penetration was necessary to see in his character a picture of the royal
George himself. A tradition not well authenticated but extremely
probable states that printer and publisher were taken up in consequence
of this daring scandal.

But more important in its effect upon the author's fortunes than any
action of the outraged government was the resentment which her
defamation of certain illustrious persons awakened in the breast of the
dictator of letters. In chosing [Transcriber's note: sic] to expose in
the character of her chief heroine, Ismonda, the foibles of Mrs.
Henrietta Howard, the neighbor of Pope, the friend of Swift and
Arbuthnot, and the admired of Lord Peterborough, Mrs. Haywood made
herself offensive in the nostrils of the literary trio. The King's
mistress, later the Countess of Suffolk, conducted herself with such
propriety that her friends affected to believe that her relations with
her royal lover were purely platonic, and they naturally failed to
welcome the chronicle of her amours and the revelation of the slights
which George II delighted to inflict upon her. Swift described the
writer of the scandal as a "stupid, infamous, scribbling woman";[24]
Peterborough writing to Lady Mary Montagu in behalf of his friend, the
English Homer, sneered at the "four remarkable poetesses and scribblers,
Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Haywood, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Ben [_sic_]";[25]
and Pope himself pilloried the offender to all time in his greatest
satire.

FOOTNOTES
[1]
_Monthly Review_, I, 238. July, 1749.

[2]
Mme de Villedieu, _Annales galantes de Grece_ and _Les exiles de la cour
d'Auguste_. Mme Durand-Bedacier, _Les belles Grecques, ou l'histoire des
plus fameuses courtisanes de la Grece._

[3]
B.M. Catalogue.

[4]
A. Lang, _History of English Literature_ (1912), 458. See _ante_, p. 25.

[5]
Re-issued as _The Unfortunate Princess, or, the Ambitious Statesman_,
1741.

[6]
J.E. Wells, _Fielding's Political Purpose in Jonathan Wilde_, PMLA,
XXVIII, No. I, pp. 1-55. March, 1913. See also _The Secret History of
Mama Oello_, 1733. "The Curaca Robilda's Character [i.e. Sir Robert
Walpole's] will inform you that there were Evil Ministers even amongst
the simple Indians" ... and _The Statesman's Progress: Or, Memoirs of
the Life, Administration, and Fall of Houly Chan, Primier Minister to
Abensader, Emperor of China_ (1733).

[7]
A.C. Ewald, _Sir Robert Walpole_ (1878), 444.

[8]
A.C. Ewald, _Sir Robert W