was both a wit and a writer. There is still retailed a vague,
persistent, and entirely baseless tradition that Aphra Behn was assisted
in writing her plays by Edward Ravenscroft,[22] the well known
dramatist. Mrs. Behn often alludes in her prefaces to the prejudice a
carping clique entertained against her and the strenuous efforts that
were made to damn her comedies merely because they were 'writ by a
woman'. Accordingly, when her plays succeeded, this same party, unable
to deny such approved and patent merit, found their excuse in spreading
a report that she was not inconsiderably aided in her scenes by another
hand. Edward Ravenscroft's name stands to the epilogue of _Sir Timothy
Tawdrey_, and he was undoubtedly well acquainted with Mrs. Behn. Tom
Brown (I suggest) hints at a known intrigue,[23] but, even if my surmise
be correct, there is nothing in this to warrant the oft repeated
statement that many of her scenes are actually due to his pen. On the
other hand, amongst Aphra's intimates was a certain John Hoyle,
a lawyer, well known about the town as a wit. John Hoyle was the son of
Thomas Hoyle, Alderman and Lord Mayor of, and M.P. for York, who hanged
himself[24] at the same hour as Charles I was beheaded. In the Gray's
Inn Admission Register we have: '1659/60 Feb. 27. John Hoyle son and
heir of Thomas H. late of the city of York, Esq. deceased.' Some
eighteen years after he was admitted to the Inner Temple: '1678/9 Jan.
26. Order that John Hoyle formerly of Gray's Inn be admitted to this
society _ad eundem statum_. (_Inner Temple Records_, iii, 131.) There
are allusions not a few to him in Mrs. Behn's poems; he is the Mr. J. H.
of _Our Cabal_; and in 'A Letter to Mr. _Creech_ at _Oxford_, Written in
the last great Frost,' which finds a place in the _Miscellany_ of 1685,
the following lines occur:--

To Honest H----le I shou'd have shown ye,
A Wit that wou'd be proud t' have known ye;
A Wit uncommon, and Facetious,
A great admirer of _Lucretius_.

There can be no doubt he was on terms of the closest familiarity[25]
with Mrs. Behn, and he (if any), not Ravenscroft, assisted her (though
we are not to suppose to a real extent) in her plays. There is a very
plain allusion to this in Radcliffe's _The Ramble: News from Hell_
(1682):--

Amongst this Heptarchy of Wit
The censuring Age have thought it fit,
To damn a Woman, 'cause 'tis said
The Plays she vends she never made.
But t