The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood Part 5

"Thus was the crime of giving way to an unwarrantable pa.s.sion, punish'd in the persons of Philenia and Misimene, and that of perjury and ingrat.i.tude in Fillamour; while the constancy of Antonia, and the honour of Coeurdemont, receiv'd the reward their virtues merited, and they continued, to their lives end, great and s.h.i.+ning examples of conjugal affection."

Apparently Philenia's adventures were somewhat too improbable even for the taste of readers steeped in melodramatic romances, for if we may judge by the few copies that have survived, these effusions did not enjoy a wide popularity. But not to be discouraged by failure, Mrs.

Haywood soon produced another extravagant and complicated romance, ent.i.tled "Cleomelia: or, the Generous Mistress. Being the Secret History of a Lady Lately arriv'd from Bengall" (1727). The scene might equally well have been laid in the Isle of Wight, but Bengal on the t.i.tle-page doubtless served to whet the curiosity of readers.

Gasper, secretly affianced to Cleomelia, is conveyed out of Bengal by an avaricious father to prevent him from marrying, and she, believing him unfaithful, gives her hand to the generous Heartlove. Informed of the truth by a letter from her lover announcing his speedy return, she boards a s.h.i.+p bound for England, leaving her husband and lover to fight a duel in which Heartlove falls. Meanwhile the heroine is s.h.i.+pwrecked, finds a new suitor in the s.h.i.+p's captain, and hearing of her husband's death and of Gasper's marriage to a Spanish lady, marries the captain.

Hardly has he departed on his first voyage, when the still faithful Gasper returns to claim her, only to find her again the bride of another. In despair he goes to England, and when her second husband is lost at sea, she follows to reward his constancy.

Cleomelia's generosity does not seem to be as notable as the sub-t.i.tle would indicate, but the story was evidently intended to ill.u.s.trate virtues exalted to a high romantic level.

With the same end in view Mrs. Haywood attempted an even loftier flight into the empyrean of romance, with the result that "Philidore and Placentia: or, L 'Amour trop Delicat" (1727) is more conventional and stilted than any other work from her pen. It imitates closely the heroic French romances, both in the inflated style and elaborate regard for the tender pa.s.sion, and in the structure of the plot with little histories of the princ.i.p.al characters interspersed at intervals throughout the story. In substance the tale is simply a mosaic of romantic adventures, though some of the hero's wanderings in the desert after being marooned by pirates and especially his encounter with the "tyger" sound like a faint echo of "Captain Singleton" or of Captain John Smith's "True Travels."

The n.o.ble Philidore falls in love with the rich and beautiful Placentia, but as his estate is no match for hers, he contents himself with entering her service in disguise and performing menial offices for the pleasure of seeing her. One day she hears him singing in a grotto, and is charmed by the graceful replies he makes to her questions. A little later he saves her from robbers at the expense of a slight wound. She offers to make him groom of her chamber, but fearful of being recognized, he declines. Finally she lays her fortune at his feet, but he has too much generosity to accept the offer. Leaving a letter revealing his true rank and his poverty, he sails for Persia. Some time later, the return of Placentia's long lost brother, by depriving her of her fortune, puts her on a level with her lover.

Philidore is captured by pirates and with eleven others set on sh.o.r.e on a desert strand. Three of the little company reach civilization. After recuperating their strength, they set out for Persia overland, but a tiger deprives Philidore of his two companions. A little later he rescues an unknown youth from three a.s.sailants, but not before the stranger has been seriously wounded. A pa.s.sing traveller carries them to the castle of a Persian n.o.bleman. There Philidore waits with the utmost impatience for the wounded man to recover strength enough to relate his story, but this, as also the misfortunes, perplexities, and dangers to which the despairing pa.s.sion of the enamoured Placentia occasioned her to reduce herself, and the catastrophe of Philidore's surprising fate, must be told in a Second Part.

Part II. The youthful stranger, concealing his name and family, relates the sad effects of his love for the favorite wife of the Bashaw of Liperto, and how by her aid he was enabled to escape from slavery, only to be pursued and about to be retaken by janizaries when rescued by Philidore.

