n temper, which
characterised some parts of the book, it is impossible not to remark a
luxuriance of imagination, and a trembling delicacy of sentiment, which
would have done honour to a poet, bursting with all the visions of an
Armida and a Dido.

The contradiction, to the public apprehension, was equally great, as to
the person of the author, as it was when they considered the temper of
the book. In the champion of her sex, who was described as endeavouring
to invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity prompted
to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy,
muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when,
instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, in
the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners.

The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequal
performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When
tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it
can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human
productions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and
the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it
will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of
this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary
Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more
substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other
writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in the
behalf of oppressed and injured beauty.

The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance,
will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of this
inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state in
which it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks.

It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendship
that subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source of
the most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native of
the republic of Switzerland, but has spent the principal part of his
life in the island of Great-Britain. The eminence of his genius can
scarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is the
least to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of his
contemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics