears from his letters, in 1700, and, it is generally suggested, on military duty. He was occasionally on service in the country. The ‘Recruiting Officer’ is dedicated to ‘all friends round the Wrekin.’ A letter to Bishop Percy, bound up in Haslewood's copy of Jacob's ‘Poetical Register’ in the British Museum, mentions an old lady who in 1763 remembered to have met him in a recruiting party at Shrewsbury. About 1703 Farquhar married. The story is that a lady fell in love with him, and won him for her husband by professing to be an heiress. It is further stated that upon discovering the trick he never upbraided her, and always treated her with the utmost kindness. In 1704 he visited Dublin and appeared as Sir Harry Wildair at his own benefit. He failed as an actor, but cleared 100l. He continued to produce plays, the most successful being the ‘Recruiting Officer,’ which was performed in 1706, and his ‘last and best,’ ‘The Beaux' Stratagem,’ in 1707. In the dedication of the ‘Recruiting Officer’ he calls the Duke of Ormonde his ‘general’ and the Earl of Orrery his ‘colonel.’ He was in difficulties, and the Duke of Ormonde advised him, it is said, to sell his commission in order to pay his debts, promising to give him a captaincy. He acted upon the advice, but the duke failed to fulfil his promise or made delays. Farquhar felt the blow so keenly that he sickened and died in April 1707. It is added that he wrote his last play in six weeks during a ‘settled illness.’ A letter to his friend Wilkes was found among his papers: ‘Dear Bob,—I have not anything 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.’ Wilkes is said to have acknowledged the claim, and to have procured a benefit for each of the daughters when they were of age to be ‘put out into the world.’ The widow, however, died in great poverty; one of the daughters married a poor tradesman and died soon after; the other was living in poverty, uneducated and ignorant of her father's fame, in 1764. Leigh Hunt says, it does not appear on what authority, that she was a ‘maidservant.’ Edmund Chaloner, to whom Farquhar dedicated his ‘Miscellanies,’ is said to have procured a pension of 20l. for the daughters. A poem called ‘Barcelona,’ upon Lord Peterborough's capture of the town, is mentioned in the ‘Biographia Britannica,’ and the dedication by ‘Margaret Farquhar,’ the widow, is quoted. There is no copy in the British Museum.
Farquhar describes himself in the ‘Miscellanies,’ insisting chiefly upon his easy-going and diffident temperament, and asserting that he is habitually melancholy, ‘very splenetic, and yet very amorous.’ Such self-portraiture is not very trustworthy. As he appears in his work he is the most attractive, as he is the last, of the school generally associated with Congreve: full of real gaiety, and a gentleman in spite of recklessness and an affectation of the fashionable tone of morals. Without the keen wit or the sardonic force of his rivals, he has more genuine high spirits and good nature. The military scenes in the ‘Recruiting Officer’ are all interesting sketches from life. His comedies are: 1. ‘Love and a Bottle,’ 1699. 2. ‘A Constant Couple,’ end of 1699. 3. ‘Sir Harry Wildair,’ 1701 (published in May 1701). 4. ‘The Inconstant, or the Way to win him,’ 1702. 5. ‘The Twin Rivals,’ 17 Dec. 1702. 6. ‘The Stage Coach,’ farce in one act (with Motteux), 2 Feb. 1704. 7. ‘The Recruiting Officer,’ 8 April 1706. 8. ‘The Beaux' Stratagem,’ 8 March 1707.
[Vague and unsatisfactory lives of Farquhar were prefixed to editions of his works in 1728, 1742, and 1772; a more satisfactory life by Thomas Wilkes (a relation of the actor, see Garrick's Corr. ii. 171–2) to the Dublin edition of 1775; see also Memoirs of Wilkes, by Daniel O'Bryan, 1732, and Life of Wilkes (published by Curll), 1733; Chetwood's History of the Stage (1749), pp. 148–51; Jacob's Poetical Register, i. 98, ii. 294; Egerton's Memoirs of Mrs. Oldfield (1731), pp. 69, 77; Biog. Brit.; Leigh Hunt's life prefixed to Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh; Genest's History of the Stage; Cibber's Lives of the Poets, iii. 124–137; Ware's Writers of Ireland.]
FARQUHAR, JOHN (1751–1826), millionaire, was born in 1751 of humble parents at Bilbo, parish of Crimond, Aberdeenshire. In early life he went to India as cadet in the Bombay establishment, but soon after his arrival received a dangerous wound in the hip, which seriously affected his health, and also occasioned a lameness incapacitating him for military service. He moved for the sake of his health to Bengal, and became there a free merchant. In his leisure he amused himself with chemical experiments, and the practical knowledge of chemistry thus acquired accidentally led to the acquisition of a fortune. The gunpowder manufactured at Pultah in the interior having been found unsatisfactory, Farquhar was selected by General (afterwards Marquis) Cornwallis, then governor-general of Bengal, to inquire into the matter and render his assistance. This proved so valuable that he was made