Our hero is kindly received by his uncle in Persia, who soon dies and leaves him sole heir of an enormous fortune. He is now Placentia's equal in wealth as well as rank, and immediately embarks for England. Driven into Baravat by contrary winds, he is moved to ransom a female captive on hearing of her grief at her hard fate, but what is his surprise when the fair slave proves to be Placentia. "Kisses, embraces, and all the fond endearments of rewarded pa.s.sion made up for their want of speech-- in their expressive looks, and eager graspings, the violence of their mutual flame was more plainly demonstrated, than it could have been by the greatest elegance of language--those of the Persians that stood by, who understood not English, easily perceived, not only that they were lovers, but also that they were so to the most unbounded height of tender pa.s.sion."

Placentia relates how she had eluded her brother and set sail to rejoin her lover, how she had been saved from the arms of the brutal s.h.i.+p's captain by a timely attack of pirates, and how, sold to a Moslem merchant and still annoyed by the attentions of the captain, she had abandoned all thoughts of life till redeemed by Philidore's generosity.

With Placentia, her maid, and young Tradewell, the maid's lover, ransomed, Philidore sails blissfully to England. But upon landing Placentia becomes suddenly cold to him. He forces his way into her house, and finds that her brother is the young stranger whose life he had saved in Persia. Meanwhile Placentia, whose fortune is now no match for Philidore's, flees to parts unknown, leaving a letter conjuring him to forget her. After a long search the brother and lover find her place of concealment, and the former removes her scruples by settling a large estate upon her. "Nothing could be more splendid than the celebration of their nuptials; and of their future bliss, the reader may better judge by their almost unexampled love, their constancy, their generosity and n.o.bleness of soul, than by any description I am able to give of it."

"Philidore and Placentia" is one of the few novels by Mrs. Haywood that do not pretend to a moral purpose. Realism needed some justification, for realism at the time almost invariably meant a picture of vice and folly, and an author could not expose objectionable things except in the hope that they would lessen in fact as they increased in fiction. But in spite of the disapproval sometimes expressed for fables on the ground of their inherent untruth, idealistic romances were generally justified as mirrors of all desirable virtues. Pious Mrs. Penelope Aubin wrote no other kind of fiction, though she sometimes admitted a deep-dyed villain for the sake of showing his condign punishment at the hands of providence. It was perhaps due to the sale of this lady's novels, largely advertised toward the end of 1727 and apparently very successful, that Mrs. Haywood was encouraged to desert her favorite field of exemplary novels showing the dangerous effects of pa.s.sion for an excursion into pure romance. That she found the attempt neither congenial nor profitable may be inferred from the fact that it was not repeated.

If the highly imaginary romances suffered from an excess of delicacy, certain other tales by Mrs. Haywood overleaped decency as far on the other side. The tendency of fiction before Richardson was not toward refinement. The models, French and Spanish, which writers in England found profit in imitating, racked sensationalism to the utmost degree by stories of horrible and perverted l.u.s.t. All the excitement that could be obtained from incest, threatened, narrowly averted, or actually committed, was offered to eager readers. Usually, as in Defoe's "Moll Flanders" or Fielding's "Tom Jones," ignorance of birth was an essential element in the plot. A story of this type in which the catastrophe is prevented by a timely discovery of the hero's parentage, is "The Force of Nature: or, the Lucky Disappointment" (1725).

Felisinda, daughter of Don Alvario of Valladolid, falls in love with a dependent of her father's named Fernando, who returns her pa.s.sion, but when by a dropped letter she reveals their mutual tenderness, her father becomes exceedingly disordered and threatens to marry her out of hand to Don Carlos, who had long solicited the match. That generous lover, however, refuses to marry her against her will. The disappointment proves mortal to Don Alvario, who leaves his estate to Felisinda and Fernando equally, provided they do not marry each other. Felisinda is committed to the care of an abbess named Berinthia, but by the aid of a probationer, Alantha, the lovers manage to correspond. They agree that Fernando shall convert his moiety to ready money, convey it to Brussels, and there await Felisinda, whose escape he entrusts to a friend, Cleomas. Alantha, meantime, has fallen in love with Fernando, and subst.i.tutes herself for Felisinda. Cleomas in conducting the supposed mistress of his friend to the nearest port falls under the influence of her beauty and attempts to betray her, but is prevented and slain by a chance pa.s.senger, who turns out to be Carlos. He brings Alantha to a better mind, and conducts her in search of Fernando, but they discover in Brussels that he has set out again for Spain. When Fernando reaches Valladolid to inquire what has become of Cleomas and his lady, he is arrested on the charge of abducting Alantha. At the trial he is accused of having made away with her, and is sentenced to death, whereupon Berinthia, the abbess, faints, and being revived, owns him for her son by Alvario, and "in tears and blessings pours out all the mother on him." At the proper moment Carlos comes in with Alantha to prove Fernando's innocence. Felisinda rewards the constancy of Carlos, and Fernando can do no less than marry Alantha.

