The style in which the
"Atalantis" is written is so mean, that no person could have derived
any pleasure from its pages other than the gratification of a depraved
taste.
A writer of fiction of much greater importance appeared in the person
of Aphra Johnson, more generally known as Mrs. Behn, or "the divine
Astraea"; "a gentlewoman by birth, of a good family in the city of
Canterbury." Her father was appointed to a colonial office in the West
Indies, where he took his family while Mrs. Behn was yet a young girl.
There the future authoress began 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.
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