Note 17 — Two Novelists of the English Restoration.

Another matter of curious interest in connection with “Oroonoko” calls for passing mention, though too far removed from our special subject to detain us here. This is the remarkable way in which, in its presentation of the “noble savage,” and the innocence, purity, and high moral character of the “natural man,” the story anticipates Rousseau and the later romanticists. Jusserand, who points this out, goes so far as to say that Mrs. Behn “carries us at once beyond the times of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, and takes us among the precursors of the French Revolution.” It may be added that, in the hands of “Honest Tom Southerne,” the story of Oroonoko became a successful play.