described with all the fidelity, and, I will add, all the coarseness of a Dutch picture. Such are 'Roderick Random,' and 'Peregrine Pickle,' 'Tom Jones,' and 'Joseph Andrews.' The men riot in every kind of dissipation, and the women indulge in every species of intrigue. But there is always some virtuous figure who is generally the heroine-like Sophia Western, or Fanny Goodwin, or Emilia-who resists all libertine advances, and whose constancy is at last rewarded by marriage. It is with reference to this class of novels that an accomplished French critic, M. Taine, speaking of Tom Jones,' says: "One becomes tired of your fisticuffs and your ale-house adventures. You dirty your feet too much in the stables among the ecclesiastical pigs of Trulliber. One would like to see more regard for the modesty of your heroines; the roadside accidents disturb their dresses too often, and it is in vain that Fanny, Sophy, and Mistress Heartfree preserve their purity; one can't help remembering the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. You are so rude yourself that you are insensible to what is atrocious. . . . Man, such as you conceive him, is a good buffalo, and perhaps he is the kind of hero required by a people which is itself called John Bull." It is curious to contrast with this the opinion

* ' Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise,' vol. iii. pp. 317,318.

of Coleridge. "How charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick-room heated by stoves, into an open lawn on a breezy day in May.” * In so far as Fielding is opposed to Richardson, we should all agree in this; but I cannot think that the pure breeze of a May morning is a proper metaphor to describe such scenes as occur in Tom Jones' and 'Joseph Andrews.'

* Table Talk,' p. 332.

L

CHAPTER VI.

MRS. BEHN AND HER NOVELS.-‘OROONOKO.'-'THE WANDERING BEAUTY.”—THE UNFORTUNATE HAPPY LADY.-MRS. MANLEY AND THE NEW ATALANTIS.—THE POWER OF LOVE IN SEVEN NOVELS. THE FAIR HYPOCRITE.'-MRS. HEYWOOD.-HER NOVEL.-'MISS BETSY THOUGHTLESS.'

Ir is remarkable that some of the most immoral novels in the English language should have been written by women. This bad distinction belongs to Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood;—Corruptio optimi est pessima, and that such corrupt stories as they gave to the world were the offspring of female pens is an unmistakable proof of the loose manners of the age. Mrs. Behn, indeed, belongs to an earlier period. She wrote in the reign of Charles II., when vice was triumphant, and modesty, like 'Astræa,' had left her last footsteps upon earth.* Strictly, therefore, she does not come within the scope

* Mrs. Behn called herself 'Astræa,' and as such is alluded to by Pope in the lines—

"The stage how loosely does Astræa tread,

Who fairly puts all characters to bed!"

of the present work; but as some of her stories were the first that at all approached in idea the modern novel, and in that respect she may be considered as the literary progenitor of a most numerous race, I may be excused for saying something about her, and so far as I dare, giving some specimens of her works.

Her maiden name was Aphra Johnson; her father was made Governor of Surinam, whither she accompanied him, and then she became acquainted with the negro slave Oroonoko and his wife Imoinda, whose adventures she has made the subject of the best known one of the least objectionable of her novels, called 'Oroonoko.' She afterward married a Dutch merchant named Behn, and went to Antwerp, where she was employed by Charles II. in some political intrigues during the war with Holland. After various vicissitudes of fortune she settled in England and devoted herself to literature, chiefly novels and comedies, the titles of some of which sufficiently indicate their contents. In her preface to 'The Lucky Chance' she attempts to defend herself against the charge of indecency and indelicacy; but it is by what lawyers call a plea in confession and avoidance-retorting the charge of prudery on her accusers. She died in 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In a curious. memoir of her prefixed to a volume of her novels

which was published in 1705, and written "by one of the Fair Sex," she is described as an honor and glory to women, and possessed of uncommon charms of person. The lady takes pains to deny the truth of an ill-natured rumor which it seems was current as to some love-affair between Mrs. Behn, or Astræa, as she is called, and Oroonoko, whose heart she said was too devoted to Imoinda to be shaken in its constancy by the charms of a white beauty, "and Astræa's relations who were there present had too watchful an eye over her to permit the frailty of her youth, if that had been powerful enough." While she was at Antwerp more than one lover paid his addresses to her, but she merely used them as tools to worm out political secrets, and, in the words of the lady who wrote her life," she contrived to preserve her honor without injuring her gratitude." She adds: "They are mistaken who imagine that a Dutchman can't love; for, though they are generally more phlegmatic than other men, yet it sometimes happens that love does penetrate their lumps and dispense an enlivening fire, that destroys its graver and cooler considerations." One of her lovers met with a rather unlucky adventure in pursuit of his object. He bribed an old lady who slept with Mrs. Behn, to put him, dressed in her night-clothes, in their bed, while Mrs. Behn was ab