Incest is almost the only crime not to be found in the extraordinary series of barefaced and infamous intrigues crowded into the pages of "The Injur'd Husband: or, the Mistaken Resentment" (1723). The author naively remarks in the dedication that "The Subject of the Trifle I presume to offer, is, The Worst of Women," and she has indeed out-villained the blackest of her male villains in the character of the wicked Baroness.

The doting Baron de Tortillee marries the lascivious and extravagant Mademoiselle La Motte, who promotes the villainous Du Lache to be the instrument of her vile pleasures. After enjoying several lovers of his procuring, she fixes her affections upon the worthy Beauclair. Du Lache despairs of ensnaring him, because he is about to marry the lovely Montamour, but by a series of base expedients he manages to blacken the character of that lady in her lover's eyes, and to put the charms of the Baroness in such a light that Beauclair is at length drawn in to pay his court to her. For some time she thus successfully deludes her husband, but when the despicable La Branche openly boasts of her favors and allows some of her letters to fall into the hands of one of her numerous lovers, her perfidy is soon completely exposed. To add to her confusion she hears that the Baron, whom she had drugged into idiocy and sent into the country, has been cured by a skilful physician and is about to return. Du Lache despatches two a.s.sa.s.sins to murder him on the road, but the Baron by a lucky chance escapes the murderers, forces them to confess, and sets out to punish his guilty wife. Meanwhile Beauclair suspects that he has wronged his innocent lady and endeavors to see her, but she at first refuses to see him, and when by a ruse he gains access to her presence, will not listen to him or give him any grounds for hope. In despair he returns to Paris and meets the young Vrayment. He discovers the infamous Du Lache hiding in a convent. To save his life the wretch offers to reveal the frauds he had put in practice against Montamour, but while he is doing so, the Baron meets them, and concluding that Beauclair is in collusion with the villain, attacks them both. Beauclair disarms his antagonist and is about to return him his weapon, when Du Lache stabs the Baron in the back. Vrayment has witnessed the quarrel and summoned a.s.sistance. Beauclair and Du Lache are haled before a magistrate and are about to be condemned equally for the crime, when Vrayment reveals herself as Montamour disguised as a man, and persuades the judge that Beauclair is innocent. Du Lache and his accomplices are broken on the wheel, the Baroness takes poison, and Beauclair is united to his faithful Montamour.

In the conduct of the story the writer shows no deficiency in expressing the pa.s.sions, but rather a want of measure, for thrill follows thrill so fast that the reader can hardly realize what is happening. And as if the l.u.s.ts and crimes of the Baroness did not furnish enough sensational incidents, the tender romance of Beauclair and Montamour is superadded.

The hero is a common romantic type, easily inconstant, but rewarded above his merits by a faithful mistress. A woman disguised as a man was a favorite device with Mrs. Haywood as well as with other writers of love stories, but one need read only the brazen Mrs. Charke's memoirs or Defoe's realistic "Moll Flanders" to discover that it was a device not unheard of in real life. The actual occurrence of such disguises, however, made no difference to the female writers of fiction. Anything soul-stirring, whether from romances or from plays, was equally grist to their mills.

In seeking for the most dramatic _denouements_ sensational romancers were not long in perceiving the suspense that could be produced by involving the chief characters in a trial for their lives. Mrs. Behn had by that means considerably protracted the interest in "The Fair Jilt: or, the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda" (1688), and Mrs. Haywood, following her example, succeeded in giving a last stimulus to the jaded nerves of the readers of "The Force of Nature" and "The Injur'd Husband." And finally the t.i.tle-page of an anonymous work attributed to her indicates that the struggling auth.o.r.ess was not insensible to the popular demand for romances of roguery. A prospective buyer might have imagined that he was securing a criminal biography in "Memoirs of the Baron de Brosse, Who was Broke on the Wheel in the Reign of Lewis XIV.

