Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la Langue Françoyse, has: 'Cypres for a woman's necke—crespe'; and Cotgrave, Fr. Dict., 'Crespe: m. Cipres; also Cobweb Lawne'. The etymology of the word has given rise to much discussion. Skinner, Etymol. Angl., regards it as a corruption of the French crepes, but suggests that it may be derived from the island of Cyprus where it was first manufactured. This is almost certainly the case, cf. arras; cashmere; dimity; dornick; muslin, and many more. Wheatley in his notes on Every Man in His Humour suggests that Cyprus is derived from 'the plant Cyperus textilis, which is still used for the making of ropes and matting.' One of the English names of this plant was 'cypress'. Gerarde in his Herbal (1597) says: 'Cyperus longus is called ... in English, Cypresse and Galingale.' Mr. Wheatley's suggestion is ingenious but impossible. There is, moreover, ample evidence in favour of the derivation from the isle Cyprus.

p. 372 A Paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer. One may compare with this Paraphrase of the Pater by Mrs. Behn that by Poliziano—Προσευχὴ πρὸς τὸν Θεόν—written in 1472 when the poet was eighteen years old. Waller has sixteen lines OF the Paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, written by Mrs. Wharton. cf. also Some Reflections of his upon the Several Petitions in the Same Prayer.

p. 378 To Mr. P. who sings finely. Perhaps Henry Purcell, whose voice was a counter-tenor, or possibly a relative of the great musician, a bass, who sang in the choir of the Abbey at the coronation of James II.

p. 379 On the Author of that Excellent Book. The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness was published (4to, 1682), as Health's Grand Preservative; or, the Women's Best Doctor ... shewing the Ill-Consequences of drinking Distilled Spirits and smoking Tobacco ... with a Rational Discourse on the excellency of Herbs (2nd edition, 1691, 8vo, under the first-named title; 3rd edition 1697). It is the work of Thomas Tryon (1634-1703), 'Pythagorean', mystic, economist. This remarkable man, of whom a full account may be found in the Dic. Nat. Biog., was long a fervent follower of Jacob Behmen, and forms an interesting link between this enthusiast and the early quakers. In The Way to Health he advocates a vegetable diet, complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, and indeed all luxuries. This, however, is done without fanaticism, and he has many pages of sound common sense. The manual is in the highest degree interesting, and in spite of much quaint detail his hygiene was excellent. Tryon died at Hackney, 21 August, 1703. This same poem appears prefixed to The Way to make All People Rich: or Wisdom's Call to Temperance and Frugality, by Philotheos Physiologus. [T. Tryon]. 12mo, 1685.

p. 382 Epilogue to the Jealous Lovers. The Jealous Lovers, which is by many considered Randolph's best play, was originally acted before the King and Queen at Cambridge by the students of Trinity. It was printed quarto, 1632, with nine copies of English, and seven of Latin, verses. The revival of this comedy at the Duke's house in 1682 met with extraordinary success, and is mentioned by Langbaine. Nokes, who spoke this epilogue, acted Asotus the prodigal, and Leigh, Ballio the pimp. Jo and Jack are Joseph Williams and John Bowman who sustained Tyndarus and Pamphilus.

Rebell Ward is a sharp hit at Sir Patience Ward (1629-1696), the ultra-protestant lord mayor of London, to which office he was elected on Michaelmas day, 1680, entering on to his duties 29 October following. He was a violent upholder of the city against the court, and in 1683 was tried for perjury in connection with the action brought by the Duke of York against Sir Thomas Pilkington for scandalum magnatum. On being found guilty he escaped to Holland but returned at the Revolution. He died 10 July, 1696, and is buried in the chancel of St. Mary Abchurch. This fanatic incurred much odium early in his Mayoralty by having an additional inscription engraved on the Monument to the effect that the Great Fire had been caused by the Catholics. A similar inscription was placed on the house in Pudding Lane where the fire began. Tom Ward (1652-1791), in his England's Reformation (1710, canto iv, p. 100), jeering at Titus Oates and his fictions has the following lines:—

