ntrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been
frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that
broke in upon me. 'I found it! What terrified me will terrify others;
and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight
pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had _thought of a story_. I
began that day with the words, _It was on a dreary night of November_,
making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream."

The next year Shelley and herself were in Buckinghamshire, where the
great poet wrote _The Revolt of Islam_. In the spring of 1818, they
quitted England for Italy, and their eldest child died in Rome. Soon
after, they took a house near Leghorn--half way between the city and
Monte Nero, where they remained during the summer.

"Our villa," she says, "was situated in the midst of a podere;
the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during
the heats of a very hot season, and at night the water-wheel
creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the
fire-flies flashed from among the myrtle hedges:--nature was
bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a
majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed."

_The Cenci_ and several other poems were written here. The summer of
1818 they passed at the Baths of Lucca, and in the autumn went to a
villa belonging to Lord Byron, near Venice, whence they proceeded to
Naples, where the winter was spent; after which they visited Florence,
and in the fall of 1820 took up their residence at Pisa. The next
year--in July--Shelley's death occurred: he was drowned in the gulf of
Lerici. The details must be familiar to all readers of literary history.
Mrs. Shelley wrote of the time:

"This morn thy gallant bark
Sailed on a sunny sea,
'Tis noon, and tempests dark
Have wrecked it on the lee,
Ah woe! Ah woe!
By spirits of the deep
Thou'rt cradled on the billow,
To thy eternal sleep.

Thou sleep'st upon the shore
Beside the knelling surge,
And sea-nymphs evermore
Shall sadly chant thy dirge.
They come! they come,
The spirits of the deep,
While near thy sea-weed pillow
My lonely watch I keep.

From far across the sea
I hear a loud lament,
By echo's voice for thee,
From ocean's caverns sent.
O list! O list,
The spirits of the