n to
Intellectual Beauty_, and the first three acts of _Prometheus
Unbound_. The fourth act was written in the winter of 1819, but
Demogorgon's words may already have been at least adumbrated before
the beginning of November:

To love and bear, to hope till hope creates From its own wreck the
thing it contemplates.

[75] Shelley had written, "Desolation is a delicate thing"
(_Prometheus Unbound_, Act I, l. 772) and called the Spirit of the
Earth "a delicate spirit" (_Ibid._, Act III, Sc. iv, l. 6).

[76] _Purgatorio_, Canto 28, ll. 31-33. Perhaps by this time Shelley
had translated ll. 1-51 of this canto. He had read the _Purgatorio_ in
April, 1818, and again with Mary in August, 1819, just as she was
beginning to write _Mathilda_. Shelley showed his translation to
Medwin in 1820, but there seems to be no record of the date of
composition.

[77] An air with this title was published about 1800 in London by
Robert Birchall. See _Catalogue of Printed Music Published between
1487 and 1800 and now in the British Museum_, by W. Barclay Squire,
1912. Neither author nor composer is listed in the _Catalogue_.

[78] This paragraph is materially changed from _F of F--B_. Clouds and
darkness are substituted for starlight, silence for the sound of the
wind. The weather here matches Mathilda's mood. Four and a half lines
of verse (which I have not been able to identify, though they sound
Shelleyan--are they Mary's own?) are omitted: of the stars she says,

the wind is in the tree
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; & the vault
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

[79] If Mary quotes Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_ intentionally here,
she is ironic, for this is no merciful rain, except for the fact that
it brings on the illness which leads to Mathilda's death, for which
she longs.

[80] This quotation from _Christabel_ (which suggests that the
preceding echo is intentional) is not in _F of F--B_.

[81] Cf. the description which opens _Mathilda_.

[82] Among Lord Abinger's papers, in Mary's hand, are some comparable
(but very bad) fragmentary verses addressed to Mother Earth.

[83] At this point four sheets are cut out of the notebook. They are
evidently those with pages numbered 217 to 223 which are among the
_S-R fr_. They contain the conclusion of the story, ending, as does _F
of F--B_ with Mathilda's wo