Roscommon, The Ghost of the old House of Commons ... (1681), dockets 'the Bethels and the Wards' together as

Your Damage is at most but half-a-Crown. half-a-Crown was the price of admittance to the Pit. vide note, vol. I, p. 450.

p. 383 A Pastoral to Mr. Stafford. John Stafford, the translator of the Camilla episode (Dryden's Sylvae: or, the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies, 1685, p. 481), is the same person who translated other parts of Virgil and Horace in the same Miscellany, Vols. I and II. In the 3rd edition of Vol. II he is called 'the Honourable Mr. John Stafford.' Stafford is also the author of the Epilogue (sometimes erroneously printed as Dryden's) to Southerne's The Disappointment; or, The Mother in Fashion (1684, and 4to, 1684).

p. 383 cale. This excessively rare adjective, which the N.E.D. fails to include, is an Irish word = hard.

p. 390 Gildon's Chorus Poetarum. 'Adequately to translate Sappho' says J. A. Symonds in The Greek Poets 'was beyond the power of even Catullus: that love-ode, which Longinus called "not one passion, but a congress of passions," and which a Greek physician copied into his book of diagnoses as a compendium of all the symptoms of corroding emotion, appears but languid in its Latin dress of "Ille mi par." Far less has any modern poet succeeded in the task: Rossetti, who deals so skilfully with Dante and Villon, is comparatively tame when he approaches Sappho.' This rendering of The Ode to Anactoria (as tradition names it) Φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν, first appears under Mrs. Behn's name in Gildon's Chorus Poetarum, 1694. In State Poems, Vol. II (1703), it is printed with the title On Madam Behn, a very different matter. If the lines are Mrs. Behn's she must have versified them from a translation given her by Hoyle or some other friend. In any case they are graceful and far better than the versions of Ambrose Philips (1711), or Smollett (1748). But, indeed, it is impossible to translate these lines which are so truly 'mixed with fire' as Plutarch has it. For various attempts and a literal prose version see Wharton's Sappho.

p. 391 Complaint of the poor Cavaliers. The Muses Mercury, June 1707, prefixes the following to this poem: 'All the World knows Mrs. Behn was no Whig, no Republican, nor Fanatick; her Zeal lay quite on the other Side: And tho her Manners was no Honour to any, yet her Wit made her acceptable to that which she espous'd. She was a Politician, as well as a Poet: for we find in the short Account of her Life, printed with those of other Poets, she was employ'd by Charles II. in the Discovery of the Dutch Intrigues in the Dutch War; which she was the better qualifi'd to do by her knowledge of their Language, she having liv'd a long time in Surinam, a Colony where there were many Dutch Merchants; and not long after she left it 'twas surrendered to that Republic by King Charles. 'Tis well known, that the Gentlemen she speaks of in the following Poem, had too much reason to complain; and that the very Men, who had been so much instrumental in keeping King Charles the II. out of his Dominions, were most caress'd after his Restoration.'

p. 393 Mrs. Harsenet. Carola, daughter of Sir Roger Harsnett, knight. These verses are a variation of 'To my Lady Morland at Tunbridge.' vide p. 175.

p. 395 A letter to the Earl of Kildare. John FitzGerald, 18th Earl of Kildare, lived in St. James' Square, and in 1648 married, as his second wife, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Charles Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh ('a fortune of £10,000.') She died in 1758 at the great age of ninety-three. She was extremely beautiful, and either she or one of her unmarried sisters was a mistress of the King.

