[Illustration: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. ]

MEMOIRSOF THEAUTHOROF AVINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 

By WILLIAM GODWIN. 

_LONDON_:PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'SCHURCH. YARD; AND G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1798. 

[Transcriber's Note: corrobation has been corrected to corroboration]

MEMOIRS. 

CHAP. I. 

1759-1775. 

It has always appeared to me, that to give to the public some account ofthe life of a person of eminent merit deceased, is a duty incumbent onsurvivors. It seldom happens that such a person passes through life, without being the subject of thoughtless calumny, or malignantmisrepresentation. It cannot happen that the public at large should beon a footing with their intimate acquaintance, and be the observer ofthose virtues which discover themselves principally in personalintercourse. Every benefactor of mankind is more or less influenced by aliberal passion for fame; and survivors only pay a debt due to thesebenefactors, when they assert and establish on their part, the honourthey loved. The justice which is thus done to the illustrious dead, converts into the fairest source of animation and encouragement to thosewho would follow them in the same carreer. The human species at large isinterested in this justice, as it teaches them to place their respectand affection, upon those qualities which best deserve to be esteemedand loved. I cannot easily prevail on myself to doubt, that the morefully we are presented with the picture and story of such persons as thesubject of the following narrative, the more generally shall we feel inourselves an attachment to their fate, and a sympathy in theirexcellencies. There are not many individuals with whose character thepublic welfare and improvement are more intimately connected, than theauthor of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 

The facts detailed in the following pages, are principally taken fromthe mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the veracity andingenuousness of her habits, perhaps no one that was ever acquaintedwith her, entertains a doubt. The writer of this narrative, when he hasmet with persons, that in any degree created to themselves an interestand attachment in his mind, has always felt a curiosity to be acquaintedwith the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents thathad contributed to form their understandings and character. Impelled bythis sentiment, he repeatedly led the conversation of Mary to topics ofthis sort; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, of a fewdates calculated to arrange the circumstances in his mind. To thematerials thus collected, he has added an industrious enquiry among thepersons most intimately acquainted with her at the different periods ofher life. 

 * * * * *

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759. Her father'sname was Edward John, and the name of her mother Elizabeth, of thefamily of Dixons of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland: her paternalgrandfather was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, and issupposed to have left to his son a property of about 10, 000l. Three ofher brothers and two sisters are still living; their names, Edward, James, Charles, Eliza, and Everina. Of these, Edward only was older thanherself; he resides in London. James is in Paris, and Charles in or nearPhiladelphia in America. Her sisters have for some years been engaged inthe office of governesses in private families, and are both at presentin Ireland. 

I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession;but, about the time of her birth, he resorted, rather perhaps as anamusement than a business, to the occupation of farming. He was of avery active, and somewhat versatile disposition, and so frequentlychanged his abode, as to throw some ambiguity upon the place of herbirth. She told me, that the doubt in her mind in that respect, laybetween London, and a farm upon Epping Forest, which was the principalscene of the five first years of her life. 

Mary was distinguished in early youth, by some portion of that exquisitesensibility, soundness of understanding, and decision of character, which were the leading features of her mind through the whole course ofher life. She experienced in the first period of her existence, but fewof those indulgences and marks of affection, which are principallycalculated to sooth the subjection and sorrows of our early years. Shewas not the favourite either of her father or mother. Her father was aman of a quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternate fits ofkindness and cruelty. In his family he was a despot, and his wifeappears to have been the first, and most submissive of his subjects. Themother's partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system ofgovernment relative to Mary, was characterized by considerable rigour. She, at length, became convinced of her mistake, and adopted a differentplan with her younger daughters. When, in the Wrongs of Woman, Maryspeaks of "the petty cares which obscured the morning of her heroine'slife; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditionalsubmission to orders, which, as a mere child, she soon discovered to beunreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the beingoften obliged to sit, in the presence of her parents, for three or fourhours together, without daring to utter a word;" she is, I believe, tobe considered as copying the outline of the first period of her ownexistence. 

But it was in vain, that the blighting winds of unkindness orindifference, seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary'smind. It surmounted every obstacle; and, by degrees, from a personlittle considered in the family, she became in some sort its directorand umpire. The despotism of her education cost her many a heart-ache. She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of adespot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that, when she feltshe had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, insteadof being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable ofreconciling her to herself. The blows of her father on the contrary, which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead ofhumbling her, roused her indignation. Upon such occasions she felt hersuperiority, and was apt to betray marks of contempt. The quickness ofher father's temper, led him sometimes to threaten similar violencetowards his wife. When that was the case, Mary would often throw herselfbetween the despot and his victim, with the purpose to receive upon herown person the blows that might be directed against her mother. She haseven laid whole nights upon the landing-place near their chamber-door, when, mistakenly, or with reason, she apprehended that her father mightbreak out into paroxysms of violence. The conduct he held towards themembers of his family, was of the same kind as that he observed towardsanimals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, whenhe was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivialreasons, his anger was alarming. Mary was what Dr. Johnson would havecalled, "a very good hater. " In some instance of passion exercised byher father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of heremotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony. In a word, her conductduring her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion ofaffection from her mother, and to hold her father in considerable awe. 

In one respect, the system of education of the mother appears to havehad merit. All her children were vigorous and healthy. This seems verymuch to depend upon the management of our infant years. It is affirmedby some persons of the present day, most profoundly skilled in thesciences of health and disease, that there is no period of human life solittle subject to mortality, as the period of infancy. Yet, from themismanagement to which children are exposed, many of the diseases ofchildhood are rendered fatal, and more persons die in that, than in anyother period of human life. Mary had projected a work upon this subject, which she had carefully considered, and well understood. She has indeedleft a specimen of her skill in this respect in her eldest daughter, three years and a half old, who is a singular example of vigorousconstitution and florid health. Mr. Anthony Carlisle, surgeon, ofSoho-square, whom to name is sufficiently to honour, had promised torevise her production. This is but one out of numerous projects ofactivity and usefulness, which her untimely death has fatallyterminated. 

The rustic situation in which Mary spent her infancy, no doubtcontributed to confirm the stamina of her constitution. She sported inthe open air, and amidst the picturesque and refreshing scenes ofnature, for which she always retained the most exquisite relish. Dollsand the other amusements usually appropriated to female children, sheheld in contempt; and felt a much greater propensity to join in theactive and hardy sports of her brothers, than to confine herself tothose of her own sex. 

About the time that Mary completed the fifth year of her age, her fatherremoved to a small distance from his former habitation, and took a farmnear the Whalebone upon Epping Forest, a little way out of theChelmsford road. In Michaelmas 1765, he once more changed his residence, and occupied a convenient house behind the town of Barking in Essex, eight miles from London. In this situation some of their nearestneighbours were, Bamber Gascoyne, esquire, successively member ofparliament for several boroughs, and his brother, Mr. Joseph Gascoyne. Bamber Gascoyne resided but little on this spot; but his brother wasalmost a constant inhabitant, and his family in habits of the mostfrequent intercourse with the family of Mary. Here Mr. Wollstonecraftremained for three years. In September 1796, I accompanied my wife in avisit to this spot. No person reviewed with greater sensibility, thescenes of her childhood. We found the house uninhabited, and the gardenin a wild and ruinous state. She renewed her acquaintance with themarket-place, the streets, and the wharf, the latter of which we foundcrowded with barges, and full of activity. 

In Michaelmas 1768, Mr. Wollstonecraft again removed to a farm nearBeverley in Yorkshire. Here the family remained for six years, andconsequently, Mary did not quit this residence, till she had attainedthe age of fifteen years and five months. The principal part of herschool-education passed during this period; but it was not to anyadvantage of infant literature, that she was indebted for her subsequenteminence; her education in this respect was merely such, as was affordedby the day-schools of the place, in which she resided. To herrecollections Beverley appeared a very handsome town, surrounded bygenteel families, and with a brilliant assembly. She was surprized, whenshe visited it in 1795, upon her voyage to Norway, to find the realityso very much below the picture in her imagination. 

Hitherto Mr. Wollstonecraft had been a farmer; but the restlessness ofhis disposition would not suffer him to content himself with theoccupation in which for some years he had been engaged, and thetemptation of a commercial speculation of some sort being held out tohim, he removed to a house in Queen's-Row, in Hoxton near London, forthe purpose of its execution. Here he remained for a year and a half;but, being frustrated in his expectations of profit, he, after thatterm, gave up the project in which he was engaged, and returned to hisformer pursuits. During this residence at Hoxton, the writer of thesememoirs inhabited, as a student, at the dissenting college in thatplace. It is perhaps a question of curious speculation to enquire, whatwould have been the amount of the difference in the pursuits andenjoyments of each party, if they had met, and considered each otherwith the same distinguishing regard in 1776, as they were afterwardsimpressed with in the year 1796. The writer had then completed thetwentieth, and Mary the seventeenth year of her age. Which would havebeen predominant; the disadvantages of obscurity, and the pressure of afamily; or the gratifications and improvement that might have flowedfrom their intercourse?

One of the acquaintances Mary formed at this time was with a Mr. Clare, who inhabited the next house to that which was tenanted by her father, and to whom she was probably in some degree indebted for the earlycultivation of her mind. Mr. Clare was a clergyman, and appears to havebeen a humourist of a very singular cast. In his person he was deformedand delicate; and his figure, I am told, bore a resemblance to that ofthe celebrated Pope. He had a fondness for poetry, and was not destituteof taste. His manners were expressive of a tenderness and benevolence, the demonstrations of which appeared to have been somewhat tooartificially cultivated. His habits were those of a perfect recluse. Heseldom went out of his drawing-room, and he showed to a friend of Mary apair of shoes, which had served him, he said, for fourteen years. Maryfrequently spent days and weeks together, at the house of Mr. Clare. 

CHAP. II

1775-1783. 

But a connection more memorable originated about this time, between Maryand a person of her own sex, for whom she contracted a friendship sofervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of hermind. The name of this person was Frances Blood; she was two years olderthan Mary. Her residence was at that time at Newington Butts, a villagenear the southern extremity of the metropolis; and the originalinstrument for bringing these two friends acquainted, was Mrs. Clare, wife of the gentleman already mentioned, who was on a footing ofconsiderable intimacy with both parties. The acquaintance of Fanny, likethat of Mr. Clare, contributed to ripen the immature talents of Mary. 

The situation in which Mary was introduced to her, bore a resemblance tothe first interview of Werter with Charlotte. She was conducted to thedoor of a small house, but furnished with peculiar neatness andpropriety. The first object that caught her sight, was a young woman ofa slender and elegant form, and eighteen years of age, busily employedin feeding and managing some children, born of the same parents, butconsiderably inferior to her in age. The impression Mary received fromthis spectacle was indelible; and, before the interview was concluded, she had taken, in her heart, the vows of an eternal friendship. 

Fanny was a young woman of extraordinary accomplishments. She sung andplayed with taste. She drew with exquisite fidelity and neatness; and, by the employment of this talent, for some time maintained her father, mother, and family, but ultimately ruined her health by herextraordinary exertions. She read and wrote with considerableapplication; and the same ideas of minute and delicate proprietyfollowed her in these, as in her other occupations. 

Mary, a wild, but animated and aspiring girl of sixteen, contemplatedFanny, in the first instance, with sentiments of inferiority andreverence. Though they were much together, yet, the distance of theirhabitation being considerable, they supplied the want of mere frequentinterviews by an assiduous correspondence. Mary found Fanny's lettersbetter spelt and better indited than her own, and felt herself abashed. She had hitherto paid but a superficial attention to literature. She hadread, to gratify the ardour of an inextinguishable thirst of knowledge;but she had not thought of writing as an art. Her ambition to excel wasnow awakened, and she applied herself with passion and earnestness. Fanny undertook to be her instructor; and, so far as related to accuracyand method, her lessons were given with considerable skill. 

It has already been mentioned that, in the spring of the year 1776, Mr. Wollstonecraft quitted his situation at Hoxton, and returned to hisformer agricultural pursuits. The situation upon which he now fixed wasin Wales, a circumstance that was felt as a severe blow to Mary'sdarling spirit of friendship. The principal acquaintance of theWollstonecrafts in this retirement, was the family of a Mr. Allen, twoof whose daughters are since married to the two elder sons of thecelebrated English potter, Josiah Wedgwood. 

