Mary Shelley - The Last Man

These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, they came on me, as I stood on the height of St. Peter’s, they have ruled my imagination. I have chosen my boat, and laid in my scant stores. I have selected a few books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare—But the libraries of the world are thrown open to me—and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task, however slight or voluntary, for each day’s fulfilment. I shall witness all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume—I shall read fair augury in the rainbow—menace in the cloud—some lesson or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney—the LAST MAN.

Byron’s Childe Harolde , Canto IV.

Shakepeare’s Sonnets .

Calderon de la Barca.

See an ingenious Essay, entitled “The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated,” by Mackey, a shoemaker of Norwich, printed in 1822.

Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution .

Elton’s translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days .

Shakespeare’s Sonnets .

Calderon de la Barca.

Coleridge’s Translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein .

Calderon de la Barca.

Wordsworth.

Keats.

Andrew Marvell.

The Cenci .

The Bride’s Tragedy , by T. L. Beddoes, Esq.

Wordsworth.

Prior’s Solomon .

Cleveland’s Poems .

Elton’s translation of Hesiod.

Cleveland’s Poems .

Chorus in Oedipus Coloneus .

Shakespeare— Julius Caesar .

Elton’s Translation of Hesiod’s Shield of Hercules .

Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution .

Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters from Norway .

Solomon’s Song.