aggressive animosity towards their authors.

Persistent and close analysis of human emotion and of the passion of
love in the way in which Sir Philip Sidney had caught sight of it,
disappeared from the novel until the day when a second "Pamela" was to
figure on the literary stage, and to fill with emotion all London and
Paris, down even to Crebillon fils, who was to write to Lord
Chesterfield: "Without 'Pamela' we should not know what to read or to
say." And at reading it, the author of "The Sopha" was "moved to tears."

One work alone was published towards the end of the century in which an
original thought is to be found, the "Oroonoko"[369] of Mrs. Behn. The
sentiment that animates it is of another epoch, and belongs to a quite
peculiar class of novel; with her begins the philosophical novel,
crowded with dissertations on the world and humanity, on the vanity of
religions, the innocence of negroes, and the purity of savages. These
are the ideas of Rousseau before Rousseau: other ideas of Rousseau had
been, as we have seen, anticipated, in the history of the novel, by
Lyly.

Remains of the ordinary heroic style are of course not wanting. Being
love-struck Oroonoko, an African negro, well read in the classics,
refuses to fight, and following Achilles' example, retires to his tent.
"For the world, said he, it was a trifle not worth his care. Go,
continued he, sighing, and divide it amongst you, and reap with joy what
you so vainly prize!" In trying to carry out this advice his companions
are utterly routed, until after two days Oroonoko consents to take up
his arms again, and the victors are at once all put to flight.
Oroonoko's death is also in the heroical style, but a peculiar sort of
heroism which recalls Scudery, and at the same time Fenimore Cooper.

But more striking are the parts in which the manners of the savages are
compared to those of civilized nations. "Everything is well," Rousseau
was to say later, "when it comes fresh from the hands of the Maker of
things; everything degenerates in the hands of man."[370] Mrs. Behn
expressed many years before the very same ideas; her Oroonoko has been
educated by a Frenchman who "was a man of very little religion, yet he
had admirable morals and a brave soul," an ancestor obviously of
Rousseau himself, and a fit tutor for this black "Emile." The aborigines
of Surinam live in a state of perfection which reminds Mrs. Behn of Adam
and Eve before the fall: "These people