Containing, An Account of his Amours. With Several Particulars relating to the Wars in those Times," but the promise of the t.i.tle was unfulfilled, for Mrs. Haywood was no journalist to make capital out of a malefactor's exit from the world. The whole book is a chronicle of the Baron's unsuccessful pursuit of a hard-hearted beauty named Larissa, mingled with little histories of the Baron's rivals, of a languis.h.i.+ng Madam de Monbray, and of Larissa's mother. The fair charmer finally marries a count, and her lover, plunged into adequate despair, can barely exert himself to answer a false accusation trumped up by the revengeful Monbray. With the verdict in his favor the story ends abruptly, and the promised continuation was apparently never written. We read nothing of the wars, nor of the Baron's execution on the wheel.

Tortures, tragedies of blood, and heinous crimes added piquancy to Mrs.

Haywood's love stories, but were not the normal material of her romances. Her talent was chiefly for "soft things." She preferred the novel of intrigue and pa.s.sion in which the characters could be run through a breathless maze of amatory adventures, with a pause now and again to relate a digressive episode for variety's sake. Typical of this sort, the best adapted to the romancer's genius, is "The Agreeable Caledonian: or, Memoirs of Signiora di Morella, a Roman Lady, Who made her Escape from a Monastery at Viterbo, for the Love of a Scots n.o.bleman. Intermix'd with many other Entertaining little Histories and Adventures which presented themselves to her in the Course of her Travels." No moralizing, no romantic idealism disturbs the rapid current of events. It is a pure "cloak and sword" novel, definitely located in Italy, with all the machinery of secret a.s.signations, escapes from convents, adventures on the road and at inns, sudden a.s.saults, duels, seductions, and revenge characteristic of Spanish fiction.

Don Jaques di Morella determines to marry his daughter, Clementina, to a certain Cardinal, who has offered to renounce the scarlet hat for love of her. When she piques her lover by her evident unwillingness to wed, Don Jaques packs her off to a convent at Viterbo. By picking up a copy of verses Clementina becomes acquainted with Signiora Miramene, who relates the history of her correspondence with the Baron Glencairn.

Clementina becomes the instrument of the lovers, but no sooner sees the lovely North Briton than she herself is captivated. In response to her proffered affection, Glencairn manages by an extraordinary device to convey her out of the convent. In spite of the rage of Dan Jaques they escape to Sienna. The further surprising turns in their affairs to be later communicated to the public.

Part II. At Sienna the lovers enjoy a season of perfect felicity until Don Jaques comes to town in pursuit of a defaulting steward, discovers Clementina, and apprehends the pair. While the two are confined in separate convents awaiting trial, Clementina's maid, Ismenia (who has already related her little history), becomes their go-between and serves her mistress the same trick that Clementina had already played upon her friend Miramene. Ismenia and the faithless Baron decamp to parts unknown, while Clementina's father starts back to Rome with his recreant daughter. In man's clothes she escapes from her parent to seek revenge upon her lover. At an inn she hears a woman in the next room complaining of her gallant's desertion, and going in to console her, hears the moving story of Signiora Vicino and Monsieur Beaumont, told as a warning to the credulous and unwary s.e.x. The injured fair enters a convent.

Still in pursuit of her lover, Clementina on Montelupe meets the funeral of a young woman who had been torn to pieces by wolves. The chief mourner proves to be Glencairn. She is hindered in an attempt to stab him and thrown into prison, where he visits her and disarms her resentment by offering to marry her. After the ceremony they proceed to Paris where each plunges into dissipation. Finally they separate, Clementina dies of a fever, and the Baron is left free to pursue his inclinations through a possible third part, which, however, was never written.

After a slumber of forty years "The Agreeable Caledonian" was reprinted, as the "Monthly Review" informs us, from a copy corrected by Mrs.

Haywood not long before her death.[16] The review continues, "It is like the rest of Mrs. Haywood's novels, written in a tawdry style, now utterly exploded; the romances of these days being reduced much nearer the standard of nature, and to the manners of the living world." Realism is, indeed, far to seek in the brief but intricate tissue of incidents that made the novel of 1728. To a taste accustomed to "Sir Charles Grandison," and "Peregrine Pickle," and "The Sentimental Journey" the rehash of Eliza Haywood's novel must have seemed very far even from the manners of the world of fiction. The judgment of the "Critical Review"

was still more savage in its accuracy.[17] "This is a republication of a dull, profligate Haywoodian production, in which all the males are rogues, and all the females wh.o.r.es, without a glimpse of plot, fable, or sentiment." In its uncompromising literalness the critic's verdict ranks with the learned Ascham's opinion of the "Morte D'Arthur,"--except that it has not been superseded. The same animadversion might be urged against Defoe's "Colonel Jacque" or "The Fortunate Mistress." If Mrs.

