lda_.

[xiv] See _Shelley and Mary_ (4 vols. Privately printed [for Sir Percy
and Lady Shelley], 1882), II, 338A.

[xv] See Mrs. Julian Marshall, _The Life and Letters of Mary W.
Shelley_ (2 vols. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1889), I, 255.

[xvi] Julian _Works_, X, 69.

[xvii] _Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of
Italy, Spain, and Portugal_ (3 vols., Nos. 63, 71, and 96 of the Rev.
Dionysius Lardner's _Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, London, 1835-1837), II,
291-292.

[xviii] The most significant revisions are considered in detail in the
notes. The text of the opening of _The Fields of Fancy_, containing
the fanciful framework of the story, later discarded, is printed after
the text of _Mathilda_.

MATHILDA[1]

CHAP. I

Florence. Nov. 9th 1819

It is only four o'clock; but it is winter and the sun has already set:
there are no clouds in the clear, frosty sky to reflect its slant
beams, but the air itself is tinged with a slight roseate colour which
is again reflected on the snow that covers the ground. I live in a
lone cottage on a solitary, wide heath: no voice of life reaches me. I
see the desolate plain covered with white, save a few black patches
that the noonday sun has made at the top of those sharp pointed
hillocks from which the snow, sliding as it fell, lay thinner than on
the plain ground: a few birds are pecking at the hard ice that covers
the pools--for the frost has been of long continuance.[2]

I am in a strange state of mind.[3] I am alone--quite alone--in the
world--the blight of misfortune has passed over me and withered me; I
know that I am about to die and I feel happy--joyous.--I feel my
pulse; it beats fast: I place my thin hand on my cheek; it burns:
there is a slight, quick spirit within me which is now emitting its
last sparks. I shall never see the snows of another winter--I do
believe that I shall never again feel the vivifying warmth of another
summer sun; and it is in this persuasion that I begin to write my
tragic history. Perhaps a history such as mine had better die with me,
but a feeling that I cannot define leads me on and I am too weak both
in body and mind to resist the slightest impulse. While life was
strong within me I thought indeed that there was a sacred horror in my
tale that rendered it unfit for utterance, and now about to die I
pollute its mystic terrors. It is as the wood of the Eumenides none
but the dying may enter; and Oedipus is a