ties should have been buried in oblivion. Licentious as the times
are, we trust it will obtain no imitators of the heroine in this country.
It may act, however, as a warning to those who fancy themselves at
liberty to dispense with the laws of propriety and decency, and who
suppose the possession of perverted talents will atone for the well
government of society and the happiness of mankind."

This opinion of the "European Magazine" was the one most generally
adopted. It was re-echoed almost invariably when Mary Wollstonecraft's
name was mentioned in print. A Mrs. West, who, in 1801, published a
series of "Letters to a Young Man," full of goodly discourse and moral
exhortation, found occasion to warn him against Mary's works, which she
did with as much energy as if the latter had been the Scarlet Woman of
Babylon in the flesh. "This unfortunate woman," she says in conclusion,
"has _terribly_ terminated her guilty career; terribly, I say, because
the account of her last moments, though intentionally panegyrical, proves
that she died as she lived; and her posthumous writings show that her
soul was in the most unfit state to meet her pure and holy judge."

A writer in the "Beauties of England and Wales," though animated by the
same spirit, saw no reason to caution his readers against Mary's
pernicious influence, because of his certainty that in another generation
she would be forgotten. "Few writers have attained a larger share of
temporary celebrity," he admits. "This was the triumph of wit and
eloquence of style. To the age next succeeding it is probable that her
name will be nearly unknown; for the calamities of her life so miserably
prove the impropriety of her doctrines that it becomes a point of charity
to close the volume treating of the Rights of Women with mingled wonder
and pity."

But probably the article which was most influential in perpetuating the
ill-repute in which she stood with her contemporaries, is the sketch of
her life given in Chalmers's "Biographical Dictionary." The papers and
many books of the day soon passed out of sight, but the Dictionary was
long used as a standard work of reference. In this particular article
every action of Mary's life is construed unfavorably, and her character
shamefully vilified. Judging from Godwin's Memoir, it decides that Mary
"appears to have been a woman of strong intellect, which might have
elevated her to the highest ranks of English female writers, had not her