[55] The preceding paragraphs about Elinor and Woodville are the result of considerable revision for the better of F of F—­A and S-R fr.  Mary scored out a paragraph describing Elinor, thus getting rid of several cliches ("fortune had smiled on her,” “a favourite of fortune,” “turning tears of misery to those of joy"); she omitted a clause which offered a weak motivation of Elinor’s father’s will (the possibility of her marrying, while hardly more than a child, one of her guardian’s sons); she curtailed the extravagance of a rhapsody on the perfect happiness which Woodville and Elinor would have enjoyed.

[56] The death scene is elaborated from F of F—­A and made more melodramatic by the addition of Woodville’s plea and of his vigil by the death-bed.

[57] F of F—­A ends here and F of F—­B resumes.

[58] A similar passage about Mathilda’s fears is cancelled in F of F—­B but it appears in revised form in S-R fr.  There is also among these fragments a long passage, not used in Mathilda, identifying Woodville as someone she had met in London.  Mary was wise to discard it for the sake of her story.  But the first part of it is interesting for its correspondence with fact:  “I knew him when I first went to London with my father he was in the height of his glory & happiness—­Elinor was living & in her life he lived—­I did not know her but he had been introduced to my father & had once or twice visited us—­I had then gazed with wonder on his beauty & listened to him with delight—­” Shelley had visited Godwin more than “once or twice” while Harriet was still living, and Mary had seen him.  Of course she had seen Harriet too, in 1812, when she came with Shelley to call on Godwin.  Elinor and Harriet, however, are completely unlike.

[59] Here and on many succeeding pages, where Mathilda records the words and opinions of Woodville, it is possible to hear the voice of Shelley.  This paragraph, which is much expanded from F of F—­B, may be compared with the discussion of good and evil in Julian and Maddalo and with Prometheus Unbound and A Defence of Poetry.

[60] In the revision of this passage Mathilda’s sense of her pollution is intensified; for example, by addition of “infamy and guilt was mingled with my portion.”

[61] Some phrases of self-criticism are added in this paragraph.

[62] In F of F—­B this quotation is used in the laudanum scene, just before Level’s (Woodville’s) long speech of dissuasion.

[63] The passage “air, & to suffer ... my compassionate friend” is on a slip of paper pasted across the page.

[64] This phrase sustains the metaphor better than that in F of F—­B:  “puts in a word.”

[65] This entire paragraph is added to F of F—­B; it is in rough draft in S-R fr.

[66] This is changed in the MS of Mathilda from “a violent thunderstorm.”  Evidently Mary decided to avoid using another thunderstorm at a crisis in the story.