Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/20

4 of mother and daughter excited private as well as public animosity. During all these years Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was not without defenders, but their number was small. Southey was always enthusiastic in his admiration, and his letters are full of her praises. Shelley, too, offered her the tribute of his praise in verse.

But the mere admiration of Southey and Shelley had little weight against popular prejudice. Year by year Mary's books were less frequently read, and the prediction that in another generation her name would be unknown bade fair to be fulfilled. But the latest of her admirers, Mr. Kegan Paul, has, by his zealous efforts in her behalf, succeeded in vindicating her character and reviving interest in her writings. By his careful history of her life, and noble words in her defence, he has re-established her reputation. As he says himself, "Only eighty years after her death has any serious attempt been made to set her right in the eyes of those who will choose to see her as she was." His attempt has been successful. No one after reading her sad story as he tells it in his Life of Godwin, can doubt her moral uprightness. His statement of her case attracted the attention it deserved. Two years after it appeared, Miss Mathilde Blind published, in the New Quarterly Review, a paper containing a brief sketch of the incidents he recorded, and expressing an honest recognition of this good but much-maligned woman.