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Title: Word Portraits of Famous Writers
Author: Mabel E. (Mabel Elizabeth) Wotton, - To be updated
Language: English
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WORD PORTRAITS OF FAMOUS WRITERS
Edited by
MABEL E. WOTTON
‘What manner of man is he?’
_Twelfth Night_
London
Richard Bentley & Son
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1887
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
“The world has always been fond of personal details respecting men
who have been celebrated.” These were the words of Lord Beaconsfield,
and with them he prefixed his description of the personal appearance
of Isaac D’Israeli; but we hardly need the dictum of our greatest
statesman to convince ourselves that at all events every honest
literature-lover takes a very real interest in the individuality of
those men whose names are perpetually on his lips. It is not enough
for such a one merely to make himself familiar with their writings. It
does not suffice for him that the _Essays of Elia_, for instance, can
be got by heart, but he feels that he must also be able to linger in
the playground at Christ’s with the “lame-footed boy,” and in after
years pace the Temple gardens with the gentle-faced scholar, before he
can properly be said to have made Lamb’s thoughts his own. At the best
it is but a very incomplete notion that most of us possess as to the
actual personality of even the most prominent of our British writers.
The almost womanly beauty of Sidney, and the keen eyes and razor face
of Pope, would, perhaps, be recognised as easily as the well-known form
of Dr. Johnson; but taking them _en masse_ even a widely-read man might
be forgiven if, from amongst the scraps of hearsay and curtly-recorded
impressions on which at rare intervals he may alight, he cannot very
readily conjure up the ghosts of the very men whose books he has
studied, and to whose haunts he has been an eager pilgrim.
Such a power the following pages have attempted to supply. They
contain an account of the face, figure, dress, voice, and manner of
our best-known writers ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to Mrs. Henry
Wood,--drawn in all cases when it is possible by their contemporaries,
and when through lack of material this endeavour has failed, the task
of portrait-painting has devolved either on other writers who owed
their inspiration to the offices of a mutual friend, or on those whose
literary ability and untiring research have qualified them for the
task. Infinite toil has not always been rewarded, and it would be easy
to supply at least half a dozen names whose absence is to be regretted.
Beaumont and Fletcher are as much read as Thomas Otway, and William
Wotton has perhaps as much right of entrance as his famous opponent
Richard Bentley, but as a small child pointed out when the book was
first proposed: “_You can’t find what isn’t there._” And the worth of
the book naturally consists in keeping to the lines already indicated.
An asterisk placed under the given reference means that the writer
of that particular portrait (who is not necessarily the writer of
that particular book) did not actually see his subject, but that he
is describing a picture, or else that he is building up one from
substantiated evidence. Sometimes, as in the case of Suckling, this
distinction leads to the same book supplying two portraits, only one of
which is at first hand.
When a date is placed at the foot of a description, it refers to the
appearance presented at that time, and not to the period when the words
were penned.
British writers only are named, and amongst them there is of course no
living author.
Chaucer’s birth-date has been given as _About_ 1340, for the
traditional year of 1328 is based on little more than the inscription
on his tomb, which was not placed there until the middle of the
sixteenth century, while according to his own deposition as witness,
his birth could not have taken place until about twelve years later.
In only one other instance has there been a departure from recognised
precedent, and that is in the case of Thomas de Quincey. In defiance
of almost every compiler and present-day writer, I have entered the
name in the Q’s and spelt it as here written. The reason for this
is threefold: First, he himself invariably spelt his name with a
small d. Second, Hood, Wordsworth, and Lamb, and, I believe, all his
other contemporaries did the same. Third, de Quincey himself was
so determined about the matter that he actually dropped the prefix
altogether for some little time, and was known as Mr. Quincey. “His
name I write with a small d in the de, as he wrote it himself. He would
not have wished it indexed among the D’s, but the Q’s,” wrote the Rev.
Francis Jacox, who was one of his Lasswade friends, and in spite of his
recent and skilful biographers, it must be conceded that after all the
little man had the greatest right to his own name.
I am glad to take this opportunity of thanking those who have helped
me, and who will not let me speak my thanks direct. It is a pleasant
thought that while working amongst the literary men of the past, I
have received nothing but kindness from those of to-day. First and
foremost to Mr. George Augustus Sala, to whom I am infinitely indebted;
also to Mrs. Huntingford, Mrs. and Mr. Frederick Chapman, Mr. Henry M.
Trollope, Dr. W. F. Fitz-Patrick, and Mr. S. C. Hall: to all these,
as well as to my own personal friends, I offer my hearty and sincere
thanks.
M. E. W.
CONTENTS
PAGE
JOSEPH ADDISON 1
HARRISON AINSWORTH 4
JANE AUSTEN 7
FRANCIS, LORD BACON 10
JOANNA BAILLIE 12
BENJAMIN, LORD BEACONSFIELD 15
JEREMY BENTHAM 17
RICHARD BENTLEY 20
JAMES BOSWELL 21
CHARLOTTE BRONTË 24
HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM 27
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 34
JOHN BUNYAN 36
EDMUND BURKE 39
ROBERT BURNS 42
SAMUEL BUTLER 47
GEORGE, LORD BYRON 47
THOMAS CAMPBELL 51
THOMAS CARLYLE 55
THOMAS CHATTERTON 58
GEOFFREY CHAUCER 61
PHILIP, LORD CHESTERFIELD 63
WILLIAM COBBETT 66
HARTLEY COLERIDGE 70
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 74
WILLIAM COLLINS 77
WILLIAM COWPER 79
GEORGE CRABBE 81
DANIEL DE FOE 83
CHARLES DICKENS 86
ISAAC D’ISRAELI 91
JOHN DRYDEN 94
MARY ANNE EVANS (GEORGE ELIOT) 98
HENRY FIELDING 102
JOHN GAY 105
EDWARD GIBBON 107
WILLIAM GODWIN 110
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 112
DAVID GRAY 114
THOMAS GRAY 116
HENRY HALLAM 118
WILLIAM HAZLITT 120
FELICIA HEMANS 125
JAMES HOGG 128
THOMAS HOOD 130
THEODORE HOOK 134
DAVID HUME 136
LEIGH HUNT 139
ELIZABETH INCHBALD 143
FRANCIS, LORD JEFFREY 144
DOUGLAS JERROLD 147
SAMUEL JOHNSON 150
BEN JONSON 152
JOHN KEATS 155
JOHN KEBLE 158
CHARLES KINGSLEY 164
CHARLES LAMB 168
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON 172
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 174
CHARLES LEVER 177
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 179
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 180
SIR RICHARD LOVELACE 181
EDWARD, LORD LYTTON 183
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 187
WILLIAM MAGINN 190
FRANCIS MAHONY (FATHER PROUT) 195
FREDERICK MARRYAT 199
HARRIET MARTINEAU 202
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 205
JOHN MILTON 207
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 211
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 215
THOMAS MOORE 217
HANNAH MORE 220
SIR THOMAS MORE 224
CAROLINE NORTON 227
THOMAS OTWAY 231
SAMUEL PEPYS 232
ALEXANDER POPE 234
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER 236
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 238
ANN RADCLIFFE 243
SIR WALTER RALEIGH 244
CHARLES READE 248
SAMUEL RICHARDSON 251
SAMUEL ROGERS 254
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 256
RICHARD SAVAGE 262
SIR WALTER SCOTT 264
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 267
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY 275
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 277
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 282
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 284
HORACE SMITH 286
SYDNEY SMITH 287
TOBIAS SMOLLETT 289
ROBERT SOUTHEY 290
EDMUND SPENSER 293
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 296
SIR RICHARD STEELE 299
LAURENCE STERNE 302
SIR JOHN SUCKLING 304
JONATHAN SWIFT 305
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 308
JAMES THOMSON 311
ANTHONY TROLLOPE 313
EDMUND WALLER 317
HORACE WALPOLE 319
IZAAC WALTON 323
JOHN WILSON 324
ELLEN WOOD (MRS. HENRY WOOD) 330
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 332
SIR HENRY WOTTON 335
JOSEPH ADDISON
1672-1719
[Sidenote: _Temple Bar_, 1874. *]
“Of his personal appearance we have at least two portraits by good
hands. Before us are three carefully-engraved portraits of him, but
there is a great dissimilarity between the three except in the wig.
Sir Godfrey Kneller painted one of these portraits, which is entirely
unlike the two others; let us, however, give Sir Godfrey the credit
of the best picture, and judge Addison’s appearance from that. The
wig almost prevents our judging the shape of the head, yet it seems
very high behind. The forehead is very lofty, the sort of forehead
which is called ‘commanding’ by those people who do not know that some
of the least decided men in the world have had high foreheads. The
eyebrows are delicately ‘pencilled,’ yet show a vast deal of vigour and
expression; they are what his old Latin friends, who knew so well the
power of expression in the eyebrow, would have called ‘supercilious,’
and yet the nasal end of the supercilium is only slightly raised, and
it droops pleasantly at the temporal end, so that there is nothing
Satanic or ill-natured about it. The eyebrow of Addison, according to
Kneller, seems to say, ‘You are a greater fool than you think yourself
to be, but I would die sooner than tell you so.’ The eye, which is
generally supposed to convey so much expression, but which very often
does not, is very much like the eyes of other amiable and talented
people. The nose is long, as becomes an orthodox Whig; quite as long,
we should say, as the nose of any member of Peel’s famous long-nosed
ministry, and quite as delicately chiselled. The mouth is very tender
and beautiful, firm, yet with a delicate curve upwards at each end of
the upper lip, suggestive of a good joke, and of a calm waiting to
hear if any man is going to beat it. Below the mouth there follows of
course the nearly inevitable double chin of the eighteenth century,
with a deep incision in the centre of the jaw-bone, which shows through
the flesh like a dimple. On the whole a singularly handsome and
pleasant face, wanting the wonderful form which one sees in the faces
of Shakespeare, Prior, Congreve, Castlereagh, Byron, or Napoleon, but
still extremely fine of its own.”
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_.]
“Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned as
that timorous or sullen taciturnity, which his friends called modesty
by too mild a name. Steele mentions, with great tenderness, ‘that
remarkable bashfulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit;’
and tells us ‘that his abilities were covered only by modesty, which
doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all
that are concealed.’ Chesterfield affirms that ‘Addison was the most
timorous and awkward man that he ever saw.’ And Addison, speaking of
his own deficiency in conversation, used to say of himself that, with
respect to intellectual wealth, ‘he could draw bills for a thousand
pounds though he had not a guinea in his pocket.’... ‘Addison’s
conversation,’ says Pope, ‘had something in it more charming than I
have found in any other man. But this was only when familiar; before
strangers, or, perhaps, a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by
a stiff silence.’”
HARRISON AINSWORTH
1805-1882
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a Long Life_.]
“I saw little of him in later days, but when I saw him in 1826, not
long after he married the daughter of Ebers of New Bond Street, and
‘condescended’ for a brief time to be a publisher, he was a remarkably
handsome young man--tall, graceful in deportment, and in all ways a
pleasant person to look upon and talk to. He was, perhaps, as thorough
a gentleman as his native city of Manchester ever sent forth.”
[Sidenote: A personal friend.]
“Harrison Ainsworth was certainly a handsome man, but it was very
much of the barber’s-block type of beauty, with wavy scented hair,
smiling lips, and pink and white complexion. As a young man he was
gorgeous in the _outré_ dress of the dandy of ’36, and, in common
with those other famous dandies, d’Orsay, young Benjamin Disraeli,
and Tom Duncombe, wore multitudinous waistcoats, over which dangled
a long gold chain, numberless rings, and a black satin stock. In old
age he was very patriarchal-looking. His gray hair was swept up and
back from a peculiarly high broad forehead; his moustache, beard, and
whiskers were short, straight, and silky, and the mouth was entirely
hidden. His eyes were large and oval, and rather _flat_ in form,--less
expressive altogether than one would have expected in the head of so
graphic a writer. The eyebrows were somewhat overhanging, and the nose
was straight and flexible. Up to the day of his death he was always a
well-dressed man, but in a far more sober fashion than in his youth.”
[Sidenote: Ainsworth’s _Rookwood_.]
“What have we to add to what we have here ventured to record, which the
engraving which accompanies this memoir will not more happily embody?
(_This refers to a portrait by Maclise which appeared in_ The Mirror.)
Should that fail to do justice to his face--to its regularity and
delicacy of feature, its manly glow of health, and the cordial nature
which lightens it up--we must refer the dissatisfied beholder to Mr.
Pickersgill’s masterly full-length portrait exhibited last year, in
which the author of _The Miser’s Daughter_ may be seen, not as some
pale, worn, pining scholar,--some fagging, half-exhausted, periodical
romancer,--but, as an English gentleman of goodly stature and well-set
limb, with a fine head on his shoulders, and a heart to match. If to
this we add a word, it must be to observe, that, though the temper
of our popular author may be marked by impatience on some occasions,
it has never been upon any occasion marked by a want of generosity,
whether in conferring benefits or atoning for errors. His friends
regard him as a man with as few failings, blended with fine qualities,
as most people, and his enemies know nothing at all about him.”
JANE AUSTEN
1775-1817
[Sidenote: Tytler’s _Jane Austen and her Works_. *]
“In person Jane Austen seems to have borne considerable resemblance to
her two favourite heroines, Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. Jane,
too, was tall and slender, a brunette, with a rich colour,--altogether
‘the picture of health’ which Emma Woodhouse was said to be. In minor
points, Jane Austen had a well-formed though somewhat small nose and
mouth, round as well as rosy cheeks, bright hazel eyes, and brown hair
falling in natural curls about her face.”
[Sidenote: Leigh’s _Memoir of Jane Austen_. *]
“As my memoir has now reached the period when I saw a great deal of my
aunt, and was old enough to understand something of her value, I will
here attempt a description of her person, mind, and habits. In person
she was very attractive; her figure was rather tall and slender, her
step light and firm, and her whole appearance expressive of health and
animation. In complexion she was a clear brunette, with a rich colour;
she had full round cheeks, with mouth and nose small and well-formed,
bright hazel eyes, and brown hair forming natural curls close round her
face. If not so regularly handsome as her sister, yet her countenance
had a peculiar charm of its own to the eyes of most beholders. At the
time of which I am now writing, she never was seen, either morning
or evening, without a cap; I believe that she and her sister were
generally thought to have taken to the garb of middle age earlier than
their years or their looks required; and that, though remarkably neat
in their dress, as in all their ways, they were scarcely sufficiently
regardful of the fashionable, or the becoming.”--1809.
[Sidenote: Austen’s _Sense and Sensibility_.]
“Of personal attractions she possessed a considerable share; her
stature rather exceeded the middle height; her carriage and deportment
were quiet, but graceful; her features were separately good; their
assemblage produced an unrivalled expression of that cheerfulness,
sensibility, and benevolence which were her real characteristics; her
complexion was of the finest texture--it might with truth be said that
her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek; her voice was sweet;
she delivered herself with fluency and precision; indeed, she was
formed for elegant and rational society, excelling in conversation as
much as in composition.... The affectation of candour is not uncommon,
but she had no affectation.... She never uttered either a hasty, a
silly, or a severe expression. In short, her temper was as polished as
her wit; and no one could be often in her company without feeling a
strong desire of obtaining her friendship, and cherishing a desire of
having obtained it.”
FRANCIS, LORD BACON
1560-1-1626
[Sidenote: Montague’s _Life of Bacon_. *]
[Sidenote: Evelyn on Medals.]
“He was of a middle stature, and well proportioned; his features were
handsome and expressive, and his countenance, until it was injured by
politics and worldly warfare, singularly placid. There is a portrait
of him when he was only eighteen now extant, on which the artist
has recorded his despair of doing justice to his subject, by the
inscription,--‘Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem.’ His portraits
differ beyond what may be considered a fair allowance for the varying
skill of the artist, or the natural changes which time wrought upon
his person; but none of them contradict the description given by one
who knew him well, ‘That he had a spacious forehead and piercing eye,
looking upward as a soul in sublime contemplation, a countenance worthy
of one who was to set free captive philosophy.’”
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_. *]
“He had a delicate, lively hazel eie; Dr. Harvey told me it was like
the eie of a viper.”
[Sidenote: Campbell’s _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_. *]
“All accounts represent him as a delightful companion, adapting himself
to company of every degree, calling, and humour,--not engrossing the
conversation,--trying to get all to talk in turn on the subject they
best understood, and not disdaining to light his own candle at the
lamp of any other.... Little remains except to give some account of
his person. He was of a middling stature; his limbs well-formed though
not robust; his forehead high, spacious and open; his eye lively and
penetrating; there were deep lines of thinking in his face, his smile
was both intellectual and benevolent; the marks of age were prematurely
impressed upon him; in advanced life his whole appearance was venerably
pleasing, so that a stranger was insensibly drawn to love before
knowing how much reason there was to admire him.”
JOANNA BAILLIE
1762-1851
[Sidenote: Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_.]
“We met Miss Joanna Baillie, and accompanied her home. She is small in
figure, and her gait is mean and shuffling, but her manners are those
of a well-bred woman. She has none of the unpleasant airs too common to
literary ladies. Her conversation is sensible. She possesses apparently
considerable information, is prompt without being forward, and has
a fixed judgment of her own, without any disposition to force it on
others. Wordsworth said of her with warmth, ‘If I had to present any
one to a foreigner as a model of an English gentlewoman, it would be
Joanna Baillie.’”--1812.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“Of the party I can recall but one; that one, however, is a
memory,--JOANNA BAILLIE. I remember her as singularly impressive in
look and manner, with the ‘queenly’ air we associate with ideas of high
birth and lofty rank. Her face was long, narrow, dark, and solemn, and
her speech deliberate and considerate, the very antipodes of ‘chatter.’
Tall in person, and habited according to the ‘mode’ of an olden time,
her picture, as it is now present to me, is that of a very venerable
dame, dressed in coif and kirtle, stepping out, as it were, from a
frame in which she had been placed by the painter Vandyke.”--1825-26.
[Sidenote: Sara Coleridge’s _Letters_.]
“I saw Mrs. Joanna Baillie before dinner. She wore a delicate lavender
satin bonnet; and Mrs. J. says she is fond of dress, and knows what
every one has on. Her taste is certainly exquisite in dress though
(strange to say) not, in my opinion, in poetry. I more than ever
admired the harmony of expression and tint, the silver hair and
silvery-gray eye, the pale skin, and the look which speaks of a
mind that has had much communing with high imagination, though such
intercourse is only perceptible now by the absence of everything which
that lofty spirit would not set his seal upon.”--1834.
BENJAMIN, LORD BEACONSFIELD
1804-1881
[Sidenote: Jeaffreson’s _Novels and Novelists_.]
“His ringlets of silken black hair, his flashing eyes, his effeminate
and lisping voice, his dress-coat of black velvet lined with white
satin, his white kid gloves with his wrist surrounded by a long hanging
fringe of black silk, and his ivory cane, of which the handle, inlaid
with gold, was relieved by more black silk in the shape of a tassel....
Such was the perfumed boy-exquisite who forced his way into the salons
of peeresses.”--1829.
[Sidenote: Mill’s _Beaconsfield_.]
“In the front seat on the Conservative side of the House, may be
observed a man who, if his hat be off, which it generally is, is sure
to arrest one’s attention, and we need scarcely to be told after having
once seen him that he is the leader of that great party. He is not
old, just turned fifty we may suppose, but he bears his age well,
whatever it may be. His face, which was once handsome, is now ‘sicklied
o’er with the pale cast of thought.’ The head is long, and the forehead
massive and finished. The eye is restless, but full of fire; the hair
black and curly. Nature has evidently taken some pains to finish the
exterior.”--about 1855.
[Sidenote: J. H. du Vivier, _Portraits comparés des hommes d’état_.]
“Certes, le premier aspect de Mr. Gladstone ... réponds à l’idée
qu’on peut se faire d’un chef doué d’un élan irrésistible, mieuxque
l’attitude maladive de lord Beaconsfield, ses traits mous, son regard
flétri et comme perdu dans l’abstraction ou dans une réverie hantée par
la désillusion et la lassitude.... Chez le plus faible ... on devine
bientôt que si le fourreau est usé par la lame, c’est à raison de la
dévorante activité de celle-ci.... La tête s’incline avec mélancholie,
la bouche a pris l’habitude des contractions douleureuses; mais que
de patience invincible dans cette attitude! quelle fécondité, quelle
soudaineté d’inspirations marquées sur ces lèvres que plisse le rictus
de l’ironie!”
JEREMY BENTHAM
1748-1832
[Sidenote: Sir John Bowring’s _Autobiographical Recollections_.]
“In the very centre of the group of persons who originated the
_Westminster Review_ stands the grand figure of Jeremy Bentham.
Though closely resembling Franklin, his face expresses a profounder
wisdom and a more marked benevolence than the bust of the American
printer. Mingled with a serene contemplative cast, there is something
of playful humour in the countenance. The high forehead is wrinkled,
but is without sternness, and is contemplative but complacent. The
neatly-combed long white hair hangs over the neck, but moves at every
breath. _Simplex munditiis_ best describes his garments. When he walks
there is a restless activity in his gait, as if his thoughts were, ‘Let
me walk fast, for there is work to do, and the walking is but to fit me
the better for the work.’”
[Sidenote: Sir John Bowring’s _Life of Bentham_.]
“The striking resemblance between the persons of Franklin and Bentham
has been often noticed. Of the two, perhaps, the expression of
Bentham’s countenance was the more benign. Each remarkable for profound
sagacity, Bentham was scarcely less so for a perpetual playfulness of
manner and of expression. Few men were so sportive, so amusing, as
Bentham,--none ever tempered more delightfully his wisdom with his
wit.... Bentham’s dress was peculiar out of doors. He ordinarily wore
a narrow-rimmed straw hat, from under which his long white hair fell
on his shoulders, or was blown about by the winds. He had a plain
brown coat, cut in the Quaker style; light-brown cassimere breeches,
over whose knees outside he usually exhibited a pair of white worsted
stockings; list shoes he almost invariably used; and his hands were
generally covered with merino-lined leather gloves. His neck was bare;
he never went out without his stick ‘dapple,’ for a companion. He
walked, or rather trotted, as if he were impatient for exercise; but
often stopped suddenly for purposes of conversation.”
[Sidenote: Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_.]
“_December 31st._--At half-past one went by appointment to see Jeremy
Bentham, at his house in Westminster Square, and walked with him
for about half an hour in his garden, when he dismissed me to take
his breakfast and have the paper read to him. I have but little to
report concerning him. He is a small man. He stoops very much (he is
eighty-four), and shuffles in his gait. His hearing is not good, yet
excellent considering his age. His eye is restless, and there is a
fidgety activity about him, increased probably by the habit of having
all round fly at his command.”--1831.
RICHARD BENTLEY
1662-1742
[Sidenote: R. C. Jebb’s _Bentley_. *]
“The pose of the head is haughty, almost defiant; the eyes, which are
large, prominent, and full of bold vivacity, have a light in them as
if Bentley were looking straight at an impostor whom he had detected,
but who still amused him; the nose, strong and slightly tip-tilted,
is moulded as if Nature had wished to show what a nose can do for the
combined expression of scorn and sagacity; and the general effect of
the countenance, at a first glance, is one which suggests power--frank,
self-assured, sarcastic, and, I fear we must add, insolent: yet,
standing a little longer before the picture, we become aware of an
essential kindness in those eyes of which the gaze is so direct and
intrepid; we read in the whole face a certain keen veracity; and the
sense grows--this was a man who could hit hard, but who would not
strike a foul blow, and whose ruling instinct, whether always a sure
guide or not, was to pierce through falsities to truth.”
JAMES BOSWELL
1740-1795
[Sidenote: Littell’s _Living Age_, 1870. *]
“The sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence of Boswell, prefixed to Mr.
Murray’s edition of Johnson’s _Life_, illustrates with striking
accuracy the saying of Hazlitt, that ‘A man’s life may be a lie to
himself and others; and yet a picture painted of him by a great
artist would probably stamp his character.’ The busy vanity, the
garrulous complacency of the man when out of sight of Dr. Johnson,
as he may be supposed to have been when the portrait was etched, are
brought out with all the humour and point of a caricature, without
its exaggeration. The thin nose, that seems to sniff the air for
information, has the sharp shrewdness of a Scotch accent. The small
eyes, too much relieved by the high-arched eyebrows, twinkle with
the exultation of victories not won--an expression contracted from a
vigilant watching of Dr. Johnson, who, when he spoke, spoke always for
victory; the bleak lips, making by their protrusion an angle almost
the size of the nose, proclaim Boswell’s love of ‘drawing people
out,’ a thirst for information at once droll and impertinent; but
which finally embodied itself in a form that has been pronounced by
Lord Macaulay the most interesting biography in the world; the ample
chins, fold upon fold, tell of a strong affection, gross, and almost
sottish, for port wine and tainted meats; whilst the folded arms,
the slightly-inclined posture, the strong and arrogant setting of
the head, exhibit the self-importance, the shrewd understanding, not
to be obscurated by vanity, the imperturbable but artless egotism,
the clever inquisitiveness which have made him the best-despised
and best-read writer in English literature. The portraits handed
down to us of Boswell by his contemporaries are most graphic; some
of them are malignant, some bitter, some temperate; and those that
are temperate are probably just.... Miss Burney thus caricatures the
appearance of Boswell in Johnson’s presence, when intent upon his
note-taking: ‘The moment that voice burst forth, the attention which
it excited on Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled
with eagerness; he leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the doctor,
and his mouth dropped down to catch every syllable that was uttered;
nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not
to miss a breathing, as if hoping from it latently or mystically some
information.’”
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
1816-1855
[Sidenote: Mrs Gaskell’s _Life of C. Brontë_.]
“In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen years
of age, very small in figure--‘stunted’ was the word she applied to
herself; but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the
slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive
of deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick,
brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a
description as they appeared to me in her later life. They were large
and well-shaped, their colour a reddish brown, but if the iris were
closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of
tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but
now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome
indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had
been kindled, which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw
the like in any other human creature. As for the rest of her features,
they were plain, large, and ill-set; but, unless you began to catalogue
them, you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of
the countenance overbalanced every physical defect; the crooked mouth
and the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the
attention, and presently attracted all those whom she herself would
have cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever
saw; when one of the former was placed in mine, it was like the soft
touch of a bird in the middle of my palm. The delicate long fingers
had a peculiar fineness of sensation, which was one reason why all
her handiwork, of whatever kind--writing, sewing, knitting,--was
so clear in its minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her whole
personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and
gloves.”--1831.
[Sidenote: Harriet Martineau’s _Biographical Sketches_.]
“There was something inexpressibly affecting in the aspect of the
frail little creature who had done such wonderful things, and who was
able to bear up, with so bright an eye and so composed a countenance,
under not only such a weight of sorrow, but such a prospect of
solitude. In her deep mourning dress (neat as a Quaker’s), with her
beautiful hair, smooth and brown, her fine eyes, and her sensible face
indicating a habit of self-control, she seemed a perfect household
image--irresistibly recalling Wordsworth’s description of that domestic
treasure. And she was this.”--1850.
[Sidenote: Bayne’s _Two great Englishwomen_.]
“I can only say of this lady, _vide tantum_. I saw her first just
as I rose out of an illness from which I never thought to recover.
I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great
honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterise the
woman.... She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty,
and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth
seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she
appeared to me.”--1851.
HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM
1778-1868
[Sidenote: Ticknor’s _Life and Letters_.]
“Brougham, whom I knew in society, and from seeing him both at his
chambers and at my own lodgings, is now about thirty-eight, tall, thin,
and rather awkward, with a plain and not very expressive countenance,
and simple or even slovenly manners. He is evidently nervous, and
a slight convulsive movement about the muscles of his lips gives
him an unpleasant expression now and then. In short, all that is
exterior in him, and all that goes to make up the first impression,
is unfavourable. The first thing that removes this impression is the
heartiness and good-will he shows you, whose motive cannot be mistaken,
for such kindness comes only from the heart. This is the first thing,
but a stranger presently begins to remark his conversation. On common
topics nobody is more commonplace. He does not feel them, but if the
subject excites him, there is an air of originality in his remarks
which, if it convinces you of nothing else, convinces you that you
are talking with an extraordinary man. He does not like to join in
a general conversation, but prefers to talk apart with only two
or three persons, and, though with great interest and zeal, in an
undertone. If, however, he does launch into it, all the little, trim,
gay pleasure-boats must keep well out of the way of his great black
collier, as Gibbon said of Fox. He listens carefully and fairly--and
with a kindness which would be provoking if it were not genuine--to
all his adversary has to say; but when his time comes to answer, it is
with that bare, bold, bullion talent which either crushes itself or its
opponent.... Yet I suspect the impression Brougham generally leaves is
that of a good-natured friend. At least that is the impression I have
most frequently found, both in England and on the Continent.”--1819.
[Sidenote: Newspaper cutting 1876.]
“Standing in the narrow Gothic railed-off place reserved for the
public--the throne at the opposite extremity of the House--you may see
on one of the benches to the right, almost every forenoon, Saturday and
Sunday excepted, during the session, a very old man with a white head,
and attired in a simple frock and trousers of shepherd’s plaid. It is a
leonine head, and the white locks are bushy and profuse. So, too, the
eyebrows, penthouses to eyes somewhat weak now, but that can flash fire
yet upon occasion. The face is ploughed with wrinkles, as well it may
be, for the old man will never see fourscore years again, and of these,
threescore, at the very least, have been spent in study and the hardest
labour, mental and physical. The nose is a marvel--protuberant, rugose,
aggressive, inquiring and defiant: unlovely, but intellectual. There is
a trumpet mouth, a belligerent mouth, projecting and self-asserting;
largish ears, and on chin or cheeks no vestige of hair. Not a beautiful
man this, on any theory of beauty, Hogarthesque, Ruskinesque,
Winclemenesque, or otherwise. Rather a shaggy, gnarled, battered,
weather-beaten, ugly, faithful, Scotch-collie type. Not a soft,
imploring, yielding face. Rather a tearing, mocking, pugnacious cast
of countenance. The mouth is fashioned to the saying of harsh, hard,
impertinent things: not cruel, but downright; but never to whisper
compliments, or simper out platitudes. A nose, too, that can snuff the
battle afar off, and with dilated nostrils breathe forth a glory that
is sometimes terrible; but not a nose for a pouncet-box, or a Covent
Garden bouquet, or a _flacon_ of Frangipani. Would not care much for
truffles either, I think, or the delicate aroma of sparkling Moselle.
