John William Polidori

The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori

Excerpt from The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816: Relating to Byron, Shelley, Etc One of these writings is the text to a volume, published in 1821, entitled Sketches Illustrative of tile Manners and Costumes of France, Switzerland, ana7 Italy, by R. Bridgens. The name of Polidori is not indeed recorded in this book, but I know as a certainty that he was the writer. One of the designs in the volume shows the costume of women at Lerici just about the time when Shelley was staying there, in the closing months of his life, and a noticeable costume it was. Polidori himself - though I am not aware that he ever received any instruction in drawing worth speaking of - had some considerable native gift in sketching faces and figures with lifelike expression; I possess a few examples to prove as much. The Diary shows that he took some serious and intelligent interest in works of art, as well as in literature; and he was clearly a rapid and somewhat caustic judge of character perhaps a correct one. He was a fine, rather romantic looking young man, as evidenced by his portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, accepted from me by that Institution in 1895. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.