Behn's novels, plays, and poems fell into disre-
pute. Sir Walter Scott tells the story of his
grand-aunt who expressed a desire to see again
Mrs. Behn's novels, which she had read with de-
light in her youth. He sent them to her sealed
and marked "private and confidential." The
next time he saw her, she gave them back
with the words;



Mrs. Manley 19

"Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn, and, if
you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for
I find it impossible to get through the very first
novel. But is it not a very odd thing that I,
an old woman of eighty and upward, sitting
alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which
sixty years ago I have heard read aloud for the
amusement of large circles, consisting of the
first and most creditable society in London?"

Mrs. Behn has been accused of great license in
her conduct and of gross immorality in her
writings. Her friend and biographer says of the
former: "For my part I knew her intimately,
and never saw ought unbecoming the just
modesty of our sex, though more free and gay
than the folly of the precise will allow." For
the latter the fashion must be blamed more than
she. Mrs. Behn was not actuated by the high
moral principles of Mademoiselle de Scuderi
and Madame de Lafayette, with whom love
was an ennobling passion, nor was she writing
for the refined men and women of the Hotel
Rambouillet; she was striving to earn a living
by pleasing the court of Charles the Second,
and in that she was eminently successful.
