Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/42

30 Because my homely phrase the truth would tell. You are the fools, not I; for I did dwell With a deep thought and with a softened eye On that old sexton's natural homily, In which there was obscurity and fame— The glory and the nothing of a name."

Charles Churchill the satirist, a clergyman who had given up his standing in the Church, had died in 1764 at Boulogne, aged only thirty-three. It is clear that his renown was still considerable in 1816; it is now barely more than a literary reminiscence.]

We then returned home, where, having delivered my play into their hands, I had to hear it laughed at—(an author has always a salvo) partly, I think, from the way in which it was read. One of the party, however—to smoothe, I suppose, my ruffled spirits—took up my play, and apparently read part with great attention, drawing applause from those who before had laughed. He read on with so much attention that the others declared he had never been so attentive before.

[Further on it would appear that this play was named Cajetan. I know nothing about it. The name Cajetan is in Italian Gaetano, which was the Christian name of Polidori's father.]

I afterwards went out, and did a very absurd thing, which I told; and found I had not only hurt myself