Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/190

178 These four were the usual attendants at De Brême's box.

Monti is a short, roundish, quick-eyed, and rather rascally-faced man, affable, easily fired; talks rather nonsense when off poetry, and even upon that not good. Great imagination; very weak. Republican always in conversation with us; but in the first month, after having declaimed strongly in B[rême']s box about liberty and Germans, just as they were going out he said, "But now let us talk no more of this, on account of my pension." Under the French government he gained a great deal by his various offices; by this one he has been abridged of half. He translated the Iliad of Homer without knowing a word of Greek; he had it translated by his friends, word for word written under the Greek. Easily influenced by the opinions of others; in fact, a complete weathercock. He married the daughter of Pickler, the engraver; a fine woman, and they say an exceedingly good reciter, as he is himself She has acted in his plays upon the Philodramatic stage. His daughter is married.

Negri—Marchese Negri —a Genoese, not an improvisatore—very chatty; has at Genoa a most