for some time digesting her ideas on this subject with a view to the
press, I have found comparatively nothing that she had committed to
paper respecting it. Another project, of longer standing, was of a
series of books for the instruction of children. A fragment she left in
execution of this project, is inserted in her Posthumous Works.

But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelve
months before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. I
shall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of it
as was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observe
that, impressed, as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness of
her talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effect
what they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a task
it is to produce a truly excellent novel; and she roused her faculties
to grapple with it. All her other works were produced with a rapidity,
that did not give her powers time fully to expand. But this was written
slowly and with mature consideration. She began it in several forms,
which she successively rejected, after they were considerably advanced.
She wrote many parts of the work again and again, and, when she had
finished what she intended for the first part, she felt herself more
urgently stimulated to revise and improve what she had written, than to
proceed, with constancy of application, in the parts that were to
follow.




CHAP. X.