None of Mary Shelley’s subsequent romances approached _Frankenstein_ in power and popularity. The reason may be summed up in a word—Languor. After the death of her infant son in 1819, she could never again command the energy which had carried her so vigorously through _Frankenstein_. Except in one instance, her work did not really interest her. Her heart is not in it. _Valperga_ contains many passages of exquisite beauty; but it was, as the authoress herself says, “a child of mighty slow growth;” “laboriously dug,” Shelley adds, “out of a hundred old chronicles,” and wants the fire of imagination which alone could have interpenetrated the mass and fused its diverse ingredients into a satisfying whole. Of the later novels, _The Last Man_ excepted, it is needless to speak, save for the autobiographic interest with which Professor Dowden’s fortunate discovery has informed the hitherto slighted pages of _Lodore_. But _The Last Man_ demands great attention, for it is not only a work of far higher merit than commonly admitted, but of all her works the most characteristic of the authoress, the most representative of Mary Shelley in the character of pining widowhood which it was her destiny to support for the remainder of her life. It is an idealized version of her sorrows and sufferings, made to contribute a note to the strain which celebrates the final dissolution of the world. The languor which mars her other writings is a beauty here, harmonizing with the general tone of sublime melancholy. Most pictures of the end of the world, painted or penned, have an apocalyptic character. Men’s imaginations are powerfully impressed by great convulsions of nature; fire, tempest, and earthquake are summoned to effect the dissolution of the expiring earth. In _The Last Man_ pestilence is the sole agent, and the tragedy is purely human. The tale consequently lacks the magnificence which the subject might have seemed to invite, but, on the other hand, gains in pathos—a pathos greatly increased when the authoress’s identity is recollected, and it is observed how vividly actual experience traverses her web of fiction. None can have been affected by Mary Shelley’s work so deeply as Mary Shelley herself; for the scenery is that of her familiar haunts, the personages are her intimates under thin disguises, the universal catastrophe is but the magnified image of the overthrow of her own fortunes; and there are pages on pages where every word must have come to her fraught with some unutterably sweet or bitter association. Yet, though her romance could never be to the public what it was to the author, it is surprising that criticism should have hitherto done so little justice either to its pervading nobility of thought or to the eloquence and beauty of very many inspired passages.