FRANKENSTEIN had been published in 1818; and Godwin saw in it that power which induced him to advise her, in this her time of need, to turn to literature as a resource. She worked hard with her pen to meet the expenses of her son’s education, and also contributed to the support of Godwin, now old and failing. She sent her father, at a time when he was greatly embarrassed, her novel _Valperga_ in MS., begging him to publish it and use the proceeds as his own. The generosity of this gift reminds us of her dead mother. This novel was published in 1823; _The Last Man_, in 1824; _Perkin Warbeck_, in 1830; _Lodore_, in 1835; and _Falkner_, in 1837. Mrs. Shelley also wrote most of the Italian and Spanish lives in Lardner’s Encyclopedia, and two volumes of travels entitled _Rambles in Germany and Italy_; and edited (1839-40) Shelley’s works and his letters, by far her most important service to literature. Her son became Sir Percy Shelley on the death of his grandfather in 1844. On the 21st of February, 1851, Mary Shelley closed a life that long had “crept on a broken wing.” We may believe that she rejoiced at the coming of the hour, when, in Shelley’s own words, “Life should no more divide what death could join together.” She appears to have differed from her mother in possessing a greater delicacy, more imaginativeness, something less of intellectual boldness and independence. She had, however, all Mary Wollstonecraft’s tendency to melancholy: “I fear you are a Wollstonecraft,” the equable Godwin wrote her. She endeavored, in her happier days, to guard against this evil by mingling in society, where she was animated and charming. Henry Crabb Robinson mentions her at Godwin’s in 1823, looking “elegant and sickly and young”; one calls to mind the description of Shelley, “like some elegant flower drooping on its stem.” Robinson also relates what he had heard from Harriet Martineau, that Mrs. Shelley “never had asked a favor of any one, and never would.” This is a touch of her mother’s pride, intensified. * * * * * [Sidenote: Godwin’s account of Mary and her sister.]