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The incidents in this book are all loosely connected with the amours of Theodore, Prince of Carimania, with various beauties of this court. The chronicle minutely records the means he employed to overcome their scruples, to stifle their jealousies and their reproaches, and finally to extricate himself from affairs of gallantry grown tedious.
The scribbling dame again used the feigned letter as a vehicle for mildly infamous gossip in "Letters from the Palace of Fame. Written by a First Minister in the Regions of Air, to an Inhabitant of this World. Translated from an Arabian Manuscript." Its pretended source and the sham Oriental disguise make the work an unworthy member of that group of feigned Oriental letters begun by G.P. Marana with "L'Espion turc" in 1684, continued by Dufresny and his imitator, T. Brown, raised to a philosophic level by Addison and Steele, and finally culminant in Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes" and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World" . The fourth letter is a well-told Eastern adventure, dealing with the revenge of Forzio who seduces the wife of his enemy, Ben-hamar, through the agency of a Christian slave, but in general the "Letters" are valuable only as they add an atom of evidence to the popularity of pseudo-Oriental material. Eliza Haywood was anxious to give the public what it wanted. She had found a ready market for scandal, and knew that the piquancy of slander was enhanced and the writer protected from disagreeable consequences if her stories were cast in some sort of a disguise. She had already used the obvious ruse of an allegory in the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" and had just completed a feigned history in the "Court of Carimania." The well known "Turkish Spy" and its imitations, or perhaps the recent but untranslated "Lettres Persanes," may have suggested to her the possibility of combining bits of gossip in letters purporting to be translated from the Arabic and written by some supermundane being. The latter part of the device had already been used by Defoe in "The Consolidator." Mrs. Haywood merely added the suggestion of a mysterious Oriental source. She makes no attempt to satirize contemporary society, but is content to retail vague bits of town talk to customers who might be deluded into imagining them of importance. "The new created Vizier," the airy correspondent reports, "might have succeeded better in another Post, than in this, which with so much earnestness he has sollicited. For, notwithstanding the Plaudits he has received from our Princess, and the natural Propensity to State-Affairs, given him by his Saturnine Genius; his Significator Mars promis'd him greater Honours in the Field, than he can possibly attain to in the Cabinet." And so on. Both "Bath-Intrigues" and "Letters from the Palace of Fame" may be classed as romans
The only one of Mrs. Haywood's scandal novels that rivaled the fame of her "Memoirs of a Certain Island" was the notorious "Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Carimania" , a feigned history on a more coherent plan than the allegorical hodge-podge of the former compilation.
From these I propose to compile a very grand Work, which shall not be inferior to Utopia, Carimania, Guttiverania, Art of Flogging, Daily Journal, Epigrams on the Dunciad, or Oratory Transactions." ... Although the author of "Utopia" and "Carimania" was pilloried in good company, she suffered more than she deserved.
Eliza Haywood sustained the largest share of anathema, for not only was she vilified in the poem, but "Haywood's Novels" and the offensive "Court of Carimania" occupied a conspicuous position in the cargo of books carried by the "ass laden with authors" which formed the well-known vignette to the quarto edition of 1729.
Unfortunately the cold breath of scorn, though it may have stunted her genius, could not prevent it from bearing unseasonable fruit. Her contributions to the Duncan Campbell literature, "A Spy upon the Conjurer" and "The Dumb Projector" , in which the romancer added a breath of intrigue to the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the wizard, opened the way for more notorious appeals to the popular taste for personal scandal. In the once well known "Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia" (1725-6) and the no less infamous "Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Carimania" Mrs. Haywood found a fit repertory for daringly licentious gossip of the sort made fashionable reading by Mrs. Manley's "Atalantis." But though the romans
Haywood was credited with an anonymous "Memoirs of Lilliput, octavo, printed in 1727." The full title of the work in question reads, "Memoirs of the Court of Lilliput. Written by Captain Gulliver. Published by Lucas Bennet, with a Preface, shewing how these Papers fell into his hands." The title, indeed, is suggestive of such productions as "The Court of Carimania." In the Preface Mr.
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