The Lady Mary Howard, sister to the Earl of Carlisle, died in the last week of October, 1694. She was notorious for her intrigues, and the satires of the time accuse her of being little better than a procuress both for King Charles II and the Earl of Dorset. cf. Rochester's The Royal Angler

and the Earl of Dorset's Lamentation for Moll Howard's absence (Harleian MSS.), which ends

Amongst her lovers were Harry Lumley, Hungerford, Howe. It is noticeable that the lampoons inevitably refer to her in the grossest terms.

writes one versifier, and in Rochester's Ghost addressing itself to the Secretary of the Muses she is found bracketed with seven other ladies of the most dubious repute,

When Lady Mary Howard was received into the Church in 1685, the wits (as was often the case on these conversions) seized the opportunity to flood the town with their pasquils, e.g. The Ladies March.

p. 397 an Urban Throng (as Mr. Bayes calls it). cf. The Rehearsal, iii, v, the scene of Prince Volscius 'going out of Town'.

p. 398 Prologue to Romulus. vide Vol. I, pp. xlii-iii.

p. 399 Green-Ribbon-Brother. The green ribbon was the badge of Shaftesbury's party, as a red ribbon was of the Tories. North (Examen) gives the following account of the green ribbon fraternity: 'This was the club originally called the King's Head Club. The gentlemen of that worthy society held their evening sessions continually at the King's Head Tavern, over against the Inner Temple Gate. But upon occasion of the signal of a green ribbon agreed to be worn in their hats, in the days of street-engagements, like the coats of arms of valiant knights of old, whereby all the warriors of that society might be distinguished, and not mistake friends for enemies; they were called also the Green Ribbon Club. Their seat was in a sort of car-four at Chancery-lane-end; a centre of business and company most proper for such anglers of fools. The house was double balconied in the front, as may be yet seen, for the clubsters to issue forth in fresco, with hats and no perruques; pipes in their mouths, merry faces, and diluted throats, for the vocal encouragement of the canaglia below, at bonfires, on usual and unusual occasions.' The Green Ribbon is frequently alluded to. cf. Otway, The Poet's Complaint of His Muse (4to, 1680), xv:—

p. 400 Mrs. Behn's Satyr on Dryden. This acrid attack upon the great laureate is ungenerous to a degree, and Mrs. Behn's jibes are the more surprising, inasmuch as she had always been Tory to the backbone and a particular partisan of King James II. No doubt continued ill health and a hard struggle are largely responsible for her bad temper. There can be no question that Dryden's conversion was absolutely conscientious, and his line of action at the Revolution amply proves his sincerity. Few, if any, critics would to-day venture to echo Macaulay's discredited pronouncements, doubly dangerous that they are from the vigour and charm of their expression. Burnet's partisan libels and denunciation of Dryden can be dismissed as impertinent and groundless. It is not to be supposed that on such an occasion the whole horde of waspish Lilliputians, who hated the genius of glorious John, would not pour forth a very torrent of venom and slime. Such impotent pasquils as The Renegado Poet, and To Mr. Dryden upon his declaring himself a Roman Catholic abound. Dryden, so far as we know, had always shown himself kindly to Mrs. Behn. He included her paraphrase of Ovid's [OE]none to Paris in the translation of Ovid's Epistles 'by several Hands' (1680), and took care to pay her a graceful compliment in the preface. Further, he allowed a prologue of his own to be used at the production of her posthumous play, The Widow Ranter, in 1690. His letter of advice to Corinna (Mrs. Thomas), which, with an acknowledgement of the freedom of some of his own scenes, bids her refrain from following the carelessness of the illustrious Astrea, was written with reference to the mitigated taste of the last years of the seventeenth century when Collier had already penned his diatribe of decorum, rather than as a rebuke of, or a reflection upon Mrs. Behn.