Haywood sinned against the standards of the age to come, she was not out of touch with the spirit of her own generation.

As a writer she knew but one unfailing recipe for popularity: whatever she touched must be forthwith gilded with pa.s.sion. The chief _raison d'etre_ for "The Fair Hebrew: or, a True, but Secret History of Two Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London" (1729) was to gratify the prejudices of anti-Semitic readers, yet it is hardly distinguishable from her sentimental love stories.

The young and gay Dorante, going to the synagogue for a lark, is tempted by the sight of a fair hand to break into the woman's apartment and to expose himself to the charms of the beautiful Kesiah. He engages her in a correspondence, but at their first interview she gives him clearly to understand that he can gain nothing from her but by marriage. Driven by his unhappy pa.s.sion, he complies with her demand, and she becomes a Church of England woman. But once married, Kesiah is too proud to permit the concealment that prudence demands. Though his father is sure to disinherit them, she insists upon revealing the marriage.

Dorante entrusts his small stock of money to his wife's brother, Abimelech, in order to start him in trade. The Jew goes to Holland with a woman whom he has saved from religious murder at the hands of a Levite, and nothing further is heard from him or the money. Imprisoned by his creditors, Dorante is persuaded by his wife to sign away the entail of his estate in return for a sum of money. Thereupon she departs with the gold and a new gallant, leaving her unhappy husband to be rescued from want by the kindness, of a younger brother. After the poor solace of hearing that Kesiah and her paramour have been lost at sea, he dies of a broken heart.[18]

Though Eliza Haywood exhausted nearly every possible bit of sensationalism that could be extracted from tales of pa.s.sion, she almost never made use of the heroic feats of arms which const.i.tuted a no less important resource of the French romances. Her heroes are victors in love but not in war. The sole exception is a little romance of Moorish chivalry in the eighth century. Though this period had already been pre-empted by Mrs. Manley's "Memoirs of Europe," there is little doubt that Mrs. Haywood was responsible for "The Arragonian Queen: A Secret History" (1724), a peculiar blend of heroic adventures in battle, bullfight, and tournament, with amorous intrigues of the most involved kind.

Prince Albaraizor of Arragon goes to a.s.sist Omar, King of Valencia, against a traitorous foe, and with the help of the young general, Abdelhamar, succeeds in vanquis.h.i.+ng the enemy, though the latter youth is seriously wounded while performing miracles of valor. To reward the conqueror the hand of the Princess Zephalinda is bestowed upon him, but she unfortunately is already enamored of Abdelhamar, whom she had learned to love at a bullfight. But in spite of a repining letter from her constant lover, and in spite of his appearance before her all pale and trembling from his wounds, the Princess refuses to deviate from her duty.

"The next Day the Marriage was celebrated with all the intended Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring to outs.h.i.+ne each other in the Costliness of their Apparel--within the Barriers were all the Flower of the adjoining Kingdoms, drawn thither with a Thirst of Fame, and a Desire to shew their Dexterity. The Arragonian n.o.blemen were the Defenders against all Comers, and were like to have carried away the Prize, behaving themselves with the utmost Skill and Courage, when there appear'd in the Lists a Knight in black Armour, whose whole Air and dexterity in Horsemans.h.i.+p immediately attracted the Eyes of the numerous Spectators; the first Course he made, confirm'd them in the good opinion they had conceiv'd of him: in short, no body was able to stand against him, and he remain'd Conqueror, with the universal Applause of the whole Company.

--He waited for some time, to see if no fresh Challengers would offer themselves; but none appearing, he was led to the Princess's Scaffold, to receive the Reward he had so well merited: He took it with the greatest Submission, but without putting up his Beaver, or discovering who he was, and kissing it with profound Respect, retir'd, without so much as making any obeisance to the King or Prince; and mixing himself with the Crowd of Knights, got off without being discover'd. Every body was surpriz'd at the uncourteous Behaviour of so otherwise accomplish'd a Cavalier, but none could possibly give the least guess at who it should be--the succeeding Diversions soon put him out of every body's Thoughts but Zephalinda's; she well knew it could be none but Abdelhamar, and trembled lest he should have been discovered, fearing his concealing his Recovery, and his disrespectful Carriage towards her Father and her Husband, might have given room to Surmises prejudicial to her Honour: but when watching him with her Eyes, and seeing him get off unfollow'd, or observ'd, she then began afresh to pine at Fate, who could render Abdelhamar Conqueror in every Action that he undertook, and only vanquish'd when he fought in hopes of gaining her."

