Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/120

104 when she had published her book on the French Revolution, writing again to Hannah More, he thus concludes his letter:—

There was at least one man in London whose opinion was worth having who, it is known, treated the book with indifference, and he, by a strange caprice of fate, was William Godwin. It was at this time, when she was in the fulness of her fame, that Mary first met him. She was dining at Johnson's with Paine and Shovet, and Godwin had come purposely to meet the American philosopher and to hear him talk. But Paine was at best a silent man; and Mary, it seems, monopolized the conversation. Godwin was disappointed, and consequently the impression she made upon him was not pleasing. He afterwards wrote an account of this first meeting, which is interesting because of the closer relationship to which an acquaintance so unpropitiously begun was to lead. He says:—

The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted mutually displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Women. I had barely looked into her answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary men are apt to be with a few offences against grammar and other minute points 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 in occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks, the conversation lay principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her very frequently when I wished to hear Paine.

We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the character and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of seeing everything on the gloomy side, and bestowing