eciate her virtues and to love her. She soon
found, as she told me in after days, that instead of losing one she had
secured two friends, unequalled, perhaps, in the world for genius,
single-heartedness, and nobleness of disposition, and a cordial
intercourse subsisted between them." It was from Mrs. Reveley that Mrs.
Shelley obtained most of her information about her mother's married life.
Men like Johnson, Basil Montague, Thomas Wedgwood, Horne Tooke, Thomas
Holcroft, did not of course allow the marriage to interfere with their
friendship. It is rather strange that Fuseli should have now been willing
enough to be civil. Marriage, in his opinion, had restored Mary to
respectability. "You have not, perhaps, heard," he wrote to a friend,
"that the assertrix of female rights has given her hand to the
_balancier_ of political justice." He not only called on Mrs. Godwin, but
he dined with her, an experiment, however, which did not prove
pleasurable, for Horne Tooke, Curran, and Grattan were of the party, and
they discussed politics. Fuseli, who loved nothing better than to talk,
had never a chance to say a word. "I wonder you invited me to meet such
wretched company," he exclaimed to Mary in disgust.

Thomas Holcroft, one of the four men whom Godwin acknowledged to have
greatly influenced him, wrote them an enthusiastic letter of
congratulation. Addressing them both, he says:--

"From my very heart and soul I give you joy. I think you the most
extraordinary married pair in existence. May your happiness be as
pure as I firmly persuade myself it must be. I hope and expect to
see you both, and very soon. If you show coldness, or refuse me,
you will do injustice to a heart which, since it has really known
you, never for a moment felt cold to you.

"I cannot be mistaken concerning the woman you have married. It is
Mrs. W. Your secrecy a little pains me. It tells me you do not yet
know me."

This latter paragraph is explained by the fact that Godwin, when he wrote
to inform Holcroft of his marriage, was so sure the latter would
understand whom he had chosen that he never mentioned Mary's name.
Another friend who rejoiced in her new-found happiness was Mr. Archibald
Hamilton Rowan. But he was then living near Wilmington, Delaware, and the
news was long in reaching him. His letter of congratulation was,
strangely enough, written the very day on which Mary was buried.

The announceme