Wales however was Mr. Wollstonecraft's residence for little more than ayear. He returned to the neighbourhood of London; and Mary, whose spiritof independence was unalterable, had influence enough to determine hischoice in favour of the village of Walworth, that she might be near herchosen friend. It was probably before this, that she has once or twicestarted the idea of quitting her parental roof, and providing forherself. But she was prevailed upon to resign this idea, and conditionswere stipulated with her, relative to her having an apartment in thehouse that should be exclusively her own, and her commanding the otherrequisites of study. She did not however think herself fairly treated inthese instances, and either the conditions abovementioned, or someothers, were not observed in the sequel, with the fidelity she expected. In one case, she had procured an eligible situation, and every thing wassettled respecting her removal to it, when the intreaties and tears ofher mother led her to surrender her own inclinations, and abandon theengagement. 

These however were only temporary delays. Her propensities continued thesame, and the motives by which she was instigated were unabated. In theyear 1778, she being nineteen years of age, a proposal was made to herof living as a companion with a Mrs. Dawson of Bath, a widow lady, withone son already adult. Upon enquiry she found that Mrs. Dawson was awoman of great peculiarity of temper, that she had had a variety ofcompanions in succession, and that no one had found it practicable tocontinue with her. Mary was not discouraged by this information, andaccepted the situation, with a resolution that she would effect in thisrespect, what none of her predecessors had been able to do. In thesequel she had reason to consider the account she had received assufficiently accurate, but she did not relax in her endeavours. Bymethod, constancy and firmness, she found the means of making hersituation tolerable; and Mrs. Dawson would occasionally confess, thatMary was the only person that had lived with her in that situation, inher treatment of whom she had felt herself under any restraint. 

With Mrs. Dawson she continued to reside for two years, and only lefther, summoned by the melancholy circumstance of her mother's rapidlydeclining health. True to the calls of humanity, Mary felt in thisintelligence an irresistible motive, and eagerly returned to thepaternal roof, which she had before resolutely quitted. The residence ofher father at this time, was at Enfield near London. He had, I believe, given up agriculture from the time of his quitting Wales, it appearingthat he now made it less a source of profit than loss, and being thoughtadvisable that he should rather live upon the interest of his propertyalready in possession. 

The illness of Mrs. Wollstonecraft was lingering, but hopeless. Mary wasassiduous in her attendance upon her mother. At first, every attentionwas received with acknowledgments and gratitude; but, as the attentionsgrew habitual, and the health of the mother more and more wretched, theywere rather exacted, than received. Nothing would be taken by theunfortunate patient, but from the hands of Mary; rest was denied nightor day, and by the time nature was exhausted in the parent, thedaughter was qualified to assume her place, and become in turn herself apatient. The last words her mother ever uttered were, "A littlepatience, and all will be over!" and these words are repeatedly referredto by Mary in the course of her writings. 

Upon the death of Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Mary bid a final adieu to theroof of her father. According to my memorandums, I find her next theinmate of Fanny at Walham Green, near the village of Fulham. Upon whatplan they now lived together I am unable to ascertain; certainly notthat of Mary's becoming in any degree an additional burthen upon theindustry of her friend. Thus situated, their intimacy ripened; theyapproached more nearly to a footing of equality; and their attachmentbecame more rooted and active. 

Mary was ever ready at the call of distress, and, in particular, duringher whole life was eager and active to promote the welfare of everymember of her family. In 1780 she attended the death-bed of her mother;in 1782 she was summoned by a not less melancholy occasion, to attendher sister Eliza, married to a Mr. Bishop, who, subsequently to adangerous lying-in, remained for some months in a very afflictingsituation. Mary continued with her sister without intermission, to herperfect recovery. 

CHAP. III. 

1783-1785. 

Mary was now arrived at the twenty-fourth year of her age. Her project, five years before, had been personal independence; it was nowusefulness. In the solitude of attendance on her sister's illness, andduring the subsequent convalescence, she had had leisure to ruminateupon purposes of this sort. Her expanded mind led her to seek somethingmore arduous than the mere removal of personal vexations; and thesensibility of her heart would not suffer her to rest in solitarygratifications. The derangement of her father's affairs daily becamemore and more glaring; and a small independent provision made forherself and her sisters, appears to have been sacrificed in the wreck. For ten years, from 1782 to 1792, she may be said to have been, in agreat degree, the victim of a desire to promote the benefit of others. She did not foresee the severe disappointment with which an exclusivepurpose of this sort is pregnant; she was inexperienced enough to lay astress upon the consequent gratitude of those she benefited; and she didnot sufficiently consider that, in proportion as we involve ourselves inthe interests and society of others, we acquire a more exquisite senseof their defects, and are tormented with their untractableness andfolly. 

The project upon which she now determined, was no other than that of aday-school, to be superintended by Fanny Blood, herself, and her twosisters. 

They accordingly opened one in the year 1783, at the village ofIslington; but in the course of a few months removed it to NewingtonGreen. Here Mary formed some acquaintances who influenced the futureevents of her life. The first of these in her own estimation, was Dr. Richard Price, well known for his political and mathematicalcalculations, and universally esteemed by those who knew him, for thesimplicity of his manners, and the ardour of his benevolence. The regardconceived by these two persons for each other, was mutual, and partookof a spirit of the purest attachment. Mary had been bred in theprinciples of the church of England, but her esteem for this venerablepreacher led her occasionally to attend upon his public instructions. Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and, as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in theniceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attacheditself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressibledelight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of theimagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than avast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with ananimating soul. When she walked amidst the wonders of nature, she wasaccustomed to converse with her God. To her mind he was pictured as notless amiable, generous and kind, than great, wise and exalted. In fact, she had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religionwas almost entirely of her own creation. But she was not on that accountthe less attached to it, or the less scrupulous in discharging what sheconsidered as its duties. She could not recollect the time when she hadbelieved the doctrine of future punishments. The tenets of her systemwere the growth of her own moral taste, and her religion therefore hadalways been a gratification, never a terror, to her. She expected afuture state; but she would not allow her ideas of that future state tobe modified by the notions of judgment and retribution. From thissketch, it is sufficiently evident, that the pleasure she took in anoccasional attendance upon the sermons of Dr. Price, was not accompaniedwith a superstitious adherence to his doctrines. The fact is, that, asfar down as the year 1787, she regularly frequented public worship, forthe most part according to the forms of the church of England. Afterthat period her attendance became less constant, and in no long time waswholly discontinued. I believe it may be admitted as a maxim, that noperson of a well furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicitsubsection of youth, and is not the zealous partizan of a sect, canbring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermonsand prayers. 

Another of the friends she acquired at this period, was Mrs. Burgh, widow of the author of the Political Disquisitions, a woman universallywell spoken of for the warmth and purity of her benevolence. Mary, whenever she had occasion to allude to her, to the last period of herlife, paid the tribute due to her virtues. The only remaining friendnecessary to be enumerated in this place, is the rev. John Hewlet, nowmaster of a boarding-school at Shacklewel near Hackney, whom I shallhave occasion to mention hereafter. 

I have already said that Fanny's health had been materially injured byher incessant labours for the maintenance of her family. She had alsosuffered a disappointment, which preyed upon her mind. To thesedifferent sources of ill health she became gradually a victim; and atlength discovered all the symptoms of a pulmonary consumption. By themedical men that attended her, she was advised to try the effects of asouthern climate; and, about the beginning of the year 1785, sailed forLisbon. 

The first feeling with which Mary had contemplated her friend, was asentiment of inferiority and reverence; but that, from the operation ofa ten years' acquaintance, was considerably changed. Fanny hadoriginally been far before her in literary attainments; this disparityno longer existed. In whatever degree Mary might endeavour to freeherself from the delusions of self-esteem, this period of observationupon her own mind and that of her friend, could not pass, without herperceiving that there were some essential characteristics of genius, which she possessed, and in which her friend was deficient. Theprincipal of these was a firmness of mind, an unconquerable greatness ofsoul, by which, after a short internal struggle, she was accustomed torise above difficulties and suffering. Whatever Mary undertook, sheperhaps in all instances accomplished; and, to her lofty spirit, scarcely anything she desired, appeared hard to perform. Fanny, on thecontrary, was a woman of a timid and irresolute nature, accustomed toyield to difficulties, and probably priding herself in this morbidsoftness of her temper. One instance that I have heard Mary relate ofthis sort, was, that, at a certain time, Fanny, dissatisfied with herdomestic situation, expressed an earnest desire to have a home of herown. Mary, who felt nothing more pressing than to relieve theinconveniences of her friend, determined to accomplish this object forher. It cost her infinite exertions; but at length she was able toannounce to Fanny that a house was prepared, and that she was on thespot to receive her. The answer which Fanny returned to the letter ofher friend, consisted almost wholly of an enumeration of objections tothe quitting her family, which she had not thought of before, but whichnow appeared to her of considerable weight. 

The judgment which experience had taught Mary to form of the mind of herfriend, determined her in the advice she gave, at the period to which Ihave brought down the story. Fanny was recommended to seek a softerclimate, but she had no funds to defray the expence of such anundertaking. At this time Mr. Hugh Skeys of Dublin, but then residentin the kingdom of Portugal, paid his addresses to her. The state of herhealth Mary considered as such as scarcely to afford the shadow of ahope; it was not therefore a time at which it was most obvious to thinkof marriage. She conceived however that nothing should be omitted, whichmight alleviate, if it could not cure; and accordingly urged her speedyacceptance of the proposal. Fanny accordingly made the voyage to Lisbon;and the marriage took place on the twenty-fourth of February 1785. 

The change of climate and situation was productive of little benefit;and the life of Fanny was only prolonged by a period of pregnancy, whichsoon declared itself. Mary, in the mean time, was impressed with theidea that her friend would die in this distant country; and, shockedwith the recollection of her separation from the circle of her friends, determined to pass over to Lisbon to attend her. This resolution wastreated by her acquaintance as in the utmost degree visionary; but shewas not to be diverted from her point. She had not money to defray herexpences: she must quit for a long time the school, the very existenceof which probably depended upon her exertions. 

No person was ever better formed for the business of education; if it benot a sort of absurdity to speak of a person as formed for an inferiorobject, who is in possession of talents, in the fullest degree adequateto something on a more important and comprehensive scale. Mary had aquickness of temper, not apt to take offence with inadvertencies, butwhich led her to imagine that she saw the mind of the person with whomshe had any transaction, and to refer the principle of her approbationor displeasure to the cordiality or injustice of their sentiments. Shewas occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when shestrongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gavea very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed. Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it wasbarbed by disappointment. Where she expected little, she was not veryrigid in her censure of error. 

But, to whatever the defects of her temper might amount, they were neverexercised upon her inferiors in station or age. She scorned to make useof an ungenerous advantage, or to wound the defenceless. To her servantsthere never was a mistress more considerate or more kind. With childrenshe was the mirror of patience. Perhaps, in all her extensive experienceupon the subject of education, she never betrayed one symptom ofirascibility. Her heart was the seat of every benevolent feeling; andaccordingly, in all her intercourse with children, it was kindness andsympathy alone that prompted her conduct. Sympathy, when it mounts to acertain height, inevitably begets affection in the person towards whomit is exercised; and I have heard her say, that she never was concernedin the education of one child, who was not personally attached to her, and earnestly concerned, not to incur her displeasure. Another eminentadvantage she possessed in the business of education, was that she waslittle troubled with scepticism and uncertainty. She saw, as it were byintuition, the path which her mind determined to pursue, and had a firmconfidence in her own power to effect what she desired. Yet, with allthis, she had scarcely a tincture of obstinacy. She carefully watchedsymptoms as they rose, and the success of her experiments; and governedherself accordingly. While I thus enumerate her more than maternalqualities, it is impossible not to feel a pang at the recollection ofher orphan children!

Though her friends earnestly dissuaded her from the journey to Lisbon, she found among them a willingness facilitate the execution of herproject, when it was once fixed. Mrs. Burgh in particular, supplied herwith money, which however she always conceived came from Dr. Price. Thisloan, I have reason to believe, was faithfully repaid. 

