 my plan
as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began
the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great
hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the
being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and
proportionably large. After having formed this determination, and having spent
some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.
    No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a
hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me
ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light
into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source;
many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could
claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon
lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible)
renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.
    These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with
unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become
emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed;
yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise.
One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself;
and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless
eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors
of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or
tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble,
and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost
frantic, impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation
but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me
feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to
operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses;
and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame.
In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated
from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of
filthy
