The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori - Paperback

by John William Polidori (Author)

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.

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