It was during her residence at Newington Green, that she was introducedto the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who was at that time considered asin some sort the father of English literature. The doctor treated herwith particular kindness and attention, had a long conversation withher, and desired her to repeat her visit often. This she firmly purposedto do; but the news of his last illness, and then of his death, intervened to prevent her making a second visit. 

Her residence in Lisbon was not long. She arrived but a short timebefore her friend was prematurely delivered, and the event was fatal toboth mother and child. Frances Blood, hitherto the chosen object ofMary's attachment, died on the twenty-ninth of November 1785. 

It is thus that she speaks of her in her Letters from Norway, writtenten years after her decease. "When a warm heart has received strongimpressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; andthe imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondlyretracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views Ihave seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in everynerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dearfriend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hearher soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. "

CHAP. IV. 

1785-1787. 

No doubt the voyage to Lisbon tended considerably to enlarge theunderstanding of Mary. She was admitted into the best company theEnglish factory afforded. She made many profound observations on thecharacter of the natives, and the baleful effects of superstition. Theobsequies of Fanny, which it was necessary to perform by stealth and indarkness, tended to invigorate these observations in her mind. 

She sailed upon her voyage home about the twentieth of December. On thisoccasion a circumstance occurred, that deserves to be recorded. Whilethey were on their passage, they fell in with a French vessel, in greatdistress, and in daily expectation of foundering at sea, at the sametime that it was almost destitute of provisions. The Frenchman hailedthem, and intreated the English captain, in consideration of hismelancholy situation, to take him and his crew on board. The Englishmanrepresented in reply, that his stock of provisions was by no meansadequate to such an additional number of mouths, and absolutely refusedcompliance. Mary, shocked at his apparent insensibility, took up thecause of the sufferers, and threatened the captain to have him calledto a severe account, when he arrived in England. She finally prevailed, and had the satisfaction to reflect, that the persons in questionpossibly owed their lives to her interposition. 

When she arrived in England, she found that her school had sufferedconsiderably in her absence. It can be little reproach to any one, tosay that they were found incapable of supplying her place. She not onlyexcelled in the management of the children, but had also the talent ofbeing attentive and obliging to the parents, without degrading herself. 

The period at which I am now arrived is important, as conducting to thefirst step of her literary carreer. Mr. Hewlet had frequently mentionedliterature to Mary as a certain source of pecuniary produce, and hadurged her to make trial of the truth of his judgment. At this time shewas desirous of assisting the father and mother of Fanny in an objectthey had in view, the transporting themselves to Ireland; and, as usual, what she desired in a pecuniary view, she was ready to take on herselfto effect. For this purpose she wrote a duodecimo pamphlet of onehundred and sixty pages, entitled, Thoughts on the Education ofDaughters. Mr. Hewlet obtained from the bookseller, Mr. Johnson in St. Paul's Church Yard, ten guineas for the copy-right of this manuscript, which she immediately applied to the object for the sake of which thepamphlet was written. 

Every thing urged Mary to put an end to the affair of the school. Shewas dissatisfied with the different appearance it presented upon herreturn, from the state in which she left it. Experience impressed uponher a rooted aversion to that sort of cohabitation with her sisters, which the project of the school imposed. Cohabitation is a point ofdelicate experiment, and is, in a majority of instances, pregnant withill-humour and unhappiness. The activity and ardent spirit of adventurewhich characterized Mary, were not felt in an equal degree by hersisters, so that a disproportionate share of every burthen attendantupon the situation, fell to her lot. On the other hand, they couldscarcely perhaps be perfectly easy, in observing the superior degree ofdeference and courtship, which her merit extorted from almost every onethat knew her. Her kindness for them was not diminished, but sheresolved that the mode of its exertion in future should be different, tending to their benefit, without intrenching upon her own liberty. 

Thus circumstanced, a proposal was made her, such as, regarding only thesituations through which she had lately passed, is usually termedadvantageous. This was, to accept the office of governess to thedaughters of lord viscount Kingsborough, eldest son to the earl ofKingston of the kingdom of Ireland. The terms held out to her were suchas she determined to accept, at the same time resolving to retain thesituation only for a short time. Independence was the object after whichshe thirsted, and she was fixed to try whether it might not be found inliterary occupation. She was desirous however first to accumulate asmall sum of money, which should enable her to consider at leisure thedifferent literary engagements that might offer, and provide in somedegree for the eventual deficiency of her earliest attempts. 

The situation in the family of lord Kingsborough, was offered to herthrough the medium of the rev. Mr. Prior, at that time one of the undermasters of Eton school. She spent some time at the house of thisgentleman, immediately after her giving up the school at NewingtonGreen. Here she had an opportunity of making an accurate observationupon the manners and conduct of that celebrated seminary, and the ideasshe retained of it were by no means favourable. By all that she saw, she was confirmed in a very favourite opinion of her's, in behalf ofday-schools, where, as she expressed it, "children have the opportunityof conversing with children, without interfering with domesticaffections, the foundation of virtue. "

Though her residence in the family of lord Kingsborough continuedscarcely more than twelve months, she left behind her, with them andtheir connections, a very advantageous impression. The governesses theyoung ladies had hitherto had, were only a species of upper servants, controlled in every thing by the mother; Mary insisted upon theunbounded exercise of her own discretion. When the young ladies heard oftheir governess coming from England, they heard in imagination of a newenemy, and declared their resolution to guard themselves accordingly. Mary however speedily succeeded in gaining their confidence, and thefriendship that soon grew up between her and Margaret King, now countessMount Cashel, the eldest daughter, was in an uncommon degree cordial andaffectionate. Mary always spoke of this young lady in terms of thetruest applause, both in relation to the eminence of her intellectualpowers, and the ingenuous amiableness of her disposition. LadyKingsborough, from the best motives, had imposed upon her daughters avariety of prohibitions, both as to the books they should read, and inmany other respects. These prohibitions had their usual effects;inordinate desire for the things forbidden, and clandestine indulgence. Mary immediately restored the children to their liberty, and undertookto govern them by their affections only. The consequence was, that theirindulgences were moderate, and they were uneasy under any indulgencethat had not the sanction of their governess. The salutary effects ofthe new system of education were speedily visible; and lady Kingsboroughsoon felt no other uneasiness, than lest the children should love theirgoverness better than their mother. 

Mary made many friends in Ireland, among the persons who visited lordKingsborough's house, for she always appeared there with the air of anequal, and not of a dependent. I have heard her mention the ludicrousdistress of a woman of quality, whose name I have forgotten, that, in alarge company, singled out Mary, and entered into a long conversationwith her. After the conversation was over, she enquired whom she hadbeen talking with, and found, to her utter mortification and dismay, that it was Miss King's governess. 

One of the persons among her Irish acquaintance, whom Mary wasaccustomed to speak of with the highest respect, was Mr. George Ogle, member of parliament for the county of Wexford. She held his talents invery high estimation; she was strongly prepossessed in favour of thegoodness of his heart; and she always spoke of him as the most perfectgentleman she had ever known. She felt the regret of a disappointedfriend, at the part he has lately taken in the politics of Ireland. 

Lord Kingsborough's family passed the summer of the year 1787 atBristol Hot-Wells, and had formed the project of proceeding from thenceto the continent, a tour in which Mary purposed to accompany them. Theplan however was ultimately given up, and Mary in consequence closed herconnection with them, earlier than she otherwise had purposed to do. 

At Bristol Hot-Wells she composed the little book which bears the titleof Mary, a Fiction. A considerable part of this story consists, withcertain modifications, of the incidents of her own friendship withFanny. All the events that do not relate to that subject are fictitious. 

This little work, if Mary had never produced any thing else, wouldserve, with persons of true taste and sensibility, to establish theeminence of her genius. The story is nothing. He that looks into thebook only for incident, will probably lay it down with disgust. But thefeelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstanceis adorned with that species of imagination, which enlists itself underthe banners of delicacy and sentiment. A work of sentiment, as it iscalled, is too often another name for a work of affectation. He thatshould imagine that the sentiments of this book are affected, wouldindeed be entitled to our profoundest commiseration. 

CHAP. V. 

1787-1790. 

Being now determined to enter upon her literary plan, Mary cameimmediately from Bristol to the metropolis. Her conduct under thiscircumstance was such as to do credit both to her own heart, and that ofMr. Johnson, her publisher, between whom and herself there now commencedan intimate friendship. She had seen him upon occasion of publishingher Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, and she addressed two orthree letters to him during her residence in Ireland. Upon her arrivalin London in August 1787, she went immediately to his house, and franklyexplained to him her purpose, at the same time requesting his advice andassistance as to its execution. After a short conversation, Mr. Johnsoninvited her to make his house her home, till she should have suitedherself with a fixed residence. She accordingly resided at this time twoor three weeks under his roof. At the same period she paid a visit ortwo of similar duration to some friends, at no great distance from themetropolis. 

At Michaelmas 1787, she entered upon a house in George street, on theSurry side of Black Friar's Bridge, which Mr. Johnson had provided forher during her excursion into the country. The three years immediatelyensuing, may be said, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, to havebeen the most active period of her life. She brought with her to thishabitation, the novel of Mary, which had not yet been sent to the press, and the commencement of a sort of oriental tale, entitled, the Cave ofFancy, which she thought proper afterwards to lay aside unfinished. I amtold that at this period she appeared under great dejection of spirits, and filled with melancholy regret for the loss of her youthful friend. Aperiod of two years had elapsed since the death of that friend; but itwas possibly the composition of the fiction of Mary, that renewed hersorrows in their original force. Soon after entering upon her newhabitation, she produced a little work, entitled, Original Stories fromReal Life, intended for the use of children. At the commencement of herliterary carreer, she is said to have conceived a vehement aversion tothe being regarded, by her ordinary acquaintance, in the character of anauthor, and to have employed some precautions to prevent its occurrence. 

The employment which the bookseller suggested to her, as the easiest andmost certain source of pecuniary income, of course, was translation. With this view she improved herself in her French, with which she hadpreviously but a slight acquaintance, and acquired the Italian andGerman languages. The greater part of her literary engagements at thistime, were such as were presented to her by Mr. Johnson. Shenew-modelled and abridged a work, translated from the Dutch, entitled, Young Grandison: she began a translation from the French, of a book, called, the New Robinson; but in this undertaking, she was, I believe, anticipated by another translator: and she compiled a series of extractsin verse and prose, upon the model of Dr. Enfield's Speaker, which bearsthe title of the Female Reader; but which, from a cause not worthmentioning, has hitherto been printed with a different name in thetitle-page. 

About the middle of the year 1788, Mr. Johnson instituted the AnalyticalReview, in which Mary took a considerable share. She also translatedNecker on the Importance of Religious Opinions; made an abridgment ofLavater's Physiognomy, from the French, which has never been published;and compressed Salzmann's Elements of Morality, a German production, into a publication in three volumes duodecimo. The translation ofSalzmann produced a correspondence between Mary and the author; and heafterwards repaid the obligation to her in kind, by a German translationof the Rights of Woman. Such were her principal literary occupations, from the autumn of 1787, to the autumn of 1790. 

It perhaps deserves to be remarked that this sort of miscellaneousliterary employment, seems, for the time at least, rather to damp andcontract, than to enlarge and invigorate, the genius. The writer isaccustomed to see his performances answer the mere mercantile purpose ofthe day, and confounded with those of persons to whom he is secretlyconscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror toreflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps theman never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its fullvigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched withthe torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary producedduring this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibitthemselves in the little fiction she composed just before itscommencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionallyinterspersed some of that homily-language, which, to speak from my ownfeelings, is calculated to damp the moral courage, it was intended toawaken. This is probably to be assigned to the causes above described. 

