Your Damage is at most but half-a-Crown. half-a-Crown was the price of admittance to the Pit. vide note, vol. I, p. 450.
p. [383] A Pastoral to Mr. Stafford. John Stafford, the translator of the Camilla episode (Dryden's Sylvae: or, the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies, 1685, p. 481), is the same person who translated other parts of Virgil and Horace in the same Miscellany, Vols. I and II. In the 3rd edition of Vol. II he is called 'the Honourable Mr. John Stafford.' Stafford is also the author of the Epilogue (sometimes erroneously printed as Dryden's) to Southerne's The Disappointment; or, The Mother in Fashion (1684, and 4to, 1684).
p. [383] cale. This excessively rare adjective, which the N.E.D. fails to include, is an Irish word = hard.
p. [390] Gildon's Chorus Poetarum. 'Adequately to translate Sappho' says J. A. Symonds in The Greek Poets 'was beyond the power of even Catullus: that love-ode, which Longinus called "not one passion, but a congress of passions," and which a Greek physician copied into his book of diagnoses as a compendium of all the symptoms of corroding emotion, appears but languid in its Latin dress of "Ille mi par." Far less has any modern poet succeeded in the task: Rossetti, who deals so skilfully with Dante and Villon, is comparatively tame when he approaches Sappho.' This rendering of The Ode to Anactoria (as tradition names it) Φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν, first appears under Mrs. Behn's name in Gildon's Chorus Poetarum, 1694. In State Poems, Vol. II (1703), it is printed with the title On Madam Behn, a very different matter. If the lines are Mrs. Behn's she must have versified them from a translation given her by Hoyle or some other friend. In any case they are graceful and far better than the versions of Ambrose Philips (1711), or Smollett (1748). But, indeed, it is impossible to translate these lines which are so truly 'mixed with fire' as Plutarch has it. For various attempts and a literal prose version see Wharton's Sappho.
p. [391] Complaint of the poor Cavaliers. The Muses Mercury, June 1707, prefixes the following to this poem: 'All the World knows Mrs. Behn was no Whig, no Republican, nor Fanatick; her Zeal lay quite on the other Side: And tho her Manners was no Honour to any, yet her Wit made her acceptable to that which she espous'd. She was a Politician, as well as a Poet: for we find in the short Account of her Life, printed with those of other Poets, she was employ'd by Charles II. in the Discovery of the Dutch Intrigues in the Dutch War; which she was the better qualifi'd to do by her knowledge of their Language, she having liv'd a long time in Surinam, a Colony where there were many Dutch Merchants; and not long after she left it 'twas surrendered to that Republic by King Charles. 'Tis well known, that the Gentlemen she speaks of in the following Poem, had too much reason to complain; and that the very Men, who had been so much instrumental in keeping King Charles the II. out of his Dominions, were most caress'd after his Restoration.'
p. [393] Mrs. Harsenet. Carola, daughter of Sir Roger Harsnett, knight. These verses are a variation of 'To my Lady Morland at Tunbridge.' vide p. 175.
p. [395] A letter to the Earl of Kildare. John FitzGerald, 18th Earl of Kildare, lived in St. James' Square, and in 1648 married, as his second wife, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Charles Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh ('a fortune of £10,000.') She died in 1758 at the great age of ninety-three. She was extremely beautiful, and either she or one of her unmarried sisters was a mistress of the King.
The Lady Mary Howard, sister to the Earl of Carlisle, died in the last week of October, 1694. She was notorious for her intrigues, and the satires of the time accuse her of being little better than a procuress both for King Charles II and the Earl of Dorset. cf. Rochester's The Royal Angler
My Lady Mary nothing can design
But feed her lust with what she get's for thine,
and the Earl of Dorset's Lamentation for Moll Howard's absence (Harleian MSS.), which ends