Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/79

Rh refers to that calèche which had been just bought in Brussels for the servants—not to the elaborate travelling-carriage. Some trouble ensued over the caliche. The coachmaker who had sold it tried to make Lord Byron pay up the balance of the price. Not carrying his point, he got a warrant-officer to seize a different vehicle, a chaise, belonging to the poet. The latter, so far as appears, took no further steps.

3. To write twenty-six stanzas in one day is no small feat; especially if these are the nine-line stanzas of Childe Harold, and if the substantial work of the day consisted in riding from Brussels to Waterloo and back, and deliberately inspecting the field of battle. The entry, as written by Charlotte Polidori, stands thus—"26 St.," which I apprehend can only mean "stanzas." If one were to suppose that the stanzas thus written on May 4 were the first twenty-six stanzas of Childe Harold, canto 3 (but this of course is not a necessary inference), Byron now got up to the stanza which begins

And wild and high the 'Camerons' gathering' rose."]

I made up my accounts, and was not a little startled by a deficit of 10 napoleons, which I at last found was a mere miscalculation. Rode about thirty miles in all.

Forgot to say I saw Sir Nath[aniel] Wraxall at