I have already said that one of the purposes which Mary had conceived, afew years before, as necessary to give a relish to the otherwiseinsipid, or embittered, draught of human life, was usefulness. On thisside, the period of her existence of which I am now treating, is morebrilliant, than in a literary view. She determined to apply as great apart as possible of the produce of her present employments, to theassistance of her friends and of the distressed; and, for this purpose, laid down to herself rules of the most rigid economy. She began withendeavouring to promote the interest of her sisters. She conceived thatthere was no situation in which she could place them, at once sorespectable and agreeable, as that of governess in private families. She determined therefore in the first place, to endeavour to qualifythem for such an undertaking. Her younger sister she sent to Paris, where she remained near two years. The elder she placed in a school nearLondon, first as a parlour-boarder, and afterwards as a teacher. Herbrother James, who had already been at sea, she first took into herhouse, and next sent to Woolwich for instruction, to qualify him for arespectable situation in the royal navy, where he was shortly after madea lieutenant. Charles, who was her favourite brother, had been articledto the eldest, an attorney in the Minories; but, not being satisfiedwith his situation, she removed him; and in some time after, havingfirst placed him with a farmer for instruction, she fitted him out forAmerica, where his speculations, founded upon the basis she hadprovided, are said to have been extremely prosperous. The reason so muchof this parental sort of care fell upon her, was, that her father had bythis time considerably embarrassed his circumstances. His affairs havinggrown too complex for himself to disentangle, he had intrusted them tothe management of a near relation; but Mary, not being satisfied withthe conduct of the business, took them into her own hands. The exertionsshe made, and the struggle into which she entered however, in thisinstance, were ultimately fruitless. To the day of her death her fatherwas almost wholly supported by funds which she supplied to him. Inaddition to her exertions for her own family, she took a young girl ofabout seven years of age under her protection and care, the niece ofMrs. John Hunter, and of the present Mrs. Skeys, for whose mother, thenlately dead, she had entertained a sincere friendship. 

The period, from the end of the year 1787 to the end of the year 1790, though consumed in labours of little eclat, served still further toestablish her in a friendly connection from which she derived manypleasures. Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, contracted a great personalregard for her, which resembled in many respects that of a parent. Asshe frequented his house, she of course became acquainted with hisguests. Among these may be mentioned as persons possessing her esteem, Mr. Bonnycastle, the mathematician, the late Mr. George Anderson, accountant to the board of control, Dr. George Fordyce, and Mr. Fuseli, the celebrated painter. Between both of the two latter and herself, there existed sentiments of genuine affection and friendship. 

CHAP. VI. 

1790-1792. 

Hitherto the literary carreer of Mary, had for the most part, beensilent; and had been productive of income to herself, without apparentlyleading to the wreath of fame. From this time she was destined toattract the notice of the public, and perhaps no female writer everobtained so great a degree of celebrity throughout Europe. 

It cannot be doubted that, while, for three years of literaryemployment, she "held the noiseless tenor of her way, " her mind wasinsensibly advancing towards a vigorous maturity. The uninterruptedhabit of composition gave a freedom and firmness to the expression ofher sentiments. The society she frequented, nourished her understanding, and enlarged her mind. The French revolution, while it gave afundamental shock to the human intellect through every region of theglobe, did not fail to produce a conspicuous effect in the progress ofMary's reflections. The prejudices of her early years suffered avehement concussion. Her respect for establishments was undermined. Atthis period occurred a misunderstanding upon public grounds, with one ofher early friends, whose attachment to musty creeds and explodedabsurdities, had been increased, by the operation of those verycircumstances, by which her mind had been rapidly advanced in the raceof independence. 

The event, immediately introductory to the rank which from this time sheheld in the lids of literature, was the publication of Burke'sReflections on the Revolution in France. This book, after having beenlong promised to the world, finally made its appearance on the first ofNovember 1790; and Mary, full of sentiments of liberty, and impressedwith a warm interest in the struggle that was now going on, seized herpen in the first burst of indignation, an emotion of which she wasstrongly susceptible. She was in the habit of composing with rapidity, and her answer, which was the first of the numerous ones that appeared, obtained extraordinary notice. Marked as it is with the vehemence andimpetuousness of its eloquence, it is certainly chargeable with a toocontemptuous and intemperate treatment of the great man against whom itsattack is directed. But this circumstance was not injurious to thesuccess of the publication. Burke had been warmly loved by the mostliberal and enlightened friends of freedom, and they were proportionablyinflamed and disgusted by the fury of his assault, upon what they deemedto be its sacred cause. 

Short as was the time in which Mary composed her Answer to Burke'sReflections, there was one anecdote she told me concerning it, whichseems worth recording in this place. It was sent to the press, as isthe general practice when the early publication of a piece is deemed amatter of importance, before the composition was finished. When Mary hadarrived at about the middle of her work, she was seized with a temporaryfit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking. Inthis state of mind, she called, one evening, as she was in the practiceof doing, upon her publisher, for the purpose of relieving herself by anhour or two's conversation. Here, the habitual ingenuousness of hernature, led her to describe what had just past in her thoughts. Mr. Johnson immediately, in a kind and friendly way, intreated her not toput any constraint upon her inclination, and to give herself nouneasiness about the sheets already printed, which he would cheerfullythrow aside, if it would contribute to her happiness. Mary had wantedstimulus. She had not expected to be encouraged, in what she well knewto be an unreasonable access of idleness. Her friend's so readilyfalling in with her ill-humour, and seeming to expect that she would layaside her undertaking, piqued her pride. She immediately went home; andproceeded to the end of her work, with no other interruptions but whatwere absolutely indispensible. 

It is probable that the applause which attended her Answer to Burke, elevated the tone of her mind. She had always felt much confidence inher own powers; but it cannot be doubted, that the actual perception ofa similar feeling respecting us in a multitude of others, must increasethe confidence, and stimulate the adventure of any human being. Maryaccordingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the composition of hermost celebrated production, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 

Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to befound, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion. She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of thehuman species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records oftime, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almostsunk them to the level of the brutes. She saw indeed, that they wereoften attempted to be held in silken fetters, and bribed into the loveof slavery; but the disguise and the treachery served only the morefully to confirm her opposition. She regarded her sex, in the languageof Calista, as

 "In every state of life the slaves of men:"

the rich as alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, anda husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from theacquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out fromthe very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views sheentertained of the subject; and such the feelings with which she warmedher mind. 

The work is certainly a very bold and original production. The strengthand firmness with which the author repels the opinions of Rousseau, Dr. Gregory, and Dr. James Fordyce, respecting the condition of women, cannot but make a strong impression upon every ingenuous reader. Thepublic at large formed very different opinions respecting the characterof the performance. Many of the sentiments are undoubtedly of a rathermasculine description. The spirited and decisive way in which the authorexplodes the system of gallantry, and the species of homage with whichthe sex is usually treated, shocked the majority. Novelty produced asentiment in their mind, which they mistook for a sense of injustice. The pretty, soft creatures that are so often to be found in the femalesex, and that class of men who believe they could not exist without suchpretty, soft creatures to resort to, were in arms against the author ofso heretical and blasphemous a doctrine. There are also, it must beconfessed, occasional passages of a stern and rugged feature, incompatible with the true stamina of the writer's character. But, ifthey did not belong to her fixed and permanent character, they belongedto her character _pro tempore_; and what she thought, she scorned toqualify. 

Yet, along with this rigid, and somewhat amazonian temper, whichcharacterised some parts of the book, it is impossible not to remark aluxuriance of imagination, and a trembling delicacy of sentiment, whichwould have done honour to a poet, bursting with all the visions of anArmida and a Dido. 

The contradiction, to the public apprehension, was equally great, as tothe person of the author, as it was when they considered the temper ofthe book. In the champion of her sex, who was described as endeavouringto invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity promptedto seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy, muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when, instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, inthe best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners. 

The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequalperformance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. Whentried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, itcan scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of humanproductions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, andthe eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that itwill be read as long as the English language endures. The publication ofthis book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and MaryWollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed moresubstantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the otherwriters, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in thebehalf of oppressed and injured beauty. 

The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance, will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of thisinestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state inwhich it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks. 

It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendshipthat subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source ofthe most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native ofthe republic of Switzerland, but has spent the principal part of hislife in the island of Great-Britain. The eminence of his genius canscarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is theleast to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of hiscontemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics ofgenius, a daring, as well as persevering, spirit of adventure. The workin which he is at present engaged, a series of pictures for theillustration of Milton, upon a very large scale, and produced solelyupon the incitement of his own mind, is a proof of this, if indeed hiswhole life had not sufficiently proved it. 

Mr. Fuseli is one of Mr. Johnson's oldest friends, and was at this timein the habit of visiting him two or three times a week. Mary, one ofwhose strongest characteristics was the exquisite sensations of pleasureshe felt from the associations of visible objects, had hitherto neverbeen acquainted, or never intimately acquainted, with an eminentpainter. The being thus introduced therefore to the society of Mr. Fuseli, was a high gratification to her; while he found in Mary, aperson perhaps more susceptible of the emotions painting is calculatedto excite, than any other with whom he ever conversed. Painting, andsubjects closely connected with painting, were their almost constanttopics of conversation; and they found them inexhaustible. It cannot bedoubted, but that this was a species of exercise very conducive to theimprovement of Mary's mind. 

Nothing human however is unmixed. If Mary derived improvement from Mr. Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of someof his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached toliterature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him fromkeeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, thatbelles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, thefavourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is withMr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton, Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. Thenearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is JeanJacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of afavourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring theopinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau's conceptionof the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortivenessof all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts atimprovement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contemptand indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity ofgenius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands ofthe Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real geniusare such, in all their grand and most important features, as nosubsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhatof a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search, in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Marycame something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than shewent into it. 

But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary, and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuselifrequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, itwas impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently tofrequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned. Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temperto live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, shetransferred by association to his person. What she experienced in thisrespect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraintin which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polishedsociety condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardentaffection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife theacquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which thiscircumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of anydifficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible tothe value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex, but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, inconforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct. 

There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state herprinciples upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew herbest. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of anopposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. Itwas her maxim, "that the imagination should awaken the senses, and notthe senses the imagination. " In other words, that whatever related tothe gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of apure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. Sheregarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in thatrespect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtuewould prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, andthe most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed. --There isno reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the periodof their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As itwas, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate adistinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments ofpersonal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departingin the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself. 

In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied inGeorge-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street, Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in thelaws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literarycareer; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she hadalways scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and thosetemperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a soundand uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure. 

It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writerof this narrative was first in company with the person to whom itrelates. He dined with her at a friend's, together with Mr. Thomas Paineand one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, hisobject being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he hadnever before conversed. 

The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutuallydispleased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I hadbarely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literarymen are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minutepoints of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine, in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw inoccasionally some shrewd and striking remarks; the conversation layprincipally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, veryfrequently when I wished to hear Paine. 

We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on thecharacters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already beenobserved, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice ofseeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with aplentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, onthe contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, andparticularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly toincline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilatedin this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtainedfrom some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater numberhave treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at lastprovoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavishedit, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. Wediscussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which heropinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As theconversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my ownshare in it. We touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly andconnectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving anaccount of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I wasnot sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of activeand independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of whatperhaps I considered as justice. 

We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but madea very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance. 

In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where shecontinued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principalinducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had, atfirst, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what Imay be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not, in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she hadoriginally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed muchpleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardentimagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness sheshould have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union. She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tendercharities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as thedearest band of human society. General conversation and society couldnot satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great massof her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best yearsof her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas madethe cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one ofher greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. Sheconceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in hermind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, andmingle in different scenes. 

It is singular, that during her residence in Store street, which lastedmore than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles inthe Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employedupon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behindher a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to havehad this destination. 

CHAP. VII. 

1792-1795. 

The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had noprecise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had inview being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She didnot proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, tosome friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spokemerely of an absence of six weeks. 

It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seemto produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land ofstrangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power ofreceiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of thecountry. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she hadbeen invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent atthe time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surroundedonly with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its owncolour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series ofLetters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which sheforwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of herposthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and itis, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which atthat time pervaded her mind. 

Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families inParis. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted avery sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author ofa collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided inParis. Another person, whom Mary always spoke of in terms of ardentcommendation, both for the excellence of his disposition, and the forceof his genius, was a count Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede. Itis almost unnecessary to mention, that she was personally acquaintedwith the majority of the leaders in the French revolution. 

But the house that, I believe, she principally frequented at this time, was that of Mr. Thomas Christie, a person whose pursuits weremercantile, and who had written a volume on the French revolution. WithMrs. Christie her acquaintance was more intimate than with the husband. 