I owe the present copy of this satire, which has never before been printed, to the kindness of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., who generously transcribed the lines, thirty-one in number, from a MS. in his possession, which he copied from Haslewood, who writes 'From an old MS. in my Port Folio'.[7] The Historical MSS. Commission Third Report (1872) Appendix gives amongst the MSS. in the custody of the Bishop of Southwark, On Mr. Dryden renegate, by Mrs. Behn, 1 leaf, 33 lines. Fr. Cunningham, the Southwark archivist, whom I take this opportunity of most heartily thanking for the trouble he was put to in the matter, finds that this leaf was one of a number of MSS. restored by Bishop Danell in October, 1875, to the two sources whence they had been borrowed by the Rev. Mark Tierney. These were the Archivium of the late Cardinal Manning, and the Stonyhurst collection. Fr. Cyril Martindale, S.J., informs me that the poem is not to be found at Stonyhurst College. Nor can it be traced at Westminster. The unfortunate conclusion is that it has been irretrievably lost. A couplet would appear to have dropped out in the present copy.

p. 401 Valentinian. For Rochester's Valentinian see Vol. III, The Lucky Chance, Preface (p. 186), and note on that passage (p. 484). This alteration was printed quarto, 1685, with a vigorous defence of Rochester, 'a Preface concerning the Author and his Writings. By one of his Friends.' (i.e. Robert Wolseley, son of Sir Charles Wolseley.) It is curious to note that two publishers divided the risk of publication, and on the title pages of different 4tos we have different names. Mrs. Sarah Cook, who spoke this Prologue the first day, was an actress of no little eminence and beauty. Her origin was humble (her mother is said to have kept a tiny shop), and she early joined the Nursery. In 1677 we find her cast for Gillian, when Leanard's wholesale plagiarism of Brewer's Country Girl entitled Country Innocence; or, The Chambermaid turn'd Quaker, was produced during Lent by the younger part of the Theatre Royal Company, with help from such experienced performers as Haynes, Lydal, Goodman, Mrs. Marshall and Mrs. Knipp. The following year Mrs. Cook acted Flora in The Rambling Justice, another Nursery play, also put on in Lent. Langbaine ascribes this comedy to Leanard, and much of it is stolen in his style. Amongst Mrs. Cook's many rôles after she had joined the King's Company as a regular actress were:—1681, Livia, in D'Urfey's Sir Barnaby Whig; 1682, Semanthe, in Southerne's The Loyal Brother; The Countess of Rutland in Banks' The Unhappy Favourite. After the Union of the Companies (first performance 16 November, 1682), Mrs. Cook, who had already taken a high place, acted parts of great importance. We find that she spoke the Epilogue to Dryden and Lee's The Duke of Guise (December, 1682), and in 1683 she appears as Spaconia in a notable revival of A King and No King. The same year she possibly acted the Countess in Ravenscroft's Dame Dobson. In 1684 she played Serena in Lee's Constantine the Great; Erminia in Southerne's The Disappointment; Portia, in a revival of Julius Cæsar; 1685, Aminta in D'Urfey's The Commonwealth of Women; Edith, in a revival of Rollo, Duke of Normandy; 1686, Lady Lovemore in Jevon's farce, A Devil of A Wife; Donna Elvira in D'Urfey's The Banditti; 1687, Letitia in Mrs. Behn's The Lucky Chance; Quisara in Tate's poor alteration of The Island Princess; Elaria, in Mrs. Behn's farcical The Emperor of the Moon. Genest who records this as her last rôle says that she quitted the stage at this time. It has been stated that she died in the winter of 1687. At any rate her name no longer appears, and her place was amply filled by the advent of Mrs. Bracegirdle. Mrs. Cook was celebrated for speaking saucy and political epilogues, e.g. that to The Duke of Guise, and, again, Dryden's brilliant epilogue to Constantine the Great. A MS. (Harleian) Satire on the Players (c. 1682-3) coarsely vilipends her thus:—

On the Second Day of Valentinian a second prologue was spoken by Mrs. Cook. They are clever verses, and with regard to the critics who gird at Rochester, some 'for his want of Wit', and others because 'he too obscenely writ', it is said:—

The third 'Prologue intended for Valentinian, to be spoken by Mrs. Barrey' contains the famous lines with reference to the dead author:—

p. 402 Jenny. A well-known orange wench to whom there are allusions in the satires of the day. 'Jenny' is sometimes also a generic name for a mask.

