a chequered life by living on a
plantation among rough and lawless colonists, and there she made the
acquaintance of the slave Oroonoko, whose sad story she afterward made
known to the world. On her return to England, she married Behn, a
merchant of Dutch extraction, and went to live in the Netherlands,
where she acted as a British spy. By working upon the feelings of her
lovers, she was able to convey information to the English government of
the intention of the Dutch to enter the Thames to destroy the English
fleet. Her warnings were disregarded, and giving up her patriotic
occupation, she returned to London, and devoted herself to literature.
She died in 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster
Abbey:--"Covered only with a marble stone, with two wretched verses on
it." Although Mrs. Behn is now almost forgotten, her position in her
own time was not inconsiderable. Besides a number of letters and poems,
her literary productions include a translation of Fontenelle's
"Plurality of Worlds," and a paraphrase on Van Dale's "De Oraculis
Ethnicorum." Her plays met with some success, but were characterized by
a licentiousness which won for her the title of "the female Wycherley,"
a fact, which, on account of her sex, called down upon her a general
and well-deserved condemnation. Two other productions, of which the
nature is sufficiently indicated by their titles, were "The Lover's
Watch; or the Art of making Love: being Rules for Courtship for every
Hour of the Day and Night"; and "The Ladies Looking Glass to dress
themselves by; or the whole Art of charming all Mankind."

It was on Mrs. Behn's return from the West Indies that, being
introduced at court, she related to Charles the Second the terrible
fate of the noble slave Oroonoko. At the solicitation of the king, she
put her narrative into the form of a novel, which obtained a large
circulation, and was dramatized by Southern in his tragedy of the same
name. "Oroonoko" is worthy of notice as one of the earliest attempts on
the part of an English novelist to deal with characters which had come
under the writer's observation in actual life. It is still more
important on account of the presence within it of a didactic purpose; a
characteristic which for good or for evil has been a prominent feature
of the English novel. Sir Thomas More had made use of fiction in the
sixteenth century to urge his ideas of political and social reforms.
Bunyan, more than a century l