It was about four months after her arrival at Paris in December 1792, that she entered into that species of connection, for which her heartsecretly panted, and which had the effect of diffusing an immediatetranquillity and cheerfulness over her manners. The person with whom itwas formed (for it would be an idle piece of delicacy, to attempt tosuppress a name, which is known to every one whom the reputation ofMary has reached), was Mr. Gilbert Imlay, native of the United States ofNorth America. 

The place at which she first saw Mr. Imlay was at the house of Mr. Christie; and it perhaps deserves to be noticed, that the emotions hethen excited in her mind, were, I am told, those of dislike, and that, for some time, she shunned all occasions of meeting him. This sentimenthowever speedily gave place to one of greater kindness. 

Previously to the partiality she conceived for him, she had determinedupon a journey to Switzerland, induced chiefly by motives of economy. But she had some difficulty in procuring a passport; and it was probablythe intercourse that now originated between her and Mr. Imlay, thatchanged her purpose, and led her to prefer a lodging at Neuilly, avillage three miles from Paris. Her habitation here was a solitary housein the midst of a garden, with no other inhabitants than herself and thegardener, an old man, who performed for her many of the offices of adomestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed. The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set beforeher, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which shecould not without the greatest difficulty obtain, when she had anyperson with her as a visitor. Here it was that she conceived, and forthe most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the FrenchRevolution[A], into which, as she observes, are incorporated most of theobservations she had collected for her Letters, and which was writtenwith more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had beencommenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by awalk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old host in vain endeavouredto dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murdersthat had been committed there. 

[A] No part of the proposed continuation of this work, has been foundamong the papers of the author. 

The commencement of the attachment Mary now formed, had neitherconfident nor adviser. She always conceived it to be a gross breach ofdelicacy to have any confidant in a matter of this sacred nature, anaffair of the heart. The origin of the connection was about the middleof April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for fourmonths. At the expiration of that period a circumstance occurred thatinduced her to declare it. The French convention, exasperated at theconduct of the British government, particularly in the affair of Toulon, formed a decree against the citizens of this country, by one article ofwhich the English, resident in France, were ordered into prison till theperiod of a general peace. Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr. Imlay, who, at the time their connection was formed, had no propertywhatever; because she would not involve him in certain familyembarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make himanswerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her. Shehowever considered their engagement as of the most sacred nature; andthey had mutually formed the plan of emigrating to America, as soon asthey should have realized a sum, enabling them to do it in the modethey desired. The decree however that I have just mentioned, made itnecessary, not that a marriage should actually take place, but that Maryshould take the name of Imlay, which, from the nature of theirconnexion, she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain acertificate from the American ambassador, as the wife of a native ofthat country. 

Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside underthe same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris. 

Mary was now arrived at the situation, which, for two or three precedingyears, her reason had pointed out to her as affording the mostsubstantial prospect of happiness. She had been tossed and agitated bythe waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had knownfew of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness ofchildhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severecast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for theconfidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance uponwomanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of hermother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Herexertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself, had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she hadhoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny, had encountered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy andpremature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, shewas engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded asunprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father's fortune. In thisaffair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moralindignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assistalmost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally, when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondlyimagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, sheperceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mindfruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it onlyserved to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her. 

Some persons may be inclined to observe, that the evils here enumerated, are not among the heaviest in the catalogue of human calamities. Butevils take their rank, more from the temper of the mind that suffersthem, than from their abstract nature. Upon a man of a hard andinsensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often fall pointlessand impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who, from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are continually prompted tolook on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall, immediately rise again, to pursue their course, with the same eagerness, the same hope, and the same gaiety, as before. On the other hand, we notunfrequently meet with persons, endowed with the most exquisite anddelicious sensibility, whose minds seem almost of too fine a texture toencounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure istransport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character isfinely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was inthis respect a female Werter. 

She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, totake refuge in the bosom of a chosen friend. Let it not however beimagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its tastefor pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change offortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, andshe assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. Shewas like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears againwith the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of itshappiest age. She was playful, full of confidence, kindness andsympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour andsmoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing withuniversal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day today illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so wellrecollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almostevery one that beheld it. 

Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principlesshe had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual affection, which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart likeher's was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception ofMr. Imlay's "tenderness and worth, had twisted him closely round herheart;" and she "indulged the thought, that she had thrown out sometendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported. " Thiswas "talking a new language to her;" but, "conscious that she was not aparasite-plant, " she was willing to encourage and foster theluxuriancies of affection. Her confidence was entire; her love wasunbounded. Now, for the first time in her life she gave a loose to allthe sensibilities of her nature. 

Soon after the time I am now speaking of, her attachment to Mr. Imlaygained a new link, by finding reason to suppose herself with child. 

Their establishment at Paris, was however broken up almost as soon asformed, by the circumstance of Mr. Imlay's entering into business, urged, as he said, by the prospect of a family, and this being afavourable crisis in French affairs for commercial speculations. Thepursuits in which he was engaged, led him in the month of September toHavre de Grace, then called Havre Marat, probably to superintend theshipping of goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some otherperson or persons. Mary remained in the capital. 

The solitude in which she was now left, proved an unexpected trial. Domestic affections constituted the object upon which her heart wasfixed; and she early felt, with an inward grief, that Mr. Imlay "did notattach those tender emotions round the idea of home, " which, every timethey recurred, dimmed her eyes with moisture. She had expected hisreturn from week to week, and from month to month, but a succession ofbusiness still continued to detain him at Havre. At the same time thesanguinary character which the government of France began every day moredecisively to assume, contributed to banish tranquillity from the firstmonths of her pregnancy. Before she left Neuilly, she happened one dayto enter Paris on foot (I believe, by the _Place de Louis Quinze_), whenan execution, attended with some peculiar aggravations, had just takenplace, and the blood of the guillotine appeared fresh upon the pavement. The emotions of her soul burst forth in indignant exclamations, while aprudent bystander warned her of her danger, and intreated her to hastenand hide her discontents. She described to me, more than once, theanguish she felt at hearing of the death of Brissot, Vergniaud, and thetwenty deputies, as one of the most intolerable sensations she had everexperienced. 

Finding the return of Mr. Imlay continually postponed, she determined, in January 1794, to join him at Havre. One motive that influenced her, though, I believe, by no means the principal, was the growing crueltiesof Robespierre, and the desire she felt to be in any other place, ratherthan the devoted city, in the midst of which they were perpetrated. 

From January to September, Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together, with greatharmony, at Havre, where the child, with which she was pregnant, wasborn, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance ofthe dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased fromher memory. 

In September, Mr. Imlay took his departure from Havre for the port ofLondon. As this step was said to be necessary in the way of business, heendeavoured to prevail upon Mary to quit Havre, and once more take upher abode at Paris. Robespierre was now no more, and, of consequence, the only objection she had to residing in the capital, was removed. Mr. Imlay was already in London, before she undertook her journey, and itproved the most fatiguing journey she ever made; the carriage, in whichshe travelled, being overturned no less than four times between Havreand Paris. 

This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay hadremoved to Havre, was represented as an absence that was to have ashort duration. In two months he was once again to join her at Paris. Itproved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of sucha separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found themupon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering methodin which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hungupon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, byforce, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and notsuffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy andelasticity of her character. 

The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of oneadvantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamitiesthat awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additionalthree months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a verydear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, thandyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It waswasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind iscontinually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiringhope. 

Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion?Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuateitself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment, without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature iscapable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon thischosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submitto receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it hasfixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourableopinion of human nature; she had unweariedly fought for a kindred mind, in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay undertookto prove, in his letters written immediately after their completeseparation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to thestrictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion. Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentimentthat, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for themistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a friendship andattachment as those of Mary, could hold them at a trivial price, and, "like the base Indian, throw a pearl away, richer than all histribe. [A]"

[A] A person, from whose society at this time Mary derived particulargratification, was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had lately become afugitive from Ireland, in consequence of a political prosecution, and inwhom she found those qualities which were always eminently engaging toher, great integrity of disposition, and great kindness of heart. 

CHAP. VIII. 

1795, 1796. 

In April 1795, Mary returned once more to London, being requested to doso by Mr. Imlay, who even sent a servant to Paris to wait upon her inthe journey, before she could complete the necessary arrangements forher departure. But, notwithstanding these favourable appearances, shecame to England with a heavy heart, not daring, after all theuncertainties and anguish she had endured, to trust to the suggestionsof hope. 

The gloomy forebodings of her mind, were but too faithfully verified. Mr. Imlay had already formed another connexion; as it is said, with ayoung actress from a strolling company of players. His attentionstherefore to Mary were formal and constrained, and she probably had butlittle of his society. This alteration could not escape her penetratingglance. He ascribed it to pressure of business, and some pecuniaryembarrassments which, at that time, occurred to him; it was of littleconsequence to Mary what was the cause. She saw, but too well, thoughshe strove not to see, that his affections were lost to her for ever. 

It is impossible to imagine a period of greater pain and mortificationthan Mary passed, for about seven weeks, from the sixteenth of April tothe sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided forher. She had come over to England, a country for which she, at thistime, expressed "a repugnance, that almost amounted to horror, " insearch of happiness. She feared that that happiness had altogetherescaped her; but she was encouraged by the eagerness and impatiencewhich Mr. Imlay at length seemed to manifest for her arrival. When shesaw him, all her fears were confirmed. What a picture was she capable offorming to herself, of the overflowing kindness of a meeting, after aninterval of so much anguish and apprehension! A thousand images of thissort were present to her burning imagination. It is in vain, on suchoccasions, for reserve and reproach to endeavour to curb in the emotionsof an affectionate heart. But the hopes she nourished were speedilyblasted. Her reception by Mr. Imlay, was cold and embarrassed. Discussions ("explanations" they were called) followed; cruelexplanations, that only added to the anguish of a heart alreadyoverwhelmed in grief! They had small pretensions indeed to explicitness;but they sufficiently told, that the case admitted not of remedy. 

Mary was incapable of sustaining her equanimity in this pressingemergency. "Love, dear, delusive love!" as she expressed herself to afriend some time afterwards, "rigorous reason had forced her to resign;and now her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned tobe contented with rational enjoyments". Thus situated, life became anintolerable burthen. While she was absent from Mr. Imlay, she couldtalk of purposes of reparation and independence. But, now that they werein the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours torevive their mutual cordiality; and unsuccessful endeavours continuallyadded fuel to the fire that destroyed her. She formed a desperatepurpose to die. 

This part of the story of Mary is involved in considerable obscurity. Ionly know, that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose, at amoment when he was uncertain whether or no it were already executed, andthat his feelings were roused by the intelligence. It was perhaps owingto his activity and representations, that her life was, at this time, saved. She determined to continue to exist. Actuated by this purpose, she took a resolution, worthy both of the strength and affectionatenessof her mind. Mr. Imlay was involved in a question of considerabledifficulty, respecting a mercantile adventure in Norway. It seemed torequire the presence of some very judicious agent, to conduct thebusiness to its desired termination. Mary determined to make the voyage, and take the business into her own hands. Such a voyage seemed the mostdesireable thing to recruit her health, and, if possible, her spirits, in the present crisis. It was also gratifying to her feelings, to beemployed in promoting the interest of a man, from whom she hadexperienced such severe unkindness, but to whom she ardently desired tobe reconciled. The moment of desperation I have mentioned, occurred inthe close of May, and, in about a week after, she set out upon this newexpedition. 

The narrative of this voyage is before the world, and perhaps a book oftravels that so irresistibly seizes on the heart, never, in any otherinstance, found its way from the press. The occasional harshness andruggedness of character, that diversify her Vindication of the Rights ofWoman, here totally disappear. If ever there was a book calculated tomake a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, anddissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a geniuswhich commands all our admiration. Affliction had tempered her heart toa softness almost more than human; and the gentleness of her spiritseems precisely to accord with all the romance of unbounded attachment. 

Thus softened and improved, thus fraught with imagination andsensibility, with all, and more than all, "that youthful poets fancy, when they love, " she returned to England, and, if he had so pleased, tothe arms of her former lover. Her return was hastened by the ambiguity, to her apprehension, of Mr. Imlay's conduct. He had promised to meet herupon her return from Norway, probably at Hamburgh; and they were then topass some time in Switzerland. The style however of his letters to herduring her tour, was not such as to inspire confidence; and she wrote tohim very urgently, to explain himself, relative to the footing uponwhich they were hereafter to stand to each other. In his answer, whichreached her at Hamburgh, he treated her questions as "extraordinary andunnecessary, " and desired her to be at the pains to decide for herself. Feeling herself unable to accept this as an explanation, she instantlydetermined to sail for London by the very first opportunity, that shemight thus bring to a termination the suspence that preyed upon hersoul. 

