ued every Monday and Friday_. No. 1-36, 21 February to 22 June,
1724. B.M. (P.P. 5306).

[8]
_Ximene fearing to be forsaken by Palemon, desires he would kill her._
Quoted by Dyce, _Specimens of British Poetesses_, 1827, p. 186.

[9]
See _ante_, p. 24.

[10]
_Monthly Review_, XLVI, 463. April, 1772.

CHAPTER VII

LATER FICTION: THE DOMESTIC NOVEL

No such homogeneity as marked the works of Mrs. Haywood's first decade
of authorship can be discovered in the productions of her last fifteen
years. The vogue of the short romantic tale was then all but exhausted,
her stock of scandal was no longer new, and accordingly she was obliged
to grope her way toward fresh fields, even to the barren ground of the
moral essay. But besides the letters, essays, and conduct books, and the
anonymous pamphlets of doubtful character that may have occupied her pen
during this period, she engaged in several experiments in legitimate
prose fiction of various sorts, which have little in common except their
more considerable length. Although the name of Mrs. Eliza Haywood was
not displayed upon the title-pages nor mentioned in the reviews of these
novels, the authorship was not carefully concealed and was probably
known to the curious. The titles of nearly all of them were mentioned by
the "Biographia Dramatica" in the list of the novelist's meritorious
works.

The earliest and the only one to bear the signature of Eliza Haywood at
the end of the dedication was borrowed from the multifarious and
unremarkable literary wares of Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy.
"The Virtuous Villager, or Virgin's Victory: Being The Memoirs of a very
Great Lady at the Court of France. Written by Herself. In which the
Artifices of designing Men are fully detected and exposed; and the
Calamities they bring on credulous believing Woman, are particularly
related," was given to the English public in 1742 as a work suited to
inculcate the principles of virtue, and probably owed its being to the
previous success of "Pamela."[1] In the original a dull and spiritless
imitation of Marivaux, the work was not improved by translation, and met
naturally the reception due its slender merits. But along with the
English versions of Le Sage, Marivaux, and the Abbe Prevost, "The
Virtuous Villager" helped to accustom the readers of fiction to two
volume novels and to pave the way for the numerous pages of Richardson.

Not more than a year from the time when the fo