in the boat--a servant, two
boatmen, and ourselves. The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was
filling fast. He can't swim. I stripped off my coat, made him strip
off his, and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being
myself an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not
struggle when I took hold of him--unless we got smashed against the
rocks, which were high and sharp, with an awkward surf on them at
that minute. We were then about a hundred yards from shore, and the
boat in peril. He answered me with the greatest coolness, 'that he
had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to
save myself, and begged not to trouble me.' Luckily, the boat
righted, and, bailing, we got round a point into St. Gingo, where
the inhabitants came down and embraced the boatmen on their escape,
the wind having been high enough to tear up some huge trees from
the Alps above us, as we saw next day.

"And yet the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be
in such circumstances, (of which I am no judge myself, as the
chance of swimming naturally gives self-possession when near
shore,) certainly had the fit of phantasy which Polidori describes,
though _not exactly_ as he describes it.

"The story of the agreement to write the ghost-books is true; but
the ladies are _not_ sisters. Mary Godwin (now Mrs. Shelley) wrote
Frankenstein, which you have reviewed, thinking it Shelley's.
Methinks it is a wonderful book for a girl of nineteen,--not
nineteen, indeed, at that time. I enclose you the beginning of
mine, by which you will see how far it resembles Mr. Colburn's
publication. If you choose to publish it, you may, _stating why_,
and with such explanatory proem as you please. I never went on with
it, as you will perceive by the date. I began it in an old
account-book of Miss Milbanke's, which I kept because it contains
the word 'Household,' written by her twice on the inside blank page
of the covers, being the only two scraps I have in the world in her
writing, except her name to the Deed of Separation. Her letters I
sent back except those of the quarrelling correspondence, and
those, being documents, are placed in the hands of a third person,
with copies of several of my own; so that I have no kind of
memorial whatever of