Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/32

20 that the Editor (or the Publisher) had received in the course of the preceding autumn "several private letters" from the same person who had now forwarded a letter enclosing The Vampyre?

Murray wrote to Lord Byron on April 27, 1819. He speaks of the publication of The Vampyre in The New Monthly Magazine, and afterwards in book-form, and proceeds: "The Editor of that journal has quarrelled with the Publisher, and has called this morning to exculpate himself from the baseness of the transaction. He says that he received it from Dr. Polidori for a small sum; Polidori averring that the whole plan of it was yours, and that it was merely written out by him. The Editor inserted it with a short statement to this effect; but, to his astonishment, Colburn cancelled the leaf . . . He informs me that Polidori, finding that the sale exceeded his expectation and that he had sold it too cheap, went to the Editor and declared that he would deny it."

This statement by Murray makes it probable that the paragraph purporting to come from the Editor, or some substantial part of it, really emanated from the Publisher, and the same is definitely asserted in Polidori's letter to The Morning Chronicle; but Murray's letter does not settle the question whether the allegation about a traveller at Geneva was true