ambition of distinction far outwent both his powers and
opportunities of attaining it. His mind, accordingly, between ardour and
weakness, was kept in a constant hectic of vanity, and he seems to have
alternately provoked and amused his noble employer, leaving him seldom
any escape from anger but in laughter. Among other pretensions, he had
set his heart upon shining as an author, and one evening at Mr.
Shelley's, producing a tragedy of his own writing, insisted that they
should undergo the operation of hearing it. To lighten the infliction,
Lord Byron took upon himself the task of reader; and the whole scene,
from the description I have heard of it, must have been not a little
trying to gravity. In spite of the jealous watch kept upon every
countenance by the author, it was impossible to withstand the smile
lurking in the eye of the reader, whose only resource against the
outbreak of his own laughter lay in lauding, from time to time, most
vehemently, the sublimity of the verses;--particularly some that began
"'Tis thus the goiter'd idiot of the Alps,'--and then adding, at the
close of every such eulogy, "I assure you when I was in the Drury Lane
Committee, much worse things were offered to us."

After passing a fortnight under the same roof with Lord Byron at
Secheron, 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 Belle
Rive, that rose immediately behind them. During the fortnight that Lord
Byron outstaid them at Secheron, though the weather had changed and was
become windy and cloudy, he every evening crossed the Lake, with
Polidori, to visit them; and "as he returned again (says my informant)
over the darkened waters, the wind, from far across, bore us his voice
singing your Tyrolese Song of Liberty, which I then first heard, and
which is to me inextricably linked with his remembrance."

In the mean time, Polidori had become jealous of the growing intimacy of
his noble patron with Shelley; and the plan which he now understood them
to have formed of making a tour of the Lake without him completed his
mortification. In the soreness of his feelings on this subject he
indulged in some intemperate remonstrances, which Lord Byron indignantly
resented; and the usual bounds of courtesy being passed on both sides,
the dismissal of Polidori appeared, even to himself, inevitable. With