the first being moralizings on life and manners by a miraculous parrot; and the second a digest of whatever happenings the author could scrape together.  The news of the day was concerned chiefly with the fate of the rebels in the last Stuart uprising and with rumors of the Pretender’s movements.  From many indications Eliza Haywood would seem to have taken a lively interest in the Stuart cause, but certainly she had no exceptional facilities for reporting the course of events, and consequently her budget of information was often stale or filled with vague surmises.  But she did not overlook the opportunity to narrate con amore such pathetic incidents as the death of Jemmy Dawson’s sweetheart at the moment of his execution, later the subject of Shenstone’s ballad.  The vaporizings of the parrot were also largely inspired by the trials of the rebels, but the sagacious bird frequently drew upon such stock subjects as the follies of the gay world, the character of women, the unreliability of venal praise and interested personal satire, and the advantages of making one’s will—­the latter illustrated by a story.  Somewhat more unusual was a letter from an American Poll, representing how much it was to the interest of England to preserve, protect, and encourage her plantations in the New World, and complaining of the tyranny of arbitrary governors.  But the essay parts of “The Parrot” are not even equal to “The Female Spectator” and deserve no lightening of the deep and speedy oblivion cast upon them.

Besides her periodical essays Mrs. Haywood wrote during her declining years several conduct books, which, beyond showing the adaptability of her pen to any species of writing, have but small importance.  One of them, though inheriting something from Defoe, owed most to the interest in the servant girl heroine excited by Richardson’s first novel.  No sociologist has yet made a study of the effect of “Pamela” upon the condition of domestics, but the many excellent maxims on the servant question uttered by Lord B——­ and his lady can hardly have been without influence upon the persons of the first quality who pored over the volumes.  In popular novels, at any rate, abigails and scullions reigned supreme.  In 1752 the “Monthly Review” remarked of a recent work of fiction, “The History of Betty Barnes,” that it seemed “chiefly calculated for the amusement of a class of people, to whom the Apprentice’s Monitor, or the Present for a servant maid might be recommended to much better purpose,” but the reviewer’s censure failed to quell the demand for romances of the kitchen.  Mrs. Haywood, however, might have approved of his recommendation, since she happened to be the author of the little manual of household science especially urged upon the females below stairs.