travels to Plymouth
to see for herself, confronts her guilty partner, and after hearing his
confession, stabs herself. Overcome by remorse and love, Bellcour
imitates her, while Mirtamene "warn'd by the example of Bellcour, that
Interest, Absence, or a new Passion, can make the most seeming constant
Lover false, took a Resolution ever to contemn and hate that betraying
Sex to which she owed her Misfortune and the Sight of such a Disaster as
she had beheld in Alathia."

Not content to retire in disgust from the world, Glicera, the victim of
fickle man in "The City Jilt" (1726) determines to retaliate upon the
lover who has ruined and abandoned her when the death of her father left
her without a fortune or a protector. To secure her revenge she
encourages the advances of a senile alderman, Grubguard by name, whom
she takes infinite delight in deceiving by the help of an ingenious
confidant. Meanwhile an unfortunate lawsuit and the extravagances of his
wife have ruined the false Melladore, who is obliged to mortgage his
estate to Grubguard. Glicera obtains the deeds from the amorous
alderman, and then sends him packing. Melladore is forced to beg of her
sufficient funds to purchase a commission and later dies in battle. With
the fortune she has won from her various lovers Glicera retires from the
world and henceforth shuns the society of men.

In these three tales Mrs. Haywood followed the guidance of her own
experience when it ran counter to the traditions of romance. The
betrayed heroine ought to have died, or at least to have been immured in
a convent to suffer a living death, but instead of acquiescing in their
fate, Belinda and Cleomira, Mirtamene, and Glicera defy the world, and
in the last case prove that the worm may turn.

Among the works of her first decade of authorship a few effusions in
which Mrs. Haywood has succeeded to a degree in motivating,
characterizing, or analyzing the passions of her characters, must be
exempted from the general charge of commonplaceness. The first of these
is "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate Mistress" (1724), the story of a young
Venetian beauty--like Lasselia, her charms can only be imagined not
described--whose varied amorous adventures carry her over most of Italy.

She is sought by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her
father promptly forbids the house. Idalia's vanity is piqued at the loss
of a single adorer, and more from perverseness than from love she
cont