ty, Frankenstein creates a
new life, and in both novels the main interest lies in tracing
the effect of the experiment on the soul of the man, who has
pursued scientific inquiry beyond legitimate limits. But apart
from this, there is little resemblance. Godwin chose the
supernatural, because it chanced to be popular, and laboriously
built up a cumbrous edifice, completing it by a sheer effort of
will-power. His daughter, with an imagination naturally more
attuned to the gruesome and fantastic, writes, when once she has
wound her way into the heart of the story, in a mood of
breathless excitement that drives the reader forward with
feverish apprehension.

The name of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ is far-famed; but the
book itself, overshadowed perhaps by its literary associations,
seems to have withdrawn into the vast library of famous works
that are more often mentioned than read. The very fact that the
name is often bestowed on the monster instead of his creator
seems to suggest that many are content to accept Mrs. Shelley's
"hideous phantom" on hearsay evidence rather than encounter for
themselves the terrors of his presence. The story deserves a
happier fate, for, if it be read in the spirit of willing
surrender that a theme so impossible demands, it has still power
momentarily "to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle
the blood and to quicken the beatings of the heart." The record
of the composition of _Frankenstein_ has been so often reiterated
that it is probably better known than the tale itself. In the
summer of 1816--when the Shelleys were the neighbours of Byron
near Lake Geneva--Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori,
after reading some volumes of ghost stories[118] and discussing
the supernatural and its manifestations, each agreed to write a
ghost story. It has been asserted that an interest in spectres
was stimulated by a visit from "Monk" Lewis, but we have evidence
that Mrs. Shelley was already writing her story in June,[119] and
that Lewis did not arrive at the Villa Diodati till August
14th.[120] The conversation with him about ghosts took place four
days later. Shelley's story, based on the experiences of his
early youth, was never completed. Byron's fragment formed the
basis of Dr. Polidori's _Vampyre_. Dr. Polidori states that his
supernatural novel, _Ernestus Berchtold_, was begun at this time;
but the skull-headed lady, alluded to by Mary Shelley as figuring
in Polidori's story