Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Higden, Henry
HIGDEN, HENRY (fl. 1693), poet and dramatist, a Yorkshireman, was a member of the Middle Temple. He is represented as a man of wit and the companion of all the choice spirits of the town. In 1686 he published `A Modern Essay on the Thirteenth Satyr of Jevenal,' and in 1687 `A Modern Essay on the Tenth Satyr of Jevenal.' To the latter are prefixed complimentary verses of Dryden, Mrs. Behn, and E. Settle. He also wrote a comedy entitled `The Wary Widdow, or Sir Noisy Parrat,' to which Sir Charles Sedley contributed a prologue. It was brought out in 1693 at Drury Lane, and was condemned the first night. Higden had introduced so much punch-drinking into it that the actors got intoxicated before the end of the third act, and the house separated in confusion. In his preface to the printed edition of the play (1693) he makes a splenetic attack on Congreve's `Old Bachelor,' which had appeared during the same year.
[Baker's Biog. Dramatica, ed, 1812, i. 332-4, iii. 391; Brit. Mus. Cat.]