The Prince and his bride return to their own country to receive the crown. By the most tender a.s.siduities Albaraizor has almost succeeded in gaining the love of his wife when Abdelhamar again intrudes as amba.s.sador to congratulate him on his coronation. Though her old love returns more strongly than ever, the Queen guards her honor well, and insists that her lover marry Selyma, a captive Princess. But that lady, stung by Abdelhamar's indifference, learns to hate him, and out of revenge persuades the King that his wife is unfaithful to him. An indiscreet letter from Abdelhamar confirms his suspicions. He orders both Queen and amba.s.sador cast into prison and by his woes destroys the happiness of the whole court.

The pa.s.sages relating the monarch's love and jealousy are described with a fulness entirely lacking in the tournament scene quoted above, and we may fairly infer that both writer and reader were more deeply interested in affairs of the heart than in feats of arms, however glorious. The emphasis given to love rather than to war in this tale is significant as a contrast to the opposite tendency in such romances of a century later as "Ivanhoe," in which a tournament scene very similar in outline to that in "The Arragonian Queen" is told with the greatest attention to warlike detail, while the love story, though not allowed to languish, is kept distinctly subordinate to the narrative of chivalric adventure.

Mrs. Haywood, however, was too warm-blooded a creature to put aside the interests of the heart for the sake of a barbarous Gothic brawl, and too experienced a writer not to know that her greatest forte lay in painting the tender rather than the sterner pa.s.sions.

In this respect she forms a decided contrast to Defoe, whose men and women are almost never startled out of their matter-of-fact att.i.tude.

His picaresque characters, though outwardly rogues or their female counterparts, have at bottom something of the dissenting parson and cool-headed, middle-aged man of business. Whatever else they may be, they are never love-sick. Pa.s.sion is to them a questionable a.s.set, and if they marry, they are like to have the matter over with in the course of half a paragraph. Eliza Haywood, however, possessed in excess the one gift that Defoe lacked. To the scribbling auth.o.r.ess love was the force that motivated all the world. Crude and conventional as are many of her repeated attempts to a.n.a.lyze the workings of a mind under the sway of soft desires, she nevertheless succeeded now and then in actuating her heroines with genuine emotion. Both romance and realism were woven into the intricate web of the Richardsonian novel, and the contribution of Mrs. Haywood deserves to be remembered if only because she supplied the one element missing in Defoe's masterpieces. Each writer in his day was considered paramount in his or her particular field.[19]

FOOTNOTES [1]

_Les Heros de Roman_, 1664, circulated in MS. and printed in 1688 without the consent of the author. Not included in Boileau's _Works_ until 1713.

[2]

The story of Tellisinda, who to avoid the reproach of barrenness imposes an adopted child upon her husband, but later bearing a son, is obliged to see a spurious heir inherit her own child's estate, was borrowed with slight changes from La Belle a.s.semblee, I, Day 5, and used in Mrs.

Haywood's _Fruitless Enquiry_, (1727).

[3]

_La Pierre philosophale des dames, ou les Caprices de l'amour et du destin_, by Louis Adrien Duperron de Castera, (1723), 12mo.

[4]

_L'Ill.u.s.tre Parisienne_, (1679), variously attributed to Prechac and to Mme de Villedieu, had already been translated as _The Ill.u.s.trious Parisian Maid, or The Secret Amours of a German Prince_, (1680). A synopsis is given by H.E. Chatenet, _Le Roman et les Romans d'une femme de lettres ... Mme de Villedieu_, (Paris, 1911), 253-9.

[5]

I have not seen a copy of the book.

[6]

Mrs. E. Griffith's comment on the work is typical of the tendency to moralize even the amus.e.m.e.nts of the day. See _A Collection of Novels_, (1777), II, 162. "The idea on which this piece is founded, has a good deal of merit in it; as tending to abate envy, and conciliate content; by shewing, in a variety of instances, that appearances are frequently fallacious; that perfect or permanent happiness is not the lot of mortal life; and that peace of mind and rational enjoyment are only to be found in bosoms free from guilt, and from intimate connection with the guilty."

[7]

I have omitted two or three unessential stories in the a.n.a.lysis.