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 third time they came to the
sad old abbey to lay their child in the cloisters there.

The next year, 1683, a second son died, and in 1687 a third boy two
months old was buried in the cloisters of the abbey. This monotonous
return of the hand of death must have embittered the life of these two,
who seem to have remained lovers always. But in May, 1688, a daughter
was born, named Frances after her mother; and she outlived both parents.