However that may be, the two little mythological dramas on _Proserpine_ and _Midas_ assume, in the light of that enthusiasm, a special interest. They stand—or fall—both as a literary, and to a certain extent as an intellectual effort. They are more than an attitude, and not much less than an avowal. Not only do they claim our attention as the single poetical work of any length which seems to have been undertaken by Mrs. Shelley; they are a unique and touching monument of that intimate co-operation which at times, especially in the early years in Italy, could make the union of ‘the May’ and ‘the Elf’ almost unreservedly delightful. It would undoubtedly be fatuous exaggeration to ascribe a very high place in literature to these little Ovidian fancies of Mrs. Shelley. The scenes, after all, are little better than adaptations—fairly close adaptations—of the Latin poet’s well-known tales. Even _Proserpine_, though clearly the more successful of the two, both more strongly knit as drama, and less uneven in style and versification, cannot for a moment compare with the far more original interpretations of Tennyson, Swinburne, or Meredith.[20] But it is hardly fair to draw in the great names of the latter part of the century. The parallel would be more illuminating—and the final award passed on Mrs. Shelley’s attempt more favourable—if we were to think of a contemporary production like ‘Barry Cornwall’s’ _Rape of Proserpine_, which, being published in 1820, it is just possible that the Shelleys should have known. B. W. Procter’s poem is also a dramatic ‘scene’, written ‘in imitation of the mode originated by the Greek Tragic Writers’. In fact those hallowed models seem to have left far fewer traces in Barry Cornwall’s verse than the Alexandrian—or pseudo-Alexandrian—tradition of meretricious graces and coquettish fancies, which the eighteenth century had already run to death.[21] And, more damnable still, the poetical essence of the legend, the identification of Proserpine’s twofold existence with the grand alternation of nature’s seasons, has been entirely neglected by the author. Surely his work, though published, is quite as deservedly obscure as Mrs. Shelley’s derelict manuscript. _Midas_ has the privilege, if it be one, of not challenging any obvious comparison. The subject, since Lyly’s and Dryden’s days, has hardly attracted the attention of the poets. It was so eminently fit for the lighter kinds of presentation that the agile bibliographer who aimed at completeness would have to go through a fairly long list of masques,[22] comic operas, or ‘burlettas’, all dealing with the ludicrous misfortunes of the Phrygian king. But an examination of these would be sheer pedantry in this place. Here again Mrs. Shelley has stuck to her Latin source as closely as she could.[23] She has made a gallant attempt to connect the two stories with which Midas has ever since Ovid’s days been associated, and a distinct—indeed a too perceptible—effort to press out