| Chapter 1: | ‘The Fulsom Gingle of the Times’ |
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The epistle is, therefore, a valuable source in considering the effect of her environment on the bent of Behn’s mind and thought.
In the epistle, there is an unconscious assumption of an extremely broad span of common knowledge, of a mutual understanding between Behn and her readers of a wide diversity of subjects. The topics to which she alludes, directly and indirectly, show that Behn was very well educated for a woman of her time, or else that she had a nimble intelligence that enabled her to read, digest, and then use an enormously wide range of subjects. She believes that, although women have an inferior education, there is no reason why they cannot write plays. She writes in the epistle:
However, she does bewail her lack of formal schooling in Latin and Greek, as in her congratulatory poem to Mr. Creech on his translation of Lucretius, from which the chapter heading comes.
And more, the scanted Customs of the Nation,
Permitting not the Female Sex to tread,
The Mighty Paths of Learned Heroes dead.
The Godlike Virgil, and Great Homers Muse,
Like Divine Mysteries are conceal’d from us,
We are forbid all grateful Theams,
No ravishing Thoughts approach our Ear;
The Fulsom Gingle of the Times,
Is all we are allow’d to Understand, or Hear. (vol. 1, 25)
Even so, she published highly praised paraphrases of classical subjects, as well as translations and adaptations from French. One of the earliest was A Voyage to the Island of Love,9 another, A Discovery of New Worlds, translated from Fontenelle, which came out in July 1688.