hro' the Muse's Lines;
What Beauty ne'er could melt, thy Touches fire,
And raise a Musick that can Love inspire;
Soul-thrilling Accents all our Senses wound,
And strike with Softness, whilst they charm with Sound!
When thy Count pleads, what Fair his Suit can fly?
Or when thy Nymph laments, what Eyes are dry?
Ev'n Nature's self in Sympathy appears,
Yields Sigh for Sigh, and melts in equal Tears;
For such Descriptions thus at once can prove
The Force of Language, and the Sweets of Love.
You sit like Heav'n's bright Minister on High,
Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye,
And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow,
Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below:
The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears,
And sudden burst the involuntary Tears:
Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame,
Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame;
The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles,
Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles--
Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man,
First Learning's base Monopoly began;
He knew your Genius, and refus'd his Books,
Nor thought your Wit less fatal than your Looks.
Read, proud Usurper, read with conscious Shame,
Pathetic _Behn_, or _Mauley's_ greater Name;
Forget their Sex, and own when _Haywood_ writ,
She clos'd the fair Triumvirate of Wit;
Born to delight as to reform the Age,
She paints Example thro' the shining Page;
Satiric Precept warms the moral Tale,
And Causticks burn where the mild Balsam fails; [_sic_]
A Task reserv'd for her, to whom 'tis given,
To stand the Proxy of vindictive Heav'n!"

Amid the conventional extravagance of this panegyric exist some useful
grains of criticism. One of the most clearly expressed and continually
reiterated aims of prose fiction, as of other species of writing from
time immemorial, was that of conveying to the reader a moral through the
agreeable channel of example. This exemplary purpose, inherited by
eighteenth century novelists from Cervantes and from the French
romances, was asserted again and again in Mrs. Haywood's prefaces,[23]
while the last paragraphs of nearly all her tales were used to convey an
admonition or to proclaim the value of the story as a "warning to the
youth of both sexes." To modern readers these pieces seem less
successful illustrations of fiction made didactic, than of didacticism
dissolved and quite forgot in fiction, but Sterling and othe