years, she plucked up courage and resumed the task. Shelley, however
absorbed by the creative ardour of his _Annus mirabilis_, could not
but observe that his wife's 'spirits continued wretchedly depressed'
(5 August 1819); and though masculine enough to resent the fact at
times more than pity it, he was human enough to persevere in that
habit of co-operative reading and writing which is one of the finest
traits of his married life. 'I write in the morning,' his wife
testifies, 'read Latin till 2, when we dine; then I read some English
book, and two cantos of Dante with Shelley [Footnote: Letter to Mrs.
Hunt, 28 August 1819.]--a fair average, no doubt, of the homely aspect
of the great days which produced _The Cenci_ and _Prometheus_.

On the 12th November, in Florence, the birth of a second son, Percy
Florence Shelley, helped Mary out of her sense of bereavement.
Subsequent letters still occasionally admit 'low spirits'. But the
entries in the Journal make it clear that the year 1819-20 was one of
the most pleasantly industrious of her life. Not Dante only, but a
motley series of books, great and small, ancient and modern, English
and foreign, bespoke her attention. Not content with Latin, and the
extemporized translations which Shelley could give her of Plato's
_Republic_, she started Greek in 1820, and soon came to delight in it.
And again she thought of original composition. 'Write', 'work,'--the
words now occur daily in her Journal. These must mainly refer to the
long historical novel, which she had planned, as early as 1819,
[Footnote: 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.).]
under the title of _Castruccio_, _Prince of Lucca_, and which was not
published until 1823, as _Valperga_. It was indeed a laborious task.