A less comprehensive survey of current tittle-tattle, perhaps modeled on Mrs. Manley’s “Court Intrigues” (1711), stole forth anonymously on 16 October, 1724, under the caption, “Bath-Intrigues:  in four Letters to a Friend in London,” a title which sufficiently indicates the nature of the work.  Like the “Memoirs of a Certain Island” these letters consist of mere jottings of scandal.  Most probably both productions were from the same pen, though “Bath-Intrigues” has been attributed to Mrs. Manley.[20] Opposite the title-page Roberts, the publisher, advertised “The Masqueraders,” “The Fatal Secret,” and “The Surprise” as by the same author.  One of Mrs. Haywood’s favorite quotations, used by her later as a motto for the third volume of “The Female Spectator,” stands with naive appropriateness on the title-page: 

  “There is a Lust in Man, no Awe can tame,
  Of loudly publishing his Neighbor’s Shame.”

The writer of “Bath-Intrigues,” moreover, did not hesitate to recommend Eliza’s earlier novels to the good graces of scandal-loving readers, for she describes a certain letter as “amorous as Mrs. O—–­ F—–­d’s Eyes, or the Writings of the Author of Love in Excess.”  Most curious of all is the fact that the composer of the four letters, who signs herself J.B., refers en passant to Belinda’s inconstancy to Sir Thomas Worthly, an allusion to the story of the second part of “The British Recluse.”  This reference would indicate either that there was some basis of actuality in the earlier fiction, or that Mrs. Haywood was using imaginary scandal to pad her collection.  However that may be, this second chronique scandaleuse was apparently no less successful, though less renowned, than the first, for a third edition was imprinted during the following March.

The scribbling dame again used the feigned letter as a vehicle for mildly infamous gossip in “Letters from the Palace of Fame.  Written by a First Minister in the Regions of Air, to an Inhabitant of this World.  Translated from an Arabian Manuscript."[21] Its pretended source and the sham Oriental disguise make the work an unworthy member of that group of feigned Oriental letters begun by G.P.  Marana with “L’Espion turc” in 1684, continued by Dufresny and his imitator, T. Brown, raised to a philosophic level by Addison and Steele, and finally culminant in Montesquieu’s “Lettres Persanes” (1721) and Goldsmith’s “Citizen of the World” (1760).[22] The fourth letter is a well-told Eastern adventure, dealing with the revenge of Forzio who seduces the wife of his enemy, Ben-hamar, through the agency of a Christian slave, but in general the “Letters” are valuable only as they add an atom of evidence to the popularity of pseudo-Oriental material.  Eliza Haywood was anxious to give the public what it wanted.  She had found a ready market for scandal, and knew that the piquancy of slander was enhanced and the writer protected from disagreeable consequences if