y to finish; that she revised the material already written,
supplemented it with new and old matter of her own, composed a packet of
Original Letters, and sent the volume to press. The origin of the
"Appendix, by Way of Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel" remains unknown,
and any theory about the authorship of the "Secret Memoirs" must be
regarded in last analysis as largely conjectural.[11a]

Though the author of the original "Life and Adventures" has received
most of the credit due to Campbell's biographer, Mrs. Haywood, as we
have seen, was not less active in exploiting the deaf and dumb
gentleman. Her "Spy upon the Conjurer" was fubbed off upon the public as
often as Defoe's earlier volume, and neither writer could claim any
advantage over the other from his second and slighter contribution. Each
held successfully his own coign of vantage. Eliza Haywood, in
contemporary opinion, outranked Defoe almost as far as an interpreter of
the heart as he surpassed her in concocting an account of a new marvel
or a tale of strange adventure. The arbitress of the passions indeed
wrote nothing to compare in popularity with "Robinson Crusoe," but
before 1740 her "Love in Excess" ran through as many editions as "Moll
Flanders" and its abridgments, while "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate
Mistress" had been reprinted three times separately and twice with her
collected novels before a reissue of Defoe's "Fortunate Mistress" was
undertaken. When in 1740 Applebee published a new edition of "Roxana,"
he had it supplemented by "a continuation of nearly one hundred and
fifty pages, many of which are filled with rubbish about women named
Cleomira and Belinda."[12] Here again Mrs. Haywood's red herring crossed
the trail of Defoe, for oddly enough the sheets thus accurately
characterized were transcribed word for word from Eliza's second novel,
"The British Recluse." At the point where the heroine swallows a
sleeping potion supposing it poison, faints, and is thought to be dead,
the narrative breaks off abruptly with the words:

"Though the History of Cleomira and Belinda's Misfortunes, may be
thought foreign to my Affairs ... yet it is absolutely necessary I
should give it a Place, because it is the Source, or Spring, of many
strange and uncommon Scenes, which happened to me during the remaining
Part of my Life, and which I cannot give an Account of without"
...[13]

The pages which follow relate how Roxana became reconciled to her