do one. She had wit, honour, good-humour, and judgment. She was mistress of all the pleasing arts of conversation; but used them not to any one but those who loved plaindealing." This is the testimony of her most intimate female companion. It would be difficult to give anything like an accurate picture of Astrea's daily life, that would not horrify modern refinement. No imputation approaching dishonour rests on her name; but her amusements and tastes were those of her age. In Charles's Court, "ladies highly born, highly bred, and naturally quick-witted, were unable to write a line in their mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling, such as a charity girl would now be ashamed to commit." In the public promenades of the capital, they would grimace, ogle, and flirt with strangers: at the theatres they would call out in a loud voice to their own acquaintance, and bandy jokes with them: at balls they romped and rollicked with the sparks, pouring forth badinage which a maid-servant in any reputable household would now be ashamed to utter: their habitual discourse was garnished with a disgusting imprecation, which would not now be heard from the lips of the most debased, and was on topics most displeasing to feminine delicacy. Satirists and grave chroniclers agree in their accounts, when describing the manners of the period. In such a society as Evelyn, Pepys, and Grammont delineate, a lady might live the pace, and yet cause no scandal. Aphara availed herself of the license in such manner as suited her temperament. She encouraged the addresses of young noodles, conceited enough to think no woman safe against their attacks; and when their impertinences became dangerous, she had them unceremoniously kicked out of her house. She had not passed the middle age, and was still young in the buoyancy of her spirits, when she died on the 16th of April, 1689. Her death, we are in formed, was occasioned by an unskilful physician-a fact which seems to strike her biographer, whom we have often quoted, as singular! She was interred in Westminster Abbey. Gerard Langbaine, the second, gives, in his "Account of English Dramatic Poets," the following as the inscription on her tablet, beneath her name and the dato of her death:- Here lies a proof that wit can be, Defence enough against mortalitie Another biographical work has the following lame, though more orthodox, version of the foregoing lines: Here lies a proof that wit can never be Great poetess, O! thy stupendous lays The world admires, and the Muses praise. Aphara's last achievement was the translation of the sixth book of Cowley's "Plants." Westley makes her exertions on this work the cause of her death: But why should the soft sex be robb'd of thee? How much she does to Cowley owe? How much to Boscobel's ever sacred tree? The flow'ry world, where Gods and Poets use It shall be done. But who? ah! who shall dare And all the world's just censure bear, Thy strength, and their own weakness show? Soft Afra, who had led our shepherds long, Who long the nymphs and swains did guide, Our envy, her own sex's pride, When all her force on this great theme she'd try'd, Let us now say farewell to Aphara Behn. Her dust is mingled with the ashes of kings, bards, and patriots, in that noble temple in which our Byron has no statue,-in that temple, the walls of which, it was once said, would be profaned should they be inscribed with the name of him who sung O, welcome, pure-eyed faith, white handed hope, CHAPTER IV. DANIEL DE FOE. FEW lives have been more active, and more fruitful of results than was that of Daniel De Foe. He was a hero from the day he left school at Newington, till he died full of years and worn by poverty. But he had to share the fate that many not less noble men had experienced before and have toiled under since his time. His heroism was misunderstood. His moral constitution, like his wit, was beyond his era, and he was doomed to undergo the ill as well as the good of that fortune. Enemies hated him, and friends mistrusted him. In his life he without doubt knew many who admired him, like honest Dunton, for his honesty, his subtlety, his daring, and his perseverance, but very few were the educated men who sincerely wished him well. He has been dead over a hundred and twenty years, and has now plenty of defenders,-Hazlitt, Lamb, Forster! What living (much more dead) man can want more applauders? We may wonder if, in the unknown land, he takes pleasure in thinking how he has been righted. Perhaps he looks on and says, “I knew it would be so;" or maybe he mutters, "a pity these pleasant compliments did not come a hundred and fifty years sooner at Guildhall and St. James's." Daniel De Foe was born in 1661, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate. His grandfather was a substantial yeoman at Elton, rich enough to keep hounds. His father carried on the degrading vocation of a butcher. So did Wolsey's father. Mrs. Nickleby asks how this comes, whether there may not be something in the suet. The butcher, however, VOD. I: did his utmost to be a good man; he was a rigid dissenter; and died rich. Daniel was early indoctrinated into the religious principles of his parents, by the presbyterian Dr. Annesley, the ejected parson of Cripplegate. It was a common thing in that age for clergymen to relinquish their benefices rather than act against conscience, and their doing so was held as a matter of course; but now such a divine is a rarity, and newspapers enlarge on him as a miracle of probity. This good doctor inspired his pupil with no little fervour for the gospel. A panic spread amongst God-fearing nonconformists that the arm of the law would strip them of their Bibles; so forthwith, all the country over, there were simple families hard at work making copies of the Scriptures, so that if the printed word should be taken from them, they might still have the blessed books in manuscript. Little Dan, then quite a child, copied out the whole of the Pentateuch, and then-stuck fast. Poor little Dan! Cannot one see at this day his inked finger-nails, and imagine how his wee hands ached? Perhaps, moreover, when the young scribe stopped, and said he could not go on further, Pastor Annesley re. proved him and called him lukewarm! At fourteen years of age, Daniel De Foe (or Foe as he was then called) entered the once famous dissenting academy at Newington; and after four years' study left that nursery, by no means a good classic-which of course he would have been had he been educated at Oxford. At twenty-one years, he dipped his pen in the ink, and sat down to do battle. The title of his book ran, "Speculum Crape-gownorum; or, a Looking-glass for the young Academicks, new foyled, &c. By a guide to the Inferior Clergie. London; 1682." Roger L'Estrange, who was the author of the "Guide to the Inferior Clergy," was deeply obliged by the attention. "Oh, pray, don't mention it," Daniel replied, "one good turn deserves another." |