An extant note shows that Godwin met Mary Wollstonecraft, or, at least, accepted an invitation to meet her, at the residence of their common friend, Miss Hayes, in January, 1796; and there is reason to believe that the appointment agreed to by this note of acceptance was the first occasion on which Godwin met Mary Wollstonecraft since her return from Norway. That their acquaintance was of much older standing, and had been much more fruitful of intercourse, than Mr. Kegan Paul represents, and Mrs. Shelley imagined, is certain. That Godwin now renewed his acquaintance with her under circumstances, disposing him to think far more favourably of her than he had heretofore done, is also certain. On meeting her again in 1796, the philosopher, who had made her a Free Lover, recognized a martyr to his anti-matrimonial doctrines in the woman, whom he had some four years earlier regarded as too talkative and eager for admiration. Bound, by his principles, to approve the terms of her association with Imlay, he could not withhold his sympathy from a woman who had suffered so severely from her devotion to Free Love doctrine. Approaching her as a fair disciple, who had suffered for the truth’s sake, and for the cause of which he was the chief living representative and vindicator, he desired to show his respect for her, and to comfort her. ‘I found a wounded heart; as that heart cast itself upon me, it was my ambition to heal it,’ he wrote to her soon after their lawful marriage, in reference to the renewal of their acquaintance. They are notable words: indicating, as they do, who made the first advances to the state of mutual regard, that resulted in their marriage. He found in her what he was prepared to find--a wounded heart. The owner of the wounded heart cast herself on the philosopher, who desired to soothe its sorrow. Recalling their course from friendship to love, Godwin wrote after her death:-- ‘The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always considered as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil spreader or the prey, in this affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.... There was no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into love.’