Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/174

158 that, as her self-appointed defender said in 1803, "Letters so replete with correctness of remark, delicacy of feeling, and pathos of expression, will cease to exist only with the language in which they were written."

Shortly after her death, Godwin published in four volumes all Mary's unprinted writings, unfinished as well as finished. This collection, which is called simply Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, may more appropriately be noticed here in connection with the more complete productions of her last years.

Of the Letters to Imlay, which fill the third and a part of the fourth volume, nothing more need be said. The next in importance of these writings is Maria, or, The Wrongs of Woman, a novel. It is but a fragment. Mary intended to revise the first chapters carefully, and of the last she had written nothing but the headings and a few detached hints and passages. Godwin, in his Preface, says "So much of it as is here given to the public, she was far from considering as finished; and in a letter to a friend directly written on this subject, she says, " [sic]I am perfectly aware that some of the incidents ought to be transposed and heightened by more luminous shading; and I wished in some degree to avail myself of criticism before I began to adjust my events into a story, the outline of which I had sketched in my mind.'" It therefore must be more gently criticised than such of her books as were published during her life-time, and considered by her ready to be given to the public. But, as the last work upon which she was engaged, and as one which engrossed her thoughts for months, and to which she devoted, for her, an unusual amount of labour, it must be read with interest.

The incidents of the story are, in a large measure,