p. 402 Blanket Fair. Evelyn, 6 January, 1684, notes 'the river quite frozen', and on the 9th writes: 'I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat, and had divers shops of wares, quite across as in a town, but coaches, carts and horses passed over.' On subsequent days he notes the continuance of this frost, and on 24 January has a famous description of the Thames fair with its 'sleds, sliding with skates, a bull-baiting, horse and coach-races, puppet-plays and interludes, cooks, tippling, and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water'. A printing press was even set up and cards printed, one of which is given, dated 5 February, in a note by Bray, Evelyn's Diary, II (p. 192) (1850).

p. 403 To Henry Higden. Henry Higden, to whose translation of Juvenal's tenth satire Mrs. Behn prefixed these complimentary verses, was a well-known wit of the day. A Yorkshireman, a member of the Middle Temple, he moved in the best and gayest society. In 1686 he published A Modern Essay on the Thirteenth Satyr of Juvenal (Licensed 11 November, 1685), and in 1687 followed this up by A Modern Essay on the Tenth Satyr of Juvenal. With Mrs. Behn's Poem are also printed verses by Dryden and Settle. Higden is the author of a good comedy, The Wary Widdow: or, Sir Noisy Parrat (4to, 1693). Sir Charles Sedley wrote the prologue, there are six copies (one by Tom Brown in Latin), of complimentary verses, and the play is dedicated to the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex. A legend exists that the author 'had introduced so much punch-drinking into it that the actors got intoxicated before the end of the third act, and the house separated in confusion'. This seems to me dubious at the least, and if true the actors must have begun in a singularly mellow condition. Sir Noisy, indeed (Act i), declares 'we must banish Venus out of our Calender, Jolly Bacchus shall rejoyce our hearts, and be our Dominical Letter,' yet in Act ii, sc. iii, he toasts Clarinda's health but once and that in 'Wine and Colour'd water'; whilst Act iii, sc. vi, 'the Rose Tavern' where Sir Noisy gets drunk with Scaredevil and Fulham is somewhat quiet for a toping of the period. In Act iv Nantz is quaffed on shipboard, but all the rest of the play is temperate enough, and the tradition (repeated ad nauseam), must indubitably be dismissed as pure fiction. Higden in his Preface ascribes the doom of The Wary Widdow to those 'Sons of Zeruiah', the 'murmuring Israelites' and 'Pagans of the Pits' who 'hissing, mimicking, ridiculing, and Cat-calling' utterly 'vanquished the stage', and dumbfounded the unfortunate performers. No doubt a braying clique damned the piece. It may be noted that in his Preface Higden takes occasion to gird at the recent success of Congreve's The Old Bachelor.

p. 405 On the Death of E. Waller, Esq. Edmund Waller died at Hall Barn, 21 October, 1687, and on 26 October was buried in Beaconsfield churchyard. This elegy of Mrs. Behn's was first printed in a collection entitled Poems to Memory of that Incomparable Poet Edmund Waller, Esquire. 'By Several Hands.' 1688. The volume (27 pages), contains poems by Sir John Cotton, Bart.; Sir Tho. Higgons; T. Rymer; Monsieur St. Evremon (six lines in French, with an English translation by T. R.); George Granville; Bevill Higgons; A. Behn; an Anonymous Poem; and 'To Mr. Riley, Drawing Mr. Waller's Picture', signed T. R. The letter accompanying these lines sent by Mrs. Behn to Waller's daughter-in-law, will be found in the Memoir (Vol. I, pp. l-li).

p. 407 A Pindaric Poem. For the occasion of this Poem vide Vol. I, p. liii. From stanza 4 it would appear that Dr. Burnet had suggested to Mrs. Behn that she should write a Pindaric or some similar poem on William of Orange and his consort. To her credit she refused. The verses To Her Sacred Majesty Queen Mary are more than ample on such themes.

Index of First Lines.