rgotten, she found it impossible to
endure, at the age of fourscore, what at fifteen, she, like all the
fashionable world of the time, had perused without an idea of
impropriety." This is a striking illustration of the mere relativeness
of such words as "morality," "refinement," and their opposites. If this
old lady could have lived over her early youth embued with the
refinement of taste which surrounded her declining years, she would
have been still more shocked at the coarseness of language, and the
looseness of conduct and morals which prevailed among the highest
ranks. At the same time she would have observed, that the society which
appeared to her coarse and corrupt was far from so considering itself.
What is gross to one age may have been the refinement of the last. A
young girl considered modest and discreet at the end of the seventeenth
century, if transferred unchanged to the end of the eighteenth, would
have shocked the women she met with by talking of subjects unmentioned
in society with a freedom and broadness unusual among the men. In
judging a literary work from the point of view of morality or
refinement, we must compare it with the standard of the age to which it
belongs, and not with our own. Pope's graphic lines, in which he
describes Mrs. Behn's position as a dramatist,

"The stage how loosely doth Astraea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed."

apply almost equally well to her novels. But still the contemporary
reader found nothing in their pages to offend his sense of propriety.
And Mrs. Behn, who simply put into a literary form ideas and scenes which
were common in the society about her, cannot with justice be accused of
an intention to pander to the lowest tastes of her readers. She said
herself, when reproved for the tone of her plays, which was much inferior
to that of her novels: "I make challenge to any person of common sense
and reason, that is not wilfully bent on ill nature, and will, in spite
of sense, wrest a _double entendre_ from everything * * * but any
unprejudiced person that knows not the author--to read one of my comedies
and compare it with others of this age, and if they can find one word
which can offend the chastest ear, I will submit to all their pevish
cavills." All this is worthy of note, if we are to follow the course of
English fiction without prejudice. For it will be shown that the
nineteenth century, with all its well-deserved pride in an advanced