the late autumn of 1820.

O come, that I may hear
Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna's glen,
Thou seemest to my fancy,--singing here,
And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden, when
She lost the spring and Ceres her more dear.
[Footnote: As published by Medwin, 1834 and 1847.]

But we have a far more important, because a direct, testimony in a
manuscript addition made by Thomas Medwin in the margin of a copy of
his _Life of Shelley_ (1847). [Footnote: The copy, 2 vols., was sold
at Sotheby's on the 6th December 1906: Mr. H. Buxton Forman (who was,
I think, the buyer) published the contents in _The Life of Percy
Bysshe Shelley, By Thomas Medwin, A New Edition printed from a copy
copiously amended and extended by the Author_ . . . Milford, 1913. The
passage here quoted appears on p. 27 of the 2nd vol. of the 1847
edition (Forman ed., p. 252)] The passage is clearly intended--though
chronology is no more than any other exact science the 'forte' of that
most tantalizing of biographers--to refer to the year 1820.

'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.'