Would prefer onions or strongly-infused malt and hops; something honest
and unsophisticated. Watch this old man narrowly, young visitor to the
Lords. Scan his furrowed visage. Mark his odd angular ways and gestures
passing uncouth. Now he crouches, very dog-like, in his crimson bench:
clasps one shepherd’s plaid leg in both his hands. Botherem, _q.c._,
is talking nonsense, I think. Now the legs are crossed, and the hands
thrown behind the head; now he digs his elbows into the little Gothic
writing-table before him, and buries his hands in that puissant white
hair of his. The quiddities of Floorem, _q.c._, are beyond human
patience. Then with a wrench, a wriggle, a shake, a half-turn and
half-start up--still very dog-like, but of the Newfoundland rather,
now--he asks a lawyer or a witness a question. Question very sharp and
to the point, not often complimentary by times, and couched in that
which is neither broad Scotch nor Northumbrian burr, but a rebellious
mixture of the two. Mark him well, eye him closely: you have not much
time to lose. Alas! the giant is very old, though with frame yet
unenfeebled, with intellect yet gloriously unclouded. But the sands
are running, ever running. Watch him, mark him, eye him, score him on
your mind tablets: then home, and in after years it may be your lot
to tell your children that once at least you have seen with your own
eyes the famous Lord of Vaux; once listened to the voice which has
shaken thrones and made tyrants tremble; that has been a herald of
deliverance to millions pining in slavery and captivity; a voice that
has given utterance, in man’s most eloquent words, to the noblest,
wisest thoughts lent to this man of men by heaven; a voice that has
been trumpet-sounding these sixty years past in defence of Truth, and
Right, and Justice; in advocacy of the claims of learning and industry,
and of the liberties of the great English people, from whose ranks he
rose; a voice that should be entitled to a hearing in a Walhalla of
wise heroes, after Francis of Verulam and Isaac of Grantham; the voice
of one who is worthily a lord, but who will be yet better remembered,
and to all time,--remembered enthusiastically and affectionately,--as
the champion of all good and wise and beautiful human things--Harry
Brougham.”
[Sidenote: _Temple Bar_, 1868.]
“The personal man, the bodily man, the private man, did not vary.
From 1830 to 1866,--the period between his brightest glow of fame and
his mental eclipse,--he was always the same gaunt, angular, raw-boned
figure, with the high cheek-bones, the great flexible nose, the mobile
mouth, the shock head of hair, the uncouthly-cut coat with the velvet
collar, the high black stock, the bulging shirt front, the dangling
bunch of seals at his fob, and the immortal pantaloons of checked
tweed. It is said that one of his admirers in the Bradford Cloth Hall
gave him a bale of plaid trousering ‘a’ oo’’[1] in 1825, and that he
continued until the day of his death to have his nether garments cut
from the inexhaustible store. I have seen Lord Brougham in evening
dress and in the customary black continuations; but I never met him by
daylight without the inevitable checks.”
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
1809-1861
[Sidenote: M. R. Mitford’s _Recollections of a Literary Life_.]
“My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen
years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that
I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that
it is not merely the impression of my partiality, or my enthusiasm.
Of a slight delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on
either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly
fringed with dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look
of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in
whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of
the _Prometheus_ of Æschylus, the authoress of the _Essay on Mind_, was
old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language, was
_out_.”--1835.
[Sidenote: Sara Coleridge’s _Letters_.]
“She is little, hard featured, with long dark ringlets, a pale face,
and plaintive voice, something very impressive in her dark eyes and her
brow. Her general aspect puts me in mind of Mignon,--what Mignon might
be in maturity and maternity.”--1851.
[Sidenote: Crab Robinson’s _Diary_.]
“Dined at home, and at eight dressed to go to Kenyon. With him I found
an interesting person I had never seen before, Mrs. Browning, late
Miss Barrett--not the invalid I expected; she has a handsome oval face,
a fine eye, and altogether a pleasing person. She had no opportunity
for display, and apparently no desire. Her husband has a very amiable
expression. There is a singular sweetness about him.”--1852.
JOHN BUNYAN
1628-1688
[Sidenote: Charles Doe’s _Life of John Bunyan_.]
“He appeared in countenance to be of a stern and rough temper. He
had a sharp, quick eye, accomplished, with an excellent discerning
of persons. As for his person, he was tall of stature, strong-boned,
though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes,
wearing his hair on the upper lip after the old British fashion; his
hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with gray;
his nose well set, but not declining or bending, and his mouth moderate
large, his forehead something high, and his habit always plain and
modest.”
[Sidenote: Tulloch’s _English Puritanism_. *]
“It is impossible to look at his portrait, and not recognise the lines
of power by which it is everywhere marked. It has more of a sturdy
soldier than anything else--the aspect of a man who would face dangers
any day rather than shun them; and this corresponds exactly to his
description by his oldest biographer and friend, Charles Doe.... A more
manly and robust appearance cannot well be conceived, his eyes only
showing in their sparkling depth the fountains of sensibility concealed
within the roughened exterior. Here, as before, we are reminded of his
likeness to Luther.”
[Sidenote: Bunyan’s _Works_, 1692.]
“Give us leave to say his natural parts and abilities were not mean,
his fancy and invention were very pregnant and fertile; the use he
made of them was good, converting them to spiritual objects. His wit
was sharp and quick; his memory tenacious; it being customary with
him to commit his sermons to writing, after he had preached them. His
understanding was large and comprehensive; his judgments sound and deep
in the fundamentals of the Gospel, as his writings evidence. And yet,
this great saint was always, in his own eyes, the chiefest of sinners
and the least of saints; esteeming any, where he did believe the truth
of (their) grace, better than himself. There was, indeed, in him all
the parts of an accomplished man. His carriage was condescending,
affable, and meek to all; yet bold and courageous for Christ’s and the
Gospel’s sake. His countenance was grave and sedate, and did so, to
the life, discover the inward frame of his heart, that it did strike
something of awe into them that had nothing of the fear of God.... His
conversation was as becomes the Gospel.”
EDMUND BURKE
1730-1797
[Sidenote: Burney’s _Diary and Letters_.]
“No expectation that I had formed of Mr. Burke, either from his works,
his speeches, his character, or his fame, had anticipated to me such a
man as I now met. He appeared, perhaps, at the moment, to the highest
possible advantage in health, vivacity, and spirits. Removed from
the impetuous aggravations of party contentions, that at times, by
inflaming his passions, seemed (momentarily, at least), to disorder
his character, he was lulled into gentleness by the grateful sense of
prosperity; exhilarated, but not intoxicated, by sudden success; and
just rising, after toiling years of failures, disappointments, fire and
fury, to place, affluence, and honours, which were brightly smiling on
the zenith of his powers. He looked, indeed, as if he had no wish but
to diffuse philanthropic pleasure and genial gaiety all around.
“His figure is noble, his air commanding, his address graceful; his
voice clear, penetrating, sonorous, and powerful; his language copious,
eloquent, and changefully impressive; his manners are attractive; his
conversation is past all praise.
“You may call me mad, I know; but if I wait till I see another Mr.
Burke for such another fit of ecstacy, I may be long enough in my sober
good senses.”--1782.
[Sidenote: Peter Burke’s _Life of Burke_. *]
“The personal description of Edmund Burke has been handed down. He was
about five feet ten inches high, well made and muscular; of that firm
and compact frame that denotes more strength than bulk. His countenance
had been in his youth handsome. The expression of his face was less
striking than might have been anticipated; at least it was so until lit
up by the animation of his conversation, or the fire of his eloquence.
In dress he usually wore a brown suit; and he was in his later days
easily recognisable in the House of Commons from his bob-wig and
spectacles.”
[Sidenote: Macknight’s _Life of Burke_. *]
“He deserved ... worship better than most idols. Gentle, affectionate,
unassuming towards the members of his own family, he was also
dignified, polished, and courteous in his manner to all the rest of
mankind. Nature had stamped the noblest impress of genius on his
wrinkled brow, and time had slowly conferred a grace on his address
which made him appear singularly pleasing and lovable. In the House of
Commons only the fiercer peculiarities of his character were now seen;
while at home he seemed the mildest and kindest, as well as one of the
best and greatest of human beings. He poured forth the rich treasures
of his mind with the most prodigal bounty. At breakfast and dinner
his gaiety, wit, and pleasantry enlivened the board, and diffused
cheerfulness and happiness all round.”
ROBERT BURNS
1759-1796
[Sidenote: Currie’s _Life of Burns_.]
“Burns ... was nearly five feet ten inches in height, and of a form
that indicated agility as well as strength. His well-raised forehead,
shaded with black curling hair, indicated extensive capacity. His
eyes were large, dark, full of ardour and intelligence. His face was
well-formed, and his countenance uncommonly interesting and expressive.
His mode of dressing, which was often slovenly, and a certain fulness
and bend in his shoulders, characteristic of his original profession,
disguised in some degree the natural symmetry and elegance of his
form. The external appearance of Burns was most strikingly indicative
of the character of his mind. On a first view, his physiognomy had
a certain air of coarseness, mingled, however, with an expression
of deep penetration, and of calm thoughtfulness, approaching to
melancholy.... His dark and haughty countenance easily relaxed into
a look of good-will, of pity, or of tenderness, and, as the various
emotions succeeded each other in his mind, assumed with equal ease the
expression of the broadest humour, of the most extravagant mirth, of
the deepest melancholy, or of the most sublime emotion. The tones of
his voice happily corresponded with the expression of his features,
and with the feelings of his mind. When to these endowments are added
a rapid and distinct apprehension, a most powerful understanding,
and a happy command of language--of strength as well as brilliancy
of expression--we shall be able to account for the extraordinary
attractions of his conversation--for the sorcery which in his social
parties he seemed to exert on all around him.”
[Sidenote: Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_.]
“His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a
sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
effect, perhaps, from one’s knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His
features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth’s picture, but to me it conveys
the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think
his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits.
I would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very
sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school; _i.e._ none of your
modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the
_douce gudeman_ who held his own plough. There was a strong expression
of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think,
indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and
of a dark cast, and glowed (I say literally _glowed_) when he spoke
with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human
head, though I have seen the most distinguished men in my time. His
conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest
presumption. Among the men who were the most learned of their time and
country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the
least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did
not hesitate to express it firmly, yet, at the same time, with modesty.
I do not remember any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be
quoted, nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, where he
did not recognise me, as I could not expect he should.”--1787.
[Sidenote: _Dumfries Journal_, 1796.]
“His personal endowments were perfectly correspondent to the
qualifications of his mind, his form was manly, his action energy
itself, devoid in a great measure perhaps of those graces, of that
polish, acquired only in the refinement of societies where in early
life he could have no opportunities of mixing; but where, such was
the irresistible power of attraction that encircled him, though his
appearance and manners were always peculiar, he never failed to delight
and to excel. His figure seemed to bear testimony to his earlier
destination and employments. It seemed rather moulded by nature for the
rough exercises of agriculture, than the gentler cultivation of the
_Belles Lettres_. His features were stamped with the hardy character
of independence, and the firmness of conscious, though not arrogant,
pre-eminence; the animated expressions of countenance were almost
peculiar to himself; the rapid lightenings of his eye were always the
harbingers of some flash of genius, whether they darted the fiery
glances of insulted and indignant superiority, or beamed with the
impassioned sentiments of fervent and impetuous affections. His voice
alone could improve upon the magic of his eye; sonorous, replete with
the finest modulations, it alternately captivated the ear with the
melody of poetic numbers, the perspicuity of nervous reasoning, or the
ardent sallies of enthusiastic patriotism.”
SAMUEL BUTLER
1612-1680
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Men_.]
“He is of a middle stature, strong sett, high-colored, a head of
sorrell haire, a severe and sound judgement: a good fellowe.”
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Men_.]
“He was of a leonine-colored haire, sanguine, cholerique, middle-sized,
strong; a boon and witty companion, especially among the companie he
knew well.”
GEORGE, LORD BYRON
1788-1824
[Sidenote: Moore’s _Life of Byron_.]
“Among the impressions which this meeting left upon me, what I chiefly
remember to have remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty,
the gentleness of his voice and manners, and--what was naturally not
the least attraction--his marked kindness to myself. Being in mourning
for his mother, the colour, as well of his dress as of his glossy,
curling, and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure, spiritual
paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he spoke,
there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy was
their habitual character when in repose.”--1811.
[Sidenote: Geo. Ticknor’s _Life_.]
“I called on Lord Byron to-day, with an introduction from Mr. Gifford.
Here, again, my anticipations were mistaken. Instead of being deformed,
as I had heard, he is remarkably well-built, with the exception of
his feet. Instead of having a thin and rather sharp and anxious face,
as he has in his pictures, it is round, open, and smiling; his eyes
are light, and not black; his air easy and careless, not forward and
striking; and I found his manners affable and gentle, the tones of
his voice low and conciliating, his conversation gay, pleasant, and
interesting in an uncommon degree.”--1815.
[Sidenote: Moore’s _Life of Byron_.]
“It would be to little purpose to dwell upon the mere beauty of a
countenance in which the expression of an extraordinary mind was so
conspicuous. What serenity was seated on the forehead, adorned with
the finest chestnut hair, light, curling, and disposed with such art,
that the art was hidden in the imitation of most pleasing nature! What
varied expression in his eyes! They were of the azure colour of the
heavens, from which they seemed to derive their origin. His teeth, in
form, in colour, in transparency, resembled pearls; but his cheeks were
too delicately tinged with the hue of the pale rose. His neck, which he
was in the habit of keeping uncovered as much as the usages of society
permitted, seemed to have been formed in a mould, and was very white.
His hands were as beautiful as if they had been the works of art. His
figure left nothing to be desired, particularly by those who found
rather a grace than a defect in a certain light and gentle undulation
of the person when he entered a room, and of which you hardly felt
tempted to inquire the cause. Indeed it was hardly perceptible,--the
clothes he wore were so long.... His face appeared tranquil like the
ocean on a fine spring morning, but, like it, in an instant became
changed into the tempestuous and terrible, if a passion (a passion did
I say?), a thought, a word occurred to disturb his mind. His eyes then
lost all their sweetness, and sparkled so that it became difficult to
look on them.”--1819.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
1777-1844
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“They who knew Mr. Campbell only as the author of _Gertrude of
Wyoming_, and the _Pleasures of Hope_, would not have suspected him
to be a merry companion, overflowing with humour and anecdote, and
anything but fastidious.... When I first saw this eminent person, he
gave me the idea of a French Virgil. Not that he was like a Frenchman,
much less the French translator of Virgil. I found him as handsome as
the Abbé Delille is said to have been ugly. But he seemed to me to
embody a Frenchman’s ideal notion of the Latin poet; something a little
more cut and dry than I had looked for; compact and elegant, critical
and acute, with a consciousness of authorship upon him; a taste
over-anxious not to commit itself, and refining and diminishing nature
as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened, in the course
of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think
he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply
cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the
reflective and amative organs; and his poetry will bear them out. For a
lettered solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law
and luxury, commend us to the lovely _Gertrude of Wyoming_. His face
and person were rather on a small scale; his features regular; his eye
lively and penetrating; and when he spoke, dimples played about his
mouth, which, nevertheless, had something restrained and close in it.
Some gentle puritan seemed to have crossed the breed, and to have left
a stamp on his face, such as we often see in the female Scotch face
rather than in the male. But he appeared not at all grateful for this;
and when his critiques and his Virgilianism were over, very unlike a
puritan he talked! He seemed to spite his restrictions, and, out of the
natural largeness of his sympathy with things high and low, to break at
once out of Delille’s Virgil into Cotton’s, like a boy let loose from
school. When I had the pleasure of hearing him afterwards, I forgot
his Virgilianisms, and thought only of the delightful companion, the
unaffected philanthropist, and the creator of a beauty worth all the
heroines in Racine.”--About 1809.
[Sidenote: Patmore’s _Sketch from Real Life_.]
“The person of this exquisite writer and delightful man is small,
delicately formed, and neatly put together, without being little or
insignificant. His face has all the harmonious arrangement of features
which marks his gentle and refined mind; it is oval, perfectly regular
in its details, and lighted up not merely by ‘eyes of youth,’ but
by a bland smile of intellectual serenity that seems to pervade and
penetrate all the features, and impart to them all a corresponding
expression, such as the moonlight lends to a summer landscape; the
moonlight, not the sunshine; for there is a mild and tender pathos
blended with that expression, which bespeaks a soul that has been
steeped in the depths of human woe, but has turned their waters (as
only poets can) into fountains of beauty and of bliss.”
[Sidenote: Beattie’s _Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell_.]
“He was generally careful as to dress, and had none of Dr. Johnson’s
indifference to fine linen. His wigs were always nicely adjusted,
and scarcely distinguishable from natural hair. His appearance was
interesting and handsome. Though rather below the middle size, he
did not seem little; and his large dark eye and countenance bespoke
great sensibility and acuteness. His thin quivering lip and delicate
nostril were highly expressive. When he spoke, as Leigh Hunt has
remarked, dimples played about his mouth, which, nevertheless, had
something restrained and close in it.... In personal neatness and
fastidiousness--no less than in genius and taste--Campbell in his
best days resembled Gray. Each was distinguished by the same careful
finish in composition--the same classical predilections and lyrical
fire, rarely but strikingly displayed. In ordinary life they were both
somewhat finical--yet with greater freedom and idiomatic plainness in
their unreserved communications--Gray’s being evinced in his letters,
and Campbell’s in conversation.”
THOMAS CARLYLE
1795-1881
[Sidenote: Caroline Fox’s _Journals and Letters_.]
“Carlyle soon appeared, and looked as if he felt a well-dressed London
crowd scarcely the arena for him to figure in as a popular lecturer.
He is a tall, robust-looking man; rugged simplicity and indomitable
strength are in his face, and such a glow of genius in it,--not always
smouldering there, but flashing from his beautiful gray eyes, from the
remoteness of their deep setting under that massive brow. His manner is
very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously convinced of what he
utters.... He began in a rather low nervous voice, with a broad Scotch
accent, but it soon grew firm, and shrank not abashed from its great
task.”--1840.
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Carlyle_.]
“He was then fifty-four years old; tall (about five feet eleven),
thin, but at the same time upright, with no signs of the later stoop.
His body was angular, his face beardless, such as it is represented
in Woolner’s medallion, which is by far the best likeness of him in
the days of his strength. His head was extremely long, with the chin
thrust forward; the neck was thin; the mouth firmly closed, the under
lip slightly projecting; the hair grizzled and thick and bushy. His
eyes, which grew lighter with age, were then of a deep violet, with
fire burning at the bottom of them, which flashed out at the least
excitement. The face was altogether most striking, most impressive
in every way. And I did not admire him the less because he treated
me--I cannot say unkindly, but shortly and sternly. I saw then what
I saw ever after--that no one need look for conventional politeness
from Carlyle--he would hear the exact truth from him and nothing
else.”--1849.
[Sidenote: Wylie’s _Carlyle_.]
“The maid went forward and said something to Carlyle and left the room.
He was sitting before a fire in an arm-chair, propped up with pillows,
with his feet on a stool, and looked much older than I had expected.
The lower part of his face was covered with a rather shaggy beard,
almost quite white. His eyes were bright blue, but looked filmy from
age. He had on a sort of coloured night-cap, a long gown reaching to
his ankles, and slippers on his feet. A rest attached to the arm of his
chair supported a book before him. I could not quite see the name, but
I think it was Channing’s works. Leaning against the fireplace was a
long clay pipe, and there was a slight smell of tobacco in the room....
His hands were very thin and wasted, he showed us how they shook and
trembled unless he rested them on something, and said they were failing
him from weakness.... He seemed such a venerable old man, and so worn
and old looking, that I was very much affected. Our visit was on
Tuesday, 18th May 1880, at about 2 P.M.”
THOMAS CHATTERTON
1752-1770
[Sidenote: Wilson’s _Chatterton_. *]
“It is to be feared that no authentic portrait of Chatterton exists;
and even the accounts furnished as to his appearance, only partially
aid us in realising an idea of the manly, handsome boy, with his
flashing, hawklike eye, through which even the Bristol pewterer thought
he could see his soul. His forehead one fancies must have been high;
though hidden, perhaps, as in the supposed Gainsborough portrait, with
long flowing hair. His mouth, like that of his father, was large.
But the brilliancy of his eyes seems to have diverted attention from
every other feature; and they have been repeatedly noted for the
way in which they appeared to kindle in sympathy with his earnest
utterances. Mr. Edward Gardner, who only knew him during his last three
months in Bristol, specially recalled ‘the philosophic gravity of his
countenance, and the keen lightening of his eye.’ Mr. Capel, on the
contrary, resided as an apprentice in the same house where Lambert’s
office was, and saw Chatterton daily. His advances had been repelled
at times with the flashing glances of the poet; and the terms in which
he speaks of his pride and visible contempt for others show there was
little friendship between them. But he also remarks: ‘Upon his being
irritated or otherwise greatly affected, there was a light in his eyes
which seemed very remarkable.’ He had frequently heard this referred
to by others; and Mr. George Catcott speaks of it as one who had often
quailed before such glances, or been spell-bound, like Coleridge’s
wedding guest by the ‘glittering eye’ of the Ancient Mariner. He said
he could never look at it long enough to see what sort of an eye it
was; but it seemed to be a kind of hawk’s eye. You could see his soul
through it.”
[Sidenote: Gregory’s _Life of Chatterton_. *]
“The person of Chatterton, like his genius, was premature; he had a
manliness and dignity beyond his years, and there was a something about
him uncommonly prepossessing. His more remarkable feature was his eyes
which, though gray, were uncommonly piercing; when he was warmed in
argument or otherwise, they sparked with fire, and one eye, it is said,
was still more remarkable than the other.”
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
ABOUT 1340-1400
[Sidenote: Nicholas’s _Life of Chaucer_. *]
“The affection of Occleve” (_his contemporary and dear friend_) “has
made Chaucer’s person better known than that of any individual of his
age. The portrait of which an engraving illustrates this memoir, is
taken from Occleve’s painting already mentioned in the Harleian MS.
4866, which he says was painted from memory after Chaucer’s decease,
and which is apparently the only genuine portrait in existence. The
figure, which is half-length, has a background of green tapestry. He
is represented with gray hair and beard, which is bi-forked; he wears
a dark-coloured dress and hood, his right hand is extended, and in
his left he holds a string of beads. From his vest a black case is
suspended, which appears to contain a knife, or possibly a ‘penner’[2]
or pencase. The expression of the countenance is intelligent, but the
fire of the eye seems quenched, and evident marks of advanced age
appear on the countenance. This is incomparably the best portrait of
Chaucer yet discovered.”
[Sidenote: Nicholas’s _Life of Chaucer_. *]
“There is a third portrait in a copy of the _Canterbury Tales_ made
about the reign of King Henry the Fifth, being within twenty years of
the poet’s death, in the Lansdowne MS. 851. The figure, which is a
small full-length, is placed in the initial letter of the volume. He
is dressed in a long gray gown, with red stockings, and black shoes
fastened with black sandals round the ankles. His head is bare, and the
hair closely cut. In his right hand he holds an open book; and a knife
or pencase, as in the other portraits, is attached to his vest.”
_Tradition asserts that Chaucer merged his own personality in that of
the Poet in his_ Canterbury Tales.
[Sidenote: Prologue to _The Rime of Sire Thopas_.]
“... Our Hoste to japen he began,
And than at erst he loked upon me,
And saide thus; ‘What man art thou?’ quod he;
‘Thou lokest, as thou woldest finde an hare,
For ever upon the ground I see thee stare.
‘Approche nere, and loke up merily.
Now ware you, sires, and let this man have place.
He in the waste is shapen as wel as I:
This were a popet,[3] in an arme to enbrace
For any woman, smal and faire of face.
He semeth elvish[4] by his contenance,
For unto no wight doth he daliance.’”
PHILIP, LORD CHESTERFIELD
1694-1773
[Sidenote: _Life and Letters of Lord Chesterfield._]
“Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, was a slight-made man,
of the middle size; rather genteel than handsome either in face or
person: but there was a certain suavity in his countenance, which,
accompanied with a polite address and pleasing elocution, obtained
him in a wonderful degree the admiration of both sexes, and made his
suit irresistible with either. He was naturally possessed of a fine
sensibility; but by a habit of mastering his passions and disguising
his feelings, he at length arrived at the appearance of the most
perfect Stoicism: nothing surprised, alarmed, or discomposed him.”
[Sidenote: Hayward’s _Lord Chesterfield_. *]
“The name of Chesterfield has become a synonym for good breeding and
politeness. It is associated in our minds with all that is graceful
in manner and cold in heart, attractive in appearance and unamiable
in reality. The image it calls up is that of a man rather below the
middle height, in a court suit and blue riband, with regular features
wearing an habitual expression of gentleman-like ease. His address
is insinuating, his bow perfect, his compliments rival those of _Le
Grand Monarque_ in delicacy; laughter is too demonstrative for him,
but the smile of courtesy is ever on his lips; and by the time he has
gone through the circle, the great object of his daily ambition is
accomplished--all the women are already half in love with him, and
every man is desirous to be his friend.”
[Sidenote: _Blackwood’s Magazine_, 1868.]
“... Lord Hervey pauses in his story of Queen Caroline and her Court
to describe with cutting and bitter force the character and appearance
of his rival courtier.... ‘His person was as disagreeable as it was
possible for a human figure to be without being deformed,’ he says. ‘He
was very short, disproportioned, thick and clumsily made, with black
teeth, and a head big enough for a Polyphemus. One Ben Ashurst, who
said few good things though admired for many, told Lord Chesterfield
once that he was like a stunted giant, which was a humorous idea,
and really apposite.’... The defects of his personal appearance are
evidently exaggerated in this truculent sketch; but his portrait by
Gainsborough, which is said to be the best, affords some foundation for
the picture. The face is heavy, rugged, and unlovely, though full of
force and intelligence; and his unheroic form and stature are points
which Chesterfield himself does not attempt to conceal.”
WILLIAM COBBETT
1762-1835
[Sidenote: Bamford’s _Passages in the Life of a Radical_.]
“Had I met him anywhere else save in the room and on that occasion, I
should have taken him for a gentleman farming his own broad estate.
He seemed to have that kind of self-possession and ease about him,
together with a certain bantering jollity, which are so natural
to fast-handed and well-housed lords of the soil. He was, I should
suppose, not less than six feet in height, portly, with a fresh, clear,
and round cheek, and a small gray eye, twinkling with good-humoured
archness. He was dressed in a blue coat, yellow swan’s-down waistcoat,
drab kerseymere small-clothes, and top-boots. His hair was gray, and
his cravat and linen fine, and very white.”--1818.
[Sidenote: Hazlitt’s _Table Talk_.]
“Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time I
ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man, easy of access,
affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and
unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very
qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has a good, sensible face,
rather full, with little gray eyes, a hard square forehead, a ruddy
complexion, with hair gray or powdered; and had on a scarlet broadcloth
waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was the custom
for gentleman farmers in the last century, or as we see it in pictures
of members of parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did not
think less favourably of him for seeing him.”
[Sidenote: Watson’s _Biographies of Wilkes and Cobbett_.]
“In stature the late Mr. Cobbett was tall and athletic. I should think
he could not have been less than six feet two, while his breadth was
proportionately great. He was indeed one of the stoutest men in the
House.... His hair was of a milk-white colour, and his complexion
ruddy. His features were not strongly marked. What struck you most
about his face was his small, sparkling, laughing eyes. When disposed
to be humorous yourself, you had only to look at his eyes, and you
were sure to sympathise with his merriment. When not speaking, the
expression of his eye and his countenance was very different. He was
one of the most striking refutations of the principles of Lavater I
ever witnessed. Never were the looks of any man more completely at
variance with his character. There was something so heavy and dull
about his whole appearance, that any one who did not know him would
at once set him down for some country clodpole, to use a favourite
expression of his own, who not only had never read a book, or had a
single idea in his head, but who was a mere mass of mortality, without
a particle of sensibility of any kind in his composition. He usually
sat with one leg over the other, his head slightly drooping, as if
sleeping, on his breast, and his hat down almost to his eyes. His
usual dress was a light-gray coat of a full make, a white waistcoat,
and kerseymere breeches of a sandy colour. When he walked about the
House, he generally had his hands inserted in his breeches’ pocket.
Considering his advanced age, seventy-three, he looked remarkably hale
and healthy, and walked with a firm but slow step.”--1835.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
1796-1849
[Sidenote: Derwent Coleridge’s _Memoir of Hartley Coleridge_.]
“I first saw Hartley in the beginning, I think, of 1837, when I was
at Sedbergh, and he heard us our lesson in Mr. Green’s parlour.
My impression of him was what I conceived Shakespeare’s idea of a
gentleman to be, something which we like to have in a picture. He was
dressed in black, his hair, just touched with gray, fell in thick waves
down his back, and he had a frilled shirt on; and there was a sort of
autumnal ripeness and brightness about him. His shrill voice, and his
quick, authoritative ‘Right! right!’ and the chuckle with which he
translated ‘rerum repetundarum’ as ‘peculation, a very common vice in
governors of all ages,’ after which he took a turn round the sofa--all
struck me amazingly.”--1837.
[Sidenote: Derwent Coleridge’s _Memoir of Hartley Coleridge_.]
