genius run wild for want of cultivation. Her passions were consequently
ungovernable, and she accustomed herself to yield to them without
scruple, treating female honor and delicacy as vulgar prejudices. She was
therefore a voluptuary and sensualist, without that refinement for which
she seemed to contend on other subjects. Her history, indeed, forms
entirely a warning, and in no part an example. Singular she was, it must
be allowed, for it is not easily to be conceived that such another
heroine will ever appear, unless in a novel, where a latitude is given to
that extravagance of character which she attempted to bring into real
life." Beloe, in the "Sexagenarian," borrowed the scurrilous abuse of the
"Biographical Dictionary," which was furthermore accepted by almost every
history of English literature and encyclopaedia as the correct estimate of
Mary's character and teachings. It is, therefore, no wonder that the
immorality of her doctrines and unwomanliness of her conduct came to be
believed in implicitly by the too credulous public.

That she fully deserved this disapprobation and contempt seemed to many
confirmed by the fact that her daughter, Mary Godwin, consented to live
with Shelley before their union could be legalized. The independence of
mother and daughter excited private as well as public animosity. There is
in the British Museum a book containing a collection of drawings,
newspaper slips, and written notes, illustrative of the history and
topography of the parish of Saint Pancras. As Mary Wollstonecraft was
buried in the graveyard of Saint Pancras Church, mention is made of her.
A copy of the painting{1} by Opie, which was supposed until very recently
to be her portrait, is pasted on one of the pages of this book, and
opposite to it is the following note, written on a slip of paper, and
dated 1821: "Mary Wollstonecraft, a disgrace to modesty, an eminent
instance of a perverted strong mind, the defender of the 'Rights of
Women,' but an ill example to them, soon terminated her life of error,
and her remains were laid in the cemetery of Saint Pancras, amidst the
believers of the papal creed.

{1} It was engraved and published in the "Monthly Mirror," with Mary's
name attached to it, during her lifetime. When Mr. Kegan Paul
published the "Letters to Imlay," in 1879, there seemed no doubt
of its authenticity. But since then it has been proved to be the
portrait of the wife of an artis