Enough has been said to show that, though her temper was defective, the _Edinburgh Review_ (October, 1882) had no sufficient justification for saying, on the authority of Mr. Kegan Paul, that the second Mrs. Godwin ‘was a person who rendered life intolerable to those who shared it with her.’ The evidence is superabundant that she did not render life intolerable, or otherwise than fairly enjoyable, to her husband, her elder son Charles, her younger son William, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s illegitimate daughter Fanny. That Fanny got on pleasantly with Mrs. Godwin, and that Mrs. Godwin proved a good and kind mother to this child of shameful birth, are sufficient testimony that Mary’s stepmother was by no means so bad a woman as certain of the Shelleyan apologists would have us think her. The fault was not wholly on Mrs. Godwin’s side that, on entering the period in which girlhood passes imperceptibly into womanhood,--the period when high-spirited girls are sometimes very difficult persons to control,--Mary and Claire went into rebellion against her. Godwin’s admission to his unknown correspondent, that his favourite child was ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious,’ points to some of the difficulty Mrs. Godwin experienced in managing the girl, who had inherited a liberal share of Mary Wollstonecraft’s quick, fervid, and querulous nature. Beautiful in different styles, clever in different ways, these two wilful, daring, saucy pusses, would have tried the temper and skill of the most judicious governess. Mrs. Godwin being what she was, it is not surprising that they went into rebellion against her government, and constituted themselves ‘the opposition’ in the Skinner-Street Parliament. It was a grievous misfortune of both damsels, that Shelley (ever quick to sympathize with ‘the victims of domestic tyranny’) made their acquaintance, when they were in this dangerous period of girlhood.