She was, indeed, herself a woman of extraordinary
power, of heart as well as head. Many circumstances conspired to
conceal some of her natural faculties. She lost her mother very young;
her father--speaking with great diffidence, from a very slight and
imperfect knowledge--appeared to me a harsh and ungenial man. She
inherited from him her thin voice, but not the steel-edged sharpness
of his own; and she inherited, not from him, but from her mother, a
largeness of heart that entered proportionately into the working
of her mind. She had a masculine capacity for study; for, though I
suspect her early schooling was irregular, she remained a student all
her life, and by painstaking industry made herself acquainted with
any subject that she had to handle. Her command of history and
her imaginative power are shown in such books as "Valperga" and
"Castruccio"; but the daring originality of her mind comes out most
distinctly in her earliest published work, "Frankenstein." Its leading
idea has been ascribed to her husband, but, I am sure, unduly; and the
vividness with which she has brought out the monstrous tale in all its
horror, but without coarse or revolting incidents, is a proof of the
genius which she inherited alike from both her parents.
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