[48.] In the original edition of The Fair Jilt (1688), we have advertised: ‘There is now in the Press, Oroonoko; or, The History of the Royal Slave. Written by Madam Behn.’
[49.] In the second edition (1688), of this Congratulatory Poem to Queen Mary of Modena we have the following advertisement:—’On Wednesday next will be Published the most Ingenious and long Expected History of Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave. By Mrs. Behn.’
[50.] The title page has 1689, but it was possibly published late in 1688.
[51.] Traditionally said to be John Hoyle.
[52.] Sam Briscoe, the publisher, in his Dedicatory Epistle to Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc. (2 vols., 1718), says: ‘Had the rough Days of K. Charles II newly recover’d from the Confusion of a Civil War, or the tempestuous Time of James the Second, had the same Sence of Wit as our Gentlemen now appear to have, the first Impressions of Milton’s Paradise Lost had never been sold for Waste Paper; the Inimitable Hudibras had never suffered the Miseries of a Neglected Cavalier; Tom Brown the merriest and most diverting’st man, had never expir’d so neglected; Mr. Dryden’s Religion would never have lost him his Pension; or Mrs. Behn ever had but two Lines upon her Grave-stone.’
[53.] ‘She was a most beautiful woman, and a more excellent poet’. Col. Colepeper. Adversaria, Vol. ii (Harleian MSS.)
[54.] This piece finds a place in the unauthorised edition of Prior’s Poems, 1707, a volume the poet himself repudiated. In the Cambridge edition of Prior’s Works (1905-7), reason is given, however, to show that the lines are certainly Prior’s, and that he withdrew this and other satires (says Curll, the bookseller), owing to ‘his great Modesty’. The Horatian tag (Epistles i, xiv, 19) is of course ‘O Imitatores servum pecus’.
[55.] In his Preface Concerning Ovid’s Epistles affixed to the translation of the Heroides (Ovid’s Epistles), ‘by Several Hands’ (1680), Dryden writes: ‘The Reader will here find most of the Translations, with some little Latitude or variation from the Author’s Sence: That of Oenone to Paris, is in Mr. Cowley’s way of Imitation only. I was desir’d to say that the Author who is of the Fair Sex, understood not Latine. But if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be asham’d who do.’
[56.] ‘Old Mr. John Bowman, the player, told me that Mrs. Behn was the First Person he ever knew or heard of who made the Liquor call’d Milk Punch.’—Oldys; MS. note in Langbaine. In a tattered MS. recipe book, the compilation of a good housewife named Mary Rockett, and dated 1711, the following directions are given how to brew this tipple. ‘To make Milk Punch. Infuse the rinds of 8 Lemons in a Gallon of Brandy 48 hours then add 5 Quarts of Water and 2 pounds of Loaf Sugar then Squize the Juices of all the Lemons to these Ingredients add 2 Quarts of new milk Scald hot stirring the whole till it crudles grate in 2 Nutmegs let the whole infuse 1 Hour then refine through a flannel Bag.’
[57.] ‘She always Writ with the greatest ease in the world, and that in the midst of Company, and Discourse of other matters. I saw her my self write Oroonoko, and keep her own in Discoursing with several then present in the Room.’—Gildon: An Account of the Life of the Incomparable Mrs. Behn, prefixed to The Younger Brother (4to 1696). Southerne says, with reference to Oroonoko, ‘That she always told his Story, more feelingly than she writ it.’