State Poems, to which flood Mrs. Behn
contributed. Her Pindarics rank high amongst the semi-official,
complimentary, threnodic or pastoral pseudo-Dithyrambs, of which the age
was so bounteous; but it needed the supreme genius of a Dryden
sustainedly to instil lyric fire and true poetry into these hybrid
forms.[43] The nadir is sounded by the plumbeous productions of
Shadwell, Nahum Tate, and 'Persons of Quality'. Aphra's _Pindarick on
the Death of Charles II_ ran through two editions in 1685, and her _Poem
to the Queen Dowager Catherine_ was published the same year. James II
was crowned on St. George's Day, and she greeted her new monarch and old
patron with a _Poem on the Happy Coronation of His Sacred Majesty_.
A little later she published a _Miscellany_ of poems by various hands:
amongst whom were Etheredge, Edmund Arwaker, Henry Crisp, and Otway,
including not a few from her own pen, 'Together with Reflections on
Morality, or Seneca Unmasqued. Translated from the Maximes of the Duke
de la Rochefoucauld', a number of clever apophthegms tersely turned.

[Footnote 43: Swift, although he amply fulfilled Dryden's famous
prophecy, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a Pindaric poet', was
doubtless thinking of these Pindarics when in _The Battle of the
Books_ he wrote: 'Then _Pindar_ slew ----, and ----, and _Oldham_,
and ----, and _Afra_ the _Amazon_ light of foot.']

The following note,[44] however, affords ample evidence that at this
juncture, maugre her diligence and unremitting toils, she was far from
being in easy circumstances:--

'Where as I am indebted to Mr. Bags the sum of six pownd for the
payment of which Mr. Tonson has obleged him self. Now I do here by
impowre Mr. Zachary Baggs, in case the said debt is not fully
discharged before Michaelmas next, to stop what money he shall
hereafter have in his hands of mine, upon the playing my first play
till this aforesaid debt of six pownd be discharged. Witness my hand
this 1st August, --85.

A. Behn.'

[Footnote 44: First published in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, May,
1836.]

Early in 1686 a frolicksome comedy of great merit, _The Lucky Chance_,
was produced by her at the Theatre Royal, the home of the United
Companies. A Whiggish clique, unable to harm her in any other way,
banded together to damn the play and so endeavoured to raise a pudic
hubbub, that happily proved quite ineffective. _The Lucky Chance_, which
contends with _The