These verses are verjuiced, unwarranted, unfair. Tom Brown too in his _Letters from the Dead to the Living_ has a long epistle ‘From worthy Mrs. Behn lvi the Poetess, to the famous Virgin Actress,’ (Mrs. Bracegirdle), in which the Diana of the stage is crudely rallied. ‘The Virgin’s Answer to Mrs. Behn’ contains allusions to Aphra’s intrigue with some well-known dramatic writer, perhaps Ravenscroft, and speaks of many an other amour beside. But then for a groat Brown would have proved Barbara Villiers a virgin, and taxed Torquemada with unorthodoxy. Brown has yet another gird at Mrs. Behn in his _The Late Converts Exposed, or the Reason of Mr. Bays’s Changing his Religion &c._ Considered in a Dialogue (1690, a quarto tract; and reprinted in a Collection of Brown’s _Dialogues_, 8vo, 1704). Says Eugenius: ‘You may remember Mr. Bays, how the famed _Astrea_, once in her Life-time unluckily lighted upon such a Sacred Subject, and in a strange fit of Piety, must needs attempt a Paraphrase on the Lord’s Prayer. But alas poor Gentlewoman! She had scarce travell’d half way, when _Cupid_ served her as the Cut-Purse did the Old Justice in _Bartholmew_ Fair, tickled her with a Straw in her Ear, and then she could not budge one foot further, till she had humbly requested her Maker to grant her a private Act of Toleration for a little Harmless Love, otherwise called Fornication.’ There is a marginal note to this passage: ‘Mrs. _Behn’s_ Miscell. Printed by _Jos. Hindmarsh_.’ In _a Letter from the Dead Thomas Brown to the Living Heraclitus_ (1704), a sixpenny tract, this wag is supposed to meet Mrs. Behn in the underworld, and anon establishes himself on the most familiar terms with his ‘dear _Afra_’; they take, indeed, ‘an extraordinary liking to one lvii another’s Company’ for ‘good Conversation is not so overplentiful in these Parts.’ A bitterer attack yet, _An Epistle to Julian_ (c. 1686-7), paints her as ill, feeble, dying:— Doth that lewd Harlot, that Poetick Quean, Fam’d through _White Fryars_, you know who I mean, Mend for reproof, others set up in spight, To flux, take glisters, vomits, purge and write. Long with a Sciatica she’s beside lame, Her limbs distortur’d, Nerves shrunk up with pain, And therefore I’ll all sharp reflections shun, Poverty, Poetry, Pox, are plagues enough for one.