Early in 1686 a frolicksome comedy of great merit, _The Lucky Chance_, was produced by her at the Theatre Royal, the home of the United Companies. A Whiggish clique, unable to harm her in any other way, banded together to damn the play and so endeavoured to raise a pudic hubbub, that happily proved quite ineffective. _The Lucky Chance_, which contends with _The Rover (I)_, and _The Feign’d_ xlix _Courtezans_ for the honour of being Mrs. Behn’s highest flight of comic genius, has scenes admittedly wantoning beyond the bounds of niggard propriety, but all are alive with a careless wit and a brilliant humour that prove quite irresistible. Next appeared those graceful translations from de Bonnecorse’s _La Montre ... seconde partie contenant La Boëte et Le Miroir_, which she termed _The Lover’s Watch_ and _The Lady’s Looking-Glass_. In 1687 the Duke of Albemarle’s voyage to Jamaica45 to take up the government in the West Indies gave occasion for a Pindaric, but we only have one dramatic piece from Mrs. Behn, _The Emperor of the Moon_, a capital three act farce, Italian in sentiment and origin. For some little time past her health had begun to trouble her.46 Her three years of privation and cares had told upon her physically, and since then, ‘forced to write for bread and not ashamed to own it,’ she had spared neither mind nor bodily strength. Graver symptoms appeared, but yet she found time to translate from Fontenelle his version of Van Dale’s _De Oraculis Ethnicorum_ as _The History of Oracles and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests_, a book of great interest. There was also published in 1687 an edition in stately folio of _Æesop’s Fables with his Life in English, French and Latin_, ‘illustrated with One hundred and twelve Sculptures’ and ‘Thirty One New Figures representing his Life’, by Francis Barlow, the celebrated l draughtsman of birds and animals. Each plate to the Life has a quatrain appended, and each fable with its moral is versified beneath the accompanying picture. In his brief address to the Reader Barlow writes: ‘The Ingenious Mrs. A. Behn has been so obliging as to perform the English Poetry, which in short comprehends the Sense of the Fable and Moral; Whereof to say much were needless, since it may sufficiently recommend it self to all Persons of Understanding.’ To this year we further assign the composition of no fewer than four novels, _The Unfortunate Bride_, _The Dumb Virgin_, _The Wandering Beauty_, _The Unhappy Mistake_. She was working at high pressure, and 1688 still saw a tremendous literary output. Waller had died 21 October, 1687, at the great age of eighty-one, and her Elegiac Ode to his Memory begins:— How to thy Sacred Memory, shall I bring (Worthy thy Fame) a grateful Offering? I, who by Toils of Sickness, am become Almost as near as thou art to a Tomb? While every soft and every tender strain Is ruffl’d, and ill-natur’d grown with Pain. This she sent to his daughter-in-law with the following letter47:— Madam,