“After I received this account, I determined he should live in the place he had chosen, undisturbed. I sent some conveniences, all of which he rejected except a mat, on which he sometimes slept; the dog always did. I tried to induce him to eat, but he constantly gave the dog whatever I sent him, and lived on haws and blackberries and every kind of trash. I used to call frequently on him; and he sometimes followed me to the house I now live in, and in winter he would come of his own accord, and take a crust of bread. He gathered water-cresses out of the pool, and would bring them to me, with nosegays of wild thyme, which he plucked from the sides of the mountain. I mentioned before, that the dog was a cur; it had the tricks of curs, and would run after horses’ heels and bark. One day, when his master was gathering water-cresses, the dog ran after a young gentleman’s horse, and made it start, and almost throw the rider. Though he knew it was the poor madman’s dog, he levelled his gun at it, shot it, and instantly rode off. Robin came to him; he looked at his wounds, and, not sensible that he was dead, called him to follow him; but when he found that he could not, he took him to the pool, and washed off the blood before it began to clot, and then brought him home and laid him on the mat.
“I observed that I had not seen him pacing up the hills, and sent to inquire about him. He was found sitting by the dog, and no entreaties could prevail on him to quit it, or receive any refreshment. I went to him myself, hoping, as I had always been a favorite, that I should be able to persuade him. When I came to him, I found the hand of death was upon him. He was still melancholy; but there was not such a mixture of wildness in it. I pressed him to take some food; but, instead of answering me, or turning away, he burst into tears, a thing I had never seen him do before, and, in inarticulate accents, he said, ‘Will any one be kind to me? You will kill me! I saw not my wife die—no!—they dragged me from her, but I saw Jacky and Nancy die; and who pitied me, but my dog?’ He turned his eyes to the body. I wept with him. He would then have taken some nourishment, but nature was exhausted, and he expired.”
The book is, on the whole, well written, and was popular enough in its day. The first edition, published in 1788, was followed by a second in 1791, and a third in 1796. To make it still more attractive, Mr. Johnson engaged Blake, whom he was then befriending, to illustrate it. But children of the present day object to the tales with a moral which were the delight of the nursery in Mary’s time. They have lost all faith in the bad boy who invariably meets with the evil fate which is his due; and they are sceptical as to the good little girl who always receives the cakes and ale—metaphorically speaking—her virtues deserve. And so it has come to pass that the “Original Stories” are remembered chiefly on account of their illustrations.
The drawings contributed by Blake were more in number than were required, and only six were printed. A copy of one of those rejected is given in Gilchrist’s Life of the artist. None of them rank with his best work. “The designs,” his biographer says, “can hardly be pronounced a successful competition with Stothard, though traces of a higher feeling are visible in the graceful female forms,—benevolent heroine, or despairing, famishing peasant group. The artist evidently moves in constraint, and the accessories of these domestic scenes are simply generalized as if by a child: the result of an inobservant eye for such things.” But of those published there are two at least which, as Mr. Kegan Paul has already pointed out, make a deep impression on all who see them. One is the frontispiece, which illustrates this sentence of the text: “Look what a fine morning it is. Insects, birds, and animals are all enjoying existence.” The posing of the three female figures standing in reverential attitudes, and the creeping vine by the doorway, are conceived and executed in Blake’s true decorative spirit. The other represents Crazy Robin by the bedside of his two dead children, the faithful dog by his side. The grief, horror, and despair expressed in the man’s face cannot be surpassed, while the pathos and strength of the scene are heightened by the simplicity of the drawing.
Of the several translations Mary made at this period, but the briefest mention is necessary. It often happens that the book translated is in a great degree indicative of the mental calibre of its translator. Thus it is characteristic of Carlyle that he translated Goethe, of Swinburne that he selected the verses of Villon or Théophile Gautier for the same purpose. But Mary’s case was entirely different. The choice of foreign works rendered into English was not hers, but Mr. Johnson’s. By adhering to it she was simply fulfilling the contract she had entered into with him. There were times when she had but a poor opinion of the books he put into her hands. Thus of one of the principal of these, Necker on the “Importance of Religion,” she says in her “French Revolution:”—
“Not content with the fame he [Necker] acquired by writing on a subject which his turn of mind and profession enabled him to comprehend, he wished to obtain a higher degree of celebrity by forming into a large book various metaphysical shreds of arguments, which he had collected from the conversation of men fond of ingenious [subtilties]; and the style, excepting some declamatory passages, was as inflated and confused as the thoughts were far fetched and unconnected.”
But though she was so far from approving of the original, her translation, published in London in 1788, was declared by the “European Magazine” to be just and spirited, though apparently too hastily executed; and it was sufficiently appreciated by the English-speaking public to be republished in Philadelphia in 1791. There was at least one book, the translation of which must have been a pleasure to her. This was the Rev. C. G. Salzmann’s “Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children.” Its object, like that of the “Original Stories,” was to teach the young, by practical illustration, why virtue is good, why vice is evil. It was written much in the same style, and was for many years highly popular. Johnson brought out the first edition in 1790 and a second in 1793. It was published in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1811, and in Edinburgh in 1821, and a still newer edition was prepared for the present generation by Miss Yonge. The “Analytical Review” thought it upon its first appearance worthy of two notices.
Mary never pretended to produce perfectly literal translations. Her version of Lavater’s “Physiognomy,” now unknown, was but an abridgment. She purposely “naturalized” the “Elements of Morality,” she explains, in order not to “puzzle children by pointing out modifications of manners, when the grand principles of morality were to be fixed on a broad basis.” She made free with the originals that they might better suit English readers, and this she frankly confesses in her Prefaces. Her translations are, in consequence, proofs of her industry and varied talents and not demonstrations of her own mental character.
The novel “Mary,” like Godwin’s earlier stories, has disappeared. There are a few men and women of the present generation who remember having seen it, but it is now not to be found either in public libraries or in bookstores. It was the record of a happy friendship, and to write it had been a labor of love. As Mary always wrote most eloquently on subjects which were of heartfelt interest, its disappearance is to be regretted.
However, after she had been in London about two years, constant writing and translating having by that time made her readier with her pen, she undertook another task, in which her feelings were as strongly interested. This was her answer to Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution.” Love of humanity was an emotion which moved her quite as deeply as affection for individual friends. Burke, by his disregard for the sufferings of that portion of the human race which especially appealed to her, excited her wrath. Carried away by the intensity of her indignation, she at once set about proving to him and the world that the reasoning which led to such insensibility was, plausible as it might seem, wholly unsound. She never paused for reflection, but her chief arguments, the result of previous thought, being already prepared, she wrote before her excitement had time to cool. As she explains in the Advertisement to her “Letter” to Burke, the “Reflections” had first engaged her attention as the transient topic of the day. Commenting upon it as she read, her remarks increased to such an extent that she decided to publish them as a short “Vindication of the Rights of Man.”