s
published writings.

[54] Is this wishful thinking about Shelley's poetry? It is well known
that a year later Mary remonstrated with Shelley about _The Witch of
Atlas_, desiring, as she said in her 1839 note, "that Shelley should
increase his popularity.... It was not only that I wished him to
acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he
would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater
happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours....
Even now I believe that I was in the right." Shelley's response is in
the six introductory stanzas of the poem.

[55] The preceding paragraphs about Elinor and Woodville are the
result of considerable revision for the better of _F of F--A_ and _S-R
fr_. Mary scored out a paragraph describing Elinor, thus getting rid
of several cliches ("fortune had smiled on her," "a favourite of
fortune," "turning tears of misery to those of joy"); she omitted a
clause which offered a weak motivation of Elinor's father's will (the
possibility of her marrying, while hardly more than a child, one of
her guardian's sons); she curtailed the extravagance of a rhapsody on
the perfect happiness which Woodville and Elinor would have enjoyed.

[56] The death scene is elaborated from _F of F--A_ and made more
melodramatic by the addition of Woodville's plea and of his vigil by
the death-bed.

[57] _F of F--A_ ends here and _F of F--B_ resumes.

[58] A similar passage about Mathilda's fears is cancelled in _F of
F--B_ but it appears in revised form in _S-R fr_. There is also among
these fragments a long passage, not used in _Mathilda_, identifying
Woodville as someone she had met in London. Mary was wise to discard
it for the sake of her story. But the first part of it is interesting
for its correspondence with fact: "I knew him when I first went to
London with my father he was in the height of his glory &
happiness--Elinor was living & in her life he lived--I did not know
her but he had been introduced to my father & had once or twice
visited us--I had then gazed with wonder on his beauty & listened to
him with delight--" Shelley had visited Godwin more than "once or
twice" while Harriet was still living, and Mary had seen him. Of
course she had seen Harriet too, in 1812, when she came with Shelley
to call on Godwin. Elinor and Harriet, however, are completely unlike.

[59] Here and on many succeeding pages, where Mathilda records the
words and opi