It was not long after her arrival in London in the commencement ofOctober, that she attained the certainty she sought. Mr. Imlay procuredher a lodging. But the neglect she experienced from him after sheentered it, flashed conviction upon her, in spite of his asseverations. She made further enquiries, and at length was informed by a servant, ofthe real state of the case. Under the immediate shock which the painfulcertainty gave her, her first impulse was to repair to him at theready-furnished house he had provided for his new mistress. What was theparticular nature of their conference I am unable to relate. It issufficient to say that the wretchedness of the night which succeededthis fatal discovery, impressed her with the feeling, that she wouldsooner suffer a thousand deaths, than pass another of equal misery. 

The agony of her mind determined her; and that determination gave her asort of desperate serenity. She resolved to plunge herself in theThames; and, not being satisfied with any spot nearer to London, shetook a boat, and rowed to Putney. Her first thought had led her toBattersea-bridge, but she found it too public. It was night when shearrived at Putney, and by that time had begun to rain with greatviolence. The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down thebridge, till her clothes were thoroughly drenched and heavy with thewet, which she did for half an hour without meeting a human being. Shethen leaped from the top of the bridge, but still seemed to find adifficulty in sinking, which she endeavoured to counteract by pressingher clothes closely round her. After some time she became insensible;but she always spoke of the pain she underwent as such, that, though shecould afterwards have determined upon almost any other species ofvoluntary death, it would have been impossible for her to resolve uponencountering the same sensations again. I am doubtful, whether this isto be ascribed to the mere nature of suffocation, or was not ratherowing to the preternatural action of a desperate spirit. 

After having been for a considerable time insensible, she was recoveredby the exertions of those by whom the body was found. She had sought, with cool and deliberate firmness, to put a period to her existence, andyet she lived to have every prospect of a long possession of enjoymentand happiness. It is perhaps not an unfrequent case with suicides, thatwe find reason to suppose, if they had survived their gloomy purpose, that they would, at a subsequent period, have been considerably happy. It arises indeed, in some measure, out of the very nature of a spirit ofself-destruction; which implies a degree of anguish, that theconstitution of the human mind will not suffer to remain longundiminished. This is a serious reflection, Probably no man woulddestroy himself from an impatience of present pain, if he felt a moralcertainty that there were years of enjoyment still in reserve for him. It is perhaps a futile attempt, to think of reasoning with a man in thatstate of mind which precedes suicide. Moral reasoning is nothing but theawakening of certain feelings: and the feeling by which he is actuated, is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with otherfeelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it. But, ifthe prospect of future tranquillity and pleasure cannot be expected tohave much weight with a man under an immediate purpose of suicide, it isso much the more to be wished, that men would impress their minds, intheir sober moments, with a conception, which, being rendered habitual, seems to promise to act as a successful antidote in a paroxysm ofdesperation. 

The present situation of Mary, of necessity produced some furtherintercourse between her and Mr. Imlay. He sent a physician to her; andMrs. Christie, at his desire, prevailed on her to remove to her house inFinsbury-square. In the mean time Mr. Imlay assured her that his presentwas merely a casual, sensual connection; and, of course, fostered in hermind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him. With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainlycalculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect howeverit produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have beenlooked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind, which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity ofbringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years toroll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with anextraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, in effect, asfollows: "If we are ever to live together again, it must be now. We meetnow, or we part for ever. You say, You cannot abruptly break off theconnection you have formed. It is unworthy of my courage and character, to wait the uncertain issue of that connexion. I am determined to cometo a decision. I consent then, for the present, to live with you, andthe woman to whom you have associated yourself. I think it importantthat you should learn habitually to feel for your child the affection ofa father. But, if you reject this proposal, here we end. You are nowfree. We will correspond no more. We will have no intercourse of anykind. I will be to you as a person that is dead. "

The proposal she made, extraordinary and injudicious as it was, was atfirst accepted; and Mr. Imlay took her accordingly, to look at a househe was upon the point of hiring, that she might judge whether it wascalculated to please her. Upon second thoughts however he retracted hisconcession. 

In the following month, Mr. Imlay, and the woman with whom he was atpresent connected, went to Paris, where they remained three months. Maryhad, previously to this, fixed herself in a lodging in Finsbury-place, where, for some time, she saw scarcely any one but Mrs. Christie, forthe sake of whose neighbourhood she had chosen this situation;"existing, " as she expressed it, "in a living tomb, and her life but anexercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch. "

Thus circumstanced, it was unavoidable for her thoughts to brood upon apassion, which all that she had suffered had not yet been able toextinguish. Accordingly, as soon as Mr. Imlay returned to England, shecould not restrain herself from making another effort, and desiring tosee him once more. "During his absence, affection had led her to makenumberless excuses for his conduct, " and she probably wished to believethat his present connection was, as he represented it, purely of acasual nature. To this application, she observes, that "he returned noother answer, except declaring, with unjustifiable passion, that hewould not see her. "

This answer, though, at the moment, highly irritating to Mary, was notthe ultimate close of the affair. Mr. Christie was connected in businesswith Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was theonly one at which Mary habitually visited. The consequence of this was, that, when Mr. Imlay had been already more than a fortnight in town, Mary called at Mr. Christie's one evening, at a time when Mr. Imlay wasin the parlour. The room was full of company. Mrs. Christie heard Mary'svoice in the passage, and hastened to her, to intreat her not to makeher appearance. Mary however was not to be controlled. She thought, asshe afterwards told me, that it was not consistent with consciousrectitude, that she should shrink, as if abashed, from the presence ofone by whom she deemed herself injured. Her child was with her. Sheentered; and, in a firm manner, immediately led up the child, now neartwo years of age, to the knees of its father. He retired with Mary intoanother apartment, and promised to dine with her at her lodging, Ibelieve, the next day. 

In the interview which took place in consequence of this appointment, heexpressed himself to her in friendly terms, and in a manner calculatedto sooth her despair. Though he could conduct himself, when absent fromher, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternnessconstantly expired when he came into her presence. Mary was prepared atthis moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentlenessof his carriage, was to her as a sun-beam, awakening the hope ofreturning day. For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions;and, even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with anaching eye, upon the air-built and unsubstantial prospect of areconciliation. 

At his particular request, she retained the name of Imlay, which, ashort time before, he had seemed to dispute with her. "It was not, " asshe expresses herself in a letter to a friend, "for the world that shedid so--not in the least--but she was unwilling to cut the Gordian knot, or tear herself away in appearance, when she could not in reality". 

The day after this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country, where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, Ibelieve, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolarycommunication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from hermind, all remaining doubt as to the issue of the affair. 

Mary was now aware that every demand of forbearance towards him, of dutyto her child, and even of indulgence to her own deep-rootedpredilection, was discharged. She determined to rouse herself, and castoff for ever an attachment, which to her had been a spring ofinexhaustible bitterness. Her present residence among the scenes ofnature, was favourable to this purpose. She was at the house of an oldand intimate friend, a lady of the name of Cotton, whose partiality forher was strong and sincere. Mrs. Cotton's nearest neighbour was SirWilliam East, baronet; and, from the joint effect of the kindness of herfriend, and the hospitable and distinguishing attentions of thisrespectable family, she derived considerable benefit. She had beenamused and interested in her journey to Norway; but with thisdifference, that, at that time, her mind perpetually returned withtrembling anxiety to conjectures respecting Mr. Imlay's future conduct, whereas now, with a lofty and undaunted spirit, she threw aside everythought that recurred to him, while she felt herself called upon to makeone more effort for life and happiness. 

Once after this, to my knowledge, she saw Mr. Imlay; probably, not longafter her return to town. They met by accident upon the New Road; healighted from his horse, and walked with her for some time; and therencounter passed, as she assured me, without producing in her anyoppressive emotion. 

Be it observed, by the way, and I may be supposed best to have known thereal state of the case, she never spoke of Mr. Imlay with acrimony, andwas displeased when any person, in her hearing, expressed contempt ofhim. She was characterised by a strong sense of indignation; but heremotions of this sort were short-lived, and in no long time subsidedinto a dignified sereneness and equanimity. 

The question of her connection with Mr. Imlay, as we have seen, was notcompletely dismissed, till March 1796. But it is worthy to be observed, that she did not, like ordinary persons under extreme anguish of mind, suffer her understanding, in the mean time, to sink into listlessnessand debility. The most inapprehensive reader may conceive what was themental torture she endured, when he considers, that she was twice, withan interval of four months, from the end of May to the beginning ofOctober, prompted by it to purposes of suicide. Yet in this period shewrote her Letters from Norway. Shortly after its expiration she preparedthem for the press, and they were published in the close of that year. In January 1796, she finished the sketch of a comedy, which turns, inthe serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offeredto both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at theperiod of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude andimperfect a state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory tocommit it to the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree ofactivity, we must recollect however the entire solitude, in which mostof her hours were at that time consumed. 

CHAP. IX. 

1796, 1797. 

I am now led, by the progress of the story, to the last branch of herhistory, the connection between Mary and myself. And this I shall relatewith the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of mynarrative. If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, thatcould impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. Theycould have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are nocircumstances of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason, could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, thatneeded, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon theuniverse to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, hasawfully imposed silence upon the gabble of frivolity. 

We renewed our acquaintance in January 1796, but with no particulareffect, except so far as sympathy in her anguish, added in my mind tothe respect I had always entertained for her talents. It was in theclose of that month that I read her Letters from Norway; and theimpression that book produced upon me has been already related. 

It was on the fourteenth of April that I first saw her after herexcursion into Berkshire. On that day she called upon me in Somers Town, she having, since her return, taken a lodging in Cumming-street, Pentonville, at no great distance from the place of my habitation. Fromthat time our intimacy increased, by regular, but almost imperceptibledegrees. 

The partiality we conceived for each other, was in that mode, which Ihave always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. Itgrew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have beenimpossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, andwho was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-establishedcustom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is soseverely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume tohave been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, inthe affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, therewas nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. 

In July 1796 I made an excursion into the county of Norfolk, whichoccupied nearly the whole of that month. During this period Maryremoved, from Cumming-street, Pentonville, to Judd place West, which maybe considered as the extremity of Somers Town. In the former situation, she had occupied a furnished lodging. She had meditated a tour to Italyor Switzerland, and knew not how soon she should set out with that view. Now however she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England, probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in hermind. She had a quantity of furniture locked up at a broker's ever sinceher residence in Store-street, and she now found it adviseable to bringit into use. This circumstance occasioned her present removal. 

The temporary separation attendant on my little journey, had its effecton the mind of both parties. It gave a space for the maturing ofinclination. I believe that, during this interval, each furnished to theother the principal topic of solitary and daily contemplation. Absencebestows a refined and a๋rial delicacy upon affection, which it withdifficulty acquires in any other way. It seems to resemble thecommunication of spirits, without the medium, or the impediment, ofthis earthly frame. 

When we met again, we met with new pleasure, and, I may add, with a moredecisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer, before the sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lipsof either. There was, as I have already said, no period of throes andresolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship meltinginto love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured, yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete. 

Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find aheart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection;fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholyexperience, fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a greatsoul, is never extinguished. I had never loved till now; or, at least, had never nourished a passion to the same growth, or met with an objectso consummately worthy. 

We did not marry. It is difficult to recommend any thing toindiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules andprejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous uponthe face of it, or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as torequire the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and thatwhich, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things mostsacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the momentwhen it has arrived at its climax. 

