One of the most lively is a story told to show the inevitable unhappiness of a marriage between persons of different sects.  The husband, a High Church man, and the wife, of Presbyterian persuasion, were happy enough during the first months of married life, “tho’ he sometimes expressed a Dissatisfaction at being denied the Pleasure of leading her to Westminster-Abbey, for he would hear no Divine Service out of a Cathedral, and she was no less troubled that she could not prevail with him to make his Appearance with her at the Conventicle.”  Consequently when their first child was born, they were unable to agree how the boy was to be baptized.  “All their Discourse was larded with the most piquant Reflections,” but to no purpose.  The father insisted upon having his own way, but Amonia, as his consort was not inappropriately named, was no less stubborn in her detestation of lawn sleeves, and on the eve of the christening had the ceremony privately performed by her own minister.  When the bishop and the guests were assembled, she announced with “splenetic Satisfaction” that the child had already been “made a Christian” and that his name was John.  The astonished husband lapsed into an “adequate rage,” and though restrained by the company from doing an immediate violence to his help-mate, was permanently estranged from her through his resentment.  Two other stories from “The Female Spectator” were quoted by Dr. Nathan Drake in his “Gleaner.”

In her bold attempt to rival Addison upon his own ground Mrs. Haywood was more than moderately successful in the estimation of many of her contemporaries.  Rambling and trite as are the essays in her periodical, their excellent intentions, at least, gained them a degree of popularity.  A writer in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for December, 1744, applauding the conspicuous merit of the “fair philosophers in virtue’s cause,” declared that

  “Were your great predecessor yet on earth,
  He’d be the first to speak your page’s worth,
  There all the foibles of the fair you trace;
  There do you shew your sex’s truest grace;
  There are the various wiles of man display’d,
  In gentle warnings to the cred’lous maid;
  Politely pictur’d, wrote with strength and ease,
  And while the wand’rer you reclaim, you please.... 
  Women, the heart of women best can reach;
  While men from maxims—­you from practice teach.”

The latter part of the panegyric shows that the fair romancer had not been entirely smothered in the fair philosopher and moral essayist.

Perhaps encouraged by the success of “The Female Spectator” to publish more frequently, or actuated by a desire to appeal to the public interest in the political excitement of 1745-6, Mrs. Haywood next attempted to combine the periodical essay with the news-letter, but the innovation evidently failed to please.  “The Parrot, with a Compendium of the Times” ran only from 2 August to 4 October, 1746.  The numbers consisted commonly of two parts: