’She was of a generous and open Temper, something passionate, very serviceable to her Friends in all that was in her Power; and could sooner forgive an Injury, than do one. She had Wit, Honour, Good-Humour, and Judgment. She was Mistress of all the pleasing Arts of Conversation, liv but us’d ’em not to any but those who love Plain-dealing.’ So she comes before us. A graceful, comely woman,53 merry and buxom, with brown hair and bright eyes, candid, sincere, a brilliant conversationalist in days when conversation was no mere slipshod gabble of slang but cut and thrust of poignant epigram and repartee; warm-hearted, perhaps too warm-hearted, and ready to lend a helping hand even to the most undeserving, a quality which gathered all Grub Street round her door. At a period when any and every writer, mean or great, of whatsoever merit or party, was continually assailed with vehement satire and acrid lampoons, lacking both truth and decency, Aphra Behn does not come off scot-free, nobody did; and upon occasion her name is amply vilified by her foes. There are some eight ungenerous lines with a side reference to the ‘Conquests she had won’ in Buckingham’s _A Trial of the Poets for the Bays_, and a page or two of insipid spiritless rhymes, _The Female Laureat_, find a place in _State Poems_. The same collection contains _A Satyr on the Modern Translators_. ‘Odi Imitatores servum pecus,’ &c. By Mr. P——r,54 1684. It begins rather smartly:— Since the united Cunning of the Stage, Has balk’d the hireling Drudges of the Age; lv Since _Betterton_ of late so thrifty ’s grown, Revives Old Plays, or wisely acts his own; the modern poets Have left Stage-practice, chang’d their old Vocations, Atoning for bad Plays with worse Translations. In some instances this was true enough, but when the writer attacks Dryden he becomes ridiculous and imprecates May he still split on some unlucky Coast, And have his Works or Dictionary lost: That he may know what _Roman Authors_ mean, No more than does our blind Translatress _Behn_,55 The Female Wit, who next convicted stands, Not for abusing _Ovid’s_ verse but _Sand’s_: She might have learn’d from the ill-borrow’d Grace, (Which little helps the Ruin of her Face) That Wit, like Beauty, triumphs o’er the Heart When more of Nature’s seen, and less of Art: Nor strive in _Ovid’s_ Letters to have shown As much of Skill, as Lewdness in her own. Then let her from the next inconstant Lover, Take a new Copy for a second Rover. Describe the Cunning of a jilting Whore, From the ill Arts herself has us’d before; Thus let her write, but _Paraphrase_ no more.