There were however other reasons why we did not immediately marry. Maryfelt an entire conviction of the propriety of her conduct. It would beabsurd to suppose that, with a heart withered by desertion, she was notright to give way to the emotions of kindness which our intimacyproduced, and to seek for that support in friendship and affection, which could alone give pleasure to her heart, and peace to hermeditations. It was only about six months since she had resolutelybanished every thought of Mr. Imlay; but it was at least eighteen thathe ought to have been banished, and would have been banished, had it notbeen for her scrupulous pertinacity in determining to leave no measureuntried to regain him. Add to this, that the laws of etiquetteordinarily laid down in these cases, are essentially absurd, and thatthe sentiments of the heart cannot submit to be directed by the rule andthe square. But Mary had an extreme aversion to be made the topic ofvulgar discussion; and, if there be any weakness in this, the dreadfultrials through which she had recently passed, may well plead in itsexcuse. She felt that she had been too much, and too rudely spoken of, in the former instance; and she could not resolve to do any thing thatshould immediately revive that painful topic. 

For myself, it is certain that I had for many years regarded marriagewith so well-grounded an apprehension, that, notwithstanding thepartiality for Mary that had taken possession of my soul, I should havefelt it very difficult, at least in the present stage of ourintercourse, to have resolved on such a measure. Thus, partly fromsimilar, and partly from different motives, we felt alike in this, as wedid perhaps in every other circumstance that related to our intercourse. 

I have nothing further that I find it necessary to record, till thecommencement of April 1797. We then judged it proper to declare ourmarriage, which had taken place a little before. The principal motivefor complying with this ceremony, was the circumstance of Mary's beingin a state of pregnancy. She was unwilling, and perhaps with reason, toincur that exclusion from the society of many valuable and excellentindividuals, which custom awards in cases of this sort. I should havefelt an extreme repugnance to the having caused her such aninconvenience. And, after the experiment of seven months of as intimatean intercourse as our respective modes of living would admit, there wascertainly less hazard to either, in the subjecting ourselves to thoseconsequences which the laws of England annex to the relations of husbandand wife. On the sixth of April we entered into possession of a house, which had been taken by us in concert. 

In this place I have a very curious circumstance to notice, which I amhappy to have occasion to mention, as it tends to expose certainregulations of polished society, of which the absurdity vies with theodiousness. Mary had long possessed the advantage of an acquaintancewith many persons of genius, and with others whom the effects of anintercourse with elegant society, combined with a certain portion ofinformation and good sense, sufficed to render amusing companions. Shehad lately extended the circle of her acquaintance in this respect; andher mind, trembling between the opposite impressions of past anguish andrenovating tranquillity, found ease in this species of recreation. Wherever Mary appeared, admiration attended upon her. She had alwaysdisplayed talents for conversation; but maturity of understanding, hertravels, her long residence in France, the discipline of affliction, andthe smiling, new-born peace which awaked a corresponding smile in heranimated countenance, inexpressibly increased them. The way in which thestory of Mr. Imlay was treated in these polite circles, was probablythe result of the partiality she excited. These elegant personages weredivided between their cautious adherence to forms, and the desire toseek their own gratification. Mary made no secret of the nature of herconnection with Mr. Imlay; and in one instance, I well know, she putherself to the trouble of explaining it to a person totally indifferentto her, because he never failed to publish every thing he knew, and, shewas sure, would repeat her explanation to his numerous acquaintance. Shewas of too proud and generous a spirit to stoop to hypocrisy. Thesepersons however, in spite of all that could be said, persisted inshutting their eyes, and pretending they took her for a married woman. 

Observe the consequence of this! While she was, and constantlyprofessed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for thesqueamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our marriage would place her upon a surer footing in thecalendar of polished society, than ever. But it forced these people tosee the truth, and to confess their belief of what they had carefullybeen told; and this they could not forgive. Be it remarked, that thedate of our marriage had nothing to do with this, that question beingnever once mentioned during this period. Mary indeed had, till now, retained the name of Imlay which had first been assumed from necessityin France; but its being retained thus long, was purely from theaukwardness that attends the introduction of a change, and not from anapprehension of consequences of this sort. Her scrupulous explicitnessas to the nature of her situation, surely sufficed to make the name shebore perfectly immaterial. 

It is impossible to relate the particulars of such a story, but in thelanguage of contempt and ridicule. A serious reflection however upon thewhole, ought to awaken emotions of a different sort. Mary retained themost numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of thosewhom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjectsof the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however isimmaterial. The tendency of the proceeding, strictly considered, anduniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuablesociety. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and, as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament her sex ever had to boast!A woman, with sentiments as pure, as refined, and as delicate, as everinhabited a human heart! It is fit that such persons should stand by, that we may have room enough for the dull and insolent dictators, thegamblers and demireps of polished society!

Two of the persons, the loss of whose acquaintance Mary principallyregretted upon this occasion, were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons. Theiracquaintance, it is perhaps fair to observe, is to be ranked among herrecent acquisitions. Mrs. Siddons, I am sure, regretted the necessity, which she conceived to be imposed on her by the peculiarity of hersituation, to conform to the rules I have described. She is endowed withthat rich and generous sensibility, which should best enable itspossessor completely to feel the merits of her deceased friend. She verytruly observes, in a letter now before me, that the Travels in Norwaywere read by no one, who was in possession of "more reciprocity offeeling, or more deeply impressed with admiration of the writer'sextraordinary powers. "

Mary felt a transitory pang, when the conviction reached her of sounexpected a circumstance, that was rather exquisite. But she disdainedto sink under the injustice (as this ultimately was) of the superciliousand the foolish, and presently shook off the impression of the firstsurprize. That once subsided, I well know that the event was thought of, with no emotions, but those of superiority to the injustice shesustained; and was not of force enough, to diminish a happiness, whichseemed hourly to become more vigorous and firm. 

I think I may venture to say, that no two persons ever found in eachother's society, a satisfaction more pure and refined. What it was initself, can now only be known, in its full extent, to the survivor. But, I believe, the serenity of her countenance, the increasing sweetness ofher manners, and that consciousness of enjoyment that seemed ambitiousthat every one she saw should be happy as well as herself, were mattersof general observation to all her acquaintance. She had alwayspossessed, in an unparalleled degree, the art of communicatinghappiness, and she was now in the constant and unlimited exercise of it. She seemed to have attained that situation, which her disposition andcharacter imperiously demanded, but which she had never before attained;and her understanding and her heart felt the benefit of it. 

While we lived as near neighbours only, and before our last removal, hermind had attained considerable tranquillity, and was visited but seldomwith those emotions of anguish, which had been but too familiar to her. But the improvement in this respect, which accrued upon our removal andestablishment, was extremely obvious. She was a worshipper of domesticlife. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and herdaughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting thechild not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of natureseems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments. Noone knew better than Mary how to extract sentiments of exquisitedelight, from trifles, which a suspicious and formal wisdom wouldscarcely deign to remark. A little ride into the country with myself andthe child, has sometimes produced a sort of opening of the heart, ageneral expression of confidence and affectionate soul, a sort ofinfantine, yet dignified endearment, which those who have felt mayunderstand, but which I should in vain attempt to pourtray. 

In addition to our domestic pleasures, I was fortunate enough tointroduce her to some of my acquaintance of both sexes, to whom sheattached herself with all the ardour of approbation and friendship. 

Ours was not an idle happiness, a paradise of selfish and transitorypleasures. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention, that, influencedby the ideas I had long entertained upon the subject of cohabitation, Iengaged an apartment, about twenty doors from our house in the Polygon, Somers Town, which I designed for the purpose of my study and literaryoccupations. Trifles however will be interesting to some readers, whenthey relate to the last period of the life of such a person as Mary. Iwill add therefore, that we were both of us of opinion, that it waspossible for two persons to be too uniformly in each other's society. Influenced by that opinion, it was my practice to repair to theapartment I have mentioned as soon as I rose, and frequently not to makemy appearance in the Polygon, till the hour of dinner. We agreed incondemning the notion, prevalent in many situations in life, that a manand his wife cannot visit in mixed society, but in company with eachother; and we rather sought occasions of deviating from, than ofcomplying with, this rule. By these means, though, for the most part, wespent the latter half of each day in one another's society, yet we werein no danger of satiety. We seemed to combine, in a considerable degree, the novelty and lively sensation of visit, with the more delicious andheart-felt pleasures of domestic life. 

Whatever may be thought, in other respects, of the plan we laid down toourselves, we probably derived a real advantage from it, as to theconstancy and uninterruptedness of our literary pursuits. Mary had avariety of projects of this sort, for the exercise of her talents, andthe benefit of society; and, if she had lived, I believe the world wouldhave had very little reason to complain of any remission of herindustry. One of her projects, which has been already mentioned, was ofa series of Letters on the Management of Infants. Though she had beenfor some time digesting her ideas on this subject with a view to thepress, I have found comparatively nothing that she had committed topaper respecting it. Another project, of longer standing, was of aseries of books for the instruction of children. A fragment she left inexecution of this project, is inserted in her Posthumous Works. 

But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelvemonths before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. Ishall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of itas was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observethat, impressed, as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness ofher talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effectwhat they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a taskit is to produce a truly excellent novel; and she roused her facultiesto grapple with it. All her other works were produced with a rapidity, that did not give her powers time fully to expand. But this was writtenslowly and with mature consideration. She began it in several forms, which she successively rejected, after they were considerably advanced. She wrote many parts of the work again and again, and, when she hadfinished what she intended for the first part, she felt herself moreurgently stimulated to revise and improve what she had written, than toproceed, with constancy of application, in the parts that were tofollow. 

CHAP. X. 

I am now led, by the course of my narrative, to the last fatal scene ofher life. She was taken in labour on Wednesday, the thirtieth of August. She had been somewhat indisposed on the preceding Friday, theconsequence, I believe, of a sudden alarm. But from that time she was inperfect health. She was so far from being under any apprehension as tothe difficulties of child-birth, as frequently to ridicule the fashionof ladies in England, who keep their chamber for one full month afterdelivery. For herself, she proposed coming down to dinner on the dayimmediately following. She had already had some experience on thesubject in the case of Fanny; and I cheerfully submitted in every pointto her judgment and her wisdom. She hired no nurse. Influenced by ideasof decorum, which certainly ought to have no place, at least in cases ofdanger, she determined to have a woman to attend her in the capacity ofmidwife. She was sensible that the proper business of a midwife, in theinstance of a natural labour, is to sit by and wait for the operationsof nature, which seldom, in these affairs, demand the interposition ofart. 

At five o'clock in the morning of the day of delivery, she felt whatshe conceived to be some notices of the approaching labour. Mrs. Blenkinsop, matron and midwife to the Westminster Lying in Hospital, whohad seen Mary several times previous to her delivery, was soon aftersent for, and arrived about nine. During the whole day Mary wasperfectly cheerful. Her pains came on slowly; and, in the morning, shewrote several notes, three addressed to me, who had gone, as usual, tomy apartments, for the purpose of study. About two o'clock in theafternoon, she went up to her chamber, --never more to descend. 

The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. Mary hadrequested that I would not come into the chamber till all was over, andsignified her intention of then performing the interesting office ofpresenting the new-born child to its father. I was sitting in a parlour;and it was not till after two o'clock on Thursday morning, that Ireceived the alarming intelligence, that the placenta was not yetremoved, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gaveher opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went forDr. Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, whoarrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. Heimmediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which hebrought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole wasremoved. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he wasmistaken. 

The period from the birth of the child till about eight o'clock the nextmorning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood wasconsiderable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of faintingfits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning, and foundher in this state. She told me some time on Thursday, "that she shouldhave died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leaveme. " She added, with one of those smiles which so eminently illuminatedher countenance, "that I should not be like Porson, " alluding to thecircumstance of that great man having lost his wife, after being only afew months married. Speaking of what she had already passed through, shedeclared, "that she had never known what bodily pain was before. "

On Thursday morning Dr. Poignand repeated his visit. Mary had justbefore expressed some inclination to see Dr. George Fordyce, a manprobably of more science than any other medical professor in England, and between whom and herself there had long subsisted a mutualfriendship. I mentioned this to Dr. Poignand, but he ratherdiscountenanced the idea, observing that he saw no necessity for it, andthat he supposed Dr. Fordyce was not particularly conversant withobstetrical cases; but that I would do as I pleased. After Dr. Poignandwas gone, I determined to send for Dr. Fordyce. He accordingly saw thepatient about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. He however perceivedno particular cause of alarm; and, on that or the next day, quoted, as Iam told, Mary's case, in a mixed company, as a corroboration of afavourite idea of his, of the propriety of employing females in thecapacity of midwives. Mary "had had a woman, and was doing extremelywell. "

What had passed however in the night between Wednesday and Thursday, hadso far alarmed me, that I did not quit the house, and scarcely thechamber, during the following day. But my alarms wore off, as timeadvanced. Appearances were more favourable, than the exhausted state ofthe patient would almost have permitted me to expect. Friday morningtherefore I devoted to a business of some urgency, which called me todifferent parts of the town, and which, before dinner, I happilycompleted. On my return, and during the evening, I received the mostpleasurable sensations from the promising state of the patient. I wasnow perfectly satisfied that every thing was safe, and that, if she didnot take cold, or suffer from any external accident, her speedy recoverywas certain. 

