there is nothing like Fielding's ingenious linking of
events and careful preparation for the catastrophe, nor did Mrs. Haywood
make much out of the hint of unconscious incest and the foundling motif
which her book has in common with "Tom Jones." Occasionally also she
cannot refrain from inserting a bit of court gossip or an amorous page
in her warmest manner, but the number of intercalated stories is small
indeed compared to that in a romance like "Love in Excess," and they are
usually dismissed in a few paragraphs. Here for the first time the
author has shown some ability to subordinate sensational incident to the
needs of the main plot.

When Mrs. Haywood's inclination or necessities led her back to the novel
four years later, she produced a work upon a still more consistent, if
also more artificial plan than any of her previous attempts. "Life's
Progress through the Passions: or, the Adventures of Natura" avowedly
aims to trace the workings of human emotion. The author's purpose is to
examine in "what manner the passions operate in every stage of life, and
how far the constitution of the _outward frame_ is concerned in the
emotions of the _internal faculties_," for actions which we might admire
or abhor "would lose much of their _eclat_ either way, were the secret
springs that give them motion, seen into with the eyes of philosophy and
reflection." Natura, a sort of Everyman exposed to the variations of
passion, is not the faultless hero of romance, but a mere ordinary
mortal. Indeed, the writer declares that she is "an enemy to all
_romances, novels_, and whatever carries the air of them ... and as it
is a _real_, not _fictitious_ character I am about to present, I think
myself obliged ... to draw him such as he was, not such as some sanguine
imaginations might wish him to have been."

The survey of the passions begins with an account of Natura's birth of
well-to-do but not extraordinary parents, his mother's death, and his
father's second marriage, his attack of the small-pox, his education at
Eton, and his boyish love for his little play-mate, Delia. Later he
becomes more seriously compromised with a woman of the streets, who
lures him into financial engagements. Though locked up by his displeased
father, he manages to escape, finds his lady entertaining another
gallant, and in despair becomes a regular vagabond. Just as he is about
to leave England, his father discovers him and sends him to make the
grand tour u