Astrea with her soft gay sighing Swains
And rural virgins on the flowery Plains,
The lavish Peer’s profuseness may reprove
Who gave her Guineas for the Isle of Love.
—Contemporary Satire,—(Harleian MSS.)
[41.] This of course cannot be correct, but it is so transcribed. In the transcript of this letter made by Malone, and now in the possession of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., over the word ‘Garth’s’ is written ‘Q’, and at the foot of the page a note by Mitford says: ‘This name seems to have been doubtful in the MSS.’ I have thought it best not to attempt any emendation.
[42.] Neither of these was printed until eight years after her death. They first appear, each with its separate title page, 1697, bound up in the Third Edition, ‘with Large Additions,’ of All the Histories and Novels, Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, Entire in One Volume, 1698. After Nos. vii, viii, ix, Memoirs of the Court of the King of Bantam, The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty, The Adventure of the Black Lady follows a note: ‘These last three never before published.’ Some superficial bibliographers (e.g. Miss Charlotte E. Morgan in her unreliable monograph, The English Novel till 1749) have postulated imaginary editions of 1683-4 for The Little Black Lady and The King of Bantam. The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty is universally confounded with The History of the Nun (vide Vol. V, p. 259, Introduction to that novel) and dated 1689.
With reference to The King of Bantam we have in the 1698 collected edition of the Novels the following ’Advertisement to the Reader. The Stile of the Court of the King of Bantam, being so very different from Mrs. Behn’s usual way of Writing, it may perhaps call its being genuine in Question; to obviate which Objection, I must inform the Reader, that it was a Trial of Skill upon a Wager, to shew that she was able to write in the Style of the Celebrated Scarron, in Imitation of whom ’tis writ, tho’ the Story be true. I need not say any thing of the other Two, they evidently confessing their admirable Author.’
[43.] Swift, although he amply fulfilled Dryden’s famous prophecy, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a Pindaric poet’, was doubtless thinking of these Pindarics when in The Battle of the Books he wrote: ‘Then Pindar slew ——, and ——, and Oldham, and ——, and Afra the Amazon light of foot.’
[44.] First published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, May, 1836.
[45.] Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albermarle, was appointed Governor-General of Jamaica, 26 November, 1687. He died there early in the following autumn.
[46.] ’Sappho famous for her Gout and Guilt,’ writes Gould in The Poetess, a Satyr.
[47.] Now published for the first time by the courtesy of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., who generously obliged me with a transcript of the original.