Saturday was a day less auspicious than Friday, but not absolutelyalarming. 

Sunday, the third of September, I now regard as the day, that finallydecided on the fate of the object dearest to my heart that the universecontained. Encouraged by what I considered as the progress of herrecovery, I accompanied a friend in the morning in several calls, one ofthem as far as Kensington, and did not return till dinner-time. On myreturn I found a degree of anxiety in every face, and was told that shehad had a sort of shivering fit, and had expressed some anxiety at thelength of my absence. My sister and a friend of hers, had been engagedto dine below stairs, but a message was sent to put them off, and Maryordered that the cloth should not be laid, as usual, in the roomimmediately under her on the first floor, but in the ground-floorparlour. I felt a pang at having been so long and so unseasonablyabsent, and determined that I would not repeat the fault. 

In the evening she had a second shivering fit, the symptoms of whichwere in the highest degree alarming. Every muscle of the body trembled, the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continuedprobably for five minutes. She told me, after it was over, that it hadbeen a struggle between life and death, and that she had been more thanonce, in the course of it, at the point of expiring. I now apprehendthese to have been the symptoms of a decided mortification, occasionedby the part of the placenta that remained in the womb. At the timehowever I was far from considering it in that light. When I went for Dr. Poignand, between two and three o'clock on the morning of Thursday, despair was in my heart. The fact of the adhesion of the placenta wasstated to me; and, ignorant as I was of obstetrical science, I felt asif the death of Mary was in a manner decided. But hope had re-visited mybosom; and her chearings were so delightful, that I hugged herobstinately to my heart. I was only mortified at what appeared to me anew delay in the recovery I so earnestly longed for. I immediately sentfor Dr. Fordyce, who had been with her in the morning, as well as onthe three preceding days. Dr. Poignand had also called this morning butdeclined paying any further visits, as we had thought proper to call inDr. Fordyce. 

The progress of the disease was now uninterrupted. On Tuesday I found itnecessary again to call in Dr. Fordyce in the afternoon, who broughtwith him Dr. Clarke of New Burlington-street, under the idea that someoperation might be necessary. I have already said, that I pertinaciouslypersisted in viewing the fair side of things; and therefore the intervalbetween Sunday and Tuesday evening, did not pass without some mixture ofcheerfulness. On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbad the child's having thebreast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk. Thisoccasioned some pleasantry of Mary with me and the other attendants. Nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience and affectionatenessof the poor sufferer. I intreated her to recover; I dwelt with tremblingfondness on every favourable circumstance; and, as far it was possiblein so dreadful a situation, she, by her smiles and kind speeches, rewarded my affection. 

Wednesday was to me the day of greatest torture in the melancholyseries. It was now decided that the only chance of supporting herthrough what she had to suffer, was by supplying her rather freely withwine. This task was devolved upon me. I began about four o'clock in theafternoon. But for me, totally ignorant of the nature of diseases and ofthe human frame, thus to play with a life that now seemed all that wasdear to me in the universe, was too dreadful a task. I knew neither whatwas too much, nor what was too little. Having begun, I felt compelled, under every disadvantage, to go on. This lasted for three hours. Towardsthe end of that time, I happened foolishly to ask the servant who cameout of the room, "What she thought of her mistress?" she replied, "that, in her judgment, she was going as fast as possible. " There are moments, when any creature that lives, has power to drive one into madness. Iseemed to know the absurdity of this reply; but that was of noconsequence. It added to the measure of my distraction. A little afterseven I intreated a friend to go for Mr. Carlisle, and bring himinstantly wherever he was to be found. He had voluntarily called on thepatient on the preceding Saturday, and two or three times since. He hadseen her that morning, and had been earnest in recommending thewine-diet. That day he dined four miles out of town, on the side of themetropolis, which was furthest from us. Notwithstanding this, my friendreturned with him after three-quarters of an hour's absence. No one whoknows my friend, will wonder either at his eagerness or success, when Iname Mr. Basil Montagu. The sight of Mr. Carlisle thus unexpectedly, gave me a stronger alleviating sensation, than I thought it possible toexperience. 

Mr. Carlisle left us no more from Wednesday evening, to the hour of herdeath. It was impossible to exceed his kindness and affectionateattention. It excited in every spectator a sentiment like adoration. His conduct was uniformly tender and anxious, ever upon the watch, observing every symptom, and eager to improve every favourableappearance. If skill or attention could have saved her, Mary would stilllive. In addition to Mr. Carlisle's constant presence, she had Dr. Fordyce and Dr. Clarke every day. She had for nurses, or rather forfriends, watching every occasion to serve her, Mrs. Fenwick, author ofan excellent novel, entitled Secrecy, another very kind and judiciouslady, and a favourite female servant. I was scarcely ever out of theroom. Four friends, Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Basil Montagu, Mr. Marshal, and Mr. Dyson, sat up nearly the whole of the last week of her existence in thehouse, to be dispatched, on any errand, to any part of the metropolis, at a moment's warning. 

Mr. Carlisle being in the chamber, I retired to bed for a few hours onWednesday night. Towards morning he came into my room with an accountthat the patient was surprisingly better. I went instantly into thechamber. But I now sought to suppress every idea of hope. The greatestanguish I have any conception of, consists in that crushing of anew-born hope which I had already two or three times experienced. IfMary recovered, it was well, and I should see it time enough. But it wastoo mighty a thought to bear being trifled with, and turned out andadmitted in this abrupt way. 

I had reason to rejoice in the firmness of my gloomy thoughts, when, about ten o'clock on Thursday evening, Mr. Carlisle told us to prepareourselves, for we had reason to expect the fatal event every moment. Tomy thinking, she did not appear to be in that state of total exhaustion, which I supposed to precede death; but it is probable that death doesnot always take place by that gradual process I had pictured to myself;a sudden pang may accelerate his arrival. She did not die on Thursdaynight. 

Till now it does not appear that she had any serious thoughts of dying;but on Friday and Saturday, the two last days of her life, sheoccasionally spoke as if she expected it. This was however only atintervals; the thought did not seem to dwell upon her mind. Mr. Carlislerejoiced in this. He observed, and there is great force in thesuggestion, that there is no more pitiable object, than a sick man, thatknows he is dying. The thought must be expected to destroy his courage, to co-operate with the disease, and to counteract every favourableeffort of nature. 

On these two days her faculties were in too decayed a state, to be ableto follow any train of ideas with force or any accuracy of connection. Her religion, as I have already shown, was not calculated to be thetorment of a sick bed; and, in fact, during her whole illness, not oneword of a religious cast fell from her lips. 

She was affectionate and compliant to the last. I observed on Friday andSaturday nights, that, whenever her attendants recommended to her tosleep, she discovered her willingness to yield, by breathing, perhapsfor the space of a minute, in the manner of a person that sleeps, thoughthe effort, from the state of her disorder, usually proved ineffectual. 

She was not tormented by useless contradiction. One night the servant, from an error in judgment, teazed her with idle expostulations, but shecomplained of it grievously, and it was corrected. "Pray, pray, do notlet her reason with me, " was her expression. Death itself is scarcely sodreadful to the enfeebled frame, as the monotonous importunity of nursesever-lastingly repeated. 

Seeing that every hope was extinct, I was very desirous of obtainingfrom her any directions, that she might wish to have followed after herdecease. Accordingly, on Saturday morning, I talked to her for a goodwhile of the two children. In conformity to Mr. Carlisle's maxim of notimpressing the idea of death, I was obliged to manage my expressions. Itherefore affected to proceed wholly upon the ground of her having beenvery ill, and that it would be some time before she could expect to bewell; wishing her to tell me any thing that she would choose to havedone respecting the children, as they would now be principally under mycare. After having repeated this idea to her in a great variety offorms, she at length said, with a significant tone of voice, "I knowwhat you are thinking of, " but added, that she had nothing tocommunicate to me upon the subject. 

The shivering fits had ceased entirely for the two last days. Mr. Carlisle observed that her continuance was almost miraculous, and he wason the watch for favourable appearances, believing it highly improperto give up all hope, and remarking, that perhaps one in a million, ofpersons in her state might possibly recover. I conceive that not one ina million, unites so good a constitution of body and of mind. 

These were the amusements of persons in the very gulph of despair. Atsix o'clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr. Carlisle calledme from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to myrequest, that I might not be left to receive all at once theintelligence that she was no more. She expired at twenty minutes beforeeight. 

 * * * * *

Her remains were deposited, on the fifteenth of September, at teno'clock in the morning, in the church-yard of the parish church of St. Pancras, Middlesex. A few of the persons she most esteemed, attended theceremony; and a plain monument is now erecting on the spot, by some ofher friends, with the following inscription:

 +------------------------------+ | MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN, | | AUTHOR OF | | A VINDICATION | | OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. | | BORN, XXVII APRIL MDCCLIX. | | DIED, X SEPTEMBER MDCCXCVII. | +------------------------------+

 * * * * *

The loss of the world in this admirable woman, I leave to other men tocollect; my own I well know, nor can it be improper to describe it. I donot here allude to the personal pleasures I enjoyed in herconversation: these increased every day, in proportion as we knew eachother better, and as our mutual confidence increased. They can bemeasured only by the treasures of her mind, and the virtues of herheart. But this is a subject for meditation, not for words. What Ipurposed alluding to, was the improvement that I have for ever lost. 

We had cultivated our powers (if I may venture to use this sort oflanguage) in different directions; I chiefly an attempt at logical andmetaphysical distinction, she a taste for the picturesque. One of theleading passions of my mind has been an anxious desire not to bedeceived. This has led me to view the topics of my reflection on allsides; and to examine and re-examine without end, the questions thatinterest me. 

But it was not merely (to judge at least from all the reports of mymemory in this respect) the difference of propensities, that made thedifference in our intellectual habits. I have been stimulated, as longas I can remember, by an ambition for intellectual distinction; but, aslong as I can remember, I have been discouraged, when I have endeavouredto cast the sum of my intellectual value, by finding that I did notpossess, in the degree of some other men, an intuitive perception ofintellectual beauty. I have perhaps a strong and lively sense of thepleasures of the imagination; but I have seldom been right in aligningto them their proportionate value, but by dint of perseveringexamination, and the change and correction of my first opinions. 

What I wanted in this respect, Mary possessed, in a degree superior toany other person I ever knew. The strength of her mind lay in intuition. She was often right, by this means only, in matters of mere speculation. Her religion, her philosophy, (in both of which the errors werecomparatively few, and the strain dignified and generous) were, as Ihave already said, the pure result of feeling and taste. She adopted oneopinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a sort of tact, and theforce of a cultivated imagination; and yet, though perhaps, in thestrict sense of the term, she reasoned little, it is surprising what adegree of soundness is to be found in her determinations. But, if thisquality was of use to her in topics that seem the proper province ofreasoning, it was much more so in matters directly appealing to theintellectual taste. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces aresponsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, myoscillation and scepticism were fixed by her boldness. When a trueopinion emanated in this way from another mind, the conviction producedin my own assumed a similar character, instantaneous and firm. Thisspecies of intellect probably differs from the other, chiefly in therelation of earlier and later. What the one perceives instantaneously(circumstances having produced in it, either a premature attention toobjects of this sort, or a greater boldness of decision) the otherreceives only by degrees. What it wants, seems to be nothing more than aminute attention to first impressions, and a just appreciation of them;habits that are never so effectually generated, as by the dailyrecurrence of a striking example. 

This light was lent to me for a very short period, and is nowextinguished for ever!

While I have described the improvement I was in the act of receiving, Ibelieve I have put down the leading traits of her intellectualcharacter. 

THE END.