Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/102

86 proofs of her industry and varied talents, and not demonstrations of her own mental character.

Her novel, Mary, has disappeared. There are a few men and women of the present generation who remember having seen it, but it is now not to be found either in public libraries or in book-stores. It was the record of a happy friendship, and to write it had been a labour of love. As Mary always wrote most eloquently on subjects which were of heartfelt interest, its disappearance is to be regretted.

However, after she had been in London about two years, constant writing and translating having by that time made her readier with her pen, she undertook another task, in which her feelings were as strongly interested. This was her answer to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Love of humanity was an emotion which moved her quite as deeply as affection for individual friends. Burke, by his disregard for the sufferings of that portion of the human race which especially appealed to her, excited her wrath. Carried away by the intensity of her indignation, she at once set about proving to him and the world that the reasoning which led to such insensibility, plausible as it might seem, was wholly unsound. She never paused for reflection, but her chief arguments, the result of previous thought, being already prepared, she wrote before her excitement had time to cool. As she explains in the Advertisement to her Letter to Burke, the Reflections had first engaged her attention as the transient topic of the day. Commenting upon it as she read, her remarks increased to such an extent that she decided to publish them as a short Vindication of the Rights of Man.