[7.] Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1660-1720), sometime Maid of Honour to Queen Mary of Modena. She had true lyric genius. For a generous appreciation see Gosse, Gossip in a Library (1891).
[8.] Then unprinted but now included in the very voluminous edition of Lady Winchilsea’s Poems, ed. M. Reynolds, Chicago, 1903.
[9.] In ‘Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko’ Dr. Bernbaum elaborately endeavours to show that this story is pure fiction. His arguments, in many cases advanced with no little subtlety and precision, do not appear (to me at least) to be convincing. We have much to weigh in the contrary balance: Mrs. Behn’s manifest first-hand knowledge of, and extraordinary interest in, colonial life; her reiterated asseverations that every experience detailed in this famous novel is substantially true; the assent of all her contemporaries. It must further be remembered that Aphra was writing in 1688, of a girlhood coloured by and seen through the enchanted mists of a quarter of a century. That there are slight discrepancies is patent; the exaggerations, however, are not merely pardonable but perfectly natural. One of Dr. Bernbaum’s most crushing arguments, when sifted, seems to resolve itself into the fact that whilst writing Oroonoko Mrs. Behn evidently had George Warren’s little book, An Impartial Description of Surinam (London, 1667), at hand. Could anything be more reasonable than to suppose she would be intimately acquainted with a volume descriptive of her girlhood’s home? Again, Dr. Bernbaum bases another line of argument on the assumption that Mrs. Behn’s father was a barber. Hence the appointment of such a man to an official position in Surinam was impossible, and, ‘if Mrs. Behn’s father was not sent to Surinam, the only reason she gives for being there disappears’. We know from recent investigation that John Amis did not follow a barber’s trade, but was probably of good old stock. Accordingly, the conclusions drawn by Dr. Bernbaum from this point cannot now be for a moment maintained.
[10.] Both these incidents are the common property of Italian novelle and our own stage. Although not entirely impossible, they would appear highly suspicious in any connection.
[11.] He was at Margate 25 July, and at Bruges 7 August.
[12.] There do not appear to be any grounds for the oft-repeated assertions that Mrs. Behn communicated the intelligence when the Dutch were planning an attack (afterwards carried out) on the Thames and Medway squadrons, and that her warning was scoffed at.
[13.] Had he been imprisoned for political reasons it is impossible that there should have been so speedy a prospect of release.
[14.] Baptist May, Esq. (1629-98), Keeper of the Privy Purse.
[15.] William Chiffinch, confidential attendant and pimp to Charles II.
[16.] Amintas repeatedly stands for John Hoyle. In Our Cabal, however (vide Vol. VI, p. 160), Hoyle is dubbed Lycidas.