The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I | Page 9

to him in Mrs. Behn's poems; he is the Mr. J. H.
of Our Cabal; and in 'A Letter to Mr. Creech at Oxford, Written in the
last great Frost,' which finds a place in the Miscellany of 1685, the
following lines occur:--
To Honest H----le I shou'd have shown ye, A Wit that wou'd be proud t'
have known ye; A Wit uncommon, and Facetious, A great admirer of
Lucretius.
There can be no doubt he was on terms of the closest familiarity[25]
with Mrs. Behn, and he (if any), not Ravenscroft, assisted her (though
we are not to suppose to a real extent) in her plays. There is a very plain
allusion to this in Radcliffe's The Ramble: News from Hell (1682):--
Amongst this Heptarchy of Wit The censuring Age have thought it fit,
To damn a Woman, 'cause 'tis said The Plays she vends she never made.
But that a Greys Inn Lawyer does 'em Who unto her was Friend in

Bosom, So not presenting Scarf and Hood New Plays and Songs are
full as good.[26]
Unfortunately Hoyle was reputed to be addicted to the grossest
immorality, and rumours of a sinister description were current
concerning him.[27] There is, in fact, printed a letter[28] of Mrs.
Behn's wherein she writes most anxiously to her friend stating that the
gravest scandals have reached her ears, and begging him to clear
himself from these allegations. Hoyle was murdered in a brawl 26 May,
1692, and is buried in the vault belonging to the Inner Temple, which is
presumably in the ground attached to the Temple Church. The entry in
the Register runs as follows: 'John Hoyle, esq., of the Inner Temple was
buried in the vault May ye 29, 1692.' Narcissus Luttrell in his Diary,
Saturday, 28 May, 1692, has the following entry: 'Mr. Hoil of the
Temple on Thursday night was at a tavern with other gentlemen, and
quarrelling with Mr. Pitts' eldest son about drinking a health, as they
came out Mr. Hoil was stabb'd in the belly and fell down dead, and
thereon Pitts fled; and the next morning was taken in a disguise and is
committed to Newgate.'[29] 30 June, 1692, the same record says: 'This
day Mr. Pitts was tryed at the Old Bailey for the murder of Mr. Hoil of
the Temple, and the jury found it manslaughter but the next heir has
brought an appeal.'
[Footnote 22: In view of the extremely harsh treatment Ravenscroft has
met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing
Genest's opinion that his 'merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly
underrated'. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a
knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a
vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce,
and farce very nearly akin to comedy, he is capital.]
[Footnote 23: Letters from the Dead to the Living: The Virgin's [Mrs.
Bracegirdle] Answer to Mrs. Behn. 'You upbraid me with a great
discovery you chanc'd to make by peeping into the breast of an old
friend of mine; if you give yourself but the trouble of examining an old
poet's conscience, who went lately off the stage, and now takes up his
lodgings in your territories, and I don't question but you'll there find

Mrs. Behn writ as often in black characters, and stand as thick in some
places, as the names of the generation of Adam in the first of Genesis.'
How far credence may be given to anything of Brown's is of course a
moot point, but the above passage and much that follows would be
witless and dull unless there were some real suggestion of scandal.
Moreover, it cannot here be applied to Hoyle, whereas it very well fits
Ravenscroft. This letter which speaks of 'the lash of Mr. C----r' must
have been written no great time after the publication of Jeremy Collier's
A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage (March, 1698),
probably in 1701-2. Ravenscroft's last play, The Italian Husband, was
produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1697, and he is supposed to have
died a year or two later, which date exactly suits the detail given by
Brown. Ravenscroft's first play, Mamamouchi, had been produced in
1672, and the 'an old poet' would be understood.]
[Footnote 24: This occurrence is the subject of some lines in The Rump
(1662): 'On the happy Memory of Alderman Hoyle that hang'd
himself.']
[Footnote 25: The Muses Mercury, December, 1707, refers to verses
made on Mrs. Behn 'and her very good friend, Mr. Hoyle'.]
[Footnote 26: My attention was drawn to these lines by Mr. Thorn
Drury, who was, indeed, the first to suggest that Hoyle is the person
aimed at.