he analogy holds good also in the devotion of
these married couples, for Henry willed to Frances the whole of his
property absolutely.

Yet the legend of the cause of his death would verify the old theory
about the joltiness of the course of true love. For Sir John Hawkins
passes along the gossip that Purcell met his death by "a cold which he
caught in the night waiting for admittance into his own house. It is
said that he used to keep late hours, and that his wife had given orders
to his servants not to let him in after midnight; unfortunately he came
home heated with wine from the tavern at an hour later than that
prescribed him, and, through the inclemency of the weather, contracted
a disorder of which he died. If this be true, it reflects but little
honour on Madam Purcell, for so she is styled in the advertisements of
his works; and but ill agrees with those expressions of grief for her
dear lamented husband which she makes use of to Lady Elizabeth Howard in
the dedication of the "Orpheus Britannicus". It seems probable that the
disease of which he died was rather a lingering than an acute one,
perhaps a consumption; and that, for some time at least, it had no way
affected the powers of his mind, since one of the most celebrated of his
compositions, the song 'From Rosy Bowers,' is in the printed book said
to have been the last of his works, and to have been set during that
sickness which put a period to his days."

Hawkins guesses that Purcell was married young, because at the age of
twenty-five he was advertising the sale of his first sonatas at his own
house; also that, musician-like, he left his family dependent upon the
favour of his benefactors, particularly upon the graciousness of his
pupil and patroness, Lady Elizabeth Howard, who placed on his tomb in
Westminster Abbey the famous inscription often credited to Dryden: "Here
lyes Henry Purcell, Esq.; who left this life, and is gone to that
blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded."

We now know that Purcell's marriage was either in 1680 or 1681, when he
was twenty-two or twenty-three years old. August 2d, 1682, Purcell's
father, a venerable and distinguished musician and a friend of Pepys,
the diarist, was buried in Westminster Abbey, where later his more
distinguished son was laid. A few days after the elder Purcell's burial,
Henry and his wife came to Westminster Abbey again, for the baptism of a
son new-born. He died in a few months and a t