with her to a wood near the Ijavean court. There he
restores their natural shapes and makes a base attack upon her honor. In
the struggle she manages to break his wand, and he in a fury hangs her
up by the hair and is about to scourge her to death, when she is rescued
by a glorious young stranger. The wicked Ochihatou dashes his brains out
against an oak. Her deliverer turns out to be the banished prince of
Hypotofa, who restores to her the lost jewel, weds her, and prosperously
governs their united realms.

The fantastic story, however, was probably little calculated to sell the
book. It was addressed to those who could read between the lines well
enough to discern particular personages in the characters of the
fiction, and especially a certain great man in the figure of the evil
prime minister.

In 1736 when Eliza's novel first appeared, Walpole's defeated Excise
Bill of 1733-4 and his policy of non-interference on the Continent had
made him cordially disliked by the people, and by 1741 his unpopular
ministry, like Lady Mary Montagu's stairs, was "in a declining way." Sir
Robert had never shown himself a friend to letters, and there were not a
few writers, among them one so illustrious as Henry Fielding, who were
ready to seize upon any pretext for attacking him.[6] There can be no
doubt that in the character of the villainous, corrupt, greedy, vain,
lascivious, but plausible Ochihatou Mrs. Haywood intended her readers to
recognize a semblance of the English minister. "Of all the statesmen who
have held high office, it would be impossible to find one who has been
more systematically abused and more unjustly treated than Sir Robert
Walpole.... He is the 'Father of Parliamentary Corruption,' the 'foe to
English liberty,' the 'man who maintained his power by the basest and
most venal tactics'.... Whenever his administration is alluded to in
Parliament a shudder runs through the House ... at the very thought that
one so sordid, so interested, so schemingly selfish, should have
attained to the position of Prime Minister, and have commanded a
following. If we read the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth century,
we see Walpole represented as the meanest and most corrupt of
mankind."[7] Lord Chesterfield says of him: "His prevailing weakness was
to be thought to have a polite and happy turn to gallantry, of which he
had undoubtedly less than any man living; it was his favorite and
frequent subject of conversation, which p