“His manners and appearance were peculiar. Though not dwarfish either
in form or expression, his stature was remarkably low, scarcely
exceeding five feet, and he early acquired the gait and general
appearance of advanced age. His once dark, lustrous hair, was
prematurely silvered, and became latterly quite white. His eyes, dark,
soft, and brilliant, were remarkably responsive to the movements of his
mind, flashing with a light from within. His complexion, originally
clear and sanguine, looked weather-beaten, and the contour of his
face was rendered less pleasing by the breadth of his nose. His head
was very small, the ear delicately formed, and the forehead, which
receded slightly, very wide and expansive. His hands and feet were
also small and delicate. His countenance when in repose, or rather
in stillness, was stern and thoughtful in the extreme, indicating
deep and passionate meditation, so much so as to be at times almost
startling. His low bow on entering a room, in which there were ladies
or strangers, gave a formality to his address, which wore at first the
appearance of constraint; but when he began to talk these impressions
were presently changed,--he threw off the seeming weight of years, his
countenance became genial, and his manner free and gracious.”--1843.
[Sidenote: Littell’s _Living Age_, 1849.]
“His head was large and expressive, with dark eyes and white waving
locks, and resting upon broad shoulders, with the smallest possible
apology for a neck. To a sturdy and ample frame were appended legs
and arms of a most disproportioned shortness, and, ‘in his whole
aspect there was something indescribably elfish and grotesque, such as
limners do not love to paint, nor ladies to look upon.’ He reminded
you of a spy-glass shut up, and you wanted to take hold of him and
pull him out into a man of goodly proportions and average stature. It
was difficult to repress a smile at his appearance as he approached,
for the elements were so quaintly combined in him that he seemed like
one of Cowley’s conceits translated into flesh and blood.... His
manners were like those of men accustomed to live much alone, simple,
frank, and direct, but not in all respects governed by the rules of
conventional politeness. It was difficult for him to sit still. He
was constantly leaving his chair, walking about the room, and then
sitting down again, as if he were haunted by an incurable restlessness.
His conversation was very interesting, and marked by a vein of quiet
humour not found in his writings. He spoke with much deliberation,
and in regularly-constructed periods, which might have been printed
without any alteration. There was a peculiarity in his voice not
easily described. He would begin a sentence in a sort of subdued tone,
hardly above a whisper, and end it in something between a bark and a
growl.”--1848.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
1772-1834
[Sidenote: de Quincey’s _Life and Writings_.]
“I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge
was visiting; and in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I
noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under
this was standing and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe!
In height he might seem to be about five feet eight (he was in reality
about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which
drowns the height); his person was broad and full, and tended even
to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters
technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair;
his eyes were large and soft in their expression, and it was from
the peculiar haze or dreaminess which mixed with their light that I
recognised my object. This was Coleridge.”--1807.
[Sidenote: Bryan Procter’s _Recollections of Men of Letters_.]
“Coleridge had a weighty head, dreaming gray eyes, full, sensual lips,
and a look and manner which were entirely wanting in firmness and
decision. His motions also appeared weak and undecided, and his voice
had nothing of the sharpness or ring of a resolute man. When he spoke
his words were thick and slow, and when he read poetry his utterance
was altogether a chant.”--About 1820.
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]
“I have seen many curiosities; not the least of them I reckon
Coleridge, the Kantian metaphysician and quondam Lake Poet. I will
tell you all about our interview when we meet. Figure a fat, flabby,
incurvated personage, at once short, rotund, and relaxed, with a
watery mouth, a snuffy nose, a pair of strange brown, timid, yet
earnest-looking eyes, a high tapering brow, and a great bush of gray
hair, and you have some faint idea of Coleridge. He is a kind, good
soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism.
His cardinal sin is that he wants _will_. He has no resolution. He
shrinks from pain or labour in any of its shapes. His very attitude
bespeaks this. He never straightens his knee-joints. He stoops with his
fat, ill-shapen shoulders, and in walking he does not tread, but shovel
and slide. My father would call it ‘skluiffing.’ He is also always
busied to keep, by strong and frequent inhalations, the water of his
mouth from overflowing, and his eyes have a look of anxious impotence.
He _would_ do with all his heart, but he knows he dares not. The
conversation of the man is much as I anticipated--a forest of thoughts,
some true, many false, more _part_ dubious, all of them ingenious in
some degree, often in a high degree. But there is no method in his
talk; he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever
his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches,
or rather soliloquises. He cannot speak, he can only _tal-k_ (so he
names it). Hence I found him unprofitable, even tedious; but we parted
very good friends, I promising to go back and see him some evening--a
promise which I fully intend to keep. I sent him a copy of _Meister_,
about which we had some friendly talk. I reckon him a man of great and
useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.”--1824.
WILLIAM COLLINS
1720-1756
[Sidenote: _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1781.]
“Collins I was intimately acquainted with from the time that he came
to reside at Oxford. In London I met him often.... He was of moderate
stature, of a light and clear complexion, with gray eyes so very weak
at times as hardly to bear a candle in the room, and often raising
within him apprehensions of blindness. He was passionately fond of
music, good-natured and affable, warm in his friendships and visionary
in his pursuits, and, as long as I knew him, temperate in his eating
and drinking.”
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Collins_.]
“About this time I fell into his company. His appearance was decent
and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his
conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful.”--1744.
[Sidenote: J. Langhorne’s _Memoirs of William Collins_.]
“Mr. Collins was, in stature, somewhat above the middle size; of a
brown complexion, keen expressive eyes, and a fixed sedate aspect,
which, from intense thinking, had contracted an habitual frown. His
proficiency in letters was greater than could have been expected from
his years. He was skilled in the learned languages, and acquainted with
the Italian, French, and Spanish.”
WILLIAM COWPER
1731-1800
[Sidenote: Cowper’s _Letters_.]
“As for me, I am a very smart youth of my years. I am not indeed grown
gray so much as I am grown bald. No matter. There was more hair in the
world than ever had the honour to belong to me. Accordingly, having
found just enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermingle
with a little of my own that still hangs behind, I appear, if you
see me in an afternoon, to have a very decent head-dress, not easily
distinguished from my natural growth; which being worn with a small
bag, and a black ribbon about my neck, continues to me the charms of
my youth, even on the verge of age. Away with the fear of writing too
often.
“Yours, my dearest cousin,
“W. C.
“_P.S._--That the view I give you of myself may be complete, I add the
two following items,--that I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow
fat.”--1785.
[Sidenote: H. F. Cary’s _Notice of Cowper_.]
“Cowper was of a middle height, with limbs strongly framed, hair of
light brown, eyes of a bluish gray, and ruddy complexion.”
[Sidenote: Rossetti’s _Memoir of Cowper_. *]
“The eager, sudden-looking, large-eyed, shaven face of Cowper is
familiar to us in his portraits--a face sharp-cut and sufficiently
well-moulded, without being handsome, nor particularly sympathetic.
It is a high-strung, excitable face, as of a man too susceptible
and touchy to put himself forward willingly among his fellows,
but who, feeling a ‘vocation’ upon him, would be more than merely
earnest,--self-asserting, aggressive, and unyielding. This is in fact
very much the character of his writings.”
GEORGE CRABBE
1754-1832
[Sidenote: _Life of Crabbe_, by his son.]
“In the eye of memory I can still see him as he was at that period
of his life,--his fatherly countenance unmixed with any of the less
lovable expressions that in too many faces obscure that character; but
pre-eminently _fatherly_, conveying the ideas of kindness, intellect,
and purity; his manner grave, manly, and cheerful, in unison with his
high and open forehead; his very attitudes, whether as he sat absorbed
in the arrangement of his minerals, shells, and insects; or as he
laboured in his garden until his naturally pale complexion acquired
a tinge of fresh healthy red; or as, coming lightly towards us with
some unexpected present, his smile of indescribable benevolence spoke
exultation in the foretaste of our raptures.”--1789.
[Sidenote: _Life of Crabbe_, by his son.]
“... Mr. Lockhart ... recently favoured me with the following
letter.... ‘His noble forehead, his bright beaming eye, without
anything of old age about it--though he was then, I presume, above
seventy; his sweet, and, I would say, innocent smile, and the calm
mellow tones of his voice, are all reproduced the moment I open any
page of his poetry.’”--1822.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“In the appearance of Crabbe there was little of the poet, but even
less of the stern critic of mankind, who looked at nature askance, and
ever contemplated beauty animate or inanimate,--
‘The simple loves and simple joys,’
‘through a glass darkly.’ On the contrary, he seemed to my eyes the
representative of the class of rarely troubled, and seldom thinking,
English farmers. A clear gray eye, a ruddy complexion, as if he loved
exercise and wooed mountain breezes, were the leading characteristics
of his countenance. It is a picture of age, ‘frosty but kindly,’--that
of a tall and stalwart man gradually grown old, to whom age was rather
an ornament than a blemish. He was one of those instances of men, plain
perhaps in youth, and homely of countenance in manhood, who become
absolutely handsome when white hairs have become a crown of glory, and
indulgence in excesses or perilous passions has left no lines that
speak of remorse, or even of errors unatoned.”--1825-26.
DANIEL DE FOE
1661-1731
[Sidenote: Secretary of State’s Proclamation.]
“Whereas, Daniel De Foe, _alias_ De Fooe, is charged with writing a
scandalous and seditious pamphlet entitled _The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters_. He is a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old,
of a brown complexion, and dark brown-colored hair, but wears a wig;
a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his
mouth.”--1703.
[Sidenote: Wilson’s _De Foe_. *]
“A likeness of the author, engraved by M. Vandergucht, from a painting
by Taverner, is prefixed.” (_To a volume of treatises published in
1703._) “It is the first portrait of De Foe, and probably the most
like him. The following description of it by a recent biographer is
strikingly characteristic: ‘No portrait can have more verisimilitude,
to say the least of it. It exhibits a set of features rather regular
than otherwise, very determined in its outlines, more particularly the
mouth, which expresses great firmness and resolution of character. The
eyes are full, black, and grave-looking, but the impression of the
whole countenance is rather a striking than a pleasing one. Daniel is
here set forth in a most lordly and full-bottomed wig, which flows
down lower than his elbow, and rises above his forehead with great
amplitude of curl. A richly-laced cravat, and fine loose-flowing cloak
completes his attire, and preserve, we may suppose, the likeness
of that civic “gallantry” which Oldmixon ascribes to Daniel on the
occasion of his escorting King William to the Lord Mayor’s feast. It is
altogether more like a picture of a substantial citizen of the “surly
breed” De Foe has himself so often satirised, than that of a poor
pamphleteer languishing in jail after the terrors of the pillory.’”
[Sidenote: John Forster’s _Bibliographical Essays_. *]
“It is, to us, very pleasing to contemplate the meeting of such
a sovereign and such a subject, as William and De Foe. There was
something not dissimilar in their physical aspect, as in their moral
temperament resemblances undoubtedly existed. The King was the elder
by ten years, but the middle size, the spare figure, the hooked nose,
the sharp chin, the keen gray eye, the large forehead, and grave
appearance, were common to both. William’s manner was cold, except in
battle, and little warmth was ascribed to De Foe’s, unless he spoke of
civil liberty.”
CHARLES DICKENS
1812-1870
[Sidenote: Forster’s _Life of Dickens_.]
“Very different was his face in those days from that which photography
has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness
first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression
which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very
good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostrils,
eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humour
and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with
sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and
the air and carriage of it was extremely spirited. The hair so scant
and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant
abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a
vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first
recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted
on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and
practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several
feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books,
and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and
motion flashed from every part of it. _It was as if made of steel_, was
said of it, four or five years after the time to which I am referring,
by a most original and delicate observer, the late Mrs. Carlyle. ‘What
a face is his to meet in a drawing-room!’ wrote Leigh Hunt to me, the
morning after I had made them known to each other. ‘It has the life
and soul in it of fifty human beings.’ In such sayings are expressed
not alone the restless and resistless vivacity and force of which I
have spoken, but that also which lay beneath them of steadiness and
hard endurance.”--1838.
[Sidenote: J. T. Fields’s _Yesterdays with Authors_.]
“How well I recall the bleak winter evening in 1842 when I first saw
the handsome, glowing face of the young man who was even then famous
over half the globe! He came bounding into the Tremont House, fresh
from the steamer that had brought him to our shores, and his cheery
voice rang through the hall, as he gave a quick glance at the new
scenes opening upon him in a strange land on first arriving at a
Transatlantic hotel. ‘Here we are!’ he shouted, as the lights burst
upon the merry party just entering the house, and several gentlemen
came forward to meet him. Ah, how happy and buoyant he was then! Young,
handsome, almost worshipped for his genius, belted round by such
troops of friends as rarely ever man had, coming to a new country to
make new conquests of fame and honor,--surely it was a sight long to
be remembered and never wholly to be forgotten. The splendour of his
endowments and the personal interest he had won to himself called forth
all the enthusiasm of old and young America, and I am glad to have
been among the first to welcome his arrival. You ask me what was his
appearance as he ran, or rather flew, up the steps of the hotel, and
sprang into the hall? He seemed all on fire with curiosity, and alive
as I never saw mortal before. From top to toe every fibre of his body
was unrestrained and alert. What vigor, what keenness, what freshness
of spirit, possessed him! He laughed all over, and did not care who
heard him! He seemed like the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise of
pleasure, determined to conquer a realm or two of fun every hour of his
overflowing existence. That night impressed itself on my memory for all
time, so far as I am concerned with things sublunary. It was Dickens,
the true ‘Boz,’ in flesh and blood, who stood before us at last, and
with my companions, three or four lads of my own age, I determined to
sit up late that night.”--1842.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of writers_.]
“Charles Dickens had that acute perception of the comic side of things
which causes irrepressible brimming of the eyes; and what eyes his
were! Large, dark blue, exquisitely shaped, fringed with magnificently
long and thick lashes--they now swam in liquid, limpid suffusion,
when tears started into them from a sense of humour or a sense of
pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when some generous
indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of admiration at
magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and excitement touched
him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant, truly superb
orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly, handsome
face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
impression that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him. He, who
saw into apparently slightest trifles that were fraught to his
perception with deeper significance; he, who beheld human nature with
insight almost superhuman, and who revered good and abhorred evil
with intensity, showed instantaneously by his expressive countenance
the kind of idea that possessed him. This made his conversation
enthralling, his acting first-rate, and his reading superlative.”
ISAAC D’ISRAELI
1766-1848
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]
“I found him a most kindly and courteous gentleman, obviously of a
tender, loving nature, and certainly more than willing to give me what
I asked for. I do not recall him as like his illustrious son; if my
memory serves me rightly, he was rather fair than dark; not above the
middle height, with features calm in expression; his eyes (which,
however, were always covered with spectacles) sparkling, and searching,
but indicating less the fire of genius than the patient inquiry that
formed the staple of his books.”--1823.
[Sidenote: Beaconsfield’s _Memoirs of Isaac D’Israeli_.]
“As the world has always been fond of personal details respecting men
who have been celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a
Bourbon nose, and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He
wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his
shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities
were delicate and well formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as
shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly
he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though
in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Everything interested him,
and blind and eighty-two, he was still as susceptible as a child....
He more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to:
in his conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas ending with
some felicitous phrase of genius, his _naïveté_, his simplicity not
untouched with a dash of sarcasm affecting innocence--one was often
reminded of the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson.
There was, however, one trait in which my father did not resemble
Goldsmith; he had no vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was
rather a deficiency of self-esteem.”
[Sidenote: Chorley’s _Personal Reminiscences_.]
“Mr. D’Israeli was announced.... An old gentleman, _strictly_ in his
appearance; a countenance which at first glance (owing, perhaps, to
the mouth, which hangs), I fancied slightly chargeable with solidity
of expression, but which developed strong sense as it talked; a rather
_soigné_ style of dress for so old a man, and a manner good-humoured,
complimentary (to Gebir), discursive and prosy, bespeaking that
engrossment and interest in his own pursuits which might be expected to
be found in a person so patient in research and collection. But there
is a tone of _philosophe_ (or I fancied it), which I did not quite
like.”--1838.
JOHN DRYDEN
1631-1700
[Sidenote: Anderson’s _Poets of Great Britain_.]
“Of the person, private life, and domestic manners of Dryden, very few
particulars are known. His picture by Kneller would lead us to suppose
that he was graceful in his person; but Kneller was a great mender of
nature. From the _State Poems_ we learn that he was a short, thick man.
The nickname given him by his enemies was _Poet Squab_. ‘I remember
plain John Dryden’ (says a writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for
February 1745, who was then eighty-seven years of age) ‘before he paid
his court to the great, in one uniform clothing of Norwich drugget.
I have eat tarts with him and Madam Reeve (the actress) at the
Mulberry Garden, when our author advanced to a sword and _Chedreux_
wig (probably the wig that Swift has ridiculed in _The Battle of the
Books_). Posterity is absolutely mistaken as to that great man. Though
forced to be a satirist, he was the mildest creature breathing, and
the readiest to help the young and deserving. Though his comedies
are horribly full of _double entendre_, yet ’twas owing to a false
compliance for a dissolute age; he was in company the modestest man
that ever conversed.’... From those notices which he has very liberally
given us of himself, it appears, that ‘his conversation was slow and
dull, his humour saturnine and reserved, and that he was none of those
who endeavour to break jests in company, and make repartees.’”
[Sidenote: Gilfillan’s _Life of Dryden_. *]
“As to his habits and manners little is known, and that little is worn
threadbare by his many biographers. In appearance he became in his
maturer years fat and florid, and obtained the name of ‘Poet Squab.’
His portraits show a shrewd but rather sluggish face, with long gray
hair floating down his cheeks, not unlike Coleridge, but without his
dreamy eye like a nebulous star. His conversation was less sprightly
than solid. Sometimes men suspected that he had ‘sold all his thoughts
to his booksellers.’ His manners are by his friends pronounced
‘modest,’ and the word modest has since been amiably confounded by his
biographers with ‘pure.’ Bashful he seems to have been to awkwardness;
but he was by no means a model of the virtues. He loved to sit at
Will’s coffee-house and be the arbiter of criticism. His favourite
stimulus was snuff, and his favourite amusement angling. He had a bad
address, a down look, and little of the air of a gentleman.”
[Sidenote: Christie’s _Memoir of Dryden_. *]
“Some notion of Dryden’s personal appearance may be gathered from
contemporary notices. He was of short stature, stout, and ruddy in the
face. Rochester christened him ‘Poet Squab,’ and Tom Brown always calls
him ‘Little Bayes.’ Shadwell, in his _Medal of John Bayes_, sneers at
him as a cherry-cheeked dunce; another lampooner calls him ‘learned and
florid.’ Pope remembered him as plump and of fresh colour, with a down
look. Lady de Longueville, who died in 1763 at the age of a hundred,
told Oldys that she remembered Dryden dining with her husband, and that
the most remarkable part of his appearance was an uncommon distance
between his eyes. He had a large mole on his right cheek. The friendly
writer of some lines on his portrait by Closterman says:
‘A sleepy eye he shows, and no sweet feature.’
He appears to have become gray comparatively early, and he let his
gray hair grow long. We see him with his long gray locks in the
portrait by which, through engravings, his face is best known to us,
painted by Kneller in 1698. The face, as we know it by that picture
and the engravings, is handsome, it indicates intellect, and sensual
characteristics are not wanting.”
MARY ANNE EVANS
(GEORGE ELIOT)
1819-1880
[Sidenote: _Harper’s Magazine_, 1881.]
“In more than one striking passage in his novels Mr. Hardy has
recognised the fact that the beauty of the future, as the race is more
developed in intellect, cannot be the mere physical beauty of the past;
and in one of the most remarkable he says that ‘ideal physical beauty
is incompatible with mental development, and a full recognition of
the evil of things. Mental luminousness must be fed with the oil of
life, even though there is already a physical need for it.’ And this
was the case with George Eliot. The face was one of a group of four,
not all equally like each other, but all of the same spiritual family,
and with a curious interdependance of likeness. These four are Dante,
Savonarola, Cardinal Newman, and herself.... In the group of which
George Eliot was one there is the same straight wall of brow; the
droop of the powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion,
kept resolutely under control; a square jaw, which would make the face
stern, were it not counteracted by the sweet smile of lip and eye....
The two or three portraits that exist, though valuable, give but a very
imperfect presentiment. The mere shape of the head would be the despair
of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely be
possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to
the frame of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her,
although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that after all,
she was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and
brain.”
[Sidenote: _The Century_, 1881.]
“Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with the bent of
her soul. The deeply-lined face, the too marked and massive features,
were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was
the more impressive because it seemed to proceed so entirely from
within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the
external harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that
entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed
forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to
another with a grave appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols
that showed the presence of a wise benignant soul. But it was the voice
which best revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous
richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a
work of feeling that must remain untold.... And then again, when in
moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion would set
strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious
absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not one to
be soon forgotten. It had not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls to
whose child-like confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it
was the look (if I may use a platonic phrase) of a strenuous Demiurge,
of a soul on which high tasks are laid, and which finds in their
accomplishment its only imagination of joy.”
[Sidenote: William Morgan’s _George Eliot_. *]
“I was disappointed when I found the illustrated papers gave no
portraits of George Eliot, and I afterwards learned that, celebrated
as she is in other ways, she enjoys the rare, and perhaps unique,
distinction that she was never photographed. Two portraits of her are,
however, in existence. One, by Mr. Lawrence, hangs in Mr. Blackwood’s
drawing-room in Edinburgh; the other, by Mr. Buxton, was in her own
house at Chelsea. She is described as a woman of large, massive, and
homely features, which were softened and irradiated by a gracious
and winning smile. The size, shape, and poise of her head were very
noticeable, and some of her friends have been struck by her resemblance
to the portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolommea. Her voice was rich
and melodious, and those who best knew her speak of her as a strangely
fascinating and sympathetic woman, who left on every one who approached
her an impression of goodness and greatness. Her conversation had no
traces of the rich humour which runs through some of her writings, but
she joined very heartily in the jocularity of others.”
HENRY FIELDING
1707-1754
[Sidenote: Roscoe’s _Life of Fielding_. *]
“With regard to his personal appearance, Fielding was strongly built,
robust, and in height rather exceeding six feet; he was also remarkably
active, till repeated attacks of gout had broken down the vigour of a
fine constitution. Naturally of a dignified presence, he was equally
impressive in his tone and manner, which added to his peculiarly-marked
features; his conversational powers and rare wit must have given him a
decided influence in general society, and not a little ascendency over
the minds of common men.”
[Sidenote: Jeaffreson’s _Novels and Novelists_. *]
“That our nation was well and favourably represented by him, amongst
the lads at the university, there can be no doubt; for he was a
magnificent fellow, frank in bearing, agile as a trained wrestler,
rather exceeding six feet in height, with a face, both by aristocratic
features and gallant expression, remarkably engaging, with a fresh,
slightly ruddy complexion, and a winning smile of the most mirthful
intelligence, with an air commanding, but free from the slightest taint
of haughtiness, and lastly, with a disposition as well endowed as his
mind,--generous and truly noble as became one sprung from the seed of
kings.”--1725.
[Sidenote: Lawrence’s _Life of Fielding_. *]
“The personal appearance of the great novelist has been thus described
by his friend, Mr. Arthur Murphy: ‘Henry Fielding was in stature
rather rising above six feet; his frame of body large and remarkably
robust, till the gout had broken the vigour of his constitution.’ His
features were marked and striking, so much so, that a portrait of him
was painted by his friend Hogarth from memory, with the assistance of a
profile which had been cut in paper with a pair of scissors by a lady.
Though he was singularly handsome in his youth, in his later years it
appears, from his own account, that his gouty and dropsical figure was
anything but agreeable to behold. But his cheerfulness and good temper
rendered him to the last a delightful companion, and endeared him to
his family and friends.”
JOHN GAY
1688-1732
[Sidenote: Coxe’s _Life of John Gay_.]
“His physiognomy does not appear to have been remarkable for
strong lines or expressive features, it rather denoted benignity
and meekness.... In his person Gay was inclined to corpulency; a
circumstance which he humorously alludes to in his Epistle to Lord
Burlington:
‘You knew fat bards might tire,
And mounted sent me forth your trusty squire.’
His natural corpulency was increased by extreme indolence, for which
his friends often rallied him. Swift, in a letter to the Duchess of
Queensberry, thus expresses himself on this subject: ‘You need not be
in pain about Mr. Gay’s stock of health; I promise you he will spend
it all upon laziness, and run deep in debt by a winter’s repose in
town; therefore I entreat your Grace will order him to move his chaps
less, and his legs more, the six cold months, else he will spend all
his money in physic and coach-hire.’--8th October 1731.... In the early
part of his life Gay was extremely fond of dress.... Pope also touches
upon this weakness in a letter to Swift.--18th December 1713.
... “‘One Mr. Gay, an unhappy youth, who writes pastorals during the
time of divine service; whose case is the more deplorable, as he hath
miserably lavished away all that silver he should have reserved for his
soul’s health in buttons and loops for his coat.’”
[Sidenote: Thackeray’s _English Humourists_. *]
“In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of
the last century, Gay’s face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It
appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress
and _négligée_ of learning without which the painters of those days
scarcely ever pourtrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder
with an honest boyish glee--an artless sweet humour. He was so kind,
so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally
woe-begone at others, such a natural good creature, that the Giants
loved him.”
EDWARD GIBBON
1737-1794
[Sidenote: Colman’s _Random Recollections_.]
“The learned Gibbon was a curious counter-balance to the learned (may
I not say the less learned) Johnson. Their manners and tastes, both
in writing and conversation, were as different as their habiliments.
On the day I first sat down with Johnson in his rusty brown suit and
his black worsted stockings, Gibbon was placed opposite to me in a
suit of flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. Each had his measured
phraseology, and Johnson’s famous parallel between Dryden and Pope
might be loosely parodied in reference to himself and Gibbon. Johnson’s
style was grand, and Gibbon’s elegant: the stateliness of the former
was sometimes pedantic, and the latter was occasionally finical.
Johnson marched to kettledrums and trumpets, Gibbon moved to flutes
and hautboys. Johnson hewed passages through the Alps, while Gibbon
levelled walks through parks and gardens. Mauled as I had been by
Johnson, Gibbon poured balm upon my bruises by condescending once or
twice in the course of the evening to talk with me. The great historian
was light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of a boy; but
it was done _more suo_--still his mannerism prevailed, still he tapped
his snuff-box, still he smirked and smiled, and rounded his periods
with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men.
His mouth, mellifluous as Plato’s, was a round hole nearly in the
centre of his visage.”
[Sidenote: Lord Sheffield’s _Gibbon_.]
“M. Pavilliard has described to me the astonishment with which he gazed
on Mr. Gibbon standing before him; a thin little figure, with a large
head, disputing and urging, with the greatest ability, all the best
arguments that had ever been used in favour of popery. Mr. Gibbon many
years ago became very fat and corpulent, but he had uncommonly small
bones, and was very slightly made.”
[Sidenote: _Quarterly Review_, 1809. *]
“As to his manners in society, without doubt the agreeableness of
Gibbon was neither that yielding and retiring complaisance, nor that
modesty which is forgetful of self; but his vanity never showed itself
in an offensive manner: anxious to succeed and to please, he wished to
command attention, and obtained it without difficulty by a conversation
animated, sprightly, and full of matter: all that was dictatorial in
his tone betrayed not so much that desire of domineering over others,
which is always offensive, as confidence in himself. Notwithstanding
this, his conversation never carried one away; its fault was a kind of
arrangement which never permitted him to say anything unless well.”
WILLIAM GODWIN
1756-1836
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“In person he was remarkably sedate and solemn, resembling in dress and
manner a Dissenting minister rather than the advocate of ‘free-thought’
in all things--religious, moral, social, and intellectual; he was short
and stout, his clothes loosely and carelessly put on, and usually old
and worn; his hands were generally in his pockets; he had a remarkably
large, bald head, and a weak voice; seeming generally half asleep
when he walked, and even when he talked. Few who saw this man of
calm exterior, quiet manners, and inexpressive features, could have
believed him to have originated three romances--_Falkland_, _Caleb
Williams_, and _St. Leon_,--not yet forgotten because of their terrible
excitements; and the work, _Political Justice_, which for a time
created a sensation that was a fear in every state of Europe.... Lamb
called him ‘a good-natured heathen’; Southey said of him, in 1797, ‘He
has large noble eyes, and a nose--oh! most abominable nose.’”
[Sidenote: George Ticknor’s _Life_.]
“Godwin is as far removed from everything feverish and exciting as if
his head had never been filled with anything but geometry. He is now
about sixty-five, stout, well-built, and unbroken by age, with a cool,
dogged manner, exactly opposite to everything I had imagined of the
author of _St. Leon_ and _Caleb Williams_.”--1819.
[Sidenote: H. Martineau’s _Autobiography_.]
“The mention of Coleridge reminds me, I hardly know why, of Godwin,
who was an occasional morning visitor of mine. I looked upon him as a
curious monument of a bygone state of society; and there was still a
good deal that was interesting in him. His fine head was striking, and
his countenance remarkable. It must not be judged of by the pretended
likeness put forth in _Fraser’s Magazine_ about that time, and
attributed, with the whole set, to Maclise.... The high Tory favourites
of the Magazine were exhibited to the best advantage; while Liberals
were represented as Godwin was. Because the finest thing about him was
his noble head, they put on a hat; and they represented him in profile
because he had lost his teeth, and his lips fell in. No notion of
Godwin’s face could have been formed from that caricature.”--1833.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
1728-1774
[Sidenote: Forster’s _Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith_.]
“You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment,
anguish, and study, have worn me down.... Imagine to yourself a pale
melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with
an eye disgustingly severe, and, a big wig, and you may have a perfect
picture of my present appearance.... I can neither laugh nor drink,
have contracted a hesitating disagreeable manner of speaking, and a
visage that looks ill-nature itself; in short, I have thought myself
into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings
with it.”--1759.
[Sidenote: Boswell’s _Life of Dr. Johnson_.]
“He was very much what the French call _un étourdi_, and from
vanity and an eager desire of being conspicuous wherever he was, he
frequently talked carelessly without knowledge of the subject, or even
without thought. His person was short, his countenance coarse and
vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy
gentleman.”--1763.
