rseded. The same animadversion might be urged
against Defoe's "Colonel Jacque" or "The Fortunate Mistress." If Mrs.
Haywood sinned against the standards of the age to come, she was not out
of touch with the spirit of her own generation.

As a writer she knew but one unfailing recipe for popularity: whatever
she touched must be forthwith gilded with passion. The chief _raison
d'etre_ for "The Fair Hebrew: or, a True, but Secret History of Two
Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London" (1729) was to gratify the
prejudices of anti-Semitic readers, yet it is hardly distinguishable
from her sentimental love stories.

The young and gay Dorante, going to the synagogue for a lark, is tempted
by the sight of a fair hand to break into the woman's apartment and to
expose himself to the charms of the beautiful Kesiah. He engages her in
a correspondence, but at their first interview she gives him clearly to
understand that he can gain nothing from her but by marriage. Driven by
his unhappy passion, he complies with her demand, and she becomes a
Church of England woman. But once married, Kesiah is too proud to permit
the concealment that prudence demands. Though his father is sure to
disinherit them, she insists upon revealing the marriage.

Dorante entrusts his small stock of money to his wife's brother,
Abimelech, in order to start him in trade. The Jew goes to Holland with
a woman whom he has saved from religious murder at the hands of a
Levite, and nothing further is heard from him or the money. Imprisoned
by his creditors, Dorante is persuaded by his wife to sign away the
entail of his estate in return for a sum of money. Thereupon she departs
with the gold and a new gallant, leaving her unhappy husband to be
rescued from want by the kindness, of a younger brother. After the poor
solace of hearing that Kesiah and her paramour have been lost at sea, he
dies of a broken heart.[18]

Though Eliza Haywood exhausted nearly every possible bit of
sensationalism that could be extracted from tales of passion, she almost
never made use of the heroic feats of arms which constituted a no less
important resource of the French romances. Her heroes are victors in
love but not in war. The sole exception is a little romance of Moorish
chivalry in the eighth century. Though this period had already been
pre-empted by Mrs. Manley's "Memoirs of Europe," there is little doubt
that Mrs. Haywood was responsible for "The Arragonian Queen: A Secret