to follow.' Again, we have that she
was 'a wanton hussy'; her 'trolloping muse' shamefacedly 'wallowed in
the mire'; but finally the historian is bound to confess 'she was never
dull'.

[Footnote 17: _The Retrospective Review_, however (Vol. I, November,
1852), has an article, 'Mrs. Behn's Dramatic Writings,' which
warmly praises her comedies. The writer very justly observes that
'they exhibit a brilliance of conversation in the dialogue, and a
skill in arranging the plot and producing striking situations, in
which she has few equals.' He frequently insists upon her 'great
skill in conducting the intrigue of her pieces', and with no little
acumen declares that 'her comedies may be cited as the most perfect
models of the drama of the latter half of the seventeenth century.']

[Footnote 18: Which it certainly was not secundum mid-Victorian
morals.]

The morality of her plays is _au fond_ that of many a comedy of to-day:
that the situations and phrasing in which she presents her amorous
intrigues and merry cuckoldoms do not conform with modern exposition of
these themes we also show yet would not name, is but our surface gloss
of verbal reticence; we hint, point, and suggest, where she spoke out
broad words, frank and free; the _motif_ is one and the same. If we
judge Mrs. Behn's dramatic output in the only fair way by comparing it
legitimately with the theatre of her age, we simply shall not find that
superfluity of naughtiness the critics lead us to expect and deplore.
There are not infrequent scenes of Dryden, of Wycherley, of Vanbrugh,
Southerne, Otway, Ravenscroft, Shadwell, D'Urfey, Crowne, full as daring
as anything Aphra wrote; indeed, in some instances, far more wanton.
Particularizing, it has been objected that although in most Restoration
comedies the hero, however vicious (even such a mad scrapegrace as
Dryden's Woodall), is decently noosed up in wedlock when the curtain is
about to fall, Mrs. Behn's Willmore (_Rover II_), Gayman (_The Lucky
Chance_), Wittmore (_Sir Patient Fancy_) end up without a thought of,
save it be jest at, the wedding ring. But even this freedom can be amply
paralleled. In the Duke of Buckingham's clever alteration of _The
Chances_ (1682), we have Don John pairing off with the second Constantia
without a hint of matrimony; we have the intrigue of Bellmour and
Laetitia in Congreve's _The Old Bachelor_ (1693), the amours of Horner
in _The Country Wife_ (1675), of F