The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 - Various 6 стр.

Her connection with Shelley commenced in 1815, and she gives this account of the following year, in which she wrote her famous novel, Frankenstein:

"After this my life became busier, and reality stood in place of fiction. My husband, however, was from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was for ever inciting me to obtain literary reputation, which even on my own part I cared for then, though since I have become infinitely indifferent to it. At this time he desired that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could produce any thing worthy of notice, but that he might himself judge how far I possessed the promise of better things hereafter. Still I did nothing. Travelling, and the cares of a family, occupied my time; and study, the way of reading, or improving my ideas in communication with his far more cultivated mind, was all of literary employment that engaged my attention. In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbors of Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on its shores: and Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him. But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. There was the History of the Inconstant Lover, who when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise. His gigantic, shadowy form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet, in complete armor, but with the beaver up, was seen at midnight, by the moon's fitful beams, to advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The shape was lost beneath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate swung back, a step was heard, the door of the chamber opened, and he advanced to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal sorrow sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead of the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the stalk. I have not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday. 'We will each write a ghost story,' said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery, and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our language, than to invent the machinery of a story, commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a key-holewhat to see I forgetsomething very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her, and was obliged to dispatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted. The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task.

"I busied myself to think of a story,a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horrorone to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and ponderedvainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative. Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it. Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated. They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin (I speak not of what the Doctor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him), who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth. Night waned upon this talk; and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to rest. When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I sawwith shut eyes, but acute mental visionI saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.

"I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story,my tiresome unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. 'I found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream."

"I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story,my tiresome unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. 'I found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream."

The next year Shelley and herself were in Buckinghamshire, where the great poet wrote The Revolt of Islam. In the spring of 1818, they quitted England for Italy, and their eldest child died in Rome. Soon after, they took a house near Leghornhalf way between the city and Monte Nero, where they remained during the summer.

"Our villa," she says, "was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and at night the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed from among the myrtle hedges:nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed."

The Cenci and several other poems were written here. The summer of 1818 they passed at the Baths of Lucca, and in the autumn went to a villa belonging to Lord Byron, near Venice, whence they proceeded to Naples, where the winter was spent; after which they visited Florence, and in the fall of 1820 took up their residence at Pisa. The next yearin JulyShelley's death occurred: he was drowned in the gulf of Lerici. The details must be familiar to all readers of literary history. Mrs. Shelley wrote of the time:

Mrs. Shelley returned to England, and for nearly twenty years supported herself by writing. In the last ten yearsmore especially since 1844, when her son succeeded to the Shelley estatesshe had no need to write for money, and it is understood that she devoted the time to the composition of Memoirs of Shelley.

The Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus, of Mrs. Shelley,a fearful and fantastic dream of geniuswas never very much read; it was one of those books made to be talked of; her Lodore was more easily apprehended; it is a love story, from every-day life, but written with remarkable boldness and directness, and a real appreciation of the nature of both woman and man. The hero of this novel is the son of a gentleman ennobled for his services in the American war, and some of the scenes are in New-York. The Last Man has for its hero her husband, whose character is delineated in it with singular delicacy, but the book is in the last degree improbable and gloomy, while abounding in scenes of beauty and intense interest. She wrote also Perkin Warbeck, Falkner, Walpurga, and other novels, Journal in Italy and Germany, and Lives of eminent French Writers, besides editing the Poems and the Letters of Shelleya labor which she performed judiciously, and with feeling and accuracy.

Mrs. Shelley's son succeeded to his grandfather's baronetcy on the 24th of April, 1844, and is the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, Bart., of Castle Goring, in Sussex.

REV. H. N. HUDSON'S EDITION OF SHAKSPEARE

It has been known among his friends for several years that the Rev. Henry N. Hudson was preparing for the press an edition of the works of Shakspeare. The office of a Shakspeare restorer and commentator at this time is one of the most ambitious in the republic of letters. More than any collection of works except the Holy Scripturesto which only they are second in dignity and importance among booksthe Works of Shakspeare demand for their fit illustration not only the most varied and profound scholarship but the most eminent qualities of mind and feeling. Mr. Hudson had vindicated his capacities for the noble service upon which he has entered in his Lectures upon Shakspeare, published about three years ago. The fame he then acquired will be increased by his present performance, of which, we understand, the initial volume will in a few days be published by James Munroe & Co., of Boston, who will issue at short intervals the other ten, the last of which will embrace a Life of the Poet by the editor. Some of the main characteristics of this edition may be inferred from these paragraphs, which we are enabled to make from an early copy of the preface.

"The celebrated Chiswick edition, of which this is meant to be as near an imitation as the present state of Shaksperian literature renders desirable, was published in 1826, and has for some time been out of print. In size of volume, in type, style of execution, and adaptedness to the wants of both the scholar and the general reader, it presented a combination of advantages possessed by no other edition at the time of its appearance. The text, however, abounds in corruptions introduced by preceding editors under the name of corrections. Of the number and nature of these corruptions no adequate idea can be formed but by a close comparison, line by line, and word by word, with the original editions.

"The Chiswick edition, though perhaps the most popular that has yet been issued, has never, strange to say, been reprinted in this country. For putting forth an American edition retaining the advantages of that, without its defects, no apology, it is presumed, will be thought needful. How far those advantages are retained in the present edition, will appear upon a very slight comparison: how far those defects have been removed, we may be allowed to say that no little study and examination will be required to the forming of a right judgment. In all of the plays, the chief, and in many of them the only, basis and standard whereby to ascertain the true text, is the folio of 1623. In our preparing of copy we have this continually open before us, at the same time availing ourselves of whatsoever aid is to be drawn from earlier impressions, in case of such plays as were published during the author's life. So that, if a thorough revisal of every line, every word, every letter, and every point, with a continual reference to the original copies, be a reasonable ground of confidence, then we can confidently assure the reader that he will here find the genuine text of Shakspeare.