Otway's last play was a comedy called _The Atheist_, a continuation of _The Soldier's Fortune_, represented in 1683, or the following year, at the Theatre Royal by the united companies, who had amalgamated in 1682, and removed to Drury Lane. Charles II. died in February, 1685, and Otway thereupon published a poem called "Windsor Castle," in which he praised the late king, and exulted over the accession of James. His praises of Charles were probably not much more sincere than those which he, and other writers of the day, lavished upon people of rank in their dedications for the sake of a few guineas. More guineas are to be had now-a-days by flattering the whims and tastes of that "many-headed" monarch, under whose reign we have the honour to live. In the so-called Augustan age, literary merit was systematically neglected. Witness Butler and Cowley. Yet Otway was the son of a loyalist, and ever faithful to the Court. Nor was Charles incapable of appreciating talent. But Otway, to use his own words, only got the "pension of a prince's praise"; and a gracious command to lampoon the greatest statesman of the time, which he did accordingly. Praise of one who cannot be a rival is an inexpensive form of present. It appears, however, that two of the royal mistresses were more generous--Nell Gwynne and the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose bounty, "extended to him in his last extremity," he extols in the dedication of _Venice Preserved_. Otway had withdrawn from the importunate clamour of creditors to an obscure public-house, the sign of the Bull, on Tower Hill; and here, on the 14th of April, 1685, at the premature age of thirty-four, he died. His body was conveyed thence to the Church of St. Clement Danes, and there deposited in a vault. About the circumstances of his death there is a conflict of evidence. The story that has gained currency is probably not the true one; only one early biographer is our authority for it. He states that, having long been insufficiently fed, Otway one day sallied forth in a starving state, and begged a shilling from a gentleman in a coffee house, saying, "I am the poet Otway." This person, surprised and distressed, gave him a guinea. With it he bought a roll of bread, and began to devour it with the rage of hunger; but, incapable of swallowing from long abstinence, he was choked with the first mouthful. Other writers make no mention of this incident, and Wood is not only silent on the subject, but states that in his "sickness" (implying gradual decay) he composed a congratulatory poem on the inauguration of James II. Spence, moreover, who had the anecdote from Dennis the critic, tells quite a different story. He relates that Otway had an intimate friend named Blakiston, who was murdered in the street, and that, to revenge the deed, Otway pursued the assassin on foot as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occasioned by fatigue, privation, and excitement. On his return to London, being