a rake, but rather a romantic tenderness that inclines lovely woman to stoop to folly.  From the world of Lady Mellasin, Harriot Loveit, Mr. Trueworth, Lord Huntley, Miss Wingman, and other Georgian fashionables that filled the pages of “Betsy Thoughtless” and “Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy” we are transported again to the pale company of Celadon, Alinda, Placentia, Adario, Melanthe.  A framework analogous to that in Le Sage’s “Le Diable Boiteux” takes the place of a plot.  With a belt of invisibility and a recording tablet, Exploralibus is able to collect whatever is affecting, ludicrous, vicious, or otherwise noteworthy in the conversation, actions, and manners of society.  But the shadowy nature of the observer fails to give to the necessarily disconnected incidents even the slight unity possible in the adventures of a lap-dog, a cat, a mouse, a flea, or a guinea.  The contents of a single section of “The Invisible Spy” is enough to show how little thought the author expended upon the sequence of the narrative.

Book VI.  Disguised as her husband, a villain carries off the young Matilda from a masquerade and ruins her.  Alexis sends her away to the country and endeavors to forget her in the pleasures of the town.  The contents of a lady’s pocket:—­a catalogue of imaginary books attributed to the initials of well known persons of quality; two letters, the first from Philetes to excuse his attendance, and the other from Damon making an appointment on the spot where the pocket was found.  The foppish Miss Loiter is contrasted with the well trained children of Amadea.  Narcissa, endeavoring to avoid marriage with the detested Oakly, is entrapped by the brother of her waiting-maid, who though only a common soldier, poses as Captain Pike.

Though the novel exhibits some pictures of life which at the time were considered natural,[19] and some bits of satire rather extravagant than striking, its appearance was a tacit admission of the failing of the author’s powers.  Much experience of human nature Mrs. Haywood had undoubtedly salvaged from her sixty years of buffeting about in the world, but so rapid and complete had been the development of prose fiction during her literary life that she was unable quite to comprehend the magnitude of the change.  Her early training in romance writing had left too indelible a stamp upon her mind.  She was never able to apprehend the full possibilities of the newer fiction, and her success as a novelist was only an evidence of her ability to create the image of a literary form without mastering its technique.  So at the maturity of her powers she lacked a vessel worthy of holding the stores of her experience, and first and last she never exceeded the permutations of sensationalism possible in the short amatory romance.