Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/222

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THE DIARY OF POLIDORI

anything else relating to Polidori, and I do not think they do. In fact, the affairs of Lord Byron, and the very name of him, scarcely figure in those Broughton Papers at all: for instance, I could not find anything relating to his death.


John Polidori to Frances Polidori.

My dear Fanny,

I shall see Waterloo in a day or two—don't you wish to be with me? but there are many more things that I have seen which would have given you as much pleasure. Shakespear's Cliff at Dover, the French coast, the phosphorescent sea, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Brussels, have all got more than is in any of Feinaigh's plates to excite the memory to bring forth its hidden stores. The people amongst whom we are at present dwelling is one that has much distinguished itself in the noblest career, the race for liberty; but that tends little to the ennobling of a people without the sun of literature also deigns to shine upon them.

It was not the warlike deeds, the noble actions, of the Greeks and Romans or modern Italians, that has rescued these names from the effacing daub of oblivion; if it had not been for their poets, their historians, their philosophers, their heroes would in vain have struggled for fame. Their actions would have