Not altogether different is the conception of wedlock in Mrs. Haywood's novels of domestic life written at about the same period, but the pictures there shown are painted in incomparably greater detail, with a fuller appreciation of character, and without that pious didacticism which even the most lively exertions of Eliza Haywood's romancing genius failed to leaven in her essays. FOOTNOTES [1] _Memoirs of a Certain Island_, I, 141. The letter is one of a packet conveyed away by Sylphs much resembling those in _The Rape of the Lock_. [2] Miss C.E. Morgan, _The Novel of Manners_, 72. [3] The author herself describes it in the Preface as "more properly ... a Paraphrase than a Translation." [4] Later _A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter_, 1725. [5] A. Esdaile, _English Tales and Romances_, Introduction, xxxiii. B. [6] Robert Boyle's _Martyrdom of Theodora_, 1687, is thus described by Dr. Johnson. Boswell's _Johnson_, Oxford ed., I, 208. [7] Not to be confused with a periodical entitled _The Tea-Table. To be continued every Monday and Friday_. No. 1-36, 21 February to 22 June, 1724. B.M. (P.P. 5306). [8] _Ximene fearing to be forsaken by Palemon, desires he would kill her._ Quoted by Dyce, _Specimens of British Poetesses_, 1827, p. 186. [9] See _ante_, p. 24. [10] _Monthly Review_, XLVI, 463. April, 1772. CHAPTER VII LATER FICTION: THE DOMESTIC NOVEL No such homogeneity as marked the works of Mrs. Haywood's first decade of authorship can be discovered in the productions of her last fifteen years. The vogue of the short romantic tale was then all but exhausted, her stock of scandal was no longer new, and accordingly she was obliged to grope her way toward fresh fields, even to the barren ground of the moral essay. But besides the letters, essays, and conduct books, and the anonymous pamphlets of doubtful character that may have occupied her pen during this period, she engaged in several experiments in legitimate prose fiction of various sorts, which have little in common except their more considerable length. Although the name of Mrs. Eliza Haywood was not displayed upon the title-pages nor mentioned in the reviews of these novels, the authorship was not carefully concealed and was probably known to the curious. The titles of nearly all of them were mentioned by the "Biographia Dramatica" in the list of the novelist's meritorious works.