[Sidenote: R. Walsh’s _British Poets_. *]
“Nothing could be more amiable than the general features of his mind;
those of his person were not perhaps so engaging. His stature was under
the middle size, his body strongly built, and his limbs more sturdy
than elegant. His complexion was pale, his forehead low, his face
almost round and pitted with the small-pox, but marked with strong
lines of thinking. His first appearance was not captivating; but when
he grew easy and cheerful in company, he relaxed into such a display of
good-humour as soon removed every unfavourable impression.”
DAVID GRAY
1838-1861
[Sidenote: Buchanan’s _Life of David Gray_.]
“At twenty-one years of age ... David was a tall young man, slightly
but firmly built, and with a stoop at the shoulders. His head was
small, fringed with black curly hair. Want of candour was not his
fault, though he seldom looked one in the face; his eyes, however,
were large and dark, full of intelligence and humour, harmonising well
with the long thin nose and nervous lips. The great black eyes and
woman’s mouth betrayed the creature of impulse; one whose reasoning
faculties were small, but whose temperament was like red-hot coal. He
sympathised with much that was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and
with much that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. He carried sympathy
to the highest pitch of enthusiasm; he shed tears over the memories of
Keats and Burns, and he was corybantic in his execution of a Scotch
‘reel.’”--1859.
[Sidenote: R. M. Milnes’s _Notice on David Gray_.]
“I was told a young man wished to see me, and when he came into the
room I at once saw it was no other than the young Scotch poet. It was
a light, well-built, but somewhat stooping figure, with a countenance
that at once brought strongly to my recollection a cast of a face of
Shelley in his youth, which I had seen at Mr. Leigh Hunt’s. There was
the same full brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy mouth.”
[Sidenote: Hedderwick’s _Memoir of David Gray_.]
“In person, the deceased poet was tall, with a slight stoop. His head
was not large, but his temperament was of the keenest and brightest
edge. With black curling hair, eyes dark, large, and lustrous, and a
complexion of almost feminine delicacy, his appearance never failed to
make a favourable impression on strangers.”
THOMAS GRAY
1716-1771
[Sidenote: Gosse’s _Gray_. *]
“In one of Philip Gray’s fits of extravagance he seems to have had a
full-length of his son painted about this time, by the fashionable
portrait-painter of the day, Jonathan Richardson the elder. This
picture is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. The head is
good in colour and modelling; a broad pale brow, sharp nose and chin,
large eyes, and a pert expression, give a lively idea of the precocious
and not very healthy young gentleman of thirteen. He is dressed in a
blue satin coat, lined with pale shot silk, and crosses his stockinged
legs so as to display dapper slippers of russet leather.”--1729.
[Sidenote: Warburton’s _Horace Walpole and his contemporaries_. *]
“Gray, judging from his portrait by Echardt, lately at Strawberry
Hill, was eminently the poet and the scholar in his appearance. A
delicate frame, a pale complexion, an expansive forehead, clear eyes,
a small mouth, and regular features, bearing the general impression of
thoughtfulness and melancholy, surrounded by his own hair, worn long,
prepossessed the spectator in his favour, and charmed those who were
already his admirers.”
[Sidenote: Gosse’s _Gray_.]
“Mr. Gray’s singular niceness in the choice of his acquaintance makes
him appear fastidious in a great degree to all who are not acquainted
with his manner. He is of a fastidious and recluse distance of
carriage, rather averse to all sociability, but of the graver turn,
nice and elegant in his person, dress, and behaviour, even to a degree
of finicality and effeminacy.”--1770.
HENRY HALLAM
1777-1859
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“Hallam was a tall and remarkably handsome man, very stately in look
and manner. His countenance was thoughtful and intelligent, yet by no
means stern. On the contrary, he was kindly and condescending. I had
once occasion to apply to him for information. He gave it graciously
and gracefully, and appeared as if he had received instead of conferred
a compliment.”
[Sidenote: George Ticknor’s _Life_.]
“Mr. Hallam is, I suppose, about sixty years old, gray-headed,
hesitates a little in his speech, is lame, and has a shy manner which
makes him blush frequently, when he expresses as decided an opinion as
his temperament constantly leads him to entertain. Except his lameness,
he has a fine dignified person, and talked pleasantly, with that air of
kindness which is always so welcome to a stranger.... He is a wise man,
a little nervous in his manner and a little fidgety, yet of a sound and
quiet judgment.”--1838.
[Sidenote: Jerdan’s _Men I have known_.]
“A statue of him by Mr. Theed was sculptured for St. Paul’s Cathedral,
and a good copy was exhibited at the last National Exhibition, though
I was not altogether satisfied with the likeness, nor thought the
accessories well chosen and happy; for a standing figure, nevertheless,
it has the great merit of simplicity.
“Though habitually rather grave, the pleasant smile best became his
features, and I do not think he was often guilty of audible laughter.”
WILLIAM HAZLITT
1778-1830
[Sidenote: Patmore’s _Personal Recollections_.]
“The truth is, that for depth, force, and variety of intellectual
expression, a finer head and face than Hazlitt’s were never seen.
I speak of them when his countenance was not dimmed and obscured
by illness, or clouded and deformed by those fearful indications
of internal passion which he never even attempted to conceal.
The expression of Hazlitt’s face, when anything was said in his
presence that seriously offended him, or when any peculiarly painful
recollection passed across his mind, was truly awful, more so than can
be conceived as within the capacity of the human countenance; except,
perhaps, by those who have witnessed Edmund Kean’s last scene of ‘Sir
Giles Overreach’ from the front of the pit. But when he was in good
health, and in a tolerable humour with himself and the world, his face
was more truly and entirely answerable to the intellect that spoke
through it, than any other I ever saw, either in life or on canvas; and
its crowning portion--the brow and forehead--was, to my thinking, quite
unequalled for mingled capacity and beauty.
“For those who desire a more particular description, I will add that
Hazlitt’s features, though not cast in any received classical mould,
were regular in their formation, perfectly consonant with each other,
and so finely ‘chiseled’ (as the phrase is), that they produced a much
more prominent and striking effect than their scale of size might have
led one to expect. The forehead, as I have hinted, was magnificent; the
nose precisely that (combining strength with lightness and elegance)
which physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a fine and highly
cultivated taste, though there was a peculiar character about the
nostrils like that observable in those of a fiery and unruly horse. The
mouth, from its ever-changing form and character, could scarcely be
described, except as to its astonishingly varied power of expression,
which was equal to, and greatly resembled, that of Edmund Kean. His
eyes, I should say, were not good. They were never brilliant, and there
was a furtive and at times a sinister look about them, as they glanced
suspiciously from under their overhanging brows, that conveyed a very
unpleasant impression to those who did not know him. And they were
seldom directed frankly and fairly towards you, as if he were afraid
that you might read in them what was passing in his mind concerning
you. His head was nobly formed and placed, with (until the last few
years of his life) a profusion of coal-black hair, richly curled; and
his person was of middle height, rather slight, but well formed and put
together.”
[Sidenote: Bryan Procter’s _Recollections of Men of Letters_.]
“My first meeting with Mr. Hazlitt took place at the house of
Leigh Hunt, where I met him at supper. I expected to see a severe,
defiant-looking being. I met a grave man, diffident, almost awkward
in manner, whose appearance did not impress me with much respect. He
had a quick, restless eye, however, which opened eagerly when any
good or bright observation was made; and I found at the conclusion of
the evening, that when any question arose, the most sensible reply
always came from him.... Hazlitt was of the middle size, with eager,
expressive eyes, near which his black hair, sprinkled sparely with
gray, curled round in a wiry, resolute manner. His gray eyes, not
remarkable in colour, expanded into great expression when occasion
demanded it. Being very shy, however, they often evaded your steadfast
look. They never (as has been asserted by some one) had a sinister
expression, but they sometimes flamed with indignant glances when their
owner was moved to anger, like the eyes of other angry men. At home,
his style of dress (or undress) was perhaps slovenly, because there
was no one to please; but he always presented a very neat and clean
appearance when he went abroad. His mode of walking was loose, weak,
and unsteady, although his arms displayed strength, which he used to
put forth when he played at racquets with Martin Burney and others.”
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of Writers_.]
“The painting ... was standing on an old-fashioned couch in one corner
of the room leaning against the wall, and we remained opposite to it
for some time, while Hazlitt stood by holding the candle high up so as
to throw the light well on to the picture, descanting enthusiastically
on the merits of the original. The beam from the candle falling
on his own finely intellectual head, with its iron-gray hair, its
square potential forehead, its massive mouth and chin, and eyes full
of earnest fire, formed a glorious picture in itself, and remains a
luminous vision for ever upon our memories.”--About 1829.
FELICIA HEMANS
1794-1835
[Sidenote: Hughes’s _Memoir of Mrs. Hemans_.]
“The young poetess was then only fifteen; in the full glow of that
radiant beauty which was destined to fade so early. The mantling bloom
of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringlets, of a
rich golden brown, and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant
eyes gave a changeful play to her countenance, which would have made
it impossible for any painter to do justice to it. The recollection
of what she was at that time, irresistibly suggests a quotation from
Wordsworth’s graceful poetic picture:--
‘She was a Phantom of delight,
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament.
* * * *
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.’”
1809.
[Sidenote: Moir’s _Memoirs of Mrs. Hemans_.]
“Mrs. Hemans was about the middle height, and rather slenderly made
than otherwise. To a countenance of great intelligence and expression,
she united manners alike unassuming and playful, and with a trust
arising out of the purity of her own character--which was beyond the
meanness of suspicion in others--she remained untainted by the breath
of worldly guile.”
[Sidenote: Rossetti’s _Notice of Mrs. Hemans_. *]
“An engraved portrait of her by the American artist William E.
West--one of three which he painted in 1827, shows us that Mrs. Hemans,
at the age of thirty-four, was eminently pleasing and good-looking,
with an air of amiability and sprightly gentleness, and of confiding
candour which, while none the less perfectly womanly, might almost be
termed childlike in its limpid depth. The features are correct and
harmonious; the eyes full; and the contour amply and elegantly rounded.
In height she was neither tall nor short. A sufficient wealth of
naturally clustering hair, golden in early youth, but by this time of
a rich auburn, shades the capacious but not over-developed forehead,
and the lightly pencilled eyebrows. The bust and form have the fulness
of a mature period of life; and it would appear that Mrs. Hemans was
somewhat short-necked and high-shouldered, partly detracting from
delicacy of proportion, and of general aspect of impression on the
eye. We would rather judge of her by this portrait (which her sister
pronounces a good likeness) than by another engraved in Mr. Chorley’s
Memorials. This latter was executed in Dublin in 1831, by a young
artist named Edward Robinson. It makes Mrs. Hemans look younger than in
the earlier portrait by West, and may on that ground alone be surmised
unfaithful, and, though younger, it also makes her heavier and less
refined.”
JAMES HOGG
1770-1835
[Sidenote: Lockhart’s _Peter’s Letters_.]
“Although for some time past he has spent a considerable portion
of every year in excellent, even in refined society, the external
appearance of the man can have undergone but very little change since
he was ‘a herd on Yarrow.’ His face and hands are still as brown
as if he had lived entirely _sub dio_. His very hair has a coarse
stringiness about it, which proves beyond dispute its utter ignorance
of all the arts of the _friseur_, and hangs in playful whips and cords
about his ears, in a style of the most perfect innocence imaginable.
His mouth which, when he smiles, nearly cuts the totality of his
face in twain, is an object that would make the Chevalier Ruspini
die with indignation; for his teeth have been allowed to grow where
they listed, and as they listed, presenting more resemblance, in
arrangement (and colour too), to a body of crouching sharp-shooters,
than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead,
towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and
of an eye that illuminates their surface with genuine lightenings of
genius ... these are things which I cannot so easily transfer to my
paper.”--1819.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“The Rev. Mr. Thomson, his biographer, thus pictures him:--‘In height
he was five feet ten inches and a half; his broad chest and square
shoulders indicated health and strength; while a well-rounded leg, and
small ankle and foot, showed the active shepherd who could outstrip
the runaway sheep.’ His hair in his younger days was auburn, slightly
inclining to yellow, which afterwards became dark brown, mixed with
gray; his eyes, which were dark blue, were bright and intelligent. His
features were irregular, while his eye and ample forehead redeemed the
countenance from every charge of common-place homeliness.”
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]
“Hogg is a little red-skinned stiff sack of a body, with quite the
common air of an Ettrick shepherd, except that he has a highish though
sloping brow (among his yellow grizzled hair), and two clear little
beads of blue or gray eyes that sparkle, if not with thought, yet with
animation. Behaves himself quite easily and well; speaks Scotch, and
mostly narrative absurdity (or even obscenity) therewith.... His vanity
seems to be immense, but also his good-nature.”--1832.
THOMAS HOOD
1798-1845
[Sidenote: _The Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1872.]
“As he entered the room my first impression was that of slight
disappointment. I had not then seen any portrait of him, and my
imagination had depicted a man of the under size, with a humorous
and mobile mouth, and with sharp, twinkling, and investigating eyes.
When, therefore, a rather tall and attenuated figure presented itself
before me, with grave aspect and dressed in black, and when, after
scrutinising his features, I noticed those dark, sad eyes set in
that pale and pain-worn yet tranquil face, and saw the expression of
that suffering mouth, telling how sickness with its stern plough had
driven its silent share through that slender frame, all the long train
of quaint and curious fancies, ludicrous imageries, oddly-combined
contrasts, humorous distortions, strange and uncouth associations,
myriad word-twistings, ridiculous miseries, grave trifles, and trifling
gravities--all these came before me like the rushing event of a dream,
and I asked myself, ‘Can this be the man that has so often made me roll
with laughter at his humour, chuckle at his wit, and wonder while I
threaded the maze of his inexhaustible puns?’ When he began to converse
in bland and placid tones about Germany, where he had for some time
lived, I became more reconciled to him.”
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“In person Hood was of middle height, slender and sickly-looking, of
sallow complexion and pale features, quiet in expression, and very
rarely excited so as to give indication of either the pathos or the
humour that must ever have been working in his soul. His was, indeed,
a countenance rather of melancholy than mirth; there was something
calm, even to solemnity, in the upper portion of the face, seldom
relieved, in society, by the eloquent play of the mouth, or the sparkle
of an observant eye. In conversation he was by no means brilliant.
When inclined to pun, which was not often, it seemed as if his wit was
the issue of thought, and not an instinctive produce, such as I have
noticed in other men who have thus become famous, who are admirable in
crowds, whose animation is like that of the sounding-board, which makes
a great noise at a small touch, when listeners are many and applause is
sure.”
[Sidenote: Rossetti’s _Memoir of Hood_. *]
“The face of Hood is best known by two busts and an oil-portrait,
which have both been engraved from. It is the sort of face to which
apparently a bust does more than justice, yet less than right,--the
features, being mostly by no means bad ones, look better when thus
reduced to the more simple and abstract contour than they probably
showed in reality, for no one supposed Hood to be a fine-looking man;
on the other hand, the _value_ of the face must have been in its
shifting expression--keen, playful, or subtle--and this can be but
barely suggested by the sculptor. The poet’s visage was pallid, his
figure slight, his voice feeble; he always dressed in black, and is
generally spoken of as presenting a generally clerical appearance.”
THEODORE HOOK
1788-1841
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“I remember, one day at Sydenham, Mr. Theodore Hook coming in
unexpectedly to dinner, and amusing us very much with his talent at
extempore verse. He was then a youth, tall, dark, and of a good person,
with small eyes, and features more round than weak; a face that had
character and humour, but no refinement.”--1809.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“When I first saw him, he was above the middle height, robust of frame,
and broad of chest; well-proportioned, with evidence of great physical
capacity; his complexion dark, as were his eyes. There was nothing fine
or elevated in his expression; indeed, his features when in repose were
heavy; it was otherwise when animated; yet his manners were those of a
gentleman, less, perhaps, from inherent faculty than the polish which
refined society ever gives.”--1828.
[Sidenote: Barham’s _Life of Hook_.]
“In person Theodore Hook was above the middle height, his frame was
robust and well-proportioned, possessing a breadth and depth of chest
which, joined to a constitution naturally of the strongest order, would
have seemed, under ordinary care, to hold out promise of a long and
healthy life. His countenance was fine and commanding, his features
when in repose settling into a somewhat stern and heavy expression, but
all alive and alight with genius the instant his lips were opened. His
eyes were dark, large, and full--to the epithet [Greek: boôpis] he, not
less justly than the venerable goddess, was entitled. His voice was
rich, deep, and melodious.”
DAVID HUME
1711-1776
[Sidenote: Chambers’s _Eminent Scotsmen_.]
“Lord Charlemont, who at this period met with Mr. Hume at Turin, has
given the following account of his habits and appearance, penned
apparently with a greater aim at effect than at truth, yet somewhat
characteristic of the philosopher: ‘Nature, I believe, never formed
any man more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of
physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most
skilful in the science pretend to discover the smallest trace of the
faculties of his mind in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face
was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression
than that of imbecility. His eyes vacant and spiritless; and the
corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate
the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than of a refined philosopher.
His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch
accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable, so that
wisdom most certainly never disguised herself before in so uncouth a
garb.’”
[Sidenote: Lockhart’s _Peter’s Letters_.]
“The prints of David Hume are, most of them, I believe, taken from
the very portrait I have seen; but of course the style and effect
of the features are much more thoroughly to be understood when one
has an opportunity of observing them expanded in their natural
proportions. The face is far from being in any respect a classical
one. The forehead is chiefly remarkable for its prominence from the
ear, and not so much for its height. This gives him a lowering sort
of look forwards, expressive of great inquisitiveness into matters
of fact and the consequences to be deduced from them. His eyes are
singularly prominent, which, according to the Gallic system, would
indicate an extraordinary development of the organ of language behind
them. His nose is too low between the eyes, and not well or boldly
formed in any other respect. The lips, although not handsome, have in
their fleshy and massy outlines abundant marks of habitual reflection
and intellectual occupation. The whole had a fine expression of
intellectual dignity, candour, and serenity. The want of elevation,
however, which I have already noticed, injures very much the effect
even of the structure of the lower part of the head.... It is to be
regretted that he wore powder, for this prevents us from having the
advantage of seeing what was the natural style of his hair--or, indeed,
of ascertaining the form of any part of his head beyond the forehead.”
[Sidenote: David Hume’s _Life_.]
“To conclude historically with my own character. I am, or rather was
(for that is the style which I must now use in speaking of myself,
which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiment); I was, I say, a
man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social,
and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible
of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my
love of literary fame--my ruling passion, never soured my temper,
notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not
unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and
literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest
women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with
from them.”
LEIGH HUNT
1784-1859
[Sidenote: Son’s preface to _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_.]
“It was at this period of his life” (_as a young man_) “that his
appearance was most characteristic, and none of the portraits of him
adequately conveyed the idea of it. One of the best, a half-length
chalk drawing, by an artist named Wildman, perished. The miniature
by Severn was only a sketch on a small scale, but it suggested the
kindness and animation of his countenance. In other cases, the artists
knew too little of their sitter to catch the most familiar traits of
his aspect. He was rather tall, as straight as an arrow, and looked
slenderer than he really was. His hair was black and shining, and
slightly inclined to wave; his head was high, his forehead straight and
white, his eyes black and sparkling, his general complexion dark....
Few men were so attractive ‘in society,’ whether in a large company
or over the fireside. His manners were peculiarly animated; his
conversation varied, ranging over a great field of subjects, was moved
and called forth by the response of his companion, be that companion
philosopher or student, sage or boy, man or woman; and he was equally
ready for the most lively topics or for the gravest reflections--his
expression easily adapting itself to the tone of his companion’s mind.
With much freedom of manners, he combined a spontaneous courtesy that
never failed, and a considerateness derived from a ceaseless kindness
of heart that invariably fascinated even strangers.”
[Sidenote: Bryan Procter’s _Recollections of Men of Letters_.]
“Hunt was a little above the middle size, thin and lithe. His
countenance was very genial and pleasant. His hair was black; his eyes
were very dark, but he was short-sighted, and therefore, perhaps, it
was that they had nothing of that fierce glance which black eyes so
frequently possess. His mouth was expressive, but protruding, as is
sometimes seen in half-caste Americans.”--1817.
[Sidenote: Haydon’s _Autobiography_.]
“I afterwards met Hunt, and reminded him of Wilkie’s intention, and
Hunt, with a frankness I liked much, became quite at home, and as I
was just as easily acquainted in five minutes as himself, we began to
talk, and he to hold forth, and I thought him, with his black bushy
hair, black eyes, pale face, and ‘nose of taste,’ as fine a specimen of
a London editor as could be imagined; assuming yet moderate, sarcastic
yet genial, with a smattering of everything and a mastery of nothing,
affecting the dictator, the poet, the politician, the critic, and the
sceptic, whichever would, at the moment, give him the air, to inferior
minds, of being a very superior man. I listened with something of
curiosity to his republican independence, though hating his effeminacy
and cockney peculiarities. The fearless honesty of his opinions, the
unscrupulous sacrifice of his own interests, the unselfish perseverance
of his attacks on all abuses, whether royal or religious, noble or
democratic, ancient or modern, so gratified my mind, that I suffered
this singular young man to gain such an ascendancy in my heart, as
justified the perpetual caution of Wilkie against my great tendency to
become acquainted too soon with strangers, and like Canning’s German,
to swear eternal friendship with any spirited talented fellow after a
couple of hours of witty talk or able repartee.”
ELIZABETH INCHBALD
1753-1821
[Sidenote: Kavanagh’s _English Women of Letters_. *]
“Miss Simpson ... was ... tall and slender, with hair of a golden
auburn, and lovely hazel eyes, perfect features, and an enchanting
countenance.”--1771.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Inchbald’s _Memoirs_.]
“DESCRIPTION OF ME.
_Age._--Between 30 and 40, which, in the register of a lady’s
birth, means a little turned of 30.
_Height._--Above the middle size, and rather tall.
_Figure._--Handsome, and striking in its general air, but a little
too stiff and erect. _Shape._--Rather too fond of sharp angles.
_Skin._--By nature fair, though a little freckled, and with a tinge
of sand, which is the colour of her eyelashes, but made coarse by
ill-treatment upon her cheeks and arms.
_Bosom._--None; or so diminutive, that it’s like a needle in a
bottle of hay.
_Hair._--Of a sandy auburn, and rather too straight as well as thin.
_Face._--Beautiful in effect, and beautiful in every feature.
_Countenance._--Full of spirit and sweetness; excessively
interesting, and, without indelicacy, voluptuous.
_Dress._--Always becoming; and very seldom worth so much as
_eightpence_.”--About 1788.
FRANCIS, LORD JEFFREY
1773-1850
[Sidenote: Geo. Ticknor’s _Life_.]
“You are to imagine then, before you, a short, stout little gentleman,
about five and a half feet high, with a very red face, black hair
and black eyes. You are to suppose him to possess a very gay and
animated countenance, and you are to see in him all the restlessness
of a will-o’-wisp, and all that fitful irregularity in his movements
which you have heretofore appropriated to the pasteboard Merry Andrews
whose limbs are jerked about with a wire. These you are to interpret
as the natural indications of the impetuous and impatient character
which a farther acquaintance developes. He enters the room with a
countenance so satisfied and a step so light and almost fantastic,
that all your previous impressions of the dignity and severity of
the _Edinburgh Review_ are immediately put to flight, and, passing
at once to the opposite extreme, you might, perhaps, imagine him
to be frivolous, vain, and supercilious. He accosts you too, with
a freedom and familiarity which may, perhaps, put you at your ease
and render conversation unceremonious; but which, as I observed in
several instances, were not very tolerable to those who had always been
accustomed to the delicacy and decorum of refined society.”--1814.
[Sidenote: Lockhart’s _Peter’s Letters_.]
“I had not been long in the room, however, when I heard Mr. J----
announced, and as I had not seen him for some time, resolved to stay,
and if possible, enjoy a little of his conversation in some corner....
I have seldom seen a man more nice in his exterior than Mr. J---- now
seemed to be. His little person looked very neat in the way he had now
adorned it. He had a very well-cut blue coat,--evidently not after
the design of any Edinburgh artist,--light kerseymere breeches and
ribbed silk stockings, a pair of elegant buckles, white kid gloves,
and a tricolour watch-ribbon. He held his hat under his arm in a very
_dégagée_ manner--and altogether he was certainly one of the last men
in the assembly, whom a stranger would have guessed to be either a
great lawyer or a great reviewer. In short, he was more of a dandy
than any great author I ever saw--always excepting Tom Moore and David
Williams.”
[Sidenote: _New Monthly Magazine_, 1831.]
“He is of low stature, but his figure is elegant and well proportioned.
The face is rather elongated, the chin deficient, the mouth well
formed, with a mingled expression of determination, sentiment, and arch
mockery; the nose is slightly curved; the eye is the most peculiar
feature of the countenance; it is large and sparkling. He has two
tones in his voice--the one harsh and grating, the other rich and
clear.”--1831.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
1803-1857
[Sidenote: Hodder’s _Personal Reminiscences_.]
“To my great delight, ... I had not been in the room many minutes
before I was introduced to Douglas Jerrold, who was flitting about with
that peculiar restlessness of eye, speech, and demeanour, which was
amongst his most marked characteristics. I confess I was not surprised
to find him a man of small stature, as I had heard before that his
proportions were rather those of Tydeus than of Alcides; but I was a
little astonished when I saw in the author of _Black-eyed Susan_, _The
Rent Day_, and _The Wedding Gown_, (all of which pieces and many others
he had then produced), an amount of boyish gaiety and a rapidity of
movement which one could hardly expect from a writer who had risen to
high rank as a moralist and censor.”
[Sidenote: W. B. Jerrold’s _Life of Douglas Jerrold_.]
“He had none of the airs of success or reputation, none of the
affectations, either personal or social, which are rife everywhere.
He was manly and natural; free and off-handed to the verge of
eccentricity. Independence and marked character seemed to breathe from
the little, rather bowed figure, crowned with a lion-like head and
falling light hair--to glow in the keen, eager, blue eyes glancing on
either side as he walked along. Nothing could be less commonplace,
nothing less conventional, than his appearance in a room or in the
streets.”
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“He was a very short man, but with breadth enough, and a back
excessively bent--bowed almost to deformity; very gray hair, and a face
and expression of remarkable briskness and intelligence. His profile
came out pretty boldly, and his eyes had the prominence that indicates,
I believe, volubility of speech; nor did he fail to talk from the
instant of his appearance; and in the tone of his voice, and in his
glance, and in the whole man, there was something racy--a flavour of
the humourist. His step was that of an aged man, and he put his stick
down very decidedly at every foot-fall; though, as he afterwards told
me, he was only fifty-two, he need not yet have been infirm.”--1856.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
1709-1784
[Sidenote: Boswell’s _Life of Dr. Johnson_.]
“Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her mother,
his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so
that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the
eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore
his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he
often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which
tended to excite at once surprise and ridicule. Mrs. Porter was so much
engaged by his conversation that she overlooked all these external
disadvantages, and said to her daughter, ‘This is the most sensible man
that I ever saw in my life.’”--1731.
[Sidenote: Boswell’s _Life of Dr. Johnson_.]
“His chambers were on the first floor of No. 1 Inner Temple Lane....
He received me very courteously; but it must be confessed that his
apartment and furniture and morning dress was sufficiently uncouth.
His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty; he had on a little old
shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt
neck and knees of his breeches were loose, his black worsted stockings
ill drawn up, and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers.
But all these slovenly peculiarities were forgotten the moment he began
to talk.”--1763.
[Sidenote: Croker’s _Johnsoniana_.]
“The day after I wrote my last letter to you I was introduced to Mr.
Johnson by a friend. We passed through three very dirty rooms to a
little one that looked like an old counting-house, where this great
man was sat at breakfast.... I was very much struck with Mr. Johnson’s
appearance, and could hardly help thinking him a madman for some time,
as he sat waving over his breakfast like a lunatic. He is a very large
man, and was dressed in a dirty brown coat and waistcoat, with breeches
that were brown also (although they had been crimson), and an old black
wig; his shirt collar and sleeves were unbuttoned; his stockings were
down about his feet, which had on them, by way of slippers, an old pair
of shoes.... We had been with him some time before he began to talk,
but at length he began, and, faith, to some purpose; everything he says
is as _correct_ as a _second edition_; ’tis almost impossible to argue
with him, he is so sententious and so knowing.”--1764.
BEN JONSON
1574-1637
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_. *]
“He was (or rather had been) of a clear and faire skin, his habit
was very plaine. I have heard Mr. Lacy, the player, say that he was
wont to weare a coate like a coach-man’s coate with slitts under the
arme-pitts. He would many times exceed in drinke. Canarie was his
beloved liquer.... Ben Jonson had one eie lower than t’other and
bigger, like Clun, the player.”
[Sidenote: Anderson’s _Poets of Great Britain_. *]
“The character of Jonson, like that of most celebrated wits, has been
drawn with great diversity of lights and shades, according as affection
or envy guided the pencil. His person, as he has himself told us, was
corpulent and large. His disposition seems to have been reserved and
saturnine, and sometimes not a little oppressed with the gloom of a
splenetic imagination.... Stern and rigid as his virtue was, he was
easy and social in the convivial meetings of his friends; and the laws
of his _Symposia_, inscribed over the chimney of the Apollo, a room in
the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, where he kept his club, show that he
was neither averse to the pleasures of conversation, nor ignorant of
what would render it agreeable and improving.”
[Sidenote: Lafond, _Notice sur Ben Jonson_. *]
“Il est clair pour nous que Ben Jonson avait une nature violente dans
un corps robuste et athlétique; son portrait nous le montre avec une
énorme face, une vigoureuse mâchoire, des yeux profonds et durs, un
cou de taureau. Sa peau avait été, de bonne heure, couturée par le
scorbut; et lui-même dit quelque part qu’il eut, dans le milieu de
sa vie, une montagne pour ventre et un dandinement disgracieux pour
démarche. Tous ses traits fortement accentués, anguleux ou carrés,
dénoncent l’énergie, l’orgueil et l’amour des luttes de toute nature.
