‘Mrs. Shelley had at this time been writing some little Dramas on classical subjects, one of which was the Rape of Proserpine, a very graceful composition which she has never published. Shelley contributed to this the exquisite fable of Arethusa and the Invocation to Ceres.—Among the Nymphs gathering flowers on Enna were two whom she called Ino and Uno, names which I remember in the Dialogue were irresistibly ludicrous. She also wrote one on Midas, into which were introduced by Shelley, in the Contest between Pan and Apollo, the Sublime Effusion of the latter, and Pan’s characterised Ode.’ This statement of Medwin finally settles the question. The ‘friend’ at whose request, Mrs. Shelley says,[11] the lyrics were written by her husband, was herself. And she was the author of the dramas.[12] The manuscript (Bodleian Library, MS. Shelley, d. 2) looks like a cheap exercise-book, originally of 40, now of 36 leaves, 8 1/4 x 6 inches, in boards. The contents are the dramas here presented, written in a clear legible hand—the equable hand of Mrs. Shelley.[13] There are very few words corrected or cancelled. It is obviously a fair copy. Mr. C. D. Locock, in his _Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library_ (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1903, pp. 24-25), has already pointed out the valuable emendations of the ‘received’ text of Shelley’s lyrics which are found here. In fact the only mystery is why neither Shelley, nor Mary in the course of her long widowed years, should have published these curious, and surely not contemptible, by-products of their co-operation in the fruitful year 1820. Footnotes [1] Preface to the 1831 edition of _Frankenstein_. [2] Mrs. Marshall, _The Life and Letters of Mary W. Shelley_, i. 216. [3] Letter from Padua, 22 September 1818. [4] 27 October 1818 [5] Letter to Mrs. Hunt, 28 August 1819. [6] 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.). [7] Letter to T. L. Peacock, November 1820.