Plato's
Symposium
. He led her on in her Latin and Italian studies. He wanted her--probably as a sort of preliminary exercise before her flight into tragedy--to translate Alfieri's
Myrrha
. 'Remember _Charles the First
, and do you be prepared to bring at least some of
Myrrha_ translated,' he wrote; 'remember, remember
Charles the First
and
Myrrha
,' he insisted; and he quoted, for her benefit, the presumptuous aphorism of Godwin, in
St. Leon
, 'There is nothing which the human mind can conceive which it may not execute'. [Footnote: Letter from Padua, 22 September 1818.]
But in the year that followed these auspicious days, the strain and stress of her life proved more powerful on Mary Shelley than the inspiration of literature. The loss of her little girl Clara, at Venice, on the 24th of September 1818, was cruel enough. However, she tried hard not to show the 'pusillanimous disposition' which, Godwin assured his daughter, characterizes the persons 'that sink long under a calamity of this nature'. [Footnote: 27 October 1818] But the death of her boy, William, at Rome, on the 4th of June 1819, reduced her to a 'kind of despair'. Whatever it could be to her husband, Italy no longer was for her a 'paradise of exiles'. The flush and excitement of the early months, the 'first fine careless rapture', were for ever gone. 'I shall never recover that blow,' Mary wrote on the 27th of June 1819; 'the thought never leaves me for a single moment; everything on earth has lost its interest for me,' This time her imperturbable father 'philosophized' in vain. With a more sympathetic and acuter intelligence of her case, Leigh Hunt insisted (July 1819) that she should try and give her paralysing sorrow some literary expression, 'strike her pen into some... genial subject... and bring up a fountain of gentle tears for us'. But the poor childless mother could only rehearse her complaint--'to have won, and thus cruelly to have lost' (4 August 1819). In fact she had, on William's death, discontinued her diary.
Yet on the date just mentioned, as Shelley reached his twenty-seven years, she plucked up courage and resumed the task. Shelley, however absorbed by the creative ardour of his
Annus mirabilis
, could not but observe that his wife's 'spirits continued wretchedly depressed' (5 August 1819); and though masculine enough to resent the fact at times more than pity it, he was human enough to persevere in that habit of co-operative reading and writing which is one of the finest traits of his married life. 'I write in the morning,' his wife testifies, 'read Latin till 2, when we dine; then I read some English book, and two cantos of Dante with Shelley [Footnote: Letter to Mrs. Hunt, 28 August 1819.]--a fair average, no doubt, of the homely aspect of the great days which produced
The Cenci
and
Prometheus
.
On the 12th November, in Florence, the birth of a second son, Percy Florence Shelley, helped Mary out of her sense of bereavement. Subsequent letters still occasionally admit 'low spirits'. But the entries in the Journal make it clear that the year 1819-20 was one of the most pleasantly industrious of her life. Not Dante only, but a motley series of books, great and small, ancient and modern, English and foreign, bespoke her attention. Not content with Latin, and the extemporized translations which Shelley could give her of Plato's
Republic
, she started Greek in 1820, and soon came to delight in it. And again she thought of original composition. 'Write', 'work,'--the words now occur daily in her Journal. These must mainly refer to the long historical novel, which she had planned, as early as 1819, [Footnote: She had 'thought of it' at Marlow, as appears from her letter to Mrs. Gisborne, 30 June 1821 (in Mrs. Marshall, i. p. 291); but the materials for it were not found before the stay at Naples, and it was not actually begun 'till a year afterwards, at Pisa' (ibid.).] under the title of
Castruccio
,
Prince of Lucca
, and which was not published
Symposium
. He led her on in her Latin and Italian studies. He wanted her--probably as a sort of preliminary exercise before her flight into tragedy--to translate Alfieri's
Myrrha
. 'Remember _Charles the First
, and do you be prepared to bring at least some of
Myrrha_ translated,' he wrote; 'remember, remember
Charles the First
and
Myrrha
,' he insisted; and he quoted, for her benefit, the presumptuous aphorism of Godwin, in
St. Leon
, 'There is nothing which the human mind can conceive which it may not execute'. [Footnote: Letter from Padua, 22 September 1818.]
But in the year that followed these auspicious days, the strain and stress of her life proved more powerful on Mary Shelley than the inspiration of literature. The loss of her little girl Clara, at Venice, on the 24th of September 1818, was cruel enough. However, she tried hard not to show the 'pusillanimous disposition' which, Godwin assured his daughter, characterizes the persons 'that sink long under a calamity of this nature'. [Footnote: 27 October 1818] But the death of her boy, William, at Rome, on the 4th of June 1819, reduced her to a 'kind of despair'. Whatever it could be to her husband, Italy no longer was for her a 'paradise of exiles'. The flush and excitement of the early months, the 'first fine careless rapture', were for ever gone. 'I shall never recover that blow,' Mary wrote on the 27th of June 1819; 'the thought never leaves me for a single moment; everything on earth has lost its interest for me,' This time her imperturbable father 'philosophized' in vain. With a more sympathetic and acuter intelligence of her case, Leigh Hunt insisted (July 1819) that she should try and give her paralysing sorrow some literary expression, 'strike her pen into some... genial subject... and bring up a fountain of gentle tears for us'. But the poor childless mother could only rehearse her complaint--'to have won, and thus cruelly to have lost' (4 August 1819). In fact she had, on William's death, discontinued her diary.
Yet on the date just mentioned, as Shelley reached his twenty-seven years, she plucked up courage and resumed the task. Shelley, however absorbed by the creative ardour of his
Annus mirabilis
, could not but observe that his wife's 'spirits continued wretchedly depressed' (5 August 1819); and though masculine enough to resent the fact at times more than pity it, he was human enough to persevere in that habit of co-operative reading and writing which is one of the finest traits of his married life. 'I write in the morning,' his wife testifies, 'read Latin till 2, when we dine; then I read some English book, and two cantos of Dante with Shelley [Footnote: Letter to Mrs. Hunt, 28 August 1819.]--a fair average, no doubt, of the homely aspect of the great days which produced
The Cenci
and
Prometheus
.
On the 12th November, in Florence, the birth of a second son, Percy Florence Shelley, helped Mary out of her sense of bereavement. Subsequent letters still occasionally admit 'low spirits'. But the entries in the Journal make it clear that the year 1819-20 was one of the most pleasantly industrious of her life. Not Dante only, but a motley series of books, great and small, ancient and modern, English and foreign, bespoke her attention. Not content with Latin, and the extemporized translations which Shelley could give her of Plato's
Republic
, she started Greek in 1820, and soon came to delight in it. And again she thought of original composition. 'Write', 'work,'--the words now occur daily in her Journal. These must mainly refer to the long historical novel, which she had planned, as early as 1819, [Footnote: She had 'thought of it' at Marlow, as appears from her letter to Mrs. Gisborne, 30 June 1821 (in Mrs. Marshall, i. p. 291); but the materials for it were not found before the stay at Naples, and it was not actually begun 'till a year afterwards, at Pisa' (ibid.).] under the title of
Castruccio
,
Prince of Lucca
, and which was not published
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