recovered I
found my self by the Elysian fountain near Diotima--The beautiful
female who[m] I had left on the point of narrating her earthly history
seemed to have waited for my return and as soon as I appeared she
spoke thus--[100]

NOTES TO _THE FIELDS OF FANCY_

[88] Here is printed the opening of _F of F--A_, which contains the
fanciful framework abandoned in _Mathilda_. It has some intrinsic
interest, as it shows that Mary as well as Shelley had been reading
Plato, and especially as it reveals the close connection of the
writing of _Mathilda_ with Mary's own grief and depression. The first
chapter is a fairly good rough draft. Punctuation, to be sure,
consists largely of dashes or is non-existent, and there are some
corrections. But there are not as many changes as there are in the
remainder of this MS or in _F of F--B_.

[89] It was in Rome that Mary's oldest child, William, died on June 7,
1819.

[90] Cf. two entries in Mary Shelley's journal. An unpublished entry
for October 27, 1822, reads: "Before when I wrote Mathilda, miserable
as I was, the inspiration was sufficient to quell my wretchedness
temporarily." Another entry, that for December 2, 1834, is quoted in
abbreviated and somewhat garbled form by R. Glynn Grylls in _Mary
Shelley_ (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 194, and
reprinted by Professor Jones (_Journal_, p. 203). The full passage
follows: "Little harm has my imagination done to me & how much
good!--My poor heart pierced through & through has found balm from
it--it has been the aegis to my sensibility--Sometimes there have been
periods when Misery has pushed it aside--& those indeed were periods I
shudder to remember--but the fairy only stept aside, she watched her
time--& at the first opportunity her ... beaming face peeped in, & the
weight of deadly woe was lightened."

[91] An obvious reference to _Frankenstein_.

[92] With the words of Fantasia (and those of Diotima), cf. the
association of wisdom and virtue in Plato's _Phaedo_, the myth of Er
in the _Republic_, and the doctrine of love and beauty in the
_Symposium_.

[93] See Plato's _Symposium_. According to Mary's note in her edition
of Shelley's _Essays, Letters from Abroad, etc_. (1840), Shelley
planned to use the name for the instructress of the Stranger in his
unfinished prose tale, _The Coliseum_, which was written before
_Mathilda_, in the winter of 1818-1819. Probably at this same time
Mary was writing a