The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood | Page 7

beginning of her career had put a romance, "The Lover's Week," under the protection of the famous Mrs. Manley. Between 1720 and 1730 Mrs. Haywood wrote, beside plays and translations, thirty-eight works of her own composing, one in two stout volumes and several in two or more parts. If we may judge by the number and frequency of editions, most of the indefatigable scribbler's tales found a ready sale, while the best of them, such as "Idalia" (1723), "The Fatal Secret" (1724), "The Mercenary Lover" (1726), "The Fruitless Enquiry" and "Philidore and Placentia" (1727), gained for her not a little applause.
Nor was the young adventuress in letters unhailed by literary men. Aaron Hill immediately befriended her by writing an epilogue for her first play and another of Hill's circle, the irresponsible Richard Savage, attempted to "paint the Wonders of Eliza's Praise" in verses prefixed to "Love in Excess" and "The Rash Resolve" (1724).[21]
Along with Savage's first complimentary poem were two other effusions, in one of which an "Atheist to Love's Power" acknowledged his conversion through the force of Eliza's revelation of the tender passion, while the other expressed with less rapture the same idea. But it remained for James Sterling, the friend of Concanen, to state most vigorously the contemporary estimate of Mrs. Haywood and her early writings.[22] "Great Arbitress of Passion!" he exclaims,
"Persuasion waits on all your bright Designs, And where you point the varying Soul inclines: See! Love and Friendship, the fair Theme inspires We glow with Zeal, we melt in soft Desires! Thro' the dire Labyrinth of Ills we share The kindred Sorrows of the gen'rous Pair; Till, pleas'd, rewarded Vertue we behold, Shine from the Furnace pure as tortur'd Gold:"
of _Love in Excess_,
Part II, and at the front of each successive
edition, have never been reprinted. [Transcriber's note: wording in original.] A specimen of his praise follows,
"Thy Prose in sweeter Harmony refines, Than Numbers flowing thro' the Muse's Lines; What Beauty ne'er could melt, thy Touches fire, And raise a Musick that can Love inspire; Soul-thrilling Accents all our Senses wound, And strike with Softness, whilst they charm with Sound! When thy Count pleads, what Fair his Suit can fly? Or when thy Nymph laments, what Eyes are dry? Ev'n Nature's self in Sympathy appears, Yields Sigh for Sigh, and melts in equal Tears; For such Descriptions thus at once can prove The Force of Language, and the Sweets of Love. You sit like Heav'n's bright Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles-- Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man, First Learning's base Monopoly began; He knew your Genius, and refus'd his Books, Nor thought your Wit less fatal than your Looks. Read, proud Usurper, read with conscious Shame, Pathetic _Behn_, or _Mauley's_ greater Name; Forget their Sex, and own when Haywood writ, She clos'd the fair Triumvirate of Wit; Born to delight as to reform the Age, She paints Example thro' the shining Page; Satiric Precept warms the moral Tale, And Causticks burn where the mild Balsam fails; [_sic_] A Task reserv'd for her, to whom 'tis given, To stand the Proxy of vindictive Heav'n!"
Amid the conventional extravagance of this panegyric exist some useful grains of criticism. One of the most clearly expressed and continually reiterated aims of prose fiction, as of other species of writing from time immemorial, was that of conveying to the reader a moral through the agreeable channel of example. This exemplary purpose, inherited by eighteenth century novelists from Cervantes and from the French romances, was asserted again and again in Mrs. Haywood's prefaces,[23] while the last paragraphs of nearly all her tales were used to convey an admonition or to proclaim the value of the story as a "warning to the youth of both sexes." To modern readers these pieces seem less successful illustrations of fiction made didactic, than of didacticism dissolved and quite forgot in fiction, but Sterling and other eulogists strenuously supported the novelist's claim to moral usefulness.[24] The pill of improvement supposed to be swallowed along with the sweets of diversion hardly ever consisted of good precepts and praiseworthy actions, but usually of a warning or a horrible example of what to avoid.[25] As a necessary corollary, the more striking and sensational the picture of guilt, the more efficacious it was likely to prove in the cause of virtue. So in the Preface to "Lasselia" (1723), published to "remind the unthinking Part of