[18] A possible return to scandal-mongering should be noted. Letters from the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Everyman edition, 461.  “You should have given me a key to the Invisible Spy, particularly to the catalogue of books in it.  I know not whether the conjugal happiness of the D. of B. [Duke of Bedford] is intended as a compliment or an irony.”

[19] Gentleman’s Magazine, XXIV, 560, December 1754.

[20] Critical Review, LXV; 236, March 1788.

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

Though Eliza Haywood produced nothing which the world has not willingly let die, yet at least the obituary of her works deserves to be recorded in the history of fiction.  Of the many kinds of writing attempted by her during the thirty-six years of her literary adventuring none, considered absolutely, is superior to the novels of her last period.  “Betsy Thoughtless” contains at once her best developed characters, most extensive plot, and most nearly realistic setting.  But before it was sent to press in 1751, Richardson, Fielding, and Sarah Fielding had established themselves in public favor, and Smollett was already known as their peer.  Even in company with “David Simple” Eliza Haywood’s most notable effort could not hope to shine.  The value, then, of what is, all in all, her best work is greatly lessened by the obvious inferiority of her productions to the masterpieces of the age.  As a writer of amatory romances and scandal novels, on the contrary, Mrs. Haywood was surpassed by none of her contemporaries.  The immense reputation that she acquired in her own day has deservedly vanished, for though her tales undoubtedly helped to frame the novel of manners, they were properly discarded as useless lumber when once the new species of writing had taken tangible form.  Perhaps they are chiefly significant to the modern student, not as revealing now and then the first feeble stirrings of realism, but as showing the last throes of sensational extravagance.  The very extreme to which writers of the Haywoodian type carried breathless adventure, warm intrigue, and soul-thrilling passion exhausted the possibilities of their method and made progress possible only in a new direction.

On the technical development of the modern novel the roman a clef can hardly have exercised a strong influence.  Nor can the lampoons in Mrs. Haywood’s anthologies of scandal be valued highly as attempts to characterize.  To draw a portrait from the life is not to create a character, still less when the lines are distorted by satire.  But the caricaturing of fine ladies and gentlemen cannot have been without effect as a corrective to the glittering atmosphere of courtly life that still permeated the pages of the short, debased romances.  The characters of the scandal novels were still princes and courtiers, but their exploits were more licentious than the lowest