Moving to a brighter quarter of the town, Mary arrayed herself elegantly. At the same time she rained down letters on the man who, neglecting to answer them, sometimes kept them for days together in his pocket without opening them. More than once Fuseli expostulated with her on her unworthy behaviour, and begged her to act more reasonably. ‘If I thought my passion criminal,’ she answered, ‘I would conquer it, or die in the attempt; for immodesty, in my eyes, is ugliness, and my soul turns with disgust from pleasure tricked out in charms which shun the light of heaven.’ Mary’s last attempt to achieve her purpose may surely be taken as evidence that she spoke sincerely of the purity of her passion. Going straight to Mrs. Fuseli, she implored the lady to receive her into her family, adding, ‘As I am above deceit, it is right to say that this proposal arises from the sincere affection I have for your husband; for I find that I cannot live without the satisfaction of seeing and conversing with him daily.’ Naturally Mrs. Fuseli declined to accede to the proposal, and thought it best for her and her husband to withdraw from an engagement to accompany Mary on a six weeks’ trip to Paris. This is the outline of John Knowles’s account of an affair that, known to many people through Mary’s extravagantly indiscreet communicativeness, was of course told in various ways, more hurtful than the true way to her character. The evidence of the story, so true to Mary Wollstonecraft’s human nature, is unimpeachable. Who was the narrator of the story? Fuseli’s intimate friend, executor, and biographer, John Knowles, Fellow of the Royal Society, was also Mrs. Fuseli’s intimate friend, after her husband’s death. A gentleman of high place in the Navy Office, of good social position, of known integrity, Mr. Knowles gives his account of Fuseli’s relations with Mary Wollstonecraft in the biography of the artist, which he wrote at Mrs. Fuseli’s request and with her assistance, from the great painter’s papers. The account, thus given to the world, and given (be it observed) in Mary Wollstonecraft’s interest, even more than for the sake of the painter’s reputation, is introduced to the readers of the biography with these words: ‘Several publications having gone so far as totally to misrepresent the nature of his intercourse with this highly gifted lady, it becomes the duty of his biographer to give a plain statement of facts.’ Written to clear Fuseli and his fair friend of imputations, more discreditable to her than to him, this plain statement is supported in several of its principal assertions by quotations from Mary’s letters to Fuseli; for the accuracy of which passages the historian of unimpeachable credit, and conscientious carefulness, pledges his honour in these words, ‘This and subsequent quotations respecting Mrs. Wollstonecraft are taken from her letters to Fuseli.’ One of these quotations (already given in this work) is the passage from one of her