and had only the slightest, if any, foundation in fact.

A novel actually based upon a real occurrence, however, is "Dalinda, or
the Double Marriage. Being the Genuine History of a very Recent, and
Interesting Adventure" (1749), not certainly known to have been written
by Mrs. Haywood, but bearing in the turns of expression, the letters,
and the moralized ending, almost indubitable marks of her handiwork. One
at least of her favorite quotations comes in at an appropriate point,
and the Preface to the Reader states that the author's sole design is to
show the danger of inadvertently giving way to the passions--a stock
phrase with the author of "Love in Excess." The "Monthly Review" informs
us that the story is "the affair betwixt Mr. Cresswell and Miss Scrope,
thrown into the form of a novel."[1] The situation is somewhat similar
to that described in "The Mercenary Lover."

Dalinda's unhappy passion for Malvolio incites him to ruin her, and
though he deludes her with an unregistered marriage at the Fleet, he has
no scruples against marrying the rich Flavilla. Wishing to possess both
Flavilla's fortune and Dalinda's charms, he effects a reconciliation
with the latter by promising to own their prior contract, but when he
comes out into the open and proposes to entertain her as a mistress, she
indignantly returns to her grandmother's house, where she summons her
brother and her faithful lover, Leander, to force her perfidious husband
to do her justice. The latter half of the novel is a tissue of intrigue
upon intrigue, with a complication of lawsuits and letters in which
Malvolio's villainy is fully exposed, and he is forced to separate from
Flavilla, but is unable to exert his claims upon Dalinda. She in turn
cannot wring from him any compensation, nor can she in conscience
recompense the faithful love of Leander while her husband is living.
Thus all parties are sufficiently unhappy to make their ways a warning
to the youth of both sexes.

Evidently the history, though indeed founded on fact, differs from the
works of Mrs. Haywood's imagination only in the tedious length of the
legal proceedings and the uncertainty of the outcome. The only reason
for basing the story on the villainy of Mr. Cresswell was to take
advantage of the momentary excitement over the scandal. A similar appeal
to the passion for diving into the intrigues of the great is apparent in
the title of a novel of 1744, "The Fortunate Foundlings: Being the