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Aphra Behn; but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present day have become what they are, to point out the effects which they have produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on the whole done good or evil to the people who read them.
As long as it is Congreve and Dryden and Otway, of course it is literature, and of a very high order; even Shadwell and Mrs. Behn and Southerne are literature; Settle and Ravenscroft may pass as legitimate literary curiosity. But there are depths below this where there is no excuse but sheer collectaneomania.
In Defoe, where the record of imaginary fact was carried on with so much ingenuity and knowledge, the qualities we have just mentioned are notably absent; nor can it be said that we find them in any prose-writer of fiction earlier than Richardson, except in some very slight and imperfect degree in Aphra Behn, especially in her Rousseauish novel of Oroonoko.
'sequestered from the world in a remote part of the house, and had a large garden to range in, in which she would frequently walk, singing and giving way to that innocent frenzy which had seized her in the earlier part of her life. Aphra Behn, first acted in London in 1687.
p. 251 Song. Oh! Love. Mr. Bullen, who includes this 'impassioned song' in his Musa Proterva: Love-Poems of the Restoration , has the following note: 'Did Mrs. Bowman, set by Dr. John Blow." At the end of the song Playford adds, "These words by Mr. Ousley." ... Mrs. Behn usually acknowledged her obligations; but she may have been neglectful on the present occasion.
Mrs. Behn, from whom more modesty might have been expected.
Ninon de Lenclos, as we have seen, was not strictly a courtesan, but she was a pioneer in the assertion of woman's rights. Aphra Behn who, a little later in England, occupied a similarly dubious social position, was likewise a pioneer in generous humanitarian aspirations, which have since been adopted in the world at large.
Behn, assuring me that such only were the objects of his satire." Much upset, Lady Mary wrote the following letter to Arbuthnot: January 3 . "Sir,
My aunt lent me an abundance of books after that famous "Travels" of Mr. Gulliver. Now and then my father looked at what she gave me, but he soon tired of this, and fell asleep in the great oak chair which Governor Penn gave my grandfather. Many volumes, and some queer ones, I fell upon in my aunt's house, but, save once, against the naughtiness of Mrs. Aphra Behn, she never interfered.
The History of Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave: This was founded on a true story, the incidents of which happened during her residence at Surinam. It gave birth to Mr. Southern's celebrated play of that name; who in his dedication of it, speaking of his obligation to Mrs. Behn for the subject, says,
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