little too drastic, and had he then
discriminated rather than swept clean, we were better able wholly to
follow the conclusions at which he arrives. He even says that after
'1671'[2] when 'she began to write for the stage ... such meagre
contemporary notices as we find of her are critical rather than
biographical'. This is a very partial truth; from extant letters,[3] to
which Dr. Bernbaum does not refer, we can gather much of Mrs. Behn's
literary life and circumstances. She was a figure of some note, and even
if we had no other evidence it seems impossible that her contemporaries
should have glibly accepted the fiction of a voyage to Surinam and a
Dutch husband named Behn who had never existed.

[Footnote 1: _Kalendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1666-7. --ed. Mrs.
M. A. E. Green (1864).]

[Footnote 2: This is inaccurate. Mrs. Behn's first play, _The Forc'd
Marriage_, was produced in December, 1670.]

[Footnote 3: e.g. to Waller's daughter-in-law; to Tonson. cf. also
the Warrant of 12 August, 1682; the Pindaric to Burnet, &c.]

Ayfara, or Aphara[4] (Aphra), Amis or Amies, the daughter of John and
Amy Amis or Amies, was baptized together with her brother Peter in the
Parish Church of SS. Gregory and Martin, Wye, 10 July, 1640, presumably
by Ambrose Richmore, curate of Wye at that date.[5] Up to this time
Aphra's maiden name has been stated to be Johnson, and she is asserted
to have been the daughter of a barber, John Johnson. That the name was
not Johnson (an ancient error) is certain from the baptismal register,
wherein, moreover, the 'Quality, Trade, or Profession' is left blank;
that her father was a barber rests upon no other foundation than a MS.
note of Lady Winchilsea.[6] Mr. Gosse, in a most valuable article
(_Athenaeum_, 6 September, 1884), was the first to correct the statement
repeatedly made that Mrs. Behn came from 'the City of Canterbury in
Kent'. He tells how he acquired a folio volume containing the MS. poems
of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea,[7] 'copied about 1695 under her eye and
with innumerable notes and corrections in her autograph'. In a certain
poem entitled _The Circuit of Apollo_[8] the following lines occur:--

And standing where sadly he now might descry
From the banks of the Stowre the desolate Wye,
He lamented for Behn, o'er that place of her birth,
And said amongst Women there was not on the earth,
Her superior in fancy, in language, or witt,
Yet own'