ty the Weakness of Humanity and Lethargy of Reason,
which at some unguarded Hours, steals on the Souls of even the wisest
Men; and tho' I shou'd find, in the Course of your Papers, all the
little Inadvertencies of my own Life recorded, I am sensible it will be
done in such a Manner as I cannot but approve."

No particular intimacy between the author and the bookseller can be
inferred from this extravagant but conventional flattery. The
interpretation of what Mrs. Haywood terms inadvertencies--a word almost
invariably used in her writings as a euphemism--is a more difficult
problem, for definite evidence of the authoress' gallantries is entirely
lacking. But however damaging to herself her frankness may have been,
there was little in the production to arouse the ire of Pope. The only
instance in which the maligned novelist may have intended to show her
resentment was in the Preface to her tragedy "Frederick, Duke of
Brunswick-Lunenburgh" (1729) where with veiled sarcasm she confessed
herself "below the Censure of the Gyant-Criticks of this Age."

Although Mrs. Haywood was evidently not responsible for the inclusion of
her tale in "The Female Dunciad," and although the piece itself was
entirely innocuous, her daring to raise her head even by accident
brought down upon her another scurrilous rebuke, not this time from the
poet himself, but from her former admirer, Richard Savage. In "An Author
to be Let" (1732) Pope's jackal directed against the members of a
supposed club of dunces, presided over by James Moore-Smith and
including Theobald, Welsted, Curll, Dennis, Cooke, and Bezaleel Morris,
a tirade of abuse, in which "the divine Eliza" came in for her full
share of vituperation.

"When Mrs. Haywood ceas'd to be a Strolling Actress, why might not the
Lady (tho' once a Theatrical Queen) have subsisted by turning
Washer-woman? Has not the Fall of Greatness been a frequent Distress
in all Ages? She might have caught a beautiful Bubble as it arose from
the Suds of her Tub, blown it in Air, seen it glitter, and then break!
Even in this low Condition, she had play'd with a Bubble, and what
more, is the Vanity of human Greatness? She might also have consider'd
the sullied Linnen growing white in her pretty red Hands, as an Emblem
of her Soul, were it well scoured by Repentance for the Sins of her
Youth: But she rather chooses starving by writing Novels of Intrigue,
to teach young Heiresses the Art of runn