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OFFICE, 20, WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.

BY JOHN FRANCIS.

5th S. VIII. JULY 7, '77.]

and in a note to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
canto iii., Byron accordingly says, "This is written
in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3, 1816), which
even at this distance dazzles mine."§

The Shelleys and Miss Clairmont had clearly
reached the hotel by the 17th of May. This is
the date of Mrs. Shelley's first letter thence, given
in the Six Weeks' Tour. It is the letter of a per-
son who has arrived a day or two, not of a person
arrived on that same day, inasmuch as she writes,
"We have hired a boat, and every evening at
about six o'clock we sail on the lake." And
again, further on, "We do not enter into society
here, yet our time passes swiftly and delightfully."
I should fix their arrival at Sécheron late on the
15th of May, on these grounds :-The same letter
commences, "We arrived at Paris on the 8th of
this month, and we were detained two days for
the purpose of obtaining the various signatures
necessary to our passports." That is to say, the
Shelleys left Paris on May 10. We are then told
that Dijon was reached on the third evening after
their departure from Paris (May 13); Cham-
pagnolles was reached at midnight on the fourth
evening (May 14). They leave Les Rousses at
6 P.M. next day (May 15), and no doubt reached
Geneva before midnight on that same evening.

Byron and Dr. Polidori arrived there on May 25,
and acquaintance was made with the Shelleys and
Miss Clairmont within two days.||

Their subsequent movements are thus told by

Moore :-

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After passing a fortnight under the same roof with

Lord Byron at Sécheron, Mr. and Mrs. Shelley removed

to a small house on the Mont Blanc side of the Lake,

within about ten minutes' walk of the villa which their

noble friend had taken, upon the high banks, called

§ Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iii., p. 73. Lon-

don, 1816.

The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, &c.,

and a Memoir, by William Michael Rossetti. London,
Moxon, 1870, 2 vols. 8vo. (See Memoir, vol. i. lxxxvii.)
I copy the dates of the arrival and of the acquaintance-
ship from Mr. W. Rossetti. They are taken from Poli-
often-repeated incident of Shelley's hallucination of the
dori's diary. Subsequently, in narrating that curious but

breast-eyed woman, Mr. Rossetti informs us that the ver-

sion of this story, which he then proceeds to quote, "is

and the occurrence is dated June 18. This diary of Poli-

thus authentically jotted down in the physician's diary,"

dori's was never published. Polidori has also told the in-

cident in his prefatory letter to the Vampyre (London,

1819, 8vo., published anonymously), and this account is

quoted by Moore (vol. ii. p. 208); but, though the two

versions tally, their wording is different. In a letter at

the page last cited Byron, who had received the Vampyre,

comments very amusingly on the various perversions of its

preface. He then continues, "What do you mean about

Polidori's Diary? Why, I defy him to say anything

about me, but he is welcome," which sentence thus

ends brokenly, but its general sense is easy to gather,

and the passage shows that the physician had at that

time (1819) thoughts of publishing his journal.

was never done.

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