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"This is a republication of a dull, profligate Haywoodian production, in which all the males are rogues, and all the females whores, without a glimpse of plot, fable, or sentiment." In its uncompromising literalness the critic's verdict ranks with the learned Ascham's opinion of the "Morte D'Arthur," except that it has not been superseded.
Victor over a thousand hearts, the Haywoodian male ranges through his glittering sphere, ever ready to fall in or out of love as the occasion demands. D'Elmont of "Love in Excess" possesses a soul large enough to contain both love and fury at almost the same moment. A "brulée" with his spouse merely increases his tenderness for his ward.
The first of these was a translation of the Chevalier de Mouhy's best known work, La Mouche, ou les Aventures et espiègleries facétieuses de Bigand, , and may have been done by Mrs. Haywood herself. The second title certainly savors of a typical Haywoodian production, but I have been unable to find a copy of these alleged publications.
The very extreme to which writers of the Haywoodian type carried breathless adventure, warm intrigue, and soul-thrilling passion exhausted the possibilities of their method and made progress possible only in a new direction.
Thus every obstacle to her union with her lover is happily removed. Horatio, meanwhile, after leaving Westminster School to serve as a volunteer in Flanders, has encountered fewer amorous and more military adventures than usually fell to the lot of Haywoodian heroes.
Myrtano keeps the appointment, muffled in a cloak, and Idalia stabs him by mistake. Overcome by remorse, she dies by the same knife. The motivation of the heroine at the beginning of the story, as Miss Morgan has pointed out, is more elaborate than usual in Haywoodian romance.
The weakest part of the plot is the husband, who is jealous without cause, and equally without reason suddenly reforms. But the character of Violathia is admirably drawn. Unlike the usual heroine of Haywoodian fiction she is superior to circumstance and does not yield her love to the most complacent adjacent male.
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