the decade when the Hospital was being constructed mention of foundlings on title-pages became especially common.  A pamphlet called “The Political Foundling” was followed by the well-known “Foundling Hospital for Wit and Humour” (1743), by Mrs. Haywood’s “Fortunate Foundlings” (1744), by Moore’s popular comedy, “The Foundling” (1748), and last and greatest by “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling” (1749), not to mention “The Female Foundling” (1750).

Eliza Haywood’s contribution to foundling literature relates the history of twins, brother and sister, found by a benevolent gentleman named Dorilaus in the memorable year 1688.  Louisa is of the tribe of Marianne, Pamela, and Henrietta, nor do her experiences differ materially from the course usually run by such heroines.  Reared a model of virtue, she is obliged to fly from the house of her guardian to avoid his importunities.  After serving as a milliner’s apprentice long enough to demonstrate the inviolability of her principles, she becomes mistress of the rules of politeness at the leading courts of Europe as the companion of the gay Melanthe.  Saved from an atrocious rake by an honorable lover, whom she is unwilling to accept because of the humbleness of her station, she takes refuge in a convent where she soon becomes so popular that the abbess lays a plot to induce her to become a nun.  But escaping the religious snare, she goes back to Paris to be claimed by Dorilaus as his real daughter.  Thus every obstacle to her union with her lover is happily removed.

Horatio, meanwhile, after leaving Westminster School to serve as a volunteer in Flanders, has encountered fewer amorous and more military adventures than usually fell to the lot of Haywoodian heroes.  His promising career under Marlborough is terminated when he is taken captive by the French, but he is subsequently released to enter the service of the Chevalier.  He then becomes enamored of the beautiful Charlotta de Palfoy, and in the hope of making his fortune equal to hers, resolves to cast his lot with the Swedish monarch.  In the Saxon campaign he wins a commission as colonel of horse and a comfortable share of the spoils, but later is taken prisoner by the Russians and condemned to languish in a dungeon at St. Petersburg.  After many hardships he makes his way to Paris to be welcomed as a son by Dorilaus and as a husband by his adored Charlotta.

In describing Horatio’s martial exploits Mrs. Haywood may well have learned some lessons from the “Memoirs of a Cavalier.”  The narrative is direct and rapid, and diversified by the mingling of private escapades with history.  Too much is made, of course, of the hero’s personal relations with Charles XII, but that is a fault which few historical novelists have known how to avoid.  The geographical background, as well as the historical setting, is laid out with a precision unusual in her fiction.  The whole map of Europe is the scene of action, and the author speaks as one familiar with foreign travel, though her passing references to Paris, Venice, Vienna, and other cities have not the full vigor of the descriptions in “Peregrine Pickle.”