We ought not to omit a cirrumstance much in favour of Sir William Davenant, which proves him to have been as good a man as a poet.  When at the Restoration, those who had been active in disturbing the late reign, and secluding their sovereign from the throne, became obnoxious to the royal party, Milton was likely to feel the vengeance of the court, Davenant actuated by a noble principle of gratitude, interposed all his influence, and saved the greatest ornament of the world from the stroke of an executioner.  Ten years before that, Davenant had been rescued by Milton, and he remembered the favour; an instance, this, that generosity, gratitude, and nobleness of nature is confined to no particular party; but the heart of a good man will still discover itself in acts of munificence and kindness, however mistaken he may be in his opinion, however warm in state factions.  The particulars of this extraordinary affair are related in the life of Milton.

Sir William Davenant continued at the head of his company of actors, and at last transferred them to a new and magnificent theatre built in Dorset-Gardens, where some of his old plays were revived with very singular circumstances of royal kindness, and a new one when brought upon the stage met with great applause.

The last labour of his pen was in altering a play of Shakespear’s, called the Tempest, so as to render it agreeable to that age, or rather susceptible of those theatrical improvements he had brought into fashion.  The great successor to his laurel, in a preface to this play, in which he was concerned with Davenant, ’says, that he was a man of quick and piercing imagination, and soon found that somewhat might be added to the design of Shakespear, of which neither Fletcher nor Suckling had ever thought; and therefore to put the last hand to it, he designed the counterpart to Shakespear’s plot, namely, that of a man who had never seen a woman, that by this means, these two characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend each other.  This excellent contrivance he was pleased to communicate to me, and to defire my assistance in it.  I confess that from the first moment it so pleased me, that I never wrote any thing with so much delight.  I might likewise do him that justice to acknowledge that my writing received daily amendments, and that is the reason why it is not so faulty, as the rest that I have done, without the help or correction of so judicious a friend.  The comical parts of the sailors were also of his invention and Writing, as may easily be discovered from the stile.’

This great man died at his house in little Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, April 17, 1668, aged 63, and two days afterwards was interred in Westminster-Abbey.  On his gravestone is inscribed, in imitation of Ben Johnson’s short epitaph,

O rare sir William Davenant!

It may not be amiss to observe, that his remains rest very near the place out of which those of Mr. Thomas May, who had been formerly his rival for the bays, and the Parliament’s historian, were removed, by order of the ministry.  As to the family our author left behind him, some account of it will be given in the life of his son Dr. Charles Davenant, who succeeded him as manager of the theatre.  Sir William’s works entire were published by his widow 1673, and dedicated to James Duke of York.