] Again, it may well be more than a
coincidence, that the Proserpine motive occurs in that passage from
Dante's _Purgatorio_, canto 28, on 'Matilda gathering flowers', which
Shelley is known to have translated shortly before Medwin's visit in
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.
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