ll
Euphrosine." The suspiciously representative character of these
assistants may well make us doubt their actuality; and from the style of
the lucubrations, at least, no evidence of a plurality of authors can
readily be perceived. Indeed after the first few numbers we hear nothing
more of them. "Mira" was the pseudonym used by Mrs. Haywood in "The
Wife" (1756), while a periodical called "The Young Lady" began to appear
just before her death under the pen-name of Euphrosine.

Whether written by a Female Spectator Club or by a single authoress, the
essays in purpose, method, and style are evidently imitated from their
famous model. The loose plan and general intention to rectify the
manners of the age allowed the greatest latitude in the choice of
subject matter. In a single paper are jumbled together topics so diverse
as the degradation of the stage, the immoderate use of tea, and the
proper choice of lovers. The duty of periodical essayists to castigate
the follies of the time is graphically represented in the frontispiece
to the second volume, where Apollo, seated on some substantial clouds
and holding in his hand "The Female Spectator," despatches a flying
Mercury, who in spite of the efforts of two beaux with drawn swords and
a belle in _deshabille_, chastises a female figure of Luxuria lolling in
a chariot pulled by one inadequate grasshopper. In the essays themselves
the same purpose led to the censure of gambling, lying, affectation of
youth by the aged, jilts, "Anti-Eternitarians," scandal bearing, and
other petty sins and sinners. For political readers a gentleman
contributes a conversation between a Hanoverian and an English lady, in
which the latter has the best of the argument. An account of Topsy-Turvy
Land satirizes illogical practices in a manner familiar to the readers
of "The Bab Ballads." The few literary papers are concerned with true
and false taste, the delights of reading, Mr. Akenside's "Pleasures of
the Imagination" and the horrors of the same, the outwearing of romance,
and love-letters passed between Augustus Caesar and Livia Drusilla,
which last Mrs. Haywood was qualified to judge as an expert. Essays on
religion and the future life reveal something of the sober touch and
moral earnestness of Johnson, but nothing of his compact and weighty
style. As in the "Spectator," topics are often introduced by a scrap of
conversation by way of a text or by a letter from a correspondent
setting forth some