Besides nineteen plays, innumerable philosophical essays, letters, orations, and poems, the Duchess of Newcastle produced some "tales in prose," which are amongst our earliest novels of English manufacture.

As a specimen, we transcribe

66 THE CONVERTS IN MARRIAGE.

"There were four young gentlewomen whose fathers were near neighbours to each other, whereupon there grew up an acquaintance, and so a society.

"The first was reserved and coy.
"The second was bold and ranting.
"The third was merry and gay.

"The fourth was peevish and spightful.

"She that was reserved and coy, was generous and ambitious.

"She that was bold and ranting, was covetous and wanton. "She that was merry and gay, was vain and phantastical. "She that was peevish and spightful, was cross and

unconstant.

"It chanced the four fathers were offered four husbands for their four daughters all at one time, and, by reason they had good estates, they caused their daughters to marry.

"The husband that was to marry the first lady was covetous, miserable, and timerous, as all miserable, covetous, persons, for the most part are, fearfull; but being very rich, the father to this lady forced her to marry him.

"And he that was to marry the second lady was temperate, prudent, and chaste.

“And he that was to marry the third lady was melancholy, solitary, and studious.

"And he that was to marry the fourth lady was cholerick and impatient.

"And after they had been marryed some time, the covetous and timerous man became hospitable, bountifull, valiant, and aspiring, doing high and noble deeds.

"And she that was bold and wanton became chaste, sober, and obedient.

"And he that was melancholy became sociable, conversible, and pleasant, and she thrifty and staid.

"But he that was cholerick and impatient, who married her that was peevish and spightful, did live like dogs and cats, spit, scrawl, scratch, and bite, insomuch that they were forced to part; for, being both faulty, they could not live happily, because they could never agree: for errours and faults multiply being joined together, &c."

The foregoing is the entire story. The reader might think from the concluding &c., that there was more in the original, but there is not; the introduction, plot, denouement, moral conclusion, and the &c., have been copied as the authoress had them printed.

The Duchess of Newcastle died in the year 1673, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument, erected to her memory, has this inscription:

"Here lies the Lord Duke of Newcastle, and his Duchess, his second wife, by whom he had no issue; Her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family; for all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous. This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned lady, which her many books do well testifie: she was a most virtuous and loving, and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries; and when she came home, never parted with him in his solitary retirements."

CHAPTER III.

MRS. BEHN.

FEW English women, who have devoted themselves to literature as a vocation, have achieved a greater success than did Mrs. Behn in her day. She gained a liberal share of the applause of the wits of her age, and a yet larger share of their attention; she wrote poems that were allowed to be good: she was the authoress of plays which the town flocked to see acted; Charles the Second was fascinated by her powers of conversation and her beauty; Dryden.complimented her on her powers of versification; and she wrote novels which every one read, and continued to read for generations after her death; and one (at least) of which was translated into the French language, and published at Amsterdam, when she had been in the grave more than half a century. And yet, we doubt not, many of our readers have never heard her name till now.

Aphra, Aphara, Apharra, or Afra (for the name is to be found spelt in all four ways) Behn was a daughter of a gentleman of good family. Her maiden name was Johnson; and Canterbury has the honour of being her birth-placebut the year of her birth is unknown. The various biographers, who have briefly sketched her life, concur in placing her birth at the close of the reign of Charles the First; it certainly was not earlier.

Her father was a friend of Francis, fourth Lord Willoughby, of Parham, in the county of Suffolk, to which nobleman, in conjunction with Laurence Hyde, second son of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Charles the Second gave (with the

liberality that characterized European monarchs of those days) the colony of Surinam. The interest of Lord Willoughby secured the post of Lieutenant-General of Surinam and thirty-six West Indian isles for his friend Johnson, who immediately quitted England for the New World, taking with him his wife and children. Aphara was then quite a child-too young, her female biographer and friend assures us, to have known the passion of love. But her rare beauty had, even in those tender years, gained her many passionate admirers, and her quickness of intellect was the wonder and amusement of all her acquaintance.

The lieutenant-general was fated not to reap any of the advantages of his newly-acquired appointment. He died on board ship, during his passage to America. His patron, also, was doomed to find his death at sea, but in a more calamitous manner. Francis, Lord Willoughby, was lost in a violent hurricane, which destroyed eleven ships, in the year 1666. Pepys mentions this catastrophe, in a letter to Lord Brouncker, with official brevity and coolness. "But perhaps our ill, but confirmed, tidings from the Barbadoes may not have reached you yet, it coming but yesterday; viz., that about eleven ships, whereof two of the king's, the Hope and Coventry, going thence with men to attack St. Christopher's, were seized by a violent hurricane and all sunk-two only of the thirteen escaping, and those with the loss of masts, &c. My Lord Willoughby himself is involved in the disaster, and I think two ships thrown upon an island of the French, and so all the men, to 500, became their prisoners."

When Aphara, with her widowed mother, and her brothers and sisters, gained the terra firma of Surinam, they took possession of a house that appears to have stood somewhere on the Parham estate, and which was placed at their disposal. The scene was novel, and had plenty to interest them. "As soon as I came into the country the

best house in it was presented to me, called St. John's Hill." Aphara afterwards wrote in her novel of Oroonoko

"It stood on a vast rock of white marble, at the foot of which the river ran a vast depth down, and not to be descended on that side; the little waves, still dashing and washing the foot of this rock, made the softest murmurs and purlings in the world; and the opposite bank was adorned with such vast quantities of different flowers eternally blowing, and every day and hour new, fenced behind 'em with lofty trees, of a thousand rare forms and colours, that the prospect was the most ravishing that sands can create. On the edge of this white rock, towards the river, was a walk or grove of orange and lemon trees, about half the length of the mall here: whose flowery fruit-bearing branches met at the top, and hindered the sun, whose rays are very fierce there, from entering a beam into the grove; and the cool air that came from the river made it not only fit to entertain people in, at all the hottest hours of the day, but refreshed the sweetest blossoms, and made it always sweet and charming; and, sure, the whole globe of the world cannot show so delightful a place as this grove was; not all the gardens of boasted Italy can produce a shade to outvie this, which Nature had joined with Art to render so exceeding fine; and 'tis a marvel to see how such vast trees, as big as English oaks, can take footing in so solid a rock, and in so little earth as covered that rock. But all things by nature there are delightful and wonderful."

In another place, in the same novel, she writes of the country-"Though in a word I must say thus much of it; that certainly had his late Majesty of sacred memory but seen and known what a vast and charming world he had been master of in that continent, he would never have parted so easily with it to the Dutch. 'Tis a continent, whose vast extent was never yet known, and may contain more noble earth than all the universe besides; for, they