Heroic romance proved as ephemeral in England as the cloaks and feathers with which it had crossed the Channel, and we may pass over such trivial literary attempts as those of the Duchess of Newcastle to the writings of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Behn.  These two novelists, if such they may still be called, represent, in narrative fiction, the period which extends from the Restoration to the opening of the eighteenth century.  They have left us little, and that of very indifferent merit.  But their stories have a certain importance, inasmuch as with them begins the tendency, in English fiction, to deal with the actual, instead of the imaginary, to describe characters and scenes meant to represent real life.

The daughter of Sir Roger Manley, at one time Governor of Guernsey, Mrs. Manley was seduced, when quite a young woman, and passed the remainder of her life in a licentiousness which has evidently inspired her literary productions.  Having picked up a few stories from current report, she worked them into what she called “The Power of Love, in Seven Novels."[88] The “love” here described is an unregulated animal passion, and its “power” is the natural effect of such a passion upon men and women who have no idea of self-restraint or refinement.  The result is a series of licentious scenes, unredeemed by any literary merit.  Mrs. Manley’s most prominent work was the “Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of Both Sexes.  From the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean.”  This book is a scandalous chronicle of crimes reputed to have been committed by persons of high rank, and the names are so thinly disguised as to be easily identified.  Mrs. Manley was arrested and prosecuted for the publication, but escaped without serious punishment.  The work itself had a wide circulation, and Pope adopted the endurance of its fame as a measure of time in his shortsighted line, “As long as Atalantis shall be read.”

In the beginning of this book a female personage named Astraea resolves to revisit the earth, which she had long before abandoned in disgust.  She alights upon an island in the Mediterranean, named Atalantis, which is meant to signify England, and a female form immediately rises up before her.

Her habit obsolete and torn, almost degenerated into tatters; But her Native Charms, that needed not the Help of Art, gave to Astraea’s returning Remembrance that it could be no other than her beautiful Mother Vertue.  But oh! how despicable her Garments! how neglected her flowing Hair!  How languid her formally animated Eyes!  How pale, how withered the Roses of her lovely Cheeks and Lips!  How useless her snowy arms and polished Fingers! they hung in a melancholy Decline, and seemed out of other Employment, but sometimes to support the Head of the dejected Fair One!  Her limbs enervated and supine, wanting of that Energy which should bear her from a Solitude so affrighting!