Lord Byron to Thomas Moore, from Venice, April 11, 1817:
My late physician, Dr Polidori, is here on his way to England, with the present Lord Guilford and the widow of the late earl. Dr Polidori has, just now, no more patients, because his patients are no more. He had lately three, who are now all dead – one embalmed. Horner and a child of Thomas Hope’s are interred at Pisa and Rome. Lord Guilford died of an inflammation of the bowels: so they took them out, and sent them (on account of their discrepancies), separately from the carcass, to England. Conceive a man going one way, and his intestines another, and his immortal soul a third! – was there ever such a distribution? One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets outs, I’ll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that or any other.
from The Folio Book of Days (2002)
