me last night: I expected to hear that somebody I knew was dead;—so it turns out! Poor Polidori is gone! When he was my physician, he was always talking of Prussic acid, oil of amber, blowing into veins, suffocating by charcoal, and compounding poisons; but for a different purpose to what the Pontic Monarch did, for he has prescribed a dose for himself that would have killed fifty Miltiades’,—a dose whose effect, Murray says, was so instantaneous that he went off without a spasm or struggle. It seems that disappointment was the cause of this rash act. He had entertained too sanguine hopes of literary fame, owing to the success of his ‘Vampyre,’ which, in consequence of its being attributed to me, was got up as a melo-drame at Paris. The foundation of the story was mine; but I was forced to disown the publication, lest the world should suppose that I had vanity enough, or was egotist enough, to write in that ridiculous manner about myself.[1] Notwithstanding which, the French editions still persevere in including it with my works. My real ‘Vampyre’ I gave at the end of ‘Ma-
- ↑ He alluded to the Preface and the Postscript, containing accounts of his residence at Geneva and in the Isle of Mitylene.
