[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 An unpublished entry for October 27, 1822, reads: “Before when I wrote Mathilda, miserable as I was, the inspiration was sufficient to quell my wretchedness temporarily.”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 Probably at this same time Mary was writing an unfinished (and unpublished) tale about Valerius, an ancient Roman brought back to life in modern Rome. Valerius, like Shelley’s Stranger, was instructed by a woman whom he met in the Coliseum. Mary’s story is indebted to Shelley’s in other ways as well. [94] Mathilda. [95] I cannot find a prototype for this young man, though in some ways he resembles Shelley. [96] Following this paragraph is an incomplete one which is scored out in the MS. The comment on the intricacy of modern life is interesting. Mary wrote: “The world you have just quitted she said is one of doubt & perplexity often of pain & misery--The modes of suffering seem to me to be much multiplied there since I made one of the throng & modern feelings seem to have acquired an intracacy then unknown but now the veil is torn aside--the events that you felt deeply on earth have passed away & you see them in their nakedness all but your knowledge & affections have passed away as a dream you now wonder at the effect trifles had on you and that the events of so passing a scene should have interested you so deeply--You complain, my friends of the” [97] The word is blotted and virtually illegible.