As Mr. Austin Dobson has pointed out,[5] Mrs. Haywood’s novel is remarkable for its scant allusions to actual places and persons.  Once mention is made of an appointment “at General Tatten’s bench, opposite Rosamond’s pond, in St. James’s Park,” and once a character refers to Cuper’s Gardens, but except for an outburst of unexplained virulence directed against Fielding,[6] there is hardly a thought of the novelist’s contemporaries.  Here is a change indeed from the method of the chronique scandaleuse, and a restraint to be wondered at when we remember the worthies caricatured by so eminent a writer as Smollett.  But even more remarkable is the difference of spirit between “Betsy Thoughtless” and Mrs. Haywood’s earlier and briefer romances.  The young romanciere who in 1725 could write, “Love is a Topick which I believe few are ignorant of ... a shady Grove and purling Stream are all Things that’s necessary to give us an Idea of the tender Passion,"[7] had in a quarter of a century learned much worldly wisdom, and her heroine likewise is too sophisticated to be moved by the style of love-making that warmed the susceptible bosoms of Anadea, Filenia, or Placentia.  One of Betsy’s suitors, indeed, ventured upon the romantic vein with no very favorable results.

“‘The deity of soft desires,’ said he, ’flies the confused glare of pomp and public shews;—­’tis in the shady bowers, or on the banks of a sweet purling stream, he spreads his downy wings, and wafts his thousand nameless pleasures on the fond—­the innocent and the happy pair.’

“He was going on, but she interrupted him with a loud laugh.  ’Hold, hold,’ cried she; ’was there ever such a romantick description?  I wonder how such silly ideas come into your head—­“shady bowers! and purling streams!”—­Heavens, how insipid!  Well’ (continued she), ’you may be the Strephon of the woods, if you think fit; but I shall never envy the happiness of the Chloe that accompanies you in these fine recesses.  What! to be cooped up like a tame dove, only to coo, and bill, and breed?  O, it would be a delicious life, indeed!’"[8]

Thus completely metamorphosed were the heroines of Mrs. Haywood’s maturest fiction.  Betsy Thoughtless is not even the innocent, lovely, and pliable girl typified in Fielding’s Sophia Western.  She is eminently hard-headed, inquisitive, and practical, and is justly described by Sir Walter Raleigh as “own cousin to Roderick Random."[9]

Whether she may be considered also the ancestor of Evelina must briefly be considered.  Dunlop, who apparently originated the idea that “Betsy Thoughtless” might have suggested the plan of Miss Burney’s novel, worked out an elaborate parallel between the plots and some of the chief characters of the two compositions.[10] Both, as he pointed out, begin with the launching of a young girl on the great and busy stage of life in London.  Each heroine has much to endure from the vulgar manners of a Lady Mellasin