that the fact that he approved of Mary's conduct was reason enough for the multitude to disapprove of it. His book, therefore, was not a success as far as Mary's reputation was concerned, and, indeed, increased rather than lessened the asperity of her detractors. It was greeted by the European Magazine for April, 1798, almost immediately after its publication, by one of the most scathing denunciations of Mary's character which had yet appeared, and the opinion of the European Magazine was the one most generally adopted, and almost invariably re-echoed when Mary Wollstonecraft's name was mentioned in print.
Probably the article which was most influential in perpetuating the ill-repute in which she stood with her contemporaries, is the sketch of her life given in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary. The papers and many books of the day soon passed out of sight, but the Dictionary was long used as a standard work of reference. In this particular article every action of Mary's life was construed unfavourably, and her character shamefully vilified. Beloe, in the Sexagenarian, borrowed the scurrilous abuse of the Biographical Dictionary, which was furthermore accepted by almost every history of English literature and encyclopædia as the correct estimate of Mary's character and teachings. It is, therefore, no wonder that the immorality of her doctrines and unwomanliness of her conduct came to be believed in implicitly by the too credulous public.
That she fully deserved this disapprobation and contempt seemed to many confirmed by the fact that her daughter, Mary Godwin, consented to live with Shelley before their union could be legalized. The indepen-
