leman's Magazine" for December, 1744,
applauding the conspicuous merit of the "fair philosophers in virtue's
cause," declared that

"Were your great predecessor yet on earth,
He'd be the first to speak your page's worth,
There all the foibles of the fair you trace;
There do you shew your sex's truest grace;
There are the various wiles of man display'd,
In gentle warnings to the cred'lous maid;
Politely pictur'd, wrote with strength and ease,
And while the wand'rer you reclaim, you please....
Women, the heart of women best can reach;
While men from maxims--you from practice teach."

The latter part of the panegyric shows that the fair romancer had not
been entirely smothered in the fair philosopher and moral essayist.

Perhaps encouraged by the success of "The Female Spectator" to publish
more frequently, or actuated by a desire to appeal to the public
interest in the political excitement of 1745-6, Mrs. Haywood next
attempted to combine the periodical essay with the news-letter, but the
innovation evidently failed to please. "The Parrot, with a Compendium of
the Times" ran only from 2 August to 4 October, 1746. The numbers
consisted commonly of two parts: the first being moralizings on life and
manners by a miraculous parrot; and the second a digest of whatever
happenings the author could scrape together. The news of the day was
concerned chiefly with the fate of the rebels in the last Stuart
uprising and with rumors of the Pretender's movements. From many
indications Eliza Haywood would seem to have taken a lively interest in
the Stuart cause, but certainly she had no exceptional facilities for
reporting the course of events, and consequently her budget of
information was often stale or filled with vague surmises. But she did
not overlook the opportunity to narrate _con amore_ such pathetic
incidents as the death of Jemmy Dawson's sweetheart at the moment of his
execution, later the subject of Shenstone's ballad. The vaporizings of
the parrot were also largely inspired by the trials of the rebels, but
the sagacious bird frequently drew upon such stock subjects as the
follies of the gay world, the character of women, the unreliability of
venal praise and interested personal satire, and the advantages of
making one's will--the latter illustrated by a story. Somewhat more
unusual was a letter from an American Poll, representing how much it was
to the interest of England to preserve, protect, and e