ABSTRACT
These two lines are drafted in pencil at the top of p. 69 of Nbk 14. An illegible word, perhaps ‘The’, begins a third line. The fragment is difficult to date as it bears no obvious relation to other entries in the nbk. Carlene Adamson (BSM v 391–2) suggests a range of dates for its composition between 1 April and early June 1820. The markers for these limits are (1) Mary's reading from 4 to 6 June 1820 of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's ‘Letters from Norway’, i.e. Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), and (2) S.’s notes on Euripides’ Hippolytus, which he read on 1 April 1819 (Mary Jnl i 256), and which are on the same page as the present fragment, together with notes on the same play in Nbk 17 (BSM vi 82–3) which Adamson dates to June 1820. One may add that Mary Jnl records S.’s reading of Euripides (though not specifically Hippolytus) on 19, 20 and 23 June 1820. On that evidence the fragment is here tentatively assigned to late June 1820, though subject to the caution that such uncertain indicators impose. As for Mary's reading of ‘Letters from Norway’ in June 1820, it may be that that reminded S. of the Scandinavian landscapes therein described, but of equal importance is the occurrence of all the elements of the present fragment in S.’s poetry before summer 1820, notably in There was a little lawny islet (no. 188). Fragrant isles figure in Daemon (no. 115) ii 75 and To Constantia (no. 155) 20–1; Norway pines in L&C (no. 143) 4503 and Lines Written among the Euganean Hills (no. 183) 269–70. S. later refers to an island where pines grow in Hellas 170.
