Some Beauties here I see—
Though now demure, have felt his pow'rful Charms,
And languish'd in the circle of his Arms.
p. [402] Jenny. A well-known orange wench to whom there are allusions in the satires of the day. 'Jenny' is sometimes also a generic name for a mask.
p. [402] Blanket Fair. Evelyn, 6 January, 1684, notes 'the river quite frozen', and on the 9th writes: 'I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat, and had divers shops of wares, quite across as in a town, but coaches, carts and horses passed over.' On subsequent days he notes the continuance of this frost, and on 24 January has a famous description of the Thames fair with its 'sleds, sliding with skates, a bull-baiting, horse and coach-races, puppet-plays and interludes, cooks, tippling, and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water'. A printing press was even set up and cards printed, one of which is given, dated 5 February, in a note by Bray, Evelyn's Diary, II (p. 192) (1850).
p. [403] To Henry Higden. Henry Higden, to whose translation of Juvenal's tenth satire Mrs. Behn prefixed these complimentary verses, was a well-known wit of the day. A Yorkshireman, a member of the Middle Temple, he moved in the best and gayest society. In 1686 he published A Modern Essay on the Thirteenth Satyr of Juvenal (Licensed 11 November, 1685), and in 1687 followed this up by A Modern Essay on the Tenth Satyr of Juvenal. With Mrs. Behn's Poem are also printed verses by Dryden and Settle. Higden is the author of a good comedy, The Wary Widdow: or, Sir Noisy Parrat (4to, 1693). Sir Charles Sedley wrote the prologue, there are six copies (one by Tom Brown in Latin), of complimentary verses, and the play is dedicated to the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex. A legend exists that the author 'had introduced so much punch-drinking into it that the actors got intoxicated before the end of the third act, and the house separated in confusion'. This seems to me dubious at the least, and if true the actors must have begun in a singularly mellow condition. Sir Noisy, indeed (Act i), declares 'we must banish Venus out of our Calender, Jolly Bacchus shall rejoyce our hearts, and be our Dominical Letter,' yet in Act ii, sc. iii, he toasts Clarinda's health but once and that in 'Wine and Colour'd water'; whilst Act iii, sc. vi, 'the Rose Tavern' where Sir Noisy gets drunk with Scaredevil and Fulham is somewhat quiet for a toping of the period. In Act iv Nantz is quaffed on shipboard, but all the rest of the play is temperate enough, and the tradition (repeated ad nauseam), must indubitably be dismissed as pure fiction. Higden in his Preface ascribes the doom of The Wary Widdow to those 'Sons of Zeruiah', the 'murmuring Israelites' and 'Pagans of the Pits' who 'hissing, mimicking, ridiculing, and Cat-calling' utterly 'vanquished the stage', and dumbfounded the unfortunate performers. No doubt a braying clique damned the piece. It may be noted that in his Preface Higden takes occasion to gird at the recent success of Congreve's The Old Bachelor.
p. [405] On the Death of E. Waller, Esq. Edmund Waller died at Hall Barn, 21 October, 1687, and on 26 October was buried in Beaconsfield churchyard. This elegy of Mrs. Behn's was first printed in a collection entitled Poems to Memory of that Incomparable Poet Edmund Waller, Esquire. 'By Several Hands.' 1688. The volume (27 pages), contains poems by Sir John Cotton, Bart.; Sir Tho. Higgons; T. Rymer; Monsieur St. Evremon (six lines in French, with an English translation by T. R.); George Granville; Bevill Higgons; A. Behn; an Anonymous Poem; and 'To Mr. Riley, Drawing Mr. Waller's Picture', signed T. R. The letter accompanying these lines sent by Mrs. Behn to Waller's daughter-in-law, will be found in the Memoir (Vol. I, pp. l-li).
p. [407] A Pindaric Poem. For the occasion of this Poem vide Vol. I, p. liii. From stanza 4 it would appear that Dr. Burnet had suggested to Mrs. Behn that she should write a Pindaric or some similar poem on William of Orange and his consort. To her credit she refused. The verses To Her Sacred Majesty Queen Mary are more than ample on such themes.