passion more lifelike than the heroic romances, and while they avoided the extravagances, they also shunned the voluminousness of the romans a longue haleine.  So the stories related in “La Belle Assemblee” by Mme de Gomez, translated by Mrs. Haywood in 1725 and often reprinted, are nearer the model of Boccaccio’s novelle than of the Scudery romance, both in their directness and in being set in a framework, but the inclusion, in the framework, of long conversations on love, morals, politics, or wit, with copious examples from ancient and modern history, of elegant verses on despair and similar topics, and of such miscellaneous matter as the “General Instructions of a Mother to a Daughter for her Conduct in Life,” showed that the influence of the salon was not yet exhausted.  In the continuation called “L’Entretien des Beaux Esprits” (translated in 1734), however, the elaborate framework was so far reduced that fourteen short tales were crowded into two volumes as compared with eighteen in the four volumes of the previous work.  Writers of fiction were evidently finding brief, unadorned narrative most acceptable to the popular taste.

That the “novels” inserted in these productions had not ceased to breathe the atmosphere of romance is sufficiently indicated by such titles as “Nature outdone by Love,” “The Triumph of Virtue,” “The Generous Corsair,” “Love Victorious over Death,” and “Heroick Love.”  French models of this kind supplied Mrs. Haywood with a mine of romantic plots and situations which she was not slow to utilize.[2] Furthermore, her natural interest in emotional fiction was quickened by these and other translations from the French.  The “Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier” emphasized the teaching of the “Lettres Portugaises,” while “The Lady’s Philosopher’s Stone; or, The Caprices of Love and Destiny” (1725),[3] although claiming to be an “historical novel” in virtue of being set “in the time, when Cromwell’s Faction prevail’d in England,” was almost entirely occupied with the matters indicated in the sub-title.  And in “The Disguis’d Prince:  or, the Beautiful Parisian” (1728) she translated the melting history of a prince who weds a merchant’s daughter in spite of complicated difficulties.[4] Much reading in books of this sort filled Mrs. Haywood’s mind with images of exalted virtue and tremendous vice, and like a Female Quixote, she saw and reported the life about her in terms borrowed from the romances.  So, too, Mrs. Manley had written her autobiography in the character of Rivella.

This romantic turn of mind was not easily laid aside, but the women writers made some progress toward a more direct and natural representation of the passions.  The advance was due partly, no doubt, to a perception of the heroic absurdities of French fiction, but also to the study of Italian novelle and the “Exemplary Novels” of Cervantes.  But even when imitating the compression of these short tales Mrs. Haywood did not always succeed in freeing herself from the “amour trop delicat” of the romantic conventions.  In two short “novels” appended to “Cleomelia:  or, the Generous Mistress” (1727) the robust animalism of the Italian tales comes in sharp contrast with the delicatesse of the French tradition.  “The Lucky Rape:  or, Fate the best Disposer” illustrates the spirit of the novelle.