If, then, a number of anecdotes in the “Secret Memoirs” are suggestive of Mrs. Haywood’s known writings, and if one of them remained in her memory thirteen years later; if the pamphlet carefully alludes to Eliza Haywood as one of the dumb seer’s particular friends, and if it repeats in slightly different form her peculiar account of the dumb projector’s journey into Holland; and if, finally, the book contains a series of letters to Campbell from fictitious correspondents fashioned on the last already used by her, we may conclude that in all likelihood the authoress whose name had previously been associated with Duncan Campbell literature was again concerned in writing or revising this latest work.  At least a cautious critic can say that there is no inherent improbability in the theory that Defoe with journalistic instinct, thinking that Campbell’s death in 1730 might stimulate public interest in the wizard, had drafted in the rough the manuscript of a new biography, but was prevented by the troubles of his last days from completing it; that after his death the manuscript fell into the hands of Mrs. Haywood, or perhaps was given to her by the publishers Millan and Chrichley to finish; that she revised the material already written, supplemented it with new and old matter of her own, composed a packet of Original Letters, and sent the volume to press.  The origin of the “Appendix, by Way of Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel” remains unknown, and any theory about the authorship of the “Secret Memoirs” must be regarded in last analysis as largely conjectural.[11a]

Though the author of the original “Life and Adventures” has received most of the credit due to Campbell’s biographer, Mrs. Haywood, as we have seen, was not less active in exploiting the deaf and dumb gentleman.  Her “Spy upon the Conjurer” was fubbed off upon the public as often as Defoe’s earlier volume, and neither writer could claim any advantage over the other from his second and slighter contribution.  Each held successfully his own coign of vantage.  Eliza Haywood, in contemporary opinion, outranked Defoe almost as far as an interpreter of the heart as he surpassed her in concocting an account of a new marvel or a tale of strange adventure.  The arbitress of the passions indeed wrote nothing to compare in popularity with “Robinson Crusoe,” but before 1740 her “Love in Excess” ran through as many editions as “Moll Flanders” and its abridgments, while “Idalia:  or, the Unfortunate Mistress” had been reprinted three times separately and twice with her collected novels before a reissue of Defoe’s “Fortunate Mistress” was undertaken.  When in 1740 Applebee published a new edition of “Roxana,” he had it supplemented by “a continuation of nearly one hundred and fifty pages, many of which are filled with rubbish about women named Cleomira and Belinda."[12] Here again Mrs. Haywood’s red herring crossed the trail of Defoe, for oddly enough the sheets thus accurately characterized were transcribed word for word from Eliza’s second novel, “The British Recluse.”  At the point where the heroine swallows a sleeping potion supposing it poison, faints, and is thought to be dead, the narrative breaks off abruptly with the words: