The facts of the case appear to be as follows. As we shall see in the Diary, Polidori began, near Geneva, a tale which (according to Mrs. Shelley) was about a "skull-headed lady," and he was clearly aware that Byron had commenced a story about a vampyre. After quitting Byron, Polidori, in conversation with the Countess of Breuss, mentioned in his Journal, spoke (unless we are to discredit his own account) of the subject of the great poet's tale; the Countess questioned whether anything could be made of such a theme, and Polidori then tried his hand at carrying it out. He left the MS. with the Countess, and thought little or no more about it. After his departure from that neighbourhood some person who was travelling there (one might perhaps infer a lady) obtained the MS. either from the Countess of Breuss or from some person acquainted with the Countess: this would, I suppose, be the Madame Gatelier who is named in the Journal along with the Countess. The traveller then forwarded the tale to the Publisher, Colburn, telling him—and this statement was printed by Colburn as an Extract of a Letter from Geneva—that certain tales were "undertaken by Lord B[yron], the physician [Polidori], and Miss M. W. Godwin," and that the writer received from her female friend "the outline of each of these stories." She did not say that the completed Vampyre was the production of Byron; but Colburn inferred this, and in the magazine he attributed it to Byron, printing his name as author.

Among the papers which were left by Dr. Polidori at the time of his death, and which have come into my possession, are the drafts of two letters of his—one addressed to Mr. Henry Colburn, and the other to the Editor of The Morning Chronicle. These letters were actually dispatched, and (having no sort of reason to suspect the contrary) I assume that they contain a truthful account of the facts. If so, they exonerate Polidori from the imputation of having planned or connived at a literary imposture. In his letter to Mr. Colburn he affirms (as will be seen) that the following incidents in his tale were borrowed from Byron's project: the departure of two friends from England, one of them dying in Greece [but it is in fact near Ephesus] after exacting from his companion an oath not to mention his death; the revival of the dead man, and his then making love to the sister of his late companion. The story begun by Byron and published along with Mazeppa contains the incidents above named, except only the important incident of the dead man's revival and his subsequent love-making. Byron's extant writing, which is a mere fragment, affords no trace of that upshot; but Polidori must have known that such was the intended sequel. It may be added that the resemblance between these productions of Byron and of Polidori extends only to incidents: the form of narrative is different.

I proceed to give the letter of Dr. Polidori to Mr. Colburn, followed by the letter to the Editor of The Morning Chronicle. This latter goes over a good deal of the same ground as the letter to Colburn, so I shorten it very considerably.

John Polidori to Henry Colburn

[London], April 2 (1819).

Sir,

I received a copy of the magazine of last April (the present month), and am sorry to find that your Genevan correspondent has led you into a mistake with regard to the tale of The Vampyre—which is not Lord Byron's, but was written entirely by me at the request of a lady, who (upon my mentioning that his Lordship had said that it was his intention of writing a ghost story, depending for interest upon the circumstances of two friends leaving England, and one dying in Greece, the other finding him alive, upon his return, and making love to his sister) saying that she thought it impossible to work up such materials, desired I would write it for her, which I did in two idle mornings by her side. These circumstances above mentioned, and the one of the dying man having obtained an oath that the survivor should not in any way disclose his decease, are the only parts of the tale belonging to his Lordship. I desire, therefore, that you will positively contradict your statement in the next number, by the insertion of this note.

With regard to my own tale, it is imperfect and unfinished. I had rather therefore it should not appear in the magazine; and, if the Editor had sent his communication, as he mentions, he would have been spared this mistake.

But, sir, there is one circumstance of which I must request a further explanation. I observe upon the back of your publication the announcement of a separate edition. Now, upon buying this, I find that it states in the title-page that it was entered into Stationers' Hall upon March 27, consequently before your magazine was published. I wish therefore to ask for information how this tale passed from the hands of your Editor into those of a publisher.

As it is a mere trifle, I should have had no objection to its appearing in your magazine, as I could, in common with any other, have extracted it thence, and republished it. But I shall not sit patiently by and see it taken without my consent, and appropriated by any person. As therefore it must have passed through your hands (as stated in the magazine) from a correspondent, I shall expect that you will account to me for the publishers, Messrs. Sherwood and Neely, having possession of it and appropriating it to themselves; and demand either that a compensation be made me, or that its separate publication be instantly suppressed.

Hoping for an immediate answer, which will save me the trouble of obtaining an injunction, I remain,

Sir,

Your obedient servant,

John Polidori.

To the Editor of The Morning Chronicle

Sir,

As you were the first person to whom I wrote to state that the tale of The Vampyre was not Lord Byron's, I beg you to insert the following statement in your paper.... The tale, as I stated to you in my letter, was written upon the foundation of a purposed and begun story of Lord Byron's.... Lord Byron, in a letter dated Venice, stated that he knew nothing of the Vampyre story, and hated vampyres; but, while this letter was busily circulating in all the London and provincial papers, the fragment at the end of Mazeppa was in the hands of his publishers in Albemarle Street, with the date of June 17, 1816, attached to it, being the beginning of his tale upon this very foundation. My development was written on the Continent, and left with a lady at whose request it was undertaken; in the course of three mornings by her side it was produced, and left with her. From her hands, by means of a correspondent, without my knowledge, it came into those of the Editor of The New Monthly, with a letter stating it to be an ébauche of Lord Byron's. Mr. Watts, as Editor of that magazine, stated in his notice that the tale which accompanies the letters "we also present to our readers without pledging ourselves for its authenticity as the production of Lord Byron"; and he continues, "We should suppose it to have been committed to paper rather from the recital of a third person." This, however, after the publication of 700 copies, was cancelled by the publisher, and another notice inserted stating it to be decidedly his Lordship's, in direct opposition (as I am informed) to the Editor's will—who has since retired from the conduct of the magazine.

