Introduction xxiii 



Sugar-plum-words, which fall sweet from the lips. 



And wafer-promises mould'ring like chips; 



Biskets of love, which crumble all away, 



Jelly of fear, which shak'd and quivering lay: 



Then was a fresh green-sickness cheese brought in, 



And tempting fruit, like that which Eve made sin, ..." 



The writer who could write these lines, and then clear 

 ler style to suit her fairy verse, or in prose achieve the 

 Life, and the Memoirs, and the best of the Sociable 

 Letters with which this volume ends, was truly a portent. 

 No doubt the majority of the Letters were, like the 

 EpistolcB HoMliance, imaginary and never saw the post. 

 In one of the twelve or thirteen dedicatory epistles to 

 her folio of Plays (1662) she says: " But after some idle 

 time, at last I fell upon a vein of writing letters, and so 

 fast did the vein run at first, as in one fortnight I writ 

 above three score letters; but I find it begins to flag. 

 Like one that hath been let much bloud formerly, it 

 may gush or stream full out, but cannot bleed long. . . . 

 So it is in my writing, for though I desire to make 

 them up a hundred, yet I believe I shall not go much 

 further." However she went as far as CCII. 



A few only, which are at the end of the folio, appear 

 to have been actually written to her sister Pye and 

 others. The rest, while they vary greatly in contents, 

 and often take their colour from a change of scene, are 

 written more or less to the same pattern. It is easy to 

 mark in reading them where the hterary invention. ekes 

 out the epistolary note of some actual occasion. Since 

 her Letters won Elia's praise, following him we may 

 count her safely among the best English letter-writers 

 and biographers of her own sex, and then put her in a 

 place of honour among the poets. If we admit that she 

 is among the worst of our playwrights in either sex, 

 who have survived in the record, and that her philo- 

 sophy is nU, it does not reduce the wonder of her 

 achievement. 



We end by loving her in the EUan way and replacing 

 her on his gallery. We picture her with the Duke as 

 very happy at Welbeck and other great houses after the 

 Restoration, and she was well inspired to die before him. 



