“Philidore and Placentia” is one of the few novels by Mrs. Haywood that do not pretend to a moral purpose.  Realism needed some justification, for realism at the time almost invariably meant a picture of vice and folly, and an author could not expose objectionable things except in the hope that they would lessen in fact as they increased in fiction.  But in spite of the disapproval sometimes expressed for fables on the ground of their inherent untruth, idealistic romances were generally justified as mirrors of all desirable virtues.  Pious Mrs. Penelope Aubin wrote no other kind of fiction, though she sometimes admitted a deep-dyed villain for the sake of showing his condign punishment at the hands of providence.  It was perhaps due to the sale of this lady’s novels, largely advertised toward the end of 1727 and apparently very successful, that Mrs. Haywood was encouraged to desert her favorite field of exemplary novels showing the dangerous effects of passion for an excursion into pure romance.  That she found the attempt neither congenial nor profitable may be inferred from the fact that it was not repeated.

If the highly imaginary romances suffered from an excess of delicacy, certain other tales by Mrs. Haywood overleaped decency as far on the other side.  The tendency of fiction before Richardson was not toward refinement.  The models, French and Spanish, which writers in England found profit in imitating, racked sensationalism to the utmost degree by stories of horrible and perverted lust.  All the excitement that could be obtained from incest, threatened, narrowly averted, or actually committed, was offered to eager readers.  Usually, as in Defoe’s “Moll Flanders” or Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” ignorance of birth was an essential element in the plot.  A story of this type in which the catastrophe is prevented by a timely discovery of the hero’s parentage, is “The Force of Nature:  or, the Lucky Disappointment” (1725).

Felisinda, daughter of Don Alvario of Valladolid, falls in love with a dependent of her father’s named Fernando, who returns her passion, but when by a dropped letter she reveals their mutual tenderness, her father becomes exceedingly disordered and threatens to marry her out of hand to Don Carlos, who had long solicited the match.  That generous lover, however, refuses to marry her against her will.  The disappointment proves mortal to Don Alvario, who leaves his estate to Felisinda and Fernando equally, provided they do not marry each other.  Felisinda is committed to the care of an abbess named Berinthia, but by the aid of a probationer, Alantha, the lovers manage to correspond.  They agree that Fernando shall convert his moiety to ready money, convey it to Brussels, and there await Felisinda, whose escape he entrusts to a friend, Cleomas.  Alantha, meantime, has fallen in love with Fernando, and substitutes herself for Felisinda.  Cleomas in conducting the supposed mistress of his friend to the nearest port falls under