Immediately it was published I procured a copy; and, upon finding that it was an almost forgotten trifle of my own, instantly wrote to you as Editor of The Morning Chronicle, stating the little share Lord Byron had in the work. This was upon the Friday evening after its publication. I at the same time wrote to the publishers of the tale in its separate form, and to those of the magazine, to stop its sale under his Lordship's name. On Monday the publishers of the magazine called upon me, and promised it should be instantly announced as mine.... When I came to claim my share in the profits, I was offered £30, instead of nearly £300....

Your obedient servant,

John Polidori.

The prefatory note to The Vampyre, in The New Monthly Magazine, runs thus: "We received several private letters in the course of last autumn from a friend travelling on the Continent, and among others the following, which we give to the public on account of its containing anecdotes of an individual concerning whom the most trifling circumstances, if they tend to mark even the minor features of his mind, cannot fail of being considered important and valuable by those who know how to appreciate his erratic but transcendent genius. The tale which accompanied the letter we have also much pleasure in presenting to our readers.—Ed." There is also a final note thus: "We have in our possession the tale of Dr. –, as well as the outline of that of Miss Godwin. The latter has already appeared under the title of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The former, however, upon consulting with its author, we may probably hereafter give to our readers.—Ed."

Two questions arise as to that prefatory note: (1) Did the Editor really write it, or did the Publisher Colburn write it? (2) Is the averment true or false 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 or false. The Editor's assertion that "he received it from Dr. Polidori for a small sum" does not by any means clear up all the facts. It seems quite possible that there really was a correspondent at Geneva who sent to the Editor the MS. of The Vampyre, along with that of Polidori's other tale, and an outline of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as expressly affirmed in the final note signed "Ed."; and that the Editor, having no right to publish The Vampyre unless by authority of its writer, spoke to Polidori about it. How could Polidori dispose of it "for a small sum" if he alleged that it was written by Byron, or by any one other than himself? He averred "that the whole plan of it was" Byron's—and this is apparently true; adding "that it was merely written out by" himself—in the sense not of having written from Byron's dictation, but of having composed a story founded upon Byron's intended incidents. Murray's final phrase—that Polidori "went to the Editor, and declared that he would deny it"—is loosely expressed, but seems to mean that he would deny Byron's authorship of The Vampyre—and so in fact he did.

If we suppose (as did Murray apparently) that Polidori had in the first instance planned a deliberate imposture, and had palmed off upon the Editor The Vampyre as being virtually the writing of Byron, we are encountered by three difficulties left unexplained: (1) What plea could Polidori advance for having the MS. and the right of publishing it? (2) Why did he sell for "a small sum" a work which, if written by the world-famous Lord Byron, would be worth a very considerable sum? (3) Why did the Editor pay to Polidori a sum, whether small or large, for a book which, according to this assumption, was avowedly not the writing of himself, but the writing and property of Byron? All these difficulties are avoided, and no other serious difficulties arise, if we assume that the account given by Polidori is the true one, viz. that he offered the tale to the Editor as being his own composition, strictly modelled upon a series of incidents invented by Byron.

Polidori's letter, addressed to the Editor of The Morning Chronicle, was, as I have already said, delivered to the office of that paper. It was not however published there, as Messrs. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, the publishers of The Vampyre in its book-form, represented to Polidori that the appearance of such a letter would tend to compromise them, and he therefore, out of consideration for this firm, withdrew the letter unprinted. This is Polidori's own statement, contained in the Introduction to another romantic tale of his, Ernestus Berchtold, published in 1819; being the tale by Polidori which, as stated by the Editor of The New Monthly Magazine, had been sent to him along with The Vampyre and the outline of Frankenstein. Besides all this, the Doctor wrote a brief letter, published in The Courier on May 5, 1819, saying—what was clearly the fact—"Though the groundwork is certainly Lord Byron's, its development is mine."

I must now revert for a moment to the "skull-headed lady." In the Introduction above named, Polidori asserts that that tale, Ernestus Berchtold, was the one which he began at Cologny. It does not contain any sort of mention of any skull-headed lady. There is some supernatural machinery in the story, of a rather futile kind; it could be excluded without affecting the real basis of the narrative, which relates the love-affair and marriage of a young Swiss patriot with a lady who is ultimately identified as his sister. As to Mrs. Shelley's allegation that the (non-existent) skull-headed lady was punished for "peeping through a keyhole," no such incident exists in Ernestus Berchtold; there is, however, a passage where a certain Julia seeks to solve a mystery by looking "through the wainscot of a closet for wood." Her head, after this inspection, remains exactly what it was before.

The Vampyre was in its way a great success. As stated in The Dictionary of National Biography, Byron's name gave Polidori's production great celebrity on the Continent, where The Vampyre was held to be quite the thing which it behoved Byron to have written. It formed the groundwork of Marschner's opera, and nearly half a volume of Dumas's Memoirs is occupied by an account of the representation of a French play founded upon it.