Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/136

124 different drama named Ximenes was afterwards published: certainly its merit—whether as a drama or as a specimen of poetic writing—is slender. The conversation between Shelley and Polidori about "principles" and "whether man was to be thought merely an instrument" appears to have some considerable analogy with a conversation to which Mary Shelley and Professor Dowden refer, and which raised in her mind a train of thought conducing to her invention of Frankenstein and his Man-monster. Mary, however, speaks of Byron (not Polidori) as the person who conversed with Shelley on that occasion. Professor Dowden, paraphrasing some remarks made by Mary, says: "One night she sat listening to a conversation between the two poets at Diodati. What was the nature, they questioned, of the principle of life? Would it ever be discovered, and the power of communicating life be acquired? Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things. That night Mary lay sleepless," etc.]

June 16.—Laid up. Shelley came, and dined and slept here, with Mrs. S[helley] and Miss Clare Clairmont. Wrote another letter.

[This is the first instance in which the name of Miss Clairmont is given correctly by Polidori; but it may be presumed that he had, several days back, found out that she was not properly to be termed "Miss Godwin."]