gman and Lady Speck,
but she gently repulses him and will believe nothing to Jemmy's
disadvantage. She is saved from the rudeness of Celandine by the
intrusion of the gallant's jealous mistress, who faints when foiled in
her attempt to stab Jenny, but later relates the story of her ruin. This
narrative is enough to disgust Lady Speck with her foppish admirer and
to make her sensible of the merits of Mr. Lovegrove. In spite of
Bellpine's industrious slander and in spite of seemingly
incontrovertible proof of Jemmy's inconstancy, Jenny's faith in her
lover remains unshaken. After tedious delays he finally rejoins her in
London, but learning the full extent of Bellpine's treachery, he wounds
him seriously in a duel and is obliged to seek safety in France. After
causing the lovers untold anxiety, the injured man recovers, and Jenny
forestalls her lover's return by joining her friends on their wedding
journey to Paris. There she finds her adored Jessamy now fully sensible
of the merits of his treasure. He does not fail to press for a speedy
termination to their delays, and Jenny is not unwilling to crown his
love by a "happy catastrophe."

Besides being unwarrantably expanded by a wealth of tedious detail, the
novel has little merit as a piece of realism. The society of Lord
Humphreys and Lady Specks was not that in which Eliza Haywood commonly
moved, but she had lived upon the skirts of gay life long enough to
imitate its appearances. Although she exhibits the diamond tassels
sparkling in St. James's sun or the musk and amber that perfume the
Mall, she never penetrates beyond externalities. The sentiments of her
characters are as inflated as those of a Grandison and her picture of
refined society as ridiculously stilted as Richardson's own. The scene
whether in London, Bath, Oxford, or Paris, is described with more
attention to specific detail than appeared in her early romances, but
compared with the setting of "Humphrey Clinker" her glittering world
appears pale and unreal. Mrs. Haywood had so framed her style to suit
the short, rapid tale of passion that she never moved easily in the
unwieldy novel form. Consequently her best narrative is to be found in
the digressions, a chapter or two long, which are equivalent to little
histories upon the old model. In them the progress of the action is
unimpeded, compressed, and at times even sprightly.

Recognizing, perhaps, her inability to cope with a plot of any extent,
Mrs. Ha