Man, no Awe can tame,
Of loudly publishing his Neighbor's Shame."

The writer of "Bath-Intrigues," moreover, did not hesitate to recommend
Eliza's earlier novels to the good graces of scandal-loving readers, for
she describes a certain letter as "amorous as Mrs. O--- F---d's Eyes,
or the Writings of the Author of Love in Excess." Most curious of all is
the fact that the composer of the four letters, who signs herself J.B.,
refers _en passant_ to Belinda's inconstancy to Sir Thomas Worthly, an
allusion to the story of the second part of "The British Recluse." This
reference would indicate either that there was some basis of actuality
in the earlier fiction, or that Mrs. Haywood was using imaginary scandal
to pad her collection. However that may be, this second _chronique
scandaleuse_ was apparently no less successful, though less renowned,
than the first, for a third edition was imprinted during the following
March.

The scribbling dame again used the feigned letter as a vehicle for
mildly infamous gossip in "Letters from the Palace of Fame. Written by a
First Minister in the Regions of Air, to an Inhabitant of this World.
Translated from an Arabian Manuscript."[21] Its pretended source and the
sham Oriental disguise make the work an unworthy member of that group of
feigned Oriental letters begun by G.P. Marana with "L'Espion turc" in
1684, continued by Dufresny and his imitator, T. Brown, raised to a
philosophic level by Addison and Steele, and finally culminant in
Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes" (1721) and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the
World" (1760).[22] The fourth letter is a well-told Eastern adventure,
dealing with the revenge of Forzio who seduces the wife of his enemy,
Ben-hamar, through the agency of a Christian slave, but in general the
"Letters" are valuable only as they add an atom of evidence to the
popularity of pseudo-Oriental material. Eliza Haywood was anxious to
give the public what it wanted. She had found a ready market for
scandal, and knew that the piquancy of slander was enhanced and the
writer protected from disagreeable consequences if her stories were cast
in some sort of a disguise. She had already used the obvious ruse of an
allegory in the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" and had just completed a
feigned history in the "Court of Carimania." The well known "Turkish
Spy" and its imitations, or perhaps the recent but untranslated "Lettres
Persanes," may have suggested to her the possibility of com