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66 it. As Mary once said of him, he was a man before he was a bookseller. His kind, generous nature made him as ready to assist needy and deserving authors with his purse as he was to publish their works. From the time he had seen Mary's pamphlet on the Education of Daughters, he had been deeply and honestly interested in her. It had convinced him of her power to do something greater. Her letters had sustained him in this opinion, and her novel still further confirmed it. He now, in addition to urging her to try to support herself by writing, promised her continual employment if she would settle in London.

To-day there would seem no possible reason for anyone in her position hesitating before accepting such an offer; but in her time it was an unusual occurrence for a woman to adopt literature as a profession. It is true there had been a great change since Swift declared that "not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand her own natural tongue." Women had learned not only to read, but to write. Miss Burney had written her novels, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu her Letters, and Mrs. Inchbald her Simple Story and her plays, before Mary came to London. Though the Amelias and Lydia Melfords of fiction were still favourite types, the blue-stocking was gaining ascendency. Because she was such a rara avis she received a degree of attention and devotion which now appears extraordinary. Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Opie, Maria Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld, at the end of the last and beginning of this century, were fêted and praised as seldom falls to the lot of their successors of the