he road towards them and mind and keep
yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained
stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the
lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons
and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the
grave, that occasionally may blast your straining
eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction
should yawn beneath your feet.

"Think of all this at the frightful hour of midnight,
when the Hell-demon leans over your sleeping form, and
inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you
to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Sussex
solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight--he
thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But
the day of retribution will arrive. H + D=Hell
Devil."[96]

That Shelley could jest thus lightly in the mock-terrific vein
shows that his mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and
that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling
diversion. His _Zastrozzi_ (1810) and _St. Irvyne_ (1811) were
probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing
letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish
ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their
composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A
letter to Peacock (Nov. 9, 1818) from Italy re-echoes the note of
child-like enjoyment in weaving romances:

"We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any
purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing
a novel."

_Zastrozzi_ was published in April, 1810, while Shelley was still
at Eton, and with the L40 paid for the romance, he is said to
have given a banquet to eight of his friends. Though the story is
little more than a _rechauffe_ of previous tales of terror, it
evidently attained some measure of popularity. It was reprinted
in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ in 1839. Like Godwin,
Shelley contrived to smuggle a little contraband theory into his
novels, but his stock-in-trade is mainly that of the
terrormongers. The book to which Shelley was chiefly indebted was
_Zofloya or the Moor_ (1806), by the notorious Charlotte Dacre or
"Rosa Matilda," but there are many reminiscences of Mrs.
Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis. The sources of _Zastrozzi_ and
_St. Irvyne_ have been investigated i