Il aimait la bonne chère et le vin; sa prédilection pour le vin des
Canaries avait, disait il, pour excuse la nécessité de sa constitution
scorbutique. Il avait l’esprit semblable au corps; malgré ses études
classiques, il était loin d’être un Athénien, c’était un Anglo-Saxon
enté sur un Romain de la décadence. Généreux, libéral, prodigue, il
tint toujours table ouverte, même lorsque la misère était devenue
l’hôte de son foyer.”
JOHN KEATS
1795-1821
[Sidenote: Bryan Procter’s _Recollections of Men of Letters_.]
“I was first introduced to him (Keats), by Leigh Hunt, and found him
very pleasant, and free from all affectation in manner and opinion.
Indeed it would be difficult to discover a man with a more bright and
open countenance.... I can only say that I never encountered a more
manly and simple young man. In person he was short, and had eyes large
and wonderfully luminous, and a resolute bearing, not defiant but well
sustained.”
[Sidenote: Monckton Milnes’s _Life of Keats_.]
“His eyes were large and blue, his hair auburn, he wore it divided
down the centre, and it fell in rich masses on each side his face,
his mouth was full, and less intellectual than his other features.
His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and
brightness,--it had an expression as if he had been looking on some
glorious sight. The shape of his face had not the squareness of a
man’s, but more like some women’s faces I have seen--it was so wide
over the forehead, and so small at the chin. He seemed in perfect
health, and with life offering all things that were precious to
him.”--1818.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of Writers_.]
_In reviewing this portrait, Mrs. Cowden Clarke, while admitting
that much of it is_ “excellent” _and_ “true,” _goes on to add these
words_: “But when our artist pronounces that ‘his eyes were large and
_blue_,’ and that ‘his hair was _auburn_,’ I am naturally reminded of
the ‘Chameleon’ fable--‘they were _brown_, ma’am--_brown_, I assure
you!’... Reader, alter, in your copy of the _Life of Keats_, vol. i.
page 103, ‘eyes’ light hazel, ‘hair’ _lightish brown and wavy_.”
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“Keats, when he died, had just completed his four and twentieth year.
He was under the middle height, and his lower limbs were small in
comparison with the upper, but neat and well-turned. His shoulders were
very broad for his size; he had a face in which energy and sensibility
were remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by
ill-health. Every feature was at once strongly cut, and delicately
alive. If there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which
was not without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was
rather long than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the
under; the chin was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes are mellow and
glowing, large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a noble action,
or a beautiful thought, they would suffuse with tears, and his mouth
trembled. In this there was ill-health as well as imagination, for
he did not like these betrayals of emotion; and he had great personal
as well as moral courage. He once chastised a butcher, who had been
insolent, by a regular stand-up fight. His hair, of a brown colour,
was fine, and hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the
phrenologists, being remarkably small in the skull--a singularity which
he had in common with Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get
on. Keats was sensible of the disproportion above noticed between his
upper and lower extremities, and he would look at his hand, which was
faded, and swollen in the veins, and say it was the hand of a man of
fifty.”--1826.
JOHN KEBLE
1792-1866
[Sidenote: J. Coleridge’s _Memoir of the Rev. John Keble_.]
“To me both the portraits are full of deep interest” (_these portraits
of Keble, the one in the prime of manhood and the other in old age,
were drawn by Richmond_), “the earlier and the later both--each
brings him back to me as he was; in the earlier, he has some of the
merry defiance he could assume in argument; in the latter, I see the
sad tenderness of his advanced years. Keble had not regular features;
he could not be called a handsome man, but he was one to be noticed
anywhere, and remembered long; his forehead and hair beautiful in all
ages; his eyes, full of play, intelligence, and emotion, followed you
while you spoke; and they lighted up, especially with pleasure, or
indignation, as it might be, when he answered you. The most pleasing
photograph is one in which he is standing by Mrs. Keble’s side; she is
sitting with a book in her hand. The later photographs are to me very
unpleasant. I will attempt no more particular description, for I feel
how little definite I can convey in writing.”
[Sidenote: _The Christian Observer_, 1871.]
“Mr. Keble greeted us, emerging from his little study, the door of
which, as I afterwards noticed, oftener than not, stood open.... His
features, indeed, were familiar to us, as to most people, from the
engraving of Richmond’s first portrait of him, taken in middle life
for Sir John Coleridge. Now the original stood before me, and I saw
at a glance that face and figure had been faithfully portrayed. The
forehead was pale and serene, the hair silvery; doubtless this token
of advancing years must have helped to give softness and refinement to
the features; eyebrows, sprinkled with white, shaded eyes of singular
brilliancy and depth of expression, as ready (I afterwards well knew)
to light up with mirth and mischief while playful talk was going on,
as they were to melt into mournful earnestness when graver topics were
broached. He habitually wore glasses, but used often to take them off
and hold them in his hand when conversing with animation. A dear
and old friend of his has told me that he ‘looked almost boyish till
about fifty, and after that rapidly aged in personal appearance.’
At this time he was in his sixty-first year, healthy and strong and
active.... In appearance he was quite one’s ideal of an old-fashioned
country clergyman, but of one whose Oxford days were still fresh in
his mind; there was a touch of _vieille cour_ in his manner, which
added, I think, to its charm. His voice in speaking was rather low,
and especially so when the subject of conversation was very near his
heart. It often struck me, when listening to him, that without the
slightest effort or aim at effect, he always hit upon the most suitable
and telling words, (and the shortest), in which to clothe his ideas.
This unconscious beauty of language, coupled with the originality and
wisdom of the ideas themselves, riveted them in one’s memory; the look,
too, with which they were uttered, could not be forgotten, and rises
as vividly before my mind’s eye ‘through the golden mist of years’ as
though it belonged to the present, instead of the ‘long ago.’”--1852.
[Sidenote: L. A. Huntingford: private letter.]
“People who went to look at Mr. Keble as a ‘lion’ were, I think,
disappointed to see a very simple old-fashioned clerical gentleman,
with very little manner, and so completely unconscious of self that
as he talked of common things, they were inclined to think as little
of him as he thought of himself. He used to come down early and
stand writing at a side-table till it was quite time for prayers and
breakfast, and then sit down anywhere and, with a little peculiar jerk
of the head and shoulders, read a short ‘Instruction,’ almost as if he
were reading it to himself. Certain people even called his reading bad,
for his voice was weak, and he had a slight cough which never wholly
left him; but he brought out the meaning of Holy Scripture in a manner
which I never heard surpassed. Mr. Keble was of middle height, very
thin, with a splendid forehead, bright eyes which were rather hidden by
his spectacles, and a sweet merry smile. Those who knew him well must
remember the way in which he used to pull himself together, as if he
were a boy obeying a well-known rule to ‘hold up his head.’ His manner
was nervous, so much so that people who were not intimately acquainted
with him were rarely quite at their ease when in his presence. The two
pictures of Mr. Keble by Richmond are both good likenesses; but the
lithograph of the head which was taken from the then-unfinished picture
which, in its completed form, now hangs in Keble College, Oxford, has
caught the peculiar intelligence of the eyes when lighted up with the
eager brightness his friends knew so well. He had the unusual power of
being able to write upon one subject and listen to the discussion of
another at the same time; and he would often glance up from the paper
in which he was apparently immersed, and pushing up his spectacles join
eagerly in the conversation.”
CHARLES KINGSLEY
1812-1875
[Sidenote: Caroline Fox’s _Journals and Letters_.]
“Torquay, _January 30th_.--Charles Kingsley called, but we missed him.
“_February 3d._--We paid him and his wife a very happy call; he
fraternising at once, and stuttering pleasant and discriminating things
concerning F. D. Maurice, Coleridge and others. He looks sunburnt with
dredging all the morning, has a piercing eye under an overhanging brow,
and his voice is most melodious and his pronunciation exquisite. He is
strangely attractive.”--1854.
[Sidenote: _The Galaxy_, 1872.]
“I was present at a meeting not long since where Mr. Kingsley was
one of the principal speakers. The meeting was held in London, the
audience was a peculiarly Cockney audience, and Charles Kingsley is
personally little known to the public of the metropolis. Therefore
when he began to speak there was quite a little thrill of wonder and
something like incredulity through the listening benches. Could that,
people near me asked, really be Charles Kingsley, the novelist, the
poet, the scholar, the aristocrat, the gentleman, the pulpit-orator,
the ‘soldier--priest,’ the apostle of muscular Christianity? Yes,
that was indeed he. Rather tall, very angular, surprisingly awkward,
with thin staggering legs, a hatchet face adorned with scraggy gray
whiskers, a faculty for falling into the most ungainly attitudes, and
making the most hideous contortions of visage and frame; with a rough
provincial accent and an uncouth way of speaking which would be set
down for absurd caricature on the boards of a comic theatre. Such was
the appearance which the author of _Glaucus_ and _Hypatia_ presented to
his startled audience. Since Brougham’s time nothing so ungainly, odd,
and ludicrous had been displayed upon an English platform. Needless to
say, Charles Kingsley has not the eloquence of Brougham. But he has a
robust and energetic plain-speaking which soon struck home to the heart
of the meeting. He conquered his audience. Those who at first could
hardly keep from laughing, those who, not knowing the speaker, wondered
whether he was not mad or in liquor, those who heartily disliked his
general principles and his public attitude, were alike won over, long
before he had finished, by his bluff and blunt earnestness and his
transparent sincerity.”
[Sidenote: _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1877.]
“For nine years the portrait of Kingsley, close to that of John Parker,
has looked down from the wall of the room in which I write. It is a
large photograph, taken, while he was on a visit to the house, by an
amateur of extraordinary ability, the late Dr. Adamson of St. Andrews.
It is the best and most lifelike portrait of Kingsley known to me.
It has the stern expression, which came partly of the effort, never
quite ceasing, to express himself through that characteristic stammer
which quite left him in public speaking, and which in private added
to the effect of his wonderful talk. Photography caught him easily.
Those who look at the portrait prefixed to Volume I. of the _Life_
see the man as he lived. Mr. Woolner’s bust, shown at the beginning
of Volume II., shows him aged and shrunken, not more than he was but
more than he ought to have been; and the removal of all hair from the
face is a marked difference from the fact in life; yet the likeness is
perfect too. That somewhat severe face belied one of the kindest hearts
that ever beat: yet the handsome and chivalrous features unworthily
expressed one of the truest, bravest, and noblest of souls. Kingsley
could not have done a mean or false thing: by his make it was as
impossible as that water should run uphill.”
CHARLES LAMB
1775-1834
[Sidenote: de Quincey’s _Life and Writings_.]
“Lamb, at this period of his life, then passed regularly, after taking
wine, under a brief eclipse of sleep. It descended upon him as soft as
a shadow. In a gross person laden with superfluous flesh, and sleeping
heavily, this would have been disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even
to meagreness, spare and wiry as an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas
Aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed
rather a net-work of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb,--more like
a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud
exhaling upwards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair as a bust,
breathing so gently as scarcely to seem entirely alive, he presented
the image of repose midway between life and death like the repose
of sculpture, and to one who knew his history, a repose contrasting
with the calamities and internal storms of his life. I have heard
more persons than I can now distinctly recall, observe of Lamb when
sleeping, that his countenance in that state assumed an expression
almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike
simplicity, and its benignity. It could not be called a transfiguration
that sleep worked in his face; for the features wore essentially the
same expression when waking; but sleep spiritualised that expression,
exalted it, and also harmonised it. Much of the change lay in that
last process. The eyes it was that disturbed the unity of effect in
Lamb’s waking face. They gave a restlessness to the character of his
intellect, shifting, like northern lights, through every mode of
combination with fantastic playfulness; and sometimes by fiery gleams
obliterating for the moment that pure light of benignity which was the
predominant reading on his features.”--1822.
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]
“He was the leanest of mankind; tiny black breeches buttoned to the
knee-cap and no further, surmounting spindle-legs also in black, face
and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and of a Jew type rather; in the
eyes a kind of smoky brightness, or confused sharpness; spoke with
a stutter; in walking tottered and shuffled, emblem of imbecility,
bodily and spiritual (something of real insanity, I have understood),
and yet something, too, of human, ingenuous, pathetic, sportfully much
enduring. Poor Lamb! he was infinitely astonished at my wife, and her
quiet encounter of his too ghastly London wit by a cheerful native
ditto. Adieu! poor Lamb!”
[Sidenote: Talfourd’s _Reminiscence of Charles Lamb_.]
“Methinks I see him before me now, as he appeared then, and as he
continued with scarcely any perceptible alteration to me, during the
twenty years of intimacy which followed, and were closed by his death.
A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow
it, clad in clerklike black, was surmounted by a head of form and
expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply
about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with
varying expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose
slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower
outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely
placed on the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a
diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch
its quivering sweetness, and fix it for ever in words? There are none,
alas, to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought striving
with humour, the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth, and
a smile of painful sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as
little describe as lose. His personal appearance and manner are not
unfitly characterised by what he himself says in one of his letters
to Manning, of Braham, ‘a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the
angel.’”--_Written shortly after Lamb’s death._
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
1802-1838
[Sidenote: Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_.]
“... Miss Landon, a young poetess--a starling--the L. E. L. of the
_Gazette_, with a gay good-humoured face, which gave me a favourable
impression.”--1826.
[Sidenote: Blanchard’s _Life of L. E. L._]
“Her hair was ‘darkly brown,’ very soft and beautiful, and always
tastefully arranged; her figure, as before remarked, slight, but
well-formed and graceful; her feet small, but her hands especially
so, and faultlessly white and finely shaped; her fingers were fairy
fingers; her ears also were observably little. Her face, though not
regular in ‘every feature,’ became beautiful by expression,--every
flash of thought, every change and colour of feeling lightened over
it as she spoke,--when she spoke earnestly. The forehead was not
high, but broad and full; the eyes had no overpowering brilliancy, but
their clear intellectual light penetrated by its exquisite softness;
her mouth was not less marked by character, and, besides the glorious
faculty of uttering the pearls and diamonds of fancy and wit, knew
how to express scorn, or anger, or pride, as well as it knew how to
smile winningly, or to pour forth those short, quick, ringing laughs
which, not excepting even her _bon-mots_ and aphorisms, were the most
delightful things that issued from it.”--1832.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a Long Life_.]
“Small of person, but well formed. Her dark silken hair braided back
over a small, but what phrenologists would call a well-developed head;
her forehead full and open, but the hair grew low upon it; the eyebrows
perfect in arch and form; the eyes round--soft or flashing as might
be--gray, well formed, and beautifully set; the lashes long and black,
the under lashes turning down with delicate curve, and forming a soft
relief upon the tint of her cheek, which, when she enjoyed good health,
was bright and blushing; her complexion was delicately fair; her skin
soft and transparent; her nose small (_retroussé_), slightly curved,
but capable of scornful expression, which she did not appear to have
the power of repressing, even though she gave her thoughts no words,
when any despicable action was alluded to.”--About 1835.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
1775-1864
[Sidenote: Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_.]
“He was a man of florid complexion, with large full eyes, and
altogether a _leonine_ man, and with a fierceness of tone well suited
to his name; his decisions being confident, and on all subjects,
whether of taste or life, unqualified, each standing for itself, not
caring whether it was in harmony with what had gone before or would
follow from the same oracular lips. But why should I trouble myself to
describe him? He is painted by a master hand in Dickens’s novel _Bleak
House_, now in course of publication, where he figures as Mr. Boythorn.
The combination of superficial ferocity and inherent tenderness, so
admirably portrayed in _Bleak House_, still at first strikes every
stranger,--for twenty-two years have not materially changed him,--no
less than his perfect frankness and reckless indifference to what he
says.”--1830.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a Long Life_.]
“... He was at that time sixty years of age, although he did not look
so old; his form and features were essentially masculine; he was not
tall, but stalwart; of a robust constitution, and was proud even to
arrogance of his physical and intellectual strength. He was a man to
whom passers-by would have looked back and asked, ‘Who is that?’ His
forehead was high, but retreated, showing remarkable absence of the
organs of benevolence and veneration. It was a large head, fullest at
the back, where the animal propensities predominate; it was a powerful,
but not a good head, the expression the opposite of genial. In short,
physiognomists and phrenologists would have selected it,--each to
illustrate his theory.”--1836.
[Sidenote: Harriet Martineau’s _Biographical Sketches_.]
“His tall, broad, muscular, active frame was characteristic, and so was
his head, with the strange elevation of the eyebrows which expresses
self-will as strongly in some cases as astonishment in others. Those
eyebrows, mounting up until they comprehend a good portion of the
forehead, have been observed in many more paradoxical persons than
one. Then there was the retreating but broad forehead, showing the
deficiency of reasoning and speculative power, with the preponderance
of imagination and a huge passion for destruction. The massive
self-love and self-will carried up his head to something more than a
dignified bearing--even to one of arrogance. His vivid and quick eye,
and the thoughtful mouth, were fine, and his whole air was that of
a man distinguished in his own eyes certainly, but also in those of
others. Tradition reports he was handsome in his youth. In age he was
more.”
CHARLES LEVER
1806-1872
[Sidenote: Fitz-Patrick’s _Life of Lever_.]
“I found him seated at an open window, a bottle of claret at his right
hand, and the proof-sheets of _Lord Kilgobbin_ before him.... At the
date of our visit he looked a hale, hearty, laughter-loving man of
sixty. There was mirth in his gray eye, joviality in the wink that
twittered on his eyelid, saucy humour in his smile, and _bon-mot_,
wit, repartee, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair
very thin, but of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when
it curtained his eyes he would jerk back his head--this, too, at some
telling crisis in a narrative, when the particular action was just the
exact finish required to make the story perfect. Mr. Lever’s teeth were
all his own and very brilliant, and whether from accident or habit, he
flashed them on us in conjunction with his wonderful eyes, a battery
at once powerful and irresistible.... Mr. Lever made great use of his
hands, which were small and white and delicate as those of a woman.
He made play with them, threw them up in ecstasy, or wrung them in
mournfulness, just as the action of the moment demanded. He did not
require eyes or teeth with such a voice and such hands; they could tell
and illustrate the workings of his brain. He was somewhat careless
in his dress, but clung to the traditional high shirt-collar, merely
compromising the unswerving stock of the Brummell period.”
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS
1775-1818
[Sidenote: _The Southern Literary Messenger_, 1849.]
“In person, Mat Lewis (as his intimate friends at first termed him) was
quite ordinary; his stature was rather diminutive; his face was almost
an ellipse, looking upon it from the side, and his features though
pleasant were not to be regarded as handsome. His forehead, however,
was high and his eyes very lustrous.”
[Sidenote: Jeaffreson’s _Novels and Novelists_.]
“Lewis’s personal appearance was not prepossessing. He describes
himself as
‘Of passions strong, of hasty nature,
Of graceless form and dwarfish stature.’
He had, moreover, large gray eyes, thick features, and an inexpressive
countenance. When he talked he had an insufferable habit of drawing the
fore-finger of his right hand across his eyelid, and in conversation
he was guilty of the absurd affectation of a drawling tone such as was
popular with dandies.”
[Sidenote: _New Monthly Magazine_, 1848.]
“Matthew Gregory Lewis. Of this gentleman I knew but little, not having
encountered him half a dozen times after my introduction to him at the
house of Nat Middleton, the banker. With a short thick-set figure,
unintellectual features, and a disagreeable habit of peering, being
very short-sighted, his aspect was by no means prepossessing; but as he
had ‘that within which passeth show,’ he recovered the ground lost at
starting as rapidly as Wilkes could have done.”
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
1794-1854
[Sidenote: _The Times_, 9th Dec. 1854.]
“Endowed with the very highest order of manly beauty, both of features
and expression, he retained the brilliancy of youth and a stately
strength of person comparatively unimpaired in ripened life; and then,
though sorrow and sickness suddenly brought on a premature old age
which none could witness unmoved, yet the beauty of the head and of the
bearing so far gained in melancholy loftiness of expression what they
lost in animation, that the last phase, whether to the eye of painter
or of anxious friend, seemed always the finest.”
SIR RICHARD LOVELACE
1618-1658
[Sidenote: Anthony Wood’s _Athenæ Oxonienses._]
“Richard Lovelace ... became a gent-commoner of Glo’cester Hall in
the beginning of the year 1634, and in that of his age 16, being then
accounted the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld, a
person also of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which
made him then, but especially after, when he retired to the great city,
much admired and adored by the female sex.... Accounted by all those
that well knew him, to have been a person well vers’d in the Greek and
Latin poets, in music, whether practical or theoretical, instrumental
or vocal, and in other things befitting a gentleman. Some of the said
persons have also added in my hearing, that his common discourse was
not only significant and witty, but incomparably graceful, which drew
respect from all men and women.”--1634 and 1658.
[Sidenote: _The Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1884. *]
“The personal attractions of Richard Lovelace have been much extolled
by his contemporaries; nor is this matter for wonder. A picture of the
poet by an unknown painter, preserved in the old college at Dulwich, to
which it was bequeathed by Cartwright the actor, in 1687, represents
him as a very handsome man. The face is oval, the hair, worn Cavalier
fashion, long, is of a dark brown colour and falls down in abundant
masses, while the mustachios are small and thin. The small, well-formed
mouth is perhaps a trifle voluptuous, but is nevertheless suggestive of
firmness of character. The eyes are large and dark, and the well-arched
and delicately pencilled eyebrows are unusually far apart; the general
expression of the face is singularly sweet and winning. The hand is
small, well formed and aristocratic. Lovelace is attired in armour,
with a white collar, and across the breast is thrown a red scarf. The
picture is inscribed ‘Col. Lovelace.’”
EDWARD, LORD LYTTON
1803-1873
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]
“A young man whose features, though of a somewhat effeminate cast,
were remarkably handsome. His bearing had that aristocratic something
bordering on hauteur, which clung to him during his life. I never saw
the famous writer without being reminded of the passage, ‘Stand back; I
am holier than thou.’--1826.
“The last time I saw him was in his then residence, No. 12 Grosvenor
Square. It was growing towards fifty years since first we had met,
and there were more changes in him than those that time usually
brings. His once handsome face had assumed the desolation without
the dignity of age. His locks, once brown, inclining to auburn, were
shaggy and grizzled; his mouth, seldom smiling even in youth, was
close shut; his whole aspect had something in it at once painful and
unpleasant.”--About 1872.
[Sidenote: _Appleton’s Journal_, 1873.]
“Bulwer is described as having been, at this period of his first
brilliant triumph, rather taller than the middle height, with a
graceful, slender figure, well-proportioned limbs, and a countenance
stamped with distinctly aristocratic features and expression. His
dark-brown, curly hair, his large and bright blue eye, his decided,
though delicately-formed aquiline nose, his rather full and handsome
mouth, his patrician, almost haughty pose and manner, as seen at that
time, are dwelt on, with true feminine enthusiasm, by a lady who
frequented the circles of which he was regarded as one of the most
shining ornaments.”--1828.
[Sidenote: _Appleton’s Journal_, 1873.]
“It was my fortune to see Bulwer in the House of Commons in 1863 and
1865, and in the House of Lords, to which he had recently risen, in
1868. He then had the appearance of being a man of some fifty years,
tallish, straight, stiff, and proudly sedate. His long, sombre face
was no longer ‘fair,’ but was yellow and wrinkled, while the almost
cadaverous aspect of his features added to the really far from
proportionate prominence of his long, aquiline nose. He now wore a
moustache with his ‘heavy red whiskers,’ which had themselves become
a dull brown, plentifully sprinkled with gray; and upon his chin he
grew an imperial. His hair was still thick, but no trace of its rich
auburn hue of youth remained; it was a heavy gray in colour. Spectacles
partially concealed the large but now dulled and glassy blue eyes; and
the whole appearance was far from prepossessing. On the former occasion
referred to, I heard him address the House in an eloquent and evidently
carefully-prepared speech of half an hour. His manner was quiet and
subdued, his voice no longer ‘lover-like and sweet,’ but rather harsh
and grating, and his declamation humdrum; occasionally a spark of the
old animation appeared, when he drew himself up to the full height,
and, for the moment seemed a very orator in motion as in speech;
but the spark soon vanished, and he was again Pelham grown old, the
exhausted and melancholy beau and wit of the past, struggling through
an imposed task.... His dress was conspicuously plain, almost stiff and
ministerial; though there was something about the attire of the neck
which seemed a suspicion of a relic of dandyism.”
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
1800-1859
[Sidenote: Trevelyan’s _Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay_.]
“Macaulay’s outward man was never better described than in two
sentences of Praed’s Introduction to Knight’s _Quarterly Magazine_.
‘There came up a short manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad
neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat pocket. Of regular beauty
he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of
great power, or of great good-humour, or both, you do not regret its
absence.’ This picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that
there is to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a powerful
and rugged cast, but so constantly lit up by every joyful and ennobling
emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely quiescent, his face
was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at table no one
thought him otherwise than good-looking; but, when he rose, he was seen
to be short and stout in figure. ‘At Holland House, the other day,’
writes his sister Margaret in September 1831, ‘Tom met Lady Lyndhurst
for the first time. She said to him: “Mr. Macaulay, you are so
different to what I had expected. I thought you were dark and thin, but
you are fair, and really, Mr. Macaulay, you are fat!”’ He at all times
sat and stood straight, full, and square; and in this respect Woolner,
in the fine statue at Cambridge, has missed what was undoubtedly the
most marked fact in his personal appearance. He dressed badly, but not
cheaply. His clothes, though ill put on, were good, and his wardrobe
was always enormously overstocked.”--1822 and 1831.
[Sidenote: Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_.]
“I went to James Stephen, and drove with him to his house at Hendon. A
dinner-party. I had a most interesting companion in young Macaulay, one
of the most promising of the rising generation I have seen for a long
time. He has a good face,--not the delicate features of a man of genius
and sensibility, but the strong lines and well-knit limbs of a man
sturdy in body and mind. Very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with
words, and not poor in thought. Liberal in opinion, but no radical. He
seems a correct as well as a full man. He showed a minute knowledge of
subjects not introduced by himself.”--1826.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]
“I never heard Macaulay speak in the House, where, although by no
means an orator, he always made a strong impression. He spoke as he
wrote,--eloquently in the choicest diction,--smooth, easy, graceful,
and ever to the purpose, striving to convince rather than persuade, and
grudging no toil of preparation to sustain an argument or enforce a
truth. His person was in his favour; in form as in mind he was robust,
with a remarkably intelligent expression, aided by deep blue eyes that
seemed to sparkle, and a mouth remarkably flexible. His countenance
was certainly well calculated to impress on his audience the classical
language ever at his command--so faithfully did it mirror the high
intelligence of the speaker.... I found him--as the world has found
him--a man of rare intelligence, deep research, and untiring energy in
pursuit of facts: also a kind, courteous, and unaffected gentleman. His
memory is to me one of the pleasantest I can recall.”
WILLIAM MAGINN
1793-1842
[Sidenote: William Maginn’s _Miscellanies_.]
“All were standing, all were listening to some one who sat in the
middle of a group. A low-seated man, short in stature, was uttering
pleasantries and scattering witticisms about him with the careless
glee of his country. His articulation was impeded by a stutter, yet
the sentences he stammered forth were brilliant repartees uttered
without sharpness, and edged rather with humour than with satire. His
countenance was rather agreeable than striking; its expression sweet
rather than bright; the gray hair, coming straight over his forehead,
gave a singular appearance to a face still bearing the attributes of
youth. He was thirty or thereabouts, but his thoughtful brow, his hair,
and the paleness of his complexion, gave him many of the attributes
of age. His conversation was careless and off-hand, and, but for the
impediment of speech, would have had the charm of a rich comedy.
His choice of words was such as I have rarely met with in any of my
contemporaries.”--1824.
[Sidenote: _Bentley’s Miscellany_, 1842.]
“I dined to-day at the Salopian with Dr. Maginn. He is a most
remarkable fellow. His flow of ideas is incredibly quick, and his
articulation so rapid, that it is difficult to follow him. He is
altogether a person of vast acuteness, celerity of apprehension, and
indefatigable activity both of body and mind. His is about my own
height; but I could allow him an inch round the chest. His forehead is
very finely developed, his organ of language and ideality large, and
his reasoning faculties excellent. His hair is quite gray, although he
does not look more than forty. I imagined he was much older looking,
and that he wore a wig. While conversing his eye is never a moment
at rest: in fact his whole body is in motion, and he keeps scrawling
grotesque figures upon the paper before him, and rubbing them out
again as fast as he draws them. He and Gifford are, as you know, joint
editors of the _Standard_.”
[Sidenote: _The Dublin University Magazine_, 1844.]
“Well does the writer of this notice recollect the feelings with which
he first wended to the residence of his late friend. He was then but
a mere boy, fresh from the university.... He went, and was shown
upstairs; the doctor was not at home, but was momentarily expected....
Suddenly, when his heart almost sank within him, a light step was heard
ascending the stairs--it could not be a man’s foot--no, it was too
delicate for that; it must, certainly, be the nursery-maid. The step
was arrested at the door, a brief interval, and Maginn entered. The
spell vanished like lightning, and the visitor took heart in a moment.
No formal-looking personage, in customary suit of solemn black, stood
before him, but a slight, boyish, careless figure, with a blue eye,
the mildest ever seen--hair, not exactly white, but of a sunned snow
colour--an easy, familiar smile--and a countenance that you would be
more inclined to laugh with than feel terror from. He bounded across
the room with a most unscholar-like eagerness, and warmly welcomed the
visitor, asking him a thousand questions, and putting him at ease with
himself in a moment. Then, taking his arm, both sallied forth into the
street, where, for a long time, the visitor was in doubt whether it
was Maginn to whom he was really talking as familiarly as if he were
his brother, or whether the whole was a dream. And such, indeed, was
the impression generally made on the minds of all strangers--but, as
in the present case, it was dispelled instantly the living original
appeared. Then was to be seen the kindness and gentleness of heart
which tinged every word and gesture with sweetness; the suavity and
mildness, so strongly the reverse of what was to be expected from the
most galling satirest of the day; the openness of soul and countenance,
that disarmed even the bitterest of his opponents; the utter absence
of anything like prejudice and bigotry from him the ablest and most
devoted champion of the Church and State. No pedantry in his language,
no stateliness of style, no forced metaphors, no inappropriate
anecdote, no overweening confidence--all easy, simple, agreeable, and
unzoned.”
