“The noted Mrs. H—–­ d, author of four volumes of novels well known, and other romantic performances, is the reputed author of this pretended letter; which was privately conveyed to the shops, no publisher caring to appear in it:  but the government, less scrupulous, took care to make the piece taken notice of, by arresting the female veteran we have named; who has been some weeks in custody of a messenger, who also took up several pamphlet-sellers, and about 800 copies of the book; which last will now probably be rescued from a fate they might otherwise have undergone, that of being turned into waste-paper, ... by the famous fiery nostrum formerly practised by the physicians of the soul in Smithfield, and elsewhere; and now as successfully used in treasonable, as then in heretical cases.”

This unceremonious handling of the “female veteran,” in marked contrast to the courteous, though not always favorable treatment of Mrs. Haywood’s legitimate novels, suggests the possibility that even the reviewers were ignorant of the authorship of “The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy” (1753) and “The Invisible Spy” (1755).  Twenty years later, in fact, a writer in the “Critical Review” used the masculine pronoun to refer to the author of “Betsy Thoughtless.”  It is quite certain that Mrs. Haywood spent the closing years of her life in great obscurity, for no notice of her death appeared in any one of the usual magazines.  She continued to publish until the end, and with two novels ready for the press, died on 25 February, 1756.[33]

“In literature,” writes M. Paul Morillot, “even if quality is wanting, quantity has some significance,” and though we may share Scott’s abhorrence for the whole “Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe” of novels, we cannot deny the authoress the distinction accorded her by the “Biographia Dramatica” of being—­for her time, at least—­“the most voluminous female writer this kingdom ever produced.”  Moreover, it is not Richardson, the meticulous inventor of the epistolary novel, but the past-mistress of sensational romance who is credited with originating the English domestic novel.  Compared with the delicate perceptions and gentle humor of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, Mrs. Haywood’s best volumes are doubtless dreary enough, but even if they only crudely foreshadow the work of incomparably greater genius, they represent an advance by no means slight.  From “Love in Excess” to “Betsy Thoughtless” was a step far more difficult than from the latter novel to “Evelina.”  As pioneers, then, the author of “Betsy Thoughtless” and her obscurer contemporaries did much to prepare the way for the notable women novelists who succeeded them.  No modern reader is likely to turn to the “Ouida” of a bygone day—­as Mr. Gosse calls her—­for amusement or for admonition, but the student of the period may find that Eliza Haywood’s seventy or more books throw an interesting sidelight upon public taste and the state of prose fiction at a time when the half created novel was still “pawing to get free his hinder parts.”