did not begin to do so two years after his death.
Moreover, each of the three writers, Bond, Defoe, and Eliza Haywood,
already identified with the Campbell pamphlets was perfectly capable of
passing off fiction as feigned biography. Both the author of "Memoirs of
a Cavalier" and the scribbler of secret histories had repeatedly used
the device. There is no evidence, however, that William Bond had any
connection with the present work, but a large share of it was almost
certainly done by Defoe and Mrs. Haywood.

The former had died full of years on 26 April, 1731, about a year before
the "Secret Memoirs" was published. It is possible, however, that he may
have assembled most of the material for the book and composed a number
of pages. The inclusion of his "Friendly Daemon" makes this suspicion
not unlikely. And furthermore, certain anecdotes told in the first
section, particularly in the first eighty pages, are such stories as
would have appealed to Defoe's penchant for the uncanny, and might well
have been selected by him. The style is not different from that of
pieces known to be his.

But that the author of "Robinson Crusoe" would have told the "little
History" of the young woman without a fortune who obtains the husband
she desires by means of a magic cake (p. 86) is scarcely probable, for
the story is a sentimental tale that would have appealed to love-sick
Lydia Languishes. As far as we know, Defoe remained hard-headed to the
last. But Mrs. Haywood when she was not a scandal-monger, was a
sentimentalist. The story would have suited her temperament and the
tastes of her readers. It is told so much in her manner that one could
swear that the originator of the anecdote was _aut Eliza, aut diabola_.
A few pages further on (p. 104) appears the incident of a swaggerer who
enters the royal vault of Westminster Abbey at dead of night on a wager,
and having the tail of his coat twitched by the knife he has stuck in
the ground, is frightened into a faint--a story which Mrs. Haywood later
retold in different words in her "Female Spectator."[11] The "Secret
Memoirs" further informs us by a casual remark of Mr. Campbell's that
Eliza Haywood was well acquainted with the seer.

"Sometimes, when surrounded by my Friends, such as Anthony Hammond,
Esq; Mr. Philip Horneck, Mr. Philips, Mr.----, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs.
Fowk, Mrs. Eliza Haywood, and other celebrated Wits, of which my
House, for some Years has been the general Ren