FRANCIS MAHONY
(FATHER PROUT)
1805-1866
[Sidenote: The works of Father Prout.]
“Stooping his short and spare but thick-set figure as he walked,
wearing his ill-brushed hat upon the extreme back of his head, clothed
in the slovenliest way in a semi-clerical dress of the shabbiest
character, he sauntered by with his right arm habitually clasped behind
him in his left hand,--altogether presenting to view so distinctly
the appearance of a member of one of the mendicant orders, that upon
one occasion, in the Rue de Rivoli, an intimate friend of his found
it impossible to resist the impulse of slipping a sou into the open
palm of his right hand, with the apologetic remark, ‘You _do_ look so
like a beggar.’ Apart, however, from his threadbare garb and shambling
gait, there were personal traits of character about him which caught
the attention almost at a glance, and piqued the curiosity of even the
least observant wayfarer. The ‘roguish Hibernian mouth,’ noted in his
regard by Mr. Gruneisen, and the gray piercing eyes, that looked up at
you so keenly over his spectacles, won your interest in him even upon a
first introduction. From the mocking lips soon afterwards, if you fell
into conversation with him, came the ‘loud snappish laugh,’ with which,
as Mr. Blanchard Jerrold remarks, the Father so frequently evinced
his appreciation of a casual witticism--uproarious fits of merriment
signalising at other moments one of his own ironical successes,
outbursts of fun followed during his later years by the racking cough
with which he was too often then tormented.”
[Sidenote: Blanchard Jerrold’s _Final Reliques of Father Prout_.]
“The Rev. Francis Mahony, or Father Prout, trudging along the
Boulevards with his arms clasped behind him, his nose in the air,
his hat worn as French caricaturists insist all Englishmen wear hat
or cap; his quick, clear, deep-seeking eye wandering sharply to the
right or left, and sarcasm--not of the sourest kind--playing like
Jack-o’-lantern in the corners of his mouth, Father Prout was as much a
character of the French capital as the learned Armenian of the Imperial
Library only a few years ago.... It was difficult to meet Father Prout.
He was an odd, uncomfortable, uncertain man. His moods changed like
April skies. Light little thoughts were busy in his brain, lively and
frisking as ‘troutlets in a pool.’ He was impatient of interruption,
and shambled forward talking in an undertone to himself, with now and
then a bubble or two of laughter, or one short sharp laugh almost
like a bark, like that of the marksman when the arrow quivers in the
bull’s-eye. He would pass you with a nod that meant ‘Hold off--not
to-day!’... He was very impatient if any injudicious friend or passing
acquaintance (who took him to be usually as accessible as any _flâneur_
on the macadam), thrust himself forward and would have his hand and
agree with him that it was a fine day, but would possibly rain shortly.
A sharp answer, and an unceremonious plunge forward without bow or
good-day, would put an end to the interruption. Of course the Father
was called a bear by shallow-pates who could not see that there was
something extra in the little man talking to himself and shuffling,
with his hands behind him, through the _fines fleurs_ and _grandes
dames_ of the Italian Boulevard.”
[Sidenote: A personal friend.]
“In recalling the Rev. Francis Mahony, I am forcibly reminded of a
few lines at the beginning of old Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_:
‘Democritus, as he is described by Hippocrates, and Laërtius, was
a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from
company in his latter dayes, and much given to solitariness, a famous
philosopher in his age, ... wholly addicted to his studies at the last,
and to a private life; writ many excellent workes.’ Substituting Father
Prout’s name for that of Democritus, the words are equally descriptive
of the quaint little Irishman. He was a small spare man, with a pale
deeply-lined face; badly dressed; with gray unkempt whiskers, and
a certain waspish expression on his thin face which was utterly at
variance, not only with the good Father’s writings,--which for ‘real
larky fun,’ as James Hannay expressed it, are unsurpassed,--but also
with the really kind nature of the man. His eyes were by far the
best feature of his face. Keen, bright, and piercing, they were eyes
that held you. Their glance was very rapid and eager, and instantly
prepossessed you in his favour.”
FREDERICK MARRYAT
1792-1848
[Sidenote: F. Marryat’s _Life and Letters of Captain Marryat_.]
“Although not handsome, Captain Marryat’s personal appearance was very
prepossessing. In figure he was upright, and broad-shouldered for
his height, which measured five feet ten inches. His hands, without
being under-sized, were remarkably perfect in form, and modelled by
a sculptor at Rome on account of their symmetry. The character of
his mind was borne out by his features, the most salient expression
of which was the frankness of an open heart. The firm decisive mouth
and massive thoughtful forehead were redeemed from heaviness by the
humorous light that twinkled in his deep-set gray eyes, which, bright
as diamonds, positively flashed out their fun, or their reciprocation
of the fun of others. As a young man, dark crisp curls covered his
head; but, later in life, when, having exchanged the sword for the pen
and the ploughshare, he affected a soberer and more patriarchal style
of dress and manner, he wore his gray hair long, and almost down to
his shoulders. His eyebrows were not alike, one being higher up and
more arched than the other, which peculiarity gave his face a look of
inquiry, even in repose. In the upper lip was a deep cleft, and in his
chin as deep a dimple--a pitfall for the razor, which, from the ready
growth of his dark beard, he was often compelled to use twice a day.”
[Sidenote: _The Cornhill_, 1876.]
“He was not a tall man--five feet ten--but I think intended by nature
to be six feet, only having gone to sea when still almost a child, at a
time when the between-decks were very low-pitched, he had, he himself
declared, had his growth unnaturally stopped. His immensely powerful
build and massive chest, which measured considerably over forty inches
round, would incline one to this belief. He had never been handsome,
as far as features went, but the irregularity of his features might
easily be forgotten by those who looked at the intellect shown in his
magnificent forehead. His forehead and his hands were his two strong
points. The latter were models of symmetry. Indeed, while resident
at Rome, at an earlier period of his life, he had been requested by a
sculptor to allow his hand to be modelled. At the time I now speak of
him he was fifty-two years of age, but looked considerably younger.
His face was clean-shaved, and his hair so long that it reached almost
to his shoulders, curly in light loose locks like those of a woman.
It was slightly gray. He was dressed in anything but evening costume
on the present occasion, having on a short velveteen shooting-jacket
and coloured trousers. I could not help smiling as I glanced at his
dress--recalling to my mind what a dandy he had been as a young
man.”--1844.
HARRIET MARTINEAU
1802-1876
[Sidenote: H. Martineau’s _Autobiography_.]
“She was graver and laughed more rarely than any young person I ever
knew. Her face was plain, and (you will scarcely believe it) she had
_no_ light in the countenance, no expression to redeem the features.
The low brow and rather large under lip increased the effect of her
natural seriousness of look, and did her much injustice. I used to
be asked occasionally, ‘What has offended Harriet that she looks so
glum?’--I, who understood her, used to answer, ‘Nothing; she is not
offended, it is only her look,’”--1818.
[Sidenote: James Payn’s _Literary Recollections_.]
“In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height,
‘inclined’ as the novelists say ‘to _embonpoint_,’ with a smile on
her kindly face and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time,
I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little
grey in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low but
broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but
her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and
motherly.”--1852.
[Sidenote: H. Martineau’s _Autobiography_.]
“... I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust,
elderly woman, and plainly dressed; but withal she has so kind,
cheerful, and intelligent a face, that she is pleasanter to look at
than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not
shrink from calling herself old. She is the most continual talker I
ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook; and very lively
and sensible too; and all the while she talks she moves the bowl of
her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite
an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself.... All
her talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like
egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness.”--About
1856.
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
1805-1872
[Sidenote: F. Maurice’s _Life of F. D. Maurice_.]
“He was distinctly below the middle height, not above five feet seven
inches, but he had a certain dignity of carriage, despite the entire
absence of any self-assertion of manner, which in the pulpit, where
only his head and shoulders were observable, removed the impression of
small stature.... His hair was now of a silvery white, very ample in
quantity, fine and soft as silk. The rush of his start for a walk had
gone. His movements had, like his life, become quiet and measured. At
no time had there been so much beauty about his face and figure. There
was now--partly from manner, partly from face, partly from a character
that seemed expressed in all,--beauty which seemed to shine round
him, and was very commonly observed by those amongst whom he was.
It made undergraduates, not specially impressionable, stop and watch
him.... Servants and poor people whom he visited often spoke of him as
‘beautiful.’”--1866.
[Sidenote: _The Spectator_, 1872.]
“Yet though Mr. Maurice’s voice seemed to be the essential part of
him as a religious teacher, his face, if you ever looked at it, was
quite in keeping with his voice. His eye was full of sweetness, but
fixed, and, as it were, fascinated on some ideal point. His countenance
expressed nervous, high-strung tension, as though all the various play
of feelings in ordinary human nature converged, in him, towards a
single focus, the declaration of the divine purpose. Yet this tension,
this peremptoriness, this convergence of his whole nature on a single
point, never gave the effect of a dictatorial air for a moment. There
was a quiver in his voice, a tremulousness in the strong deep lines
of his face, a tenderness in his eye, which assured you at once that
nothing of the hard crystallising character of a dogmatic belief in
the Absolute had conquered his heart, and most men recognised this,
for the hardest and most business-like voices took a tender and almost
caressing tone in addressing him.”
JOHN MILTON
1608-1674
[Sidenote: D’Israeli’s _Curiosities of Literature_.]
“Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of
man, an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless
being composed of nothing but skin and bone, a contemptible pedagogue,
fit only to flog his boys; and rising into a poetic frenzy applies to
him the words of Virgil: ‘_Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui
lumen ademptum._’ Our great poet thought this senseless declamation
merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear
despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the
subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous
Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a
kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says that he does
not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size
rather approaches mediocrity than the diminutive; that he still felt
the same courage and the same strength which he possessed when young,
when, with his sword, he felt no difficulty to combat with men more
robust than himself; that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and
wrinkled, was sufficiently creditable to him: for though he had passed
his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years younger. And
very pathetically he adds, ‘That even his eyes, blind as they are,
are unblemished in their appearance; in this instance alone, and much
against my inclination, I am a deceiver!’”
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_.]
“He was scarce as tall as I am.[5] He had light browne hayre. His
complexion exceeding fayre. Ovall face, his eie a darke gray. His
widowe has his picture drawne very well and like, when a Cambridge
scollar. She has his picture when a Cambridge scollar, which ought to
be engraven; for the pictures before his books are not at all like
him.... He was a spare man.... Extreme pleasant in his conversation,
and at dinner, supper, etc., but satyricall. He pronounced the letter
_r_ very hard. He had a delicate tuneable voice, and had good skill.
His harmonicall and ingeniose soul did lodge in a beautiful and
well-proportioned body:--‘In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit.’--Ovid.”
[Sidenote: Keightley’s _Life of Milton_. *]
“In his person Milton was rather under the middle size, well built and
muscular. ‘His deportment,’ says Wood, ‘was affable, and his gait erect
and manly, bespeaking courage and undauntedness.’ He was skilled in the
use of the small sword, and, though he certainly would not have engaged
in a duel, he had strength, skill, and courage to repel the attack of
any adversary. His hair, which never fell off, was of a light-brown
hue, and he wore it parted on his forehead as it is represented in his
portraits. His eyes were gray, and, as the cause of his blindness was
internal, they suffered no change of appearance from it. His face was
oval, and his complexion was so fine in his youth that at Cambridge he
was, as we are told by Aubrey, called the Lady of his College; even in
his later days his cheeks retained a ruddy tinge. He had a fine ear
for music, and was well skilled in that delightful science; he used to
perform on the organ and bass-viol. His voice was sweet and musical,
and we may presume that his singing showed both taste and science.”
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD
1786-1855
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“I certainly was disappointed when a stout little lady, tightened
up in a shawl, rolled into the parlour of Newman Street, and Mrs.
Holland announced her as Miss Mitford; her short petticoats showing
wonderfully stout leather boots, her shawl _bundled_ on, and a little
black coal-scuttle bonnet--when bonnets were expanding--added to the
effect of her natural shortness and rotundity; but her manner was that
of a cordial country gentlewoman; the pressure of her ‘fat’ little
hands (for she extended both) was warm; her eyes, both soft and bright,
looked kindly and frankly into mine; and her pretty rosy mouth dimpled
with smiles that were always sweet and friendly.... She was always
pleasant to look at, and had her face not been cast in so broad--so
‘out-spread’--a mould, she would have been handsome; even with that
disadvantage, if her figure had been tall enough to carry her head with
dignity, she would have been so; but she was most vexatiously ‘dumpy.’
Miss Landon ‘hit off’ her appearance when she whispered, the first time
she saw her (and it was at our house), ‘Sancho Panza in petticoats!’
but when Miss Mitford spoke, the awkward effect vanished,--her pleasant
voice, her beaming eyes and smiles, made you forget the wide expanse of
face; and the roley-poley figure, when seated, did not appear really
short.”--1828.
[Sidenote: James Payn’s _Literary Recollections_.]
“I can never forget the little figure rolled up in two chairs in the
little Swallowfield room, packed round with books up to the ceiling, on
to the floor--the little figure with clothes on of course, but of no
recognised or recognisable pattern; and somewhere out of the upper end
of the heap, gleaming under a great deep, globular brow, two such eyes
as I never, perhaps, saw in any other Englishwoman--though I believe
she must have had French blood in her veins, to breed such eyes, and
such a tongue, for the beautiful speech which came out of that ugly (it
was that) face, and the glitter and depth too of the eyes, like live
coals--perfectly honest the while, both lips and eyes--these seemed to
me to be attributes of the highest French, or rather Gallic, not of the
highest English, woman. In any case, she was a triumph of mind over
matter, of spirit over flesh, which gave the lie to all materialism,
and puts Professor Bain out of court--at least out of court with those
who use fair induction about the men and women whom they meet and
know.”--About 1851.
[Sidenote: James Payn’s _Literary Recollections_.]
“I seem to see the dear little old lady now, looking like a venerable
fairy, with bright sparkling eyes, a clear, incisive voice, and a
laugh that carried you away with it. I never saw a woman with such an
enjoyment of--I was about to say a joke, but the word is too coarse
for her--of a pleasantry. She was the warmest of friends, and with all
her love of fun never alluded to their weaknesses.... I well remember
our first interview. I expected to find the authoress of _Our Village_
in a most picturesque residence, overgrown with honeysuckle and roses,
and set in an old-fashioned garden. Her little cottage at Swallowfield,
near Reading, did not answer this picture at all. It was a cottage,
but not a pretty one, placed where three roads met, with only a piece
of green before it. But if the dwelling disappointed me, the owner did
not. I was ushered upstairs (for at that time, crippled by rheumatism,
she was unable to leave her room) into a small apartment, lined with
books from floor to ceiling, and fragrant with flowers; its tenant
rose from her arm-chair with difficulty, but with a sunny smile and
a charming manner bade me welcome. My father had been an old friend
of hers, and she spoke of my home and belongings as only a woman can
speak of such things. Then we plunged, _in medias res_, into men and
books.”--1852.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
1690-1762
[Sidenote: Horace Walpole’s _Letters_.]
“I went last night to visit her. I give you my word of honour, and you
who know her will believe me without it, the following is a faithful
description: I found her in a little miserable bedchamber of a ready
furnished house, with two tallow candles and a bureau covered with
pots and pans. On her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old
black-laced hood wrapped entirely round so as to conceal all hair, or
want of hair; no handkerchief, but instead of it a kind of horseman’s
riding-coat, calling itself a _pet-en-l’air_, made of a dark green
brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs; bodice
laced; a full dimity petticoat, sprigged; velvet muffetees on her arms;
gray stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than
I would have imagined. I told her so, and she was not so tolerable
twenty years ago that she should have taken it for flattery, but she
did, and literally gave me a box on the ears. She is very lively, all
her senses perfect, her language as imperfect as ever, her avarice
greater.”
[Sidenote: Horace Walpole’s _Letters_.]
“Did I tell you that Lady Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my Lady
Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town.
Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never
heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy
black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine
blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her
face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a ----, partly
covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which for
cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a
chimney.--In three words I will give you her picture as we drew it in
the ‘Sortes Virgilianae’--
‘Insanam vatem aspicies.’
I give you my honour we did not choose it; but Gray, Mr. Coke, Sir
Francis Dashwood, and I, and several others, drew it fairly amongst a
thousand for different people, most of which did not hit as you may
imagine.”--1740.
THOMAS MOORE
1779-1852
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“Moore’s forehead was bony and full of character, with ‘bumps’ of
wit, large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist. Sterne had
such another. His eyes were as dark and fine as you would wish to see
under a set of vine-leaves; his mouth generous and good-humoured, with
dimples; and his manner was as bright as his talk, full of the wish
to please and be pleased. He sang, and played with great taste on the
pianoforte, as might be supposed from his musical compositions. His
voice, which was a little hoarse in speaking (at least I used to think
so), softened into a breath, like that of a flute, when singing. In
speaking he was emphatic in rolling the letter _r_, perhaps out of a
despair of being able to get rid of the national peculiarity.”
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“His eyes sparkle like a champagne bubble; there is a kind of wintry
red, of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems enamelled on his
cheek; his lips are delicately cut, slight, and changeable as an aspen;
the slightly-turned nose confirms the fun of the expression; and
altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, and radiates--
‘The light that surrounds him is all from within.’”
1835.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a Long Life_.]
“I recall him at this moment--his small form and intellectual face rich
in expression, and that expression the sweetest, the most gentle, and
the kindliest. He had still in age the same bright and clear eye, the
same gracious smile, the same suave and winning manner I had noticed as
the attributes of what might in comparison be styled his youth (I have
stated I knew him as long ago as 1821); a forehead not remarkably broad
or high, but singularly impressive, firm, and full, with the organs
of music and gaiety large, and those of benevolence and veneration
greatly preponderating; the nose, as observed in all his portraits,
was somewhat upturned. Standing or sitting, his head was invariably
upraised, owing, perhaps, mainly to his shortness of stature. He had
so much bodily activity as to give him the attribute of restlessness,
and no doubt that usual accompaniment of genius was eminently a
characteristic of his. His hair was, at the time I speak of, thin and
very gray, and he wore his hat with the jaunty air that has been
often remarked as a peculiarity of the Irish. In dress, although far
from slovenly, he was by no means precise. He had but little voice,
yet he sang with a depth of sweetness that charmed all hearers; it was
true melody, and told upon the heart as well as the ear. No doubt much
of this charm was derived from association, for it was only his own
melodies he sang.”--1845.
HANNAH MORE
1745-1833
[Sidenote: _Memoir of Mrs. Hannah More._]
“I was much struck by the air of affectionate kindness with which the
old lady welcomed me to Barley Wood--there was something of courtliness
about it, at the same time the courtliness of the _vieille cour_,
which one reads of, but so seldom sees. Her dress was of light green
Venetian silk; a yellow, richly embroidered crape shawl enveloped her
shoulders; and a pretty net cap, tied under her chin with white satin
riband, completed the costume. Her figure is singularly _petite_; but
to have any idea of the expression of her countenance, you must imagine
the small withered face of a woman in her seventy-seventh year; and,
imagine also (shaded, but not obscured, by long and perfectly white
eyelashes) eyes dark, brilliant, flashing, and penetrating, sparkling
from object to object, with all the fire and energy of youth, and
smiling welcome on all around.”--1820.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“Her form was small and slight: her features wrinkled with age; but
the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor
lessened the fire of her eyes, the clearest, the brightest, and the
most searching I have ever seen--they were singularly dark--positively
black they seemed as they looked forth among carefully-trained tresses
of her own white hair; and absolutely sparkled while she spoke of
those of whom she was the venerated link between the present and the
long past. Her manner on entering the room, while conversing, and at
our departure, was positively sprightly; she tripped about from console
to console, from window to window, to show us some gift that bore a
name immortal, some cherished reminder of other days--almost of another
world, certainly of another age; for they were memories of those whose
deaths were registered before the present century had birth.... She
was clad, I well remember, in a dress of rich pea-green silk. It was
an odd whim, and contrasted somewhat oddly with her patriarchal age
and venerable countenance, yet was in harmony with the youth of her
step, and her unceasing vivacity as she laughed and chatted, chatted
and laughed, her voice strong and clear as that of a girl, and her
animation as full of life and vigour as it might have been in her
spring-time.”--1825.
[Sidenote: A. M. Hall’s _Pilgrimages to English Shrines_.]
“Her brow was full and well sustained, rather than what would be called
_fine_: from the manner in which her hair was dressed, its formation
was distinctly visible; and though her eyes were half-closed, her
countenance was more tranquil, more sweet, more holy--for it _had_
a holy expression--than when those deep intense eyes were looking
you through and through. Small, and shrunk, and aged as she was, she
conveyed to us no idea of feebleness. She looked, even then, a woman
whose character, combining sufficient thought and wisdom, as well as
dignity and spirit, could analyse and exhibit, in language suited
to the intellect of the people of England, the evils and dangers of
revolutionary principles. Her voice had a pleasant tone, and her
manner was quite devoid of affectation or dictation; she spoke as one
expecting a reply, and by no means like an oracle. And those bright
immortal eyes of hers--not wearied by looking at the world for more
than eighty years, but clear and far-seeing then--laughing, too, when
she spoke cheerfully, not as authors are believed to speak--
‘In measured pompous tones,’--
but like a dear matronly dame, who had especial care and tenderness
towards young women. It is impossible to remember how it occurred, but
in reference to some observation I had made she turned briskly round
and exclaimed, ‘Controversy hardens the heart, and sours the temper:
never dispute with your husband, young lady; tell him what you think,
and leave it to time to fructify.’”
SIR THOMAS MORE
1480-1535
[Sidenote: More’s _Life of Sir Thomas More_.]
“He was of a meane stature, well proportioned, his complexion tending
to the phlegmaticke, his colour white and pale, his hayre neither
black nor yellow, but betweene both; his eies gray, his countenance
amiable and chearefull, his voyce neither bigg nor shrill, but speaking
plainely and distinctly; it was not very tunable, though he delighted
much in musike, his bodie reasonably healthfull, only that towards his
latter ende by using much writing, he complained much of the ache of
his breaste. In his youth he drunke much water, wine he only tasted
of, when he pledged others; he loved salte meates, especially powdered
beefe, milke, cheese, eggs and fruite, and usually he eate of corse
browne bread, which it may be he rather used to punish his taste,
than from anie love he had thereto. For he was singularly wise to
deceave the world with mortifications, only contenting himselfe with
the knowledge which God had of his actions: et pater ejus, qui erat in
abscondito reddidit ei.”
[Sidenote: Campbell’s _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_. *]
“Holbein’s portrait of More has made his features familiar to all
Englishmen. According to his great-grandson, he was of ‘a middle
stature, well proportioned, of a pale complexion; his hair of a
chestnut colour, his eyes gray, his countenance mild and cheerful;
his voice not very musical, but clear and distinct; his constitution,
which was good originally, was never impaired by his way of living,
otherwise than by too much study. His diet was simple and abstemious,
never drinking any wine but when he pledged those who drank to him, and
rather mortifying than indulging his appetite in what he ate.’
[Sidenote: _Life of Sir Thomas More._ *]
“He is rather below than above the middle size; his countenance of
an agreeable and friendly cheerfulness, with somewhat of an habitual
inclination to smile; and appears more adapted to pleasantry than
to gravity or dignity, though perfectly remote from vulgarity or
silliness.”
CAROLINE NORTON
1808-1877
[Sidenote: Kemble’s _Records of a Girlhood_.]
“When I first knew Caroline Sheridan she had not long been married to
the Hon. George Norton. She was splendidly handsome, of an un-English
character of beauty, her rather large and heavy head and features
recalling the grandest Grecian and Italian models, to the latter of
whom her rich colouring and blue-black braids of hair gave her an
additional resemblance. Though neither as perfectly lovely as the
Duchess of Somerset, nor as perfectly charming as Lady Dufferin,
she produced a far more striking impression than either of them, by
the combination of the poetical genius with which she alone, of the
three, was gifted, with the brilliant power of repartee which they
(especially Lady Dufferin) possessed in common with her, united to
the exceptional beauty with which they were all three endowed. Mrs.
Norton was exceedingly epigrammatic in her talk, and comically dramatic
in her manner of relating things.... She was no musician, but had a
deep, sweet contralto voice, precisely the same in which she always
spoke, and which, combined with her always lowered eyelids (‘downy
eyelids’ with sweeping silken fringes), gave such incomparably comic
effect to her sharp retorts and ludicrous stories.... I admired her
extremely.--1827.
“The next time ... was at an evening party at my sister’s house,
where her appearance struck me more than it had ever done. Her dress
had something to do with this effect, no doubt. She had a rich
gold-coloured silk on, shaded and softened all over with black lace
draperies, and her splendid head, neck, and arms, were adorned with
magnificently simple Etruscan ornaments, which she had brought from
Rome, whence she had just returned, and where the fashion of that
famous antique jewellery had lately been revived. She was still ‘une
beauté triomphante à faire voir aux ambassadeurs.’”
[Sidenote: A personal friend.]
“The most beautiful of ‘the beautiful Sheridans,’ Caroline Norton will
also live in the memory of her friends as one of the most fascinating
of women. Her voice was exceedingly sweet and musical, her movements
wonderfully graceful, and, with the solitary exception of Theodore
Hook, whose rough, coarse wit spared no one, her queenly bearing won
her general adulation and deference. Her face was a pure oval, her head
was crowned by heavy braids of the darkest hair, while the warmth and
light which suffused her expressive countenance gave her a somewhat
un-English appearance. Her eyes were dark; black curly lashes swept
over the warmly-tinted cheek; the lips were of geranium red; the teeth,
dazzlingly white. Altogether she was a vivid piece of colouring, and
as she was always very beautifully dressed, it did not require her
literary reputation to make her at all times sought after and admired.”
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]
“It seems but yesterday--it is not so very long ago certainly--that
I saw for the last time the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Her radiant beauty was
then faded, but her stately form had been little impaired by years, and
she had retained much of the grace that made her early womanhood so
surpassingly attractive. She combined, in a singular degree, feminine
delicacy with masculine vigour; though essentially womanly, she seemed
to have the force of character of man. Remarkably handsome she perhaps
excited admiration rather than affection. I can easily imagine greater
love to be given to a far plainer woman. She had, in more than full
measure, the traditional beauty of her family, and no doubt inherited
with it some of the waywardness that is associated with the name of
Sheridan.”
THOMAS OTWAY
1651-1685
[Sidenote: _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1745.]
“You’ll be glad to know any trifling circumstance concerning Otway. His
person was of the middle size, about five feet seven inches in height,
inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was
all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and, like the unhappy wits
of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting
jollity and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Pl----th,
and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Tower Hill.”
[Sidenote: Sir Walter Scott’s _Memoir of Mrs. Radcliffe_. *]
“Otway, heavy, squalid, unhappy; yet tender countenance, but not so
squalid as one we formerly saw; full-speaking, black eyes; it seems as
if dissolute habits had overcome all his finer feelings, and left him
little of mind, except a sense of sorrow.” _On a picture._
SAMUEL PEPYS
1632-1703
[Sidenote: _The Cornhill Magazine_, 1874. *]
“Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when he had taken physic,
composing ‘a song in praise of a liberal genius (such as I take my
own to be) to all studies and pleasures.’ The song was successful,
but the diary is, in a sense, the very song that he was seeking; and
his portrait by Hales, so admirably reproduced in Mynors Bright’s
edition, is a confirmation of the diary. Hales, it would appear, had
known his business, and though he put his sitter to a deal of trouble,
almost breaking his neck ‘to have the portrait full of shadows,’ and
draping him in an Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was
preoccupied about no merely picturesque effects, but to portray the
essence of the man. Whether we read the picture by the diary, or the
diary by the picture, we shall at least agree, that Hales was among
the numbers of those who can ‘surprise the manners in a face.’ Here we
have a mouth pouting, moist with desires; eyes greedy, protuberant,
and yet apt for weeping too; a nose great alike in character and
dimensions, and altogether a most fleshly, melting countenance. The
face is attractive by its promise of reciprocity. I have used the
word _greedy_, but the reader must not suppose that he can change
it for that closely kindred one of _hungry_, for there is here no
aspiration, no waiting for better things, but an animal joy in all
that comes. It could never be the face of an artist; it is the face of
a _viveur_--kindly, pleased, and pleasing, protected from excess and
upheld in contentment by the shifting versatility of his desires. For a
single desire is more rightly to be called a lust; but there is health
in a variety, where one may balance and control another.”
ALEXANDER POPE
1688-1744
[Sidenote: _The Guardian_, 1713.]
“Dick Distich ... we have elected president, not only as he is the
shortest of us all, but because he has entertained so just a sense of
his stature as to go generally in black, that he may appear yet less.
Nay, to that perfection is he arrived, that he stoops as he walks. The
figure of the man is odd enough; he is a lively little creature, with
long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken
at a distance for a small windmill.”--1713.
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Pope_.]
“The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed on the nicest
model. He has, in his account of the Little Club, compared himself
to a spider, and, by another, is described as protuberant behind and
before. He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy; but he was of
a constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a tender
frame are easily distorted, his deformity was, probably, in part the
effect of his application. His stature was so low, that to bring him on
a level with common tables it was necessary to raise his seat. But his
face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid.... His
dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword.... He
sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or inferiors; but by
no merriment, either of others or of his own, was he ever seen excited
to laughter.”
[Sidenote: Tyer’s _Historical rhapsody on Mr. Pope_.]
“Pope, as Lord Clarendon says of (the ever memorable) Hales of Eaton,
was one of the least men in the kingdom; who adds of Chillingworth,
that he was of a stature little superior to him, and that it was an
age in which there were many great and wonderful men of that size....
He inherited his deformity from his father, who turns out at last,
from the information of Mrs. Racket his relation, to have been a
linen-draper in the Strand.
