ABSTRACT
“This is a motto befitting all the illustrious unhappy. But it is too presumptuous an one for me to use, though it bears some affinity to the strange world I fabricate about me, and to the destiny I conceive to be marked out for me. By his works Shelley has raised himself to that well deserved height, that must make him the wonder and glory of future ages. But his private life would remain unknown, and many of his most excellent qualities sleep with his beloved ashes, if I did not fulfil the task of recording them. His life was in every way romantic, and to have been united to him, and to have been the partner of his fortunes for eight 210years, has imbued my thoughts and existence with romance; it is, indeed, only by help of this feeling, and the indulgence that I give to it, that I can in any way endure the prolongation of life marked out for me in the eternal decrees. Strip my situation of its adventitious colours, and what is it? Alas! in the drear visitings of cold reality, in moments of torpid despair, I but too truly feel what it is. I am one cut off in the prime of life from hope, enjoyment, and prosperity. The prospect was smiling, but I am in a desert; the rock on which I built my hopes has crumbled away; my bark of refuge is wrecked, while the universal flood from out of the opened windows of Heaven is emptying its tempests upon me. But I extricate myself from these ideas, and arranging myself in the majesty of the imagination, I give other, and, in very truth, truer names to the circumstances around me. I was the chosen mate of a celestial spirit. He has left me, and I am here to learn wisdom until I am fitted to join him in his native sky. I was the mother of lovely children; they are gone to attend him in his beautiful mansion; yet, in pity, they have left one behind them to adorn my loneliness. Methinks my calling is high; I am to justify his ways; I am to make him beloved to all posterity. 211My goal is fixed. The prize waves in the air, and I am ready for the course. Who are the spectators? Sits umpire Love, and all the virtues attend him. There Wisdom and Self-approbation sit enthroned, and the wise and good of all ages throng around. These are to be my future companions, and I must work hard to make myself worthy of so illustrious a company. Thus I would make my misery my crown; my solitude, my select society of worthies; my tears, the ambrosia conferring immortality; my eternal regrets, the nectar to inebriate me, until I arrive at the divine impulse, which is to inspire my tale. I am a priestess, dedicated to his glorification by my sufferings; the bride of the dead, my daily sacrifice is brought to his temple, and under the shadow of his memory I watch each sun to its decline.”
