of a Lady Lately arriv'd from Bengall" (1727). The scene might equally
well have been laid in the Isle of Wight, but Bengal on the title-page
doubtless served to whet the curiosity of readers.

Gasper, secretly affianced to Cleomelia, is conveyed out of Bengal by an
avaricious father to prevent him from marrying, and she, believing him
unfaithful, gives her hand to the generous Heartlove. Informed of the
truth by a letter from her lover announcing his speedy return, she
boards a ship bound for England, leaving her husband and lover to fight
a duel in which Heartlove falls. Meanwhile the heroine is shipwrecked,
finds a new suitor in the ship's captain, and hearing of her husband's
death and of Gasper's marriage to a Spanish lady, marries the captain.
Hardly has he departed on his first voyage, when the still faithful
Gasper returns to claim her, only to find her again the bride of
another. In despair he goes to England, and when her second husband is
lost at sea, she follows to reward his constancy.

Cleomelia's generosity does not seem to be as notable as the sub-title
would indicate, but the story was evidently intended to illustrate
virtues exalted to a high romantic level.

With the same end in view Mrs. Haywood attempted an even loftier flight
into the empyrean of romance, with the result that "Philidore and
Placentia: or, L 'Amour trop Delicat" (1727) is more conventional and
stilted than any other work from her pen. It imitates closely the heroic
French romances, both in the inflated style and elaborate regard for the
tender passion, and in the structure of the plot with little histories
of the principal characters interspersed at intervals throughout the
story. In substance the tale is simply a mosaic of romantic adventures,
though some of the hero's wanderings in the desert after being marooned