‘My friend, this shape which you and I will admire,
Came not from Ammon’s son, but from my sire,’
as he expresses himself in his first epistle to Arbuthnot. He was
protuberant behind and before, in the words of his last biographer.
But he carried a mind in his face, as a reverend person once expressed
himself of a singular countenance. He had a brilliant eye, which
pervaded everything at a glance.”
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER
1787-1874
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]
“I have also seen and scraped acquaintance with Procter--Barry
Cornwall. He is a slender, rough-faced, palish, gentle, languid-looking
man, of three or four and thirty. There is a dreamy mildness in his
eye; he is kind and good in his manners and, I understand, in his
conduct. He is a poet by the ear and the fancy, but his heart and
intellect are not strong.”--1824.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]
“A decidedly rather pretty little fellow, Procter, bodily and
spiritually: manners prepossessing, slightly London-elegant, not
unpleasant; clear judgment in him, though of narrow field; a sound,
honourable morality, and airy friendly ways; of slight, neat figure,
vigorous for his size; fine genially rugged little face, fine head;
something curiously dreamy in the eyes of him, lids drooping at the
_outer_ ends into a cordially meditative and drooping expression; would
break out suddenly now and then into opera attitude and a _Là ci darem
là mano_ for a moment; had something of real fun, though in London
style.”
[Sidenote: Fields’s _Yesterdays with Authors_.]
“The poet’s figure was short and full, and his voice had a low,
veiled tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes difficult to
hear distinctly what he was saying. When he spoke in conversation,
he liked to be very near his listener, and thus stand, as it were,
on confidential grounds with him. His turn of thought was apt to be
cheerful among his friends, and he entered readily into a vein of wit
and nimble expression. Verbal facility seemed natural to him, and his
epithets, evidently unprepared, were always perfect. He disliked cant
and hard ways of judging character. He praised easily. He impressed
every one who came near him as a born gentleman, chivalrous and
generous in a high degree.”
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
1786-1859
[Sidenote: Masson’s _de Quincey_.]
“In addition to the general impression of his diminutiveness and
fragility, one was struck with the peculiar beauty of his head and
forehead, rising disproportionately high over his small, wrinkly
visage and gentle, deep-set eyes. His talk was in the form of
really harmonious and considerate colloquy, and not at all in that
of monologue.... That evening passed, and though I saw him once or
twice again, it is the last sight I remember best. It must have been,
I think, in 1846, on a summer afternoon. A friend, a stranger in
Edinburgh, was walking with me in one of the pleasant, quiet, country
lanes near Edinburgh. Meeting us, and the sole living thing in the
lane beside ourselves, came a small figure, not untidily dressed,
but with his hat pushed far up in front of his forehead, and hanging
on his hindhead, so that the back rim must have been resting on his
coat-collar. At a little distance I recognised it to be De Quincey;
but, not considering myself entitled to interrupt his meditations, I
only whispered the information to my friend, that he might not miss
what the look at such a celebrity was worth. So we passed him, giving
him the wall. Not unnaturally, however, after we passed, we turned
round for the pleasure of a back view of the wee, intellectual wizard.
Whether my whisper and our glance had alarmed him, as a ticket-of-leave
man might be rendered uneasy in his solitary walk by the scrutiny of
two passing strangers, or whether he had some recollection of me (which
was likely enough, as he seemed to forget nothing), I do not know,
but we found that he, too, had stopped, and was looking round at us.
Apparently scared at being caught doing so, he immediately wheeled
round again, and hurried his face towards a side-turning in the lane,
into which he disappeared, his hat still hanging on the back of his
head. That was my last sight of De Quincey.”--1846.
[Sidenote: Page’s _de Quincey_.]
“Pale he was, with a head of wonderful size, which served to make more
apparent the inferior dimensions of his body, and a face which lived
the sculptured past in every lineament from brow to chin. One seeing
him would surely be tempted to ask who he was that took off his hat
with such grave politeness, remaining uncovered if a lady were passing
almost until she was out of sight, and would get for an answer likely
enough, ‘Oh, that is little De Quincey, who hears strange sounds and
eats opium. Did you ever see such a little man?’ Little he was, indeed,
like Dickens and Jeffrey, the latter of whom had so little flesh that
it was said that his intellect was indecently exposed.”
[Sidenote: James Payn’s _Literary Recollections_.]
“In the ensuing summer, after the publication of another volume of
poems, I visited Edinburgh, and called upon De Quincey, to whom I
had a letter of introduction from Miss Mitford. He was at that time
residing at Lasswade, a few miles from the town, and I went thither
by coach. He lived a secluded life, and even at that date had become
to the world a name rather than a real personage; but it was a great
name. Considerable alarm agitated my youthful heart as I drew near
the house: I felt like Burns on the occasion when he was first about
‘to dinner wi’ a Lord.’... My apprehensions, however, proved to be
utterly groundless, for a more gracious and genial personage I never
met. Picture to yourself a very diminutive man, carelessly--very
carelessly--dressed; a face lined, careworn, and so expressionless
that it reminded one of ‘that chill changeless brow, where cold
Obstruction’s apathy appals the gazing mourners heart’--a face like
death in life. The instant he began to speak, however, it lit up as
though by electric light; this came from his marvellous eyes, brighter
and more intelligent (though by fits) than I have ever seen in any
other mortal. They seemed to me to glow with eloquence. He spoke of my
introducer, of Cambridge, of the Lake Country, and of English poets.
Each theme was interesting to me, but made infinitely more so by some
apt personal reminiscence. As for the last-named subject, it was like
talking of the Olympian gods to one not only cradled in their creed,
but who had mingled with them, himself half an immortal.”
ANN RADCLIFFE
1764-1823
[Sidenote: Kavanagh’s _English Women of Letters_. *]
“Ann Ward’s education was plain and somewhat formal. She was shy; she
showed no extraordinary genius, and the times were not propitious
to the development of female intellect. The young girl’s person was
probably more admired than her mind. She was short, but exquisitely
proportioned; she had a lovely complexion, fine eyes and eyebrows, and
a beautiful mouth. She had a sweet voice too, and sang with feeling and
taste.”
[Sidenote: Scott’s _Memoir of Ann Radcliffe_.]
“This admirable writer, whom I remember from about the time of
her twentieth year, was, in her youth, of a figure exquisitely
proportioned, while she resembled her father and his brother and sister
in being low of stature. Her complexion was beautiful, as was her whole
countenance, especially her eye, eyebrows, and mouth.”
[Sidenote: _Memoir of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe._]
“Mrs. Radcliffe, though a giant in intellect, was low in stature, and
of a slender form, but exquisitely proportioned: her countenance was
beautiful and expressive.”
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
1552-1618
[Sidenote: _The Nineteenth Century_, 1881. *]
“In appearance what manner of man was Raleigh when in Ireland? There
was much change, of course, from the dashing captain of eight and
twenty, when he was putting the unarmed men to the sword and hanging
the women in Dingle Bay, to the admiral of sixty-five who, between the
Tower and the scaffold, visited his old haunts in the county of Cork
for the last time in the three summer months of 1617.
“But all accounts agree in giving him a commanding presence, a handsome
and well-compacted figure, a forehead rather too high; the lower part
of his face, though partly hidden by the moustache and peaked beard,
showing rare resolution. His portrait, a life-sized head, painted
when he was Major of Youghal, was recently presented to the owner
of his house, where it had been years ago, by the senior member for
the county of Waterford; and another original picture of him when in
Ireland is in the possession of the Rev. Pierce W. Drew of Youghal.
Both these Irish pictures show the same lofty brow and firm lips. There
is an old and much-prized engraving by Vander Werff of Amsterdam that
seems to combine all his characteristic features--the extraordinarily
high forehead, the moustache and peaked beard, ill-concealing a too
determined mouth. The likeness is most striking.”
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_. *]
“He was a tall, handsome, and bold man; but his _næve_ was, that he was
damnably proud.... In the great parlour at Downton, at Mr. Ralegh’s,
is a good piece (an originall) of Sir W. in a white sattin doublet,
all embroidered with rich pearles, and a mighty rich chaine of great
pearles about his neck. The old servants have told me that the pearles
were neer as big as the painted ones. He had a most remarkable aspect,
an exceedingly high forehead, long-faced, and sourlie-bidded, a kind of
pigge-eie.... He spake broad Devonshire to his dye-ing day. His voice
was small, as likewise were my schoolfellowes, his gr. nephews.”
[Sidenote: _Publications of the Prince Society._ *]
“In all the pictures we have of him, there is almost nothing to suggest
the typical Englishman. Burly and robust. About six feet in height,
he is rather thin than corpulent, and in the vivacity of expression
and the nervous cast of his features he resembles rather the modern
New-Englander than the old-time Englishman. He was nineteen years
younger than Elizabeth, and had, as Naunton describes him, ‘a good
presence in a handsome and well-compacted person.’ Fuller has already
told us that at the time of his entrance at the court his clothes made
a ‘considerable part of his estate.’ He seems to have had an innate
love for the luxury and splendour of dress. He lived at a period
when gentlemen as well as ladies indulged in all the glory of gay
colours. Edwards, describing some of the more noted pictures of him,
says: ‘In another full-length, which long remained in the possession
of his descendants, he is apparelled in a white satin pinked vest,
close sleeved to the wrists with a brown doublet finely flowered
and embroidered with pearls, and a sword, also brown and similarly
decorated. Over the right hip is seen the jewelled pommel of his
dagger. He wears his hat, in which is a black feather with a ruby and
pearl drop. His trunk hose and fringed garters appear to be of white
satin. His buff-coloured shoes are tied with white ribbons.’”
CHARLES READE
1814-1884
[Sidenote: Coleman’s _Personal Reminiscences_.]
“On arriving at Bolton Row I was shown into a large room littered over
with books, MSS. agenda, newspapers of every description from the
_Times_ and the _New York Herald_ down to the _Police News_. Before me
stood a stately and imposing man of fifty or fifty-one, over six feet
high, a massive chest, herculean limbs, a bearded and leonine face,
giving traces of a manly beauty which ripened into majesty as he grew
older. Large brown eyes which could at times become exceedingly fierce,
a fine head, quite bald on the top but covered at the sides with soft
brown hair, a head strangely disproportioned to the bulk of the body;
in fact I could never understand how so large a brain could be confined
in so small a skull. On the desk before him lay a huge sheet of drab
paper on which he had been writing--it was about the size of two sheets
of ordinary foolscap; in his hand one of Gillott’s double-barrelled
pens. (Before I left the room he told me he sent Gillott his books, and
Gillott sent him his pens.)
“His voice, though very pleasant, was very penetrating. He was rather
deaf, but I don’t think quite so deaf as he pretended to be. This
deafness gave him an advantage in conversation; it afforded him time to
take stock of the situation, and either to seek refuge in silence or to
request his interlocutor to propound his proposal afresh. At first he
was very cold, but at last, carried away by the ardour of my admiration
for his works, he thawed, and in half an hour he was eager, excited,
delighted and delightful.”--1856.
[Sidenote: _The Contemporary Review_, 1884.]
“The man in truth justified Lavater, for his physiognomy was noble,
and his body the perfection of symmetry and grace. Nature gave him
a forehead as high as Shakespeare’s, but broader; the mild, pensive
ox-eye so dear to the old Greek æsthetes; a marble skin, a mouth that
was sarcasm itself. His personal attractiveness was phenomenal. In any
roomful of people, however illustrious, he became involuntarily--for
he was as little self-asserting off his paper as he was dogmatic on
it--the centre. Living immersed in Bohemianism, and in the society of
a large-hearted, yet not very cultured woman, he never parted company
with his Ipsden breeding, and his natural bearing was that of one born
to command.”
[Sidenote: _Eclectic Magazine_, 1880.]
“In personal appearance Mr. Reade is tall, erect, of a commanding
presence, with a full, expressive brown eye and a noble brow. His
manner is singularly dignified without being arrogant, and in society
he sustains an enviable reputation as a conversationalist.”
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
1689-1761
[Sidenote: Barbauld’s _Life of Richardson_. *]
“Richardson was, in person, below the middle stature, and inclined
to corpulency; of a round, rather than oval face, with a fair, ruddy
complexion. His features, says one who speaks from recollection,
bore the stamp of good nature, and were characteristic of his placid
and amiable disposition. He was slow in speech, and, to strangers at
least, spoke with reserve and deliberation; but in his manners was
affable, courteous, and engaging, and when surrounded with the social
circle he loved to draw around him, his eye sparkled with pleasure,
and often expressed that particular spirit of archness which we see
in some of his characters, and which gave, at times, a vivacity to
his conversation not expected from his general taciturnity and quiet
manners.”
[Sidenote: Richardson’s _Correspondence_.]
“Short, rather plump, about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand
generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon
under the skirts of his coat, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a
support when attacked by sudden tremors or dizziness; of a light brown
complexion; teeth not yet failing him. Looking directly foreright as
passengers would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand
of him, without moving his short neck; a regular even pace, stealing
away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a gray eye, too often
overclouded by mistiness from the head, by chance lively, very lively,
if he sees any he loves; if he approaches a lady, his eye is never
fixed first on her face, but on her feet, and rears it up by degrees,
seeming to set her down as so and so.”--1749.
[Sidenote: Stephen’s _Richardson_. *]
“He looks like a plump white mouse in a wig, with an air at once
vivacious and timid, a quick excitable nature, taking refuge in the
outside of a smug, portly tradesman. Two coloured engravings in Mrs.
Barbauld’s volumes give us Richardson amidst his surroundings....
One introduces us to Richardson at home. Half a dozen ladies and
gentlemen are sitting by the open window in his bare parlour looking
out into the garden. There is only one spindle-legged table, and a
set of uncompromising wooden chairs, just enough to accommodate the
party.... Miss Highmore, whose hoop can scarcely be squeezed into her
straight-backed chair, is quietly sketching the memorable scene. We are
truly grateful to her, for there sits the little idol of the party in
his usual morning dress, a nondescript brown dressing-gown with a cap
on his head of the same materials. His plump little frame fills the
chair, and he is apparently raising one foot for an emphatic stamp,
as he reads a passage of _Sir Charles Grandison_. We can see that as
he concludes he will be applauded with deferential gasps of heartfelt
admiration.”
SAMUEL ROGERS
1763-1855
[Sidenote: S. C Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“His countenance was the theme of continual jokes. It was ‘ugly,’
if not repulsive. The expression was in no way, nor under any
circumstances, good; he had a drooping eye and a thick underlip; his
forehead was broad, his head large--out of proportion indeed to his
form; but it was without the organs of benevolence and veneration,
although preponderating in that of ideality. His features were
‘cadaverous.’ Lord Dudley once asked him why, now that he could afford
it, he did not set up his hearse; and it is said that Sydney Smith gave
him mortal offence by recommending him, ‘when he sat for his portrait,
to be drawn saying his prayers, with his face hidden by his hands.’”
[Sidenote: Jerdan’s _Men I have known_.]
“His personal appearance was extraordinary, or rather his countenance
was unique. His skull and facial expression bore so striking a likeness
to the skeleton pictures which we sometimes see of Death, that the
facetious Sydney Smith (at one of the dressed evening parties ...)
entitled him the ‘Death dandy.’ And it was told (probably with truth),
that the same satirical wag inscribed upon the capital portrait in his
breakfast-room, ‘Painted in his lifetime.’”
[Sidenote: Mackay’s _Forty Years’ Recollections_.]
“My first look at the poet, then in his seventy-eighth year, was an
agreeable surprise, and a protest in my mind against the malignant
injustice which had been done him. As a young man he might have been
uncomely, if not as ugly as his revilers had painted him, but as an
old man there was an intellectual charm in his countenance, and a
fascination in his manner which more than atoned for any deficiency of
personal beauty.”--1840.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
1828-1882
[Sidenote: William Sharp’s _Dante Gabriel Rossetti_.]
“According to a sketch by Mr. Eyre Crowe, dated about this time,
Rossetti must have had anything but a robust appearance, being very
thin and even somewhat haggard in expression. He went about in a long
swallow-tailed coat of what was even in 1848 an antique pattern. That
his appearance in his twentieth and some subsequent years was that
of an ascetic I have been told by several, including himself, and in
addition to such pen-and-ink sketches as the above, and of himself
sitting to Miss Siddall (his future wife) for his portrait, there are
the perhaps more reliable portraitures in Mr. Millais’s _Isabella_
(painted in 1849), and Mr. Deverell’s _Viola_. On the other hand,
a beautifully-executed pencil head of himself in boyhood shows him
much removed from the ascetic type of later years, not unlike and
strongly suggestive of a young Keats or Chatterton; while in maturer
age he carefully drew his portrait from his mirrored image, the result
being a highly-finished pen-and-ink likeness. While speaking of
portraits, I may state that Rossetti was twice photographed, once in
Newcastle (which is the one publicly known, and upon which all other
illustrations have been based), and once standing arm-in-arm with Mr.
Ruskin, the latter being the best likeness of the poet-artist as he was
a quarter of a century ago. There is also an etching by Mr. Menpes,
which, however, is only founded on the well-known photograph; and,
finally, there is a portrait taken shortly after death by Mr. Frederick
Shields.”
[Sidenote: Hall Caine’s _Recollections of Rossetti_.]
“Very soon Rossetti came to me through the doorway in front, which
proved to be the entrance to his studio. Holding forth both hands
and crying, ‘Hulloa!’ he gave me that cheery hearty greeting which
I came to recognise as his alone, perhaps, in warmth and unfailing
geniality among all the men of our circle. It was Italian in its
spontaneity, and yet it was English in its manly reserve, and I
remember with much tenderness of feeling that never to the last (not
even when sickness saddened him, or after an absence of a few days or
even hours), did it fail him when meeting with those friends to whom
to the last he was really attached. Leading the way to the studio, he
introduced me to his brother, who was there upon one of the evening
visits, which at intervals of a week he was at that time making with
unfailing regularity. I should have described Rossetti, at this time,
as a man who looked quite ten years older than his actual age, which
was fifty-two, of full middle height and inclining to corpulence,
with a round face that ought, one thought, to be ruddy but was pale,
large gray eyes with a steady introspecting look, surmounted by broad
protrusive brows and a clearly-pencilled ridge over the nose, which
was well cut and had large breathing nostrils. The mouth and chin
were hidden beneath a heavy moustache and abundant beard, which grew
up to the ears, and had been of a mixed black-brown and auburn, and
were now streaked with gray. The forehead was large, round, without
protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that
had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire
configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and
from the eyes upwards full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles,
and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little
from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes, and that ‘bar
of Michael Angelo.’ His dress was not conspicuous, being however
rather negligent than otherwise, and noticeable, if at all, only for
a straight sack-coat buttoned at the throat, descending at least to
the knees, and having large pockets cut into it perpendicularly at
the sides. This garment was, I afterwards found, one of the articles
of various kinds made to the author’s own design. When he spoke, even
in exchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening conversation,
I thought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess.
It was a full deep baritone, capable of easy modulation, and with
undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwards
found, with almost illimitable compass, and with every gradation of
tone at command, for the recitation or reading of poetry.”--1880.
[Sidenote: William Sharp’s _Dante Gabriel Rossetti_].
“As to the personality of Dante Gabriel Rossetti much has been written
since his death, and it is now widely known that he was a man who
exercised an almost irresistible charm over most with whom he was
brought in contact. His manner could be peculiarly winning, especially
with those much younger than himself, and his voice was alike notable
for its sonorous beauty and for a magnetic quality that made the ear
alert, whether the speaker was engaged in conversation, recitation,
or reading. I have heard him read, some of them over and over again,
all the poems in the _Ballads and Sonnets_; and especially in such
productions as _The Cloud Confines_ was his voice as stirring as
a trumpet tone; but where he excelled was in some of the pathetic
portions of the _Vita Nuova_, or the terrible and sonorous passages
of _L’Inferno_, when the music of the Italian language found full
expression indeed. His conversational powers I am unable adequately to
describe, for during the four or five years of my intimacy with him
he suffered too much from ill-health to be a consistently brilliant
talker, but again and again I have seen instances of those marvellous
gifts that made him at one time a Sydney Smith in wit, and a Coleridge
in eloquence. In appearance he was, if anything, rather over middle
height, and, especially latterly, somewhat stout; his forehead was
of splendid proportions, recalling instantaneously to most strangers
the Stratford bust of Shakespeare; and his gray blue eyes were clear
and piercing, and characterised by that rapid penetrative gaze
so noticeable in Emerson. He seemed always to me an unmistakable
Englishman, yet the Italian element was frequently recognisable. As far
as his own opinion is concerned, he was wholly English.”--1878.
RICHARD SAVAGE
1697-1743
[Sidenote: _Dublin University, Magazine_, 1858. *]
“His companion, Who is he? He looks a little older, and is a great deal
slenderer, and very much better dressed; that is, his clothes are well
made, but alas! they are also well worn. He has an air of faded fashion
about him. There is decision in every line of the lank, and long, and
melancholy visage; it is a veritable Quixotic face. Meagre and proud,
and high and pale. An exceeding ‘woeful countenance,’ which sadness
and scorn alternately cloud and corrugate. It is mixed up with extreme
diversities. The brow and eye are intellectual and bright, while the
lower features are sensual and coarse: humour and passion both lurk in
the mouth, yet few smiles expand those lips from which laughter seems
altogether banished, while the voice is sweet, soft, and lute-like;
the pace is slow, and the gait has a certain pretension to importance,
which ill harmonises with the rest of his appearance. This person is
Richard Savage, a man whose rare talents might have brought him poetic
immortality, and a lofty pedestal in the muse’s temple, had not his
coarser vices, together with his pride and his ingratitude, dragged him
down to the lowest moral depth, and buried the many bright things he
had in brain and bosom, head and heart, in the same mud-heap.”
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Savage_.]
“He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, a long visage,
coarse features, and melancholy aspect; of a grave and manly
deportment, a solemn dignity of mien, but which, upon a nearer
acquaintance, softened into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk
was slow, and his voice tremulous and mournful. He was easily excited
to smiles, but very seldom provoked to laughter.”
SIR WALTER SCOTT
1771-1832
[Sidenote: Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_.]
“His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging. A lady of
high rank, who remembers him in the Old Assembly Rooms, says, ‘Young
Walter Scott was a comely creature.’ He had outgrown the sallowness of
early ill-health, and had a fresh, brilliant complexion. His eyes were
clear, open, and well set, with a changeful radiance, to which teeth
of the most perfect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance,
while the noble expanse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole
aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His smile was
always delightful; and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture
of tenderness and gravity, with playful innocent hilarity and humour
in the expression, as being well calculated to fix a fair lady’s eye.
His figure, excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those days
have been eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual standard,
it was cast in the very mould of a young Hercules; the head set on
with singular grace, the throat and chest after the truest model of
the antique, the hands delicately finished; the whole outline that of
extraordinary vigour, without as yet a touch of clumsiness. When he
had acquired a little facility of manner, his conversation must have
been such as could have dispensed with any exterior advantages, and
certainly brought swift forgiveness for the one unkindness of nature.
I have heard him, in talking of this part of his life, say, with an
arch simplicity of look and tone which those who were familiar with him
can fill in for themselves--‘It was a proud night with me when I first
found that a pretty young woman could think it worth her while to sit
and talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of the ball-room, while
all the world were capering in our view.’”--1790.
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]
“I never spoke with Scott.... Have a hundred times seen him, from of
old, writing in the Courts, or hobbling with stout speed along the
streets of Edinburgh; a large man, pale, shaggy face, fine, deep-browed
gray eyes, an expression of strong homely intelligence, of humour and
good-humour, and, perhaps (in later years amongst the wrinkles), of
sadness or weariness.... He has played his part, and left _none like_
or second to him. _Plaudite!_”
[Sidenote: Sir John Bowring’s _Autobiographical Recollections_.]
“More eloquent men I have known, I think, but I never knew any one so
attractive. The variety of his conversation is stupendous, while it
overflows with the most agreeable anecdotes, and almost every person
who has figured in modern times has in some way or other been connected
with him. His manner of talking is without the smallest pretence, and
is gentle and humorous. His eye has a constant play upon it, and around
it. His dress is that of a substantial farmer,--a short green coat with
steel buttons, striped waistcoat and pantaloons, and he put on light
gaiters when we sallied forth.”
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
1564-1616
[Sidenote: E. T. Craig’s _Portraits of Shakespeare_. *]
“The portrait of Martin Droeshout” (_published with the first folio
edition of Shakespeare’s works in 1623_) “has a greater claim to
attention, as it was engraved by a well-known artist at the time when
published by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Heminge and Condell, and
has the additional testimony of the poet’s friend, Ben Jonson, in its
favour, in the following lines inscribed opposite to the engraving of
the portrait:--
‘This figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life.
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpasse
All that was ever writ in brasse;
But since he cannot, reader, looke
Not on his picture, but his booke.’
These lines would indicate that the portrait of the face was
represented with some degree of truth. It may be observed here that
until within the last few years artists were less exact and minute
in the delineation of the head than the face; and the head appears
unusually high for its breadth, and impresses you with the semblance of
a form more like Scott than Byron, of Canova than Chantrey.
“The features of Droeshout’s engraving bear a closer resemblance to
the plaster cast than to the Stratford bust. The nose has the same
flowing outline, well defined, prominent, yet finely chiselled, and
the nostrils rather large. There is the same long upper lip, and a
general correspondence with the mouth of the cast. The eye is large and
round, and in life would be mild and lustrous. The hair is thin and not
curled, and the head is high but comparatively narrow. There would be
moderate secretiveness, less destructiveness, small constructiveness,
and little acquisitiveness. There is an ample endowment of the higher
sentiments. The imaginative and imitative faculties are represented
as very large. Ideality, wonder, wit, imitation, benevolence, and
veneration, comparison and causality, are all very large. The
perceptive region is scarcely sufficiently indicated for the powers
of mind possessed by Shakespeare, in his vast and ready command of
view over the range of natural objects so evident in his works. This
may be the fault of the engraver. It is the opposite in this respect
to the cast from the face. There is one feature in the portrait which
harmonises with Milton’s praise and Jonson’s worship and Spenser’s
admiration,--his large benevolence, veneration and ideality, and his
small destructiveness and acquisitiveness, leading to the control over
his feelings and generous sympathy with others, manifested by his
quiet manner and gentle nature. Men of strong passions like Jonson
and Byron have very different heads to this portrait, which presents
a great contrast both to the bust and the Chandos portrait” (_said to
be painted by Burbage, a player contemporary with Shakespeare_). “The
physical proportions of the Droeshout figure harmonise better with a
fine temperament and an intellectual head than the Stratford bust with
Shakespeare’s mental activity.”
[Sidenote: Halliwell-Phillipps’s _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_.
*]
“The exact time at which the monument was erected in the church”
(_Stratford-on-Avon_) “is unknown, but it is alluded to by Leonard
Digges as being there in the year 1623. The bust must, therefore, have
been submitted to the approval of the Halls, who could hardly have been
satisfied with a mere fanciful image. There is, however, no doubt that
it was an authentic representation of the great dramatist, but it has
unfortunately been so tampered with in modern times that much of the
absorbing interest with which it would otherwise have been surrounded
has evaporated. It was originally painted in imitation of life, the
face and hands of the usual flesh colour, the eyes a light hazel, and
the hair and beard auburn. The realisation of the costume was similarly
attempted by the use of scarlet for the doublet, black for the loose
gown, and white for the collar and wristbands.”
[Sidenote: E. T. Craig’s _Portraits of Shakespeare_. *]
“It only remains to examine the cast from the face of Shakespeare. The
documentary statements published by Mr. Friswell tend to establish a
claim to attention. It was left in the possession of Professor Owen
by Dr. Becher, the enterprising botanist, who fell a victim to his
zeal in the unfortunate Australian expedition under Burke. The cast,
it appears, originally belonged to a German nobleman at the Court of
James I., whose descendants kept it as an heirloom till the last of
the race died, when his effects were sold. Mr. Friswell observes that
‘the cast bears some resemblance to the more refined portraits of the
poet. It is not unlike the ideal head of Roubillac, and bears a very
great resemblance to a fine portrait of the poet in the possession of
Mr. Challis.’ It has some of the characteristics of Jansen’s portrait.
The mask has a mournful aspect, and sensitive persons are affected
when they look at it.... There are indications visible ... of wrinkles
and ‘crow’s feet’ at the corners of the eyes. It is utterly destitute
of the jovial physiognomy of the Stratford bust and portrait. It is
certainly the impress from one who was gifted with great sensibility,
great range of perceptive power, a ready memory, great facility of
expression, varied power of enjoyment, and great depth of feeling.
The year 1616, when Shakespeare died, is recorded on the back of the
cast. Hairs of the moustache, eyelashes, and beard still adhere to
the plaster, of a reddish brown or auburn colour, corresponding with
several portraits and the Stratford bust.... The cast presents to view
finely formed features, strongly marked, yet regular. The forehead is
well developed in the region of the perceptive powers; but scarcely so
high as the Droeshout, and the coronal region is much lower than in
that of the Felton head. The sides of the head are well developed, and
there is a large mass of brain in the front. The moustache is divided,
and falls over the corners of the mouth, and the beard, or imperial,
is a full tuft on the chin, which, as well as the moustache, appears
to be marked with a tool since taken. The face is a sharp oval, that
of the bust is a blunt or round one. The chin is rather narrow and
pointed, yet firm; that of the bust well rounded. The cheeks are thin
and fallen; in those of the bust full, fat, and coarse, as if ‘good
digestion waited on appetite,’ without thought, fancy, or feeling,
troubling either. The mask has a moderate-sized upper lip, the bust a
very large one, although Sir Walter Scott lost his wager in asserting
that it was longer than his own. The lips of the cast are thin and well
marked; those of the bust present a rude opening for the mouth. The
nostrils are drawn up, and this feature is exaggerated in the bust.
