When “Justicia” refers to her personal relations with the lord to whom her letter is addressed, her comments are still more in keeping with the acknowledged forte of the lady novelist.  They are permeated with the tenderest emotions.  The author of “Moll Flanders” and “The Fortunate Mistress” might moralize upon the unhappy consequences of love, but he was inclined to regard passion with an equal mind.  He stated facts simply.  Love, in his opinion, was not a strong motive when uncombined with interest.  But Eliza Haywood held the romantic watchword of all for love, and her books are a continual illustration of Amor vincit omnia.  In the present case her words seem to indicate that the passions of love and jealousy so often experienced by her characters were not unfamiliar to her own breast.  Even Duncan Campbell’s predictions were unable to alter her destiny.

“But tho’ I was far enough from disbelieving what he said, yet Youth, Passion, and Inadvertency render’d his Cautions ineffectual.  It was in his Hand-Writing I first beheld the dear fatal Name, which has since been the utter Destruction of my Peace:  It was from him I knew I should be undone by Love and the Perfidy of Mankind, before I had the least Notion of the one, or had seen any of the other charming enough to give me either Pain or Pleasure....  Yet besotted as I was, I had neither the Power of defending myself from the Assaults of Love, nor Thought sufficient to enable me to make those Preparations which were necessary for my future Support, while I had yet the means” ...(p. 13).

“Yet so it is with our inconsiderate Sex!—­To vent a present Passion, —­for the short liv’d Ease of railing at the Baseness of an ungrateful Lover,—­to gain a little Pity,—­we proclaim our Folly, and become the Jest of all who know us.—­A forsaken Woman immediately grows the Object of Derision,—­rallied by the Men, and pointed at by every little Flirt, who fancies herself secure in her own Charms of never being so, and thinks ’tis want of Merit only makes a Wretch.

“For my dear Lord, I am sensible, tho’ our Wounds have been a long time heal’d, there yet remains a Tenderness, which, if touch’d, will smart afresh.—­The Darts of Passion, such as we have felt, make too indeliable an Impression ever to be quite eraz’d;—­they are not content with the eternal Sear they leave on the Reputation ...” (p.76).

These passages are in substance and style after Eliza Haywood’s manner, while the experiences therein hinted at do not differ essentially from the circumstances of her own life.

The various aspects of love and jealousy are also the theme of the second and third parts of “A Spy upon the Conjurer."[8] The two packets of letters were merely imaginary, unless the pseudonymous signatures of some of the missives may have aided contemporary readers to “smoke” allusions to current gossip.  At any rate the references are now happily beyond our power to fathom.