The nose of the cast is large, finely marked, aquiline, and delicately
formed. That of the bust is short, mean, straight, and small. In
their physiognomy and phrenology they are utterly different. The cast
indicates the man of thought, emotion, and suffering; the bust, of
ease, enjoyment, and self-satisfaction. If the bust is to represent
the living image of the dead poet, the answer is, death does not
immediately alter the language once written on the ivory gate at the
temple of thought. It has been said by John Bell that the Stratford
bust was cut from a mask, but by a clumsy sculptor, who modified
his work. A monument, erected as a memorial of Shakespeare, should
therefore avoid the evident discrepancies that already exist, and
perpetrate no repetition of forms inconsistent with nature, truth, and
beauty.”
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
1798-1851
[Sidenote: _Anecdote Biography of P. B. Shelley._]
“... At the time I am speaking of, Mrs. Shelley was twenty-four. Such a
rare pedigree of genius was enough to interest me in her, irrespective
of her own merits as an authoress. The most striking feature in her
face was her calm gray eyes; she was rather under the English standard
of woman’s height, very fair and light-haired, witty, social, and
animated in the society of friends, though mournful in solitude.”--1821.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of Writers_.]
“Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, with her well-shaped,
golden-haired head, almost always a little bent and drooping; her
marble-white shoulders and arms statuesquely visible in the perfectly
plain black velvet dress, which the customs of that time allowed to be
cut low, and which her own taste adopted; ... her thoughtful, earnest
eyes; her short upper lip and intellectually curved mouth, with a
certain close compressed and decisive expression while she listened,
and a relaxation into fuller redness and mobility when speaking; her
exquisitely formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosy palms,
and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and
delicate as those in a Vandyck portrait,--all remain palpably present
to memory.”--About 1824.
[Sidenote: _The Cornhill_, 1875.]
“Shelley’s second love, who was five years his junior, is described
as ‘rather short, remarkably fair, and light-haired with brownish
gray eyes, a great forehead, striking features, and a noticeable air
of sedateness.’ One writer has compared her with the classic bust of
Clytie.”
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
1792-1822
[Sidenote: Stoddard’s _Anecdote Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley_.]
“As I felt in truth but a slight interest in the subject of his
conversation, I had leisure to examine, and, I may add, admire the
appearance of my very extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many
contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones
and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much
that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and
made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were
tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt and sometimes
violent, occasionally even awkward. His complexion was delicate and
almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and
freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said,
in shooting. His features, his whole face, and particularly his head,
were, in fact, unusually small; yet the last _appeared_ of a remarkable
bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in
the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed
it fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his
locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In
times when it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as
possible in costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like
that of our soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features
were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect
of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an
enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met
with in any other countenance.”--1810.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarke’s _Recollections of Writers_.]
“Shelley’s figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and
of delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or
waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded barely
of muscle and tendon; and that the power of walking was an achievement
with him and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not
a valetudinarian, although that has been said of him on account of his
spare and vegetable diet; for I have the remembrance of his scampering
and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath late one
night--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height like a wild
school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which
do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round,
flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair bright
brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely in the human or
any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent expression,
yet wonderfully alert and engrossing; nothing appeared to escape his
knowledge.”
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“Shelley, when he died, was in his thirtieth year. His figure was tall
and slight, and his constitution consumptive. He was subject to violent
spasmodic pains, which would sometimes force him to lie on the ground
until they were over; but he had always a kind word to give to those
about him when his pangs allowed him to speak. In this organisation,
as well as in some other respects, he resembled the German poet
Schiller. Though well-turned, his shoulders were bent a little, owing
to premature thought and trouble. The same causes had touched his
hair with gray; and though his habits of temperance and exercise gave
him a remarkable degree of strength, it is not supposed that he could
have lived many years. He used to say that he had lived three times as
long as the calendar gave out; which he would prove, between jest and
earnest, by some remarks on Time,
‘That would have puzzled that stout Stagyrite.’
Like the Stagyrites, his voice was high and weak. His eyes were large
and animated, with a dash of wildness in them; his face small, but well
shaped, particularly the mouth and chin, the turn of which was very
sensitive and graceful. His complexion was naturally fair and delicate,
with a colour in the cheeks. He had brown hair, which, though tinged
with gray, surmounted his face well, being in considerable quantity,
and tending to a curl. His side face, upon the whole, was deficient
in strength, and his features would not have told well in a bust; but
when fronting and looking at you attentively, his aspect had a certain
seraphical character that would have suited a portrait of John the
Baptist, or the angel whom Milton describes as holding a reed ‘tipt
with fire.’”--1822.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
1751-1816
[Sidenote: Moore’s _Life of Sheridan_.]
“It has been seen, by a letter of his sister already given, that,
when young, he was generally accounted handsome; but in later years
his eyes were the only testimonials of beauty which remained to him.
It was, indeed, in the upper part of his face that the spirit of the
man chiefly reigned; the dominion of the world and the senses being
rather strongly marked out in the lower. In his person, he was above
the middle size, and his general make was, as I have already said,
robust and well-proportioned. It is remarkable that his arms, though of
powerful strength, were thin, and appeared by no means muscular. His
hands were small and delicate; and the following couplet, written on
the cast of one of them, very livelily enumerates both its physical and
moral qualities:--
‘Good at a fight, better at a Play,
God-like in giving, but--the Devil to pay!’”
[Sidenote: Jerdan’s _Men I have known_.]
“I have seen his large beautiful eyes speak sadly, even while his
brilliant tongue was rehearsing the gayest sentiments and the finest
wit.... What a portrait to pronounce of intellect is that by Sir
Joshua! The head so fine, the expression so brilliant, and the lower
part of the countenance, in the prime of life, without the sensuous
encroachment of luxurious indulgence upon later years. And how
light-hearted the look.”
[Sidenote: Gantter’s _Standard Poets of Great Britain_.]
“Sheridan was above the middle size, and of a make robust and
well-proportioned. In his youth, his family said, he had been handsome;
but in his latter years he had nothing left to show for it but his
eyes. ‘It was, indeed, in the upper part of his face,’ says Mr. Moore,
‘that the spirit of the man chiefly reigned; the dominion of the world
and the senses being rather strongly marked out in the lower.’”
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
1554-1587-8
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_. *]
“He was not only an excellent witt, but extremely beautiful; he much
resembled his sister but his haire was not red, but a little inclining;
viz., a darke amber colour. If I were to find a fault in it, methinkes
’tis not masculine enough; yett he is a person of great courage.... My
great-uncle Mr. T. Browne, remembered him, and sayd that he was wont to
take his table-booke out of his pocket and write downe his notions as
they came into his head, when he was writing his _Arcadia_ (which was
never finished by him) as he was hunting on our pleasant plaines.”
[Sidenote: The Worthie Sir Phillip Sidney, Knight, his Epitaph.]
“A man made out of goodliest mould
As shape in ware were wrought,
Or Picture stoode in stampe of gold
To please each gazer’s thought....
... His silent lookes sayd wisdome great
Did lodge in loftie brow:
His patient heart (in chollers heate)
Supprest all passion’s throw.
... A portly presence passing fine
With beautie furnisht well,
Where vertues buds and grace divine
And daintie gifts did dwell.”
[Sidenote: _The Edinburgh Review_, 1876. *]
“He was tall, shapely, and muscular, with large blue-gray eyes, a long
aquiline nose, hair of a dark auburn tint, and full sensitive lips, the
slightly pensive expression of which was relieved by the decision of
the jaw and chin.”
HORACE SMITH
1779-1849
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“Horace was delicious.... A finer nature than Horace Smith’s, except in
the single instance of Shelley, I never met with in man; nor even in
that instance, all circumstances considered, have I a right to say that
those who knew him as intimately as I did the other, would not have
had the same reasons to love him.... The personal appearance of Horace
Smith, like that of most of the individuals I have met with, was highly
indicative of his character. His figure was good and manly, inclining
to the robust; and his countenance extremely frank and cordial; sweet
without weakness. I have been told he was irascible. If so, it must
have been no common offence that could have irritated him. He had not a
jot of it in his appearance.”--1809.
SYDNEY SMITH
1771-1845
[Sidenote: Duycknick’s _Memoir of Sydney Smith_. *]
“In person, Sydney Smith, as he has been described to us by those who
knew him, was of the medium height; plethoric in habit though of great
activity, of a dense brown complexion, a dark expressive eye, an open
countenance, indicative of shrewdness, humour, and benevolence. There
is a look too, in the English engraved portraits, of a thoughtful
seriousness. His ‘sense, wit, and clumsiness,’ said a college
companion, gave ‘the idea of an Athenian carter.’”
[Sidenote: Reid’s _Life and Times of Sydney Smith_. *]
“Strangers entering St. Paul’s ... would have witnessed a burly but
active-looking man of sixty-three, of medium height, with a dark
complexion and iron-gray hair, ascend the pulpit. When he stood up to
preach, the shapely and well-carried head, the fine eyes, with their
quick and penetrating glance, the expression of thorough benevolence
which lit up the sensitive yet boldly chiselled features of the strong
and intellectual face, would all contribute to heighten favourably
the first general impression concerning a man whose every movement
suggested intelligence, determination, and kindliness.”--1834.
[Sidenote: Reid’s _Life and Times of Sydney Smith_.]
“Very distinctly do I recall the portly figure of Sydney Smith seated
in his large yellow chariot--then a fashionable style of carriage--the
full-sized head, the face indicative, as it now presents itself to my
mind’s eye, of mental power, of kindliness, and of the spirit of humour
which possessed him.... This brilliant man was not brilliant only;
there was in his character, as I conceive, an unusually substantial
basis of sound common sense.”
TOBIAS SMOLLETT
1721-1771
[Sidenote: Chalmers’s _Life of Smollett_.]
“The person of Smollett was stout and well-proportioned, his
countenance engaging, his manner reserved, with a certain air of
dignity that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own
powers.”
[Sidenote: Anderson’s _Poets of Great Britain_. *]
“In his person he was graceful and handsome, and in his air and manner
there was a certain dignity which commanded respect. He possessed a
loftiness and elevation of sentiment and character, without pride
or haughtiness, for to his equals and inferiors he was ever polite,
friendly and generous.”
[Sidenote: Chambers’s _Eminent Scotsmen_. *]
“Smollett, who thus died prematurely in the fifty-first year of his
age, and the bloom of his mental faculties, was tall and handsome, with
a most prepossessing carriage and address, and the marks and manners of
a gentleman.”
ROBERT SOUTHEY
1774-1843
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Carlyle_.]
“A man towards well up in the fifties; hair gray, not yet hoary,
well setting off his fine clear brown complexion, head and face both
smallish, as indeed the figure was while seated; features finely
cut; eyes, brow, mouth, good in their kind--expressive all, and even
vehemently so, but betokening rather keenness than depth either of
intellect or character; a serious, human, honest, but sharp, almost
fierce-looking thin man, with very much of the militant in his
aspect,--in the eyes especially was visible a mixture of sorrow and of
anger, or of angry contempt, as if his indignant fight with the world
had not yet ended in victory, but also never should in defeat.”--1835.
[Sidenote: _Southey’s Life and Correspondence._]
“The personal appearance and demeanour of Southey at this time (he
was then aged sixty-two) was striking and peculiar. The only thing in
art which brings him exactly before me is the monument by Lough, the
sculptor. Like many other young men of the time who had read Byron
with great admiration, I had imbibed rather a prejudice against the
Laureate. This was weakened by his appearance, and wholly removed by
his frank conversation. He was calm, mild, and gentlemanly; full of
quiet, subdued humour; the reverse of ascetic in his manner, speech, or
actions. His bearing was rather that of a scholar than that of a man
much accustomed to mingle in general society.... In any place Southey
would have been pointed at as ‘a noticeable man.’ He was tall, slight,
and well made. His features were striking, and Byron truly described
him as ‘with a hook nose and a hawk’s eye.’ Certainly his eyes were
peculiar,--at once keen and mild. The brow was rather high than square,
and the lines well defined. His hair was tinged with gray, but his head
was as well covered with it--wavy and flowing--as it could have been in
youth. He by no means looked his age; simple habits, pure thoughts, the
quietude of a happy hearth, the friendship of the wise and good, the
self-consciousness of acting for the best purposes, a separation from
the personal irritations which men of letters are so often subjected
to in the world; and health, which to that time had been so generally
unbroken, had kept Southey from many of the cares of life, and their
usually harrowing effect on mind and body. It is one of my most
pleasant recollections that I enjoyed his friendship and regard.”--1836.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“His height was five feet eleven inches. ‘His forehead was very broad;
his complexion rather dark; the eyebrows large and arched; the eye well
shaped, and dark brown; the mouth somewhat prominent, muscular, and
very variously expressive; the chin small in proportion to the upper
features of the face.’ So writes his son, who adds that ‘many thought
him a handsomer man in age than in youth,’ when his hair had become
white, continuing abundant, and flowing in thick curls over his brow.
Byron, who saw him but twice, once at Holland House, and once at one
of Rogers’ breakfasts, said, ‘To have that man’s head and shoulders, I
would almost have written his sapphics.’ That was in 1813, when Southey
was in his prime.”
EDMUND SPENSER
1553-1599
[Sidenote: Grosart’s _Life of Spenser_. *]
“But of Edmund Spenser we have inestimable portraits. In the first
rank must be placed the miniature now in the inherited possession
of Lord Fitzhardinge. It was a gift to the Lady Elizabeth Carey
(Althorp Spenser), heiress of the Hunsdons, to whom it was left by
Queen Elizabeth. It thus came with an indisputable lineage through the
marriage of a Berkeley to Lady Elizabeth Carey. It is an exquisitely
beautiful face. The brow is ample, the lips thin but mobile, the eyes
a grayish-blue, the hair and beard a golden red (as of ‘red monie’
of the ballads) or goldenly chestnut, the nose with semi-transparent
nostril and keen, the chin firm-poised, the expression refined and
delicate. Altogether just such ‘presentment,’ of the Poet of Beauty
_par excellence_ as one would have imagined. To be placed next is the
older face of the Dowager Countess of Chesterfield. It is identically
the same face. But there is more roundness of chin, more fulness
or ripening of the lips (especially the under), more restfulness.
There is not the ‘fragile’ look of the Fitzhardinge miniature. Hair
and eyes agree with the miniature. The only other with a pedigree
or sufficiently authenticated,--not mere ‘copies,’ such as those at
Pembroke College,--is the very remarkable one that came down as a
Devonshire heirloom to the Rev. S. Baring Gould, M.A., with a companion
of Sir Walter Raleigh.
“Both have been in the family beyond record. This shows the poet in the
full strength of manhood. It is a kind of three-quarter profile, and as
one studies it, it seems to vindicate itself as ‘our sage and serious
Spenser.’ Again, hair and eyes agree with the others. The Spaniard’s
haughty face, for long engraved and re-engraved, ought never to have
been engraved as Spenser. There is not a jot or tittle of evidence in
its favour. It is an absolutely un-English, and palpably Spanish face,
and an impossible portrait of our Poet.”
[Sidenote: Payne Collier’s _Life of Spenser_. *]
“Several portraits of Spenser are in existence; but it is difficult to
settle the degree of authenticity belonging to them. The late Mr. Rodd,
of Newport Street, had a miniature of the poet in his possession in
1845, and perhaps afterwards, which corresponded pretty exactly with
the ordinary representations, but what became of it is not known to us.
The features were sharp and delicately formed, the nose long, and the
mouth refined; but the lower part of the face projected, and the high
forehead receded, while the eyes and eyebrows did not very harmoniously
range.”
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Men_. *]
“Mr. Beeston sayes he was a little man, wore short haire, little band,
and little cuffs.”
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
1815-1881
[Sidenote: _Harper’s Magazine_, 1881.]
“He was at that time (and indeed always remained) very slight of his
age, of rather florid complexion, and with a singularly bright, quick,
and yet often dreamy expression. He wore his hat rather on the back of
his head, and walked with queer little short shuffling paces, rather on
his heels, so that you could tell him by his gait at any distance--a
singular contrast to the Doctor’s long shambling stride as they
walked along at the side of Mrs. Arnold’s gray pony on half-holiday
afternoons.”--1834.
[Sidenote: _Macmillan_, 1881.]
“Il n’improvisait jamais; il lisait avec gravité, avec une force réelle
qui étonnait, sortant d’un corps si fragile, mais avec une sorte de
monotonie. L’action oratoire manquait de variété et d’abandon; c’était
toujours la même note. Du reste, personne n’avait l’oreille moins
musicale que le doyen.... D’une complexion délicate, de petite taille,
son corps semblait n’être qu’un prétexte pour être, et pour retenir son
esprit dans le monde visible.”
[Sidenote: _Temple Bar_, 1881.]
“Dean Stanley, like so many great men, possessed some strongly-marked
personal characteristics. If he was superintendent in some qualities
there were some of which he was almost altogether destitute. He was
utterly careless of personal appearance, and of external circumstances.
Short and spare in figure, there was a beauty and a dignity about him
that made his presence a perpetual pleasure. Those clear-cut features,
the beautiful forehead, and the silvery head of hair, will remain
photographed on the minds of this generation. When in the performance
of any sacred or secular function, the more crowded his auditory, the
more he was at ease. There must be many who can remember him as he used
to stand at the lectern in the Abbey waiting to read the lesson in one
of those crowded services in the nave, with the people clustered even
round his feet, and yet unconsciously, as if in his own library, with
the old familiar action, passing his hand across his face and ruffling
up his head.”
SIR RICHARD STEELE
1671-1729
[Sidenote: Thackeray’s _English Humourists_.]
“Dennis, who ran a-muck at the literary society of his day, falls foul
of poor Steele, and thus depicts him: ‘Sir John Edgar, of the County
of ---- in Ireland, is of a middle stature, broad shoulders, thick
legs, a shape like the picture of somebody over a farmer’s chimney; a
short chin, a short nose, a short forehead, a broad, flat face, and a
dusky countenance. Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered
at sixty that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more
mortified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by any reflection
made upon his honour or understanding.’”
[Sidenote: _Dublin University Magazine_, 1858. *]
“The interior of a coffee-house at Hyde Park Corner. Here in a room
small and meanly furnished, sit two men who have just arrived in a
handsome carriage, which is at this moment driving from the door. One
of these is Richard Savage; the other, who is fully twenty years his
senior, is a _beau_ and a _militaire_, being a Captain in Lord Lucas’s
regiment of Fusileer Guards. With a somewhat diminutive stature and
a long dress sword; he has laced ruffles in abundance on his shirt
sleeves and at his bosom, but not a shadow on his smiling face; with an
air at that time styled ‘genteel,’ in these days called _distingué_.
Around this gentleman’s agreeable face and person there is a brilliant
atmosphere of life and animation, for the three Celtic characteristics
are his--vivacity, volatility, and versatility,--by turns the curse
and advantage, the obstacle and ornament of his nation,--for he is an
Irishman, and his name is Sir Richard Steele.”
[Sidenote: Swift’s _Works_.]
“He has naturally a downcast foreboding aspect, which they of the
country hereabouts call a hanging look, and an unseemly manner of
staring, with his mouth wide open, and under-lip propending, especially
when any ways disturbed.... He takes a great deal of pains to persuade
his neighbours that he has a very short face, and a little flat nose
like a diminutive wart in the middle of his visage.... His eyes are
large and prominent, too big of all conscience for the conceited
narrowness of his phiz.... His back, though not very broad, is well
turned, and will bear a great deal; I have seen him myself, more
than once, carry a vast load of timber. His legs also are tolerably
substantial, and can stride very wide upon occasion; but the best thing
about him is a handsome pair of heels, which he takes especial pride
to show, not only to his friends, but even to the very worst of his
enemies.”
LAURENCE STERNE
1713-1768
[Sidenote: Sir Walter Scott’s _Memoir of Sterne_. *]
“We are well acquainted with Sterne’s features and personal appearance,
to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a
hectic and consumptive appearance. His features, though capable of
expressing with peculiar effect the sentimental emotions by which
he was often affected, had also a shrewd, humorous, and sarcastic
expression, proper to the wit and the satirist. His conversation was
as animated as witty, but Johnson complained that it was marked by
licence, better suiting the company of the Lord of Crazy Castle than of
the great moralist.”
[Sidenote: Timbs’s _Anecdote Biography_. *]
“In the same year (1761) that Reynolds exhibited the large equestrian
portrait of Lord Ligonier, now in the National Gallery, he also
exhibited the half-length of Sterne, seated, and leaning on his hand.
This portrait was painted for the Earl of Ossary, and afterwards came
into the possession of Lord Holland, on whose death in 1840, it was
purchased for 500 guineas by the Marquis of Lansdowne. ‘This,’ says
Mrs. Jameson, ‘is the most astonishing head for truth of character
I ever beheld; I do not except Titian; the character, to be sure,
is different: the subtle evanescent expression of satire round the
lips, the shrewd significance in the eye, the earnest contemplative
attitude,--all convey the strongest impression of the man, of his
peculiar genius, and peculiar humour.’”
[Sidenote: _Memoir of Sterne._ *]
“Speaking of Sterne’s physiognomy, Lavater says, ‘In this face
you discover the arch, satirical Sterne, the shrewd and exquisite
observer, more limited in his object, but on that very account more
profound,--you discover him, I say, in the eyes, in the space which
separates them, in the nose and the mouth of this figure.’”
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
1608-1641
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_.]
“His picture, which is like him, before his poems, says that he was
but twenty-eight years old when he dyed. He was of middle stature and
slight strength, brisque round eie, reddish fac’t, and red-nosed (ill
liver), his head not very big, his hayre a kind of sand colour, his
beard turn’d up naturally, so that he had a brisk and graceful looke.
He died a batchelour.”
[Sidenote: W. C. Hazlitt’s _Life of Sir John Suckling_.]
“He was a man of grave deportment and very comely person: of a fair
complexion, with good features and flaxen haire.”
[Sidenote: W. C. Hazlitt’s _Life of Sir John Suckling_. *]
“In person he was of a middle size, though but slightly made, with a
winning and graceful carriage, and noble features.”
JONATHAN SWIFT
1667-1745
[Sidenote: Scott’s _Life of Swift_. *]
“Swift was in person tall, strong, and well made, of a dark complexion,
but with blue eyes, black and bushy eyebrows, nose somewhat aquiline,
and features which remarkably expressed the stern, haughty, and
dauntless turn of his mind. He was never known to laugh, and his smiles
are happily characterised by the well-known lines of Shakespeare.
Indeed the whole description of Cassius might be applied to Swift:
‘He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men; ...
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort,
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.’
... In youth he was reckoned handsome; Pope observed that though his
face had an expression of dulness, his eyes were very particular. They
were as azure, he said, as the heavens, and had an unusual expression
of acuteness. In old age the Dean’s countenance conveyed an expression
which, though severe, was noble and impressive.”
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Swift_. *]
“The person of Swift had not many recommendations. He had a kind
of muddy complexion which, though he washed himself with oriental
scrupulosity, did not look clear. He had a countenance sour and severe,
which he seldom softened by an appearance of gaiety. He stubbornly
resisted any tendency to laughter.”
[Sidenote: Thomas Roscoe’s _Life of Dean Swift_. *]
“Swift was of middle stature, inclining to tall, robust, and manly,
with strongly-marked and regular features. He had a high forehead,
a handsome nose, and large piercing blue eyes, which retained their
lustre to the last. He had an extremely agreeable and expressive
countenance, which, in the words of the unfortunate Vanessa, sometimes
shone with a divine compassion,--at others, the most engaging vivacity,
indignation, fearful passion, and striking awe. His mouth was pleasing,
he had a fine regular set of teeth, a round double chin with a small
dimple; his complexion a light olive or pale brown. His voice was
sharp, strong, high-toned; but he was a bad reader, especially of
verses, and disliked music. His mien was erect, his head firm, and his
whole deportment commanding. There was a sternness and severity in his
aspect which wit and gaiety did not entirely remove. When pleased he
would smile, but never laughed aloud.... In his person he was neat and
clean even to superstition, and appeared regularly dressed in his gown
every morning, to receive the visits of his most familiar friends.”
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
1811-1863
[Sidenote: Theodore Taylor’s _Thackeray_.]
“As for the man himself who has lectured us, he is a stout, healthful,
broad-shouldered specimen of a man, with cropped grayish hair, and
keenish gray eyes, peering very sharply through a pair of spectacles
that have a very satiric focus. He seems to stand strongly on his own
feet, as if he would not be easily blown about or upset, either by
praise or pugilists; a man of good digestion, who takes the world easy,
and scents all shams and humours (straightening them between his thumb
and forefinger) as he would a pinch of snuff.”--1852.
[Sidenote: Stoddard’s _Anecdote Biography of Thackeray_.]
“Good portraits of Thackeray are so common, and so many of your
readers saw him in the lecture-room, that I need not describe his
person. The misshaped nose, so broad at the bridge and so stubby at
the end, was the effect of an early accident. His near-sightedness,
unless hereditary, must have had, I think, a similar origin, for no
man had less the appearance of a student who had weakened his sight by
application to books. In his gestures--especially in the act of bowing
to a lady--there was a certain awkwardness, made more conspicuous by
his tall, well-proportioned, and really commanding figure. His hair,
at forty, was already gray, but abundant and massy; the cheeks had a
ruddy tinge, and there was no sallowness in the complexion; the eyes,
keen and kindly even when they bore a sarcastic expression, twinkled
through and sometimes over the spectacles. What I should call the
predominant expression of the countenance was courage--a readiness to
face the world on its own terms, without either bawling or whining,
asking no favour, yielding, if at all, from magnanimity. I have seen
but two faces on which this expression, coupled with that of high and
intellectual power, was equally striking--those of Daniel Webster
and Thomas Carlyle. But the former had a saturnine gloom even in its
animation, and the latter a variety and intensity of expression which
was absent from Thackeray’s.”
[Sidenote: Watts’s _Great Novelists_.]
“In stature he was tall and commanding, and he walked erect. With
gray eyes--not over luminous--and a noble brow, his appearance was
confident, but never conceited or aggressive. He wore long hair, and,
but for a small whisker, shaved clean. His features, if anything,
were immobile; the nose, which had been fractured in youth at the
Charterhouse, was, like Milton’s, ‘a thoughtful one,’ and the nostrils
were full and wide, as are those of all men of genius, according to
Balzac.”
JAMES THOMSON
1700-1748
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Thomson_.]
“Thomson was of stature above the middle size, and ‘more fat than bard
beseems,’ of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting
appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select
friends, and by his friends very tenderly and warmly beloved.”
[Sidenote: Murdoch’s _Thomson_.]
“Our author himself hints, somewhere in his works, that his exterior
was not the most promising--his make being rather robust than graceful,
though it is known that in his youth he had been thought handsome. His
worst appearance was when you saw him walking alone in a thoughtful
mood, but let a friend accost him and enter into conversation, he would
instantly brighten into a most amiable aspect, his features no longer
the same, and his eye darting a peculiar animating fire. The case was
much alike in company, where, if it was mixed or very numerous, he made
but an indifferent figure, but with a few select friends he was open,
sprightly, and entertaining. His wit flowed freely but pertinently, and
at due intervals leaving room for every one to contribute his share.
Such was his extreme sensibility, so perfect the harmony of his organs
with the sentiments of his mind, that his looks always announced and
half expressed what he was about to say, and his voice corresponded
exactly to the manner and degree in which he was affected.”
[Sidenote: Rossetti’s _Memoir of Thomson_. *]
“Thomson was above the middle size, of a fat and bulky form, with a
face that might almost be called dull, and an uninviting heavy look,
although in his early youth he had even been counted handsome, and his
eyes were expressive. He was mostly taciturn, save in the company of
his familiar friends; with them he was cheerful and pleasant, and he
secured their attachment in an eminent degree.”
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
1815-1882
[Sidenote: A personal friend.]
“I remember a man hitting off a very good description of Trollope’s
manner, by remarking that ‘he came in at the door like a frantic
windmill.’ The bell would peal, the knocker begin thundering, the door
be burst open, and the next minute the house be filled by the big
resonant voice inquiring who was at home. I should say he had naturally
a sweet voice, which through eagerness he had spoilt by holloing. He
was a big man, and the most noticeable thing about his dress was a
black handkerchief which he wore tied _twice_ round his neck. A trick
of his was to put the end of a silk pocket-handkerchief in his mouth
and to keep gnawing at it--often biting it into holes in the excess
of his energy; and a favourite attitude was to stand with his thumbs
tucked into the armholes of his waistcoat. He was a full-coloured man,
and joking and playful when at his ease. Unless with his intimates,
he rarely laughed, but he had a funny way of putting things, and was
usually voted good company.”
[Sidenote: A personal friend.]
“Trollope said his height was five feet ten, but most people would
have thought him taller. He was a stout man, large of limb, and always
held himself upright without effort. His manner was bluff, hearty, and
genial, and he possessed to the full the great charm of giving his
undivided attention to the matter in hand. He was always enthusiastic
and energetic in whatever he did. He was of an eager disposition, and
doing nothing was a pain to him. In early manhood he became bald; in
his latter life his full and bushy beard naturally grew to be gray. He
had thick eyebrows, and his open nostrils gave a look of determination
to his strong capable face. His eyes were grayish-blue, but he was
rarely seen without spectacles, though of late years he used to take
them off whenever he was reading. From a boy he had always been
short-sighted.”
[Sidenote: A personal friend.]
“Standing with his back to the fire, with his hands clasped behind
him and his feet planted somewhat apart, the appearance of Anthony
Trollope, as I recall him now, was that of a thorough Englishman in
a thoroughly English attitude. He was then, perhaps, nearing sixty,
and had far more the look of a country gentleman than of a man of
letters. Tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a careless though not
slovenly fashion, it seemed more fitting that he should break into
a vivid description of the latest run with the hounds than launch
into book-talk. Either subject, however, and for the matter of that
I might add _any_ subject, was attacked by him with equal energy.
In writing of the man, this, indeed, is the chief impression I
recall--his energy, his thoroughness. While he talked to me, I and
my interests might have been the only things for which he cared; and
any passing topic of conversation was, for the moment, the one and
absorbing topic in the world. Being short-sighted, he had a habit of
peering through his glasses which contracted his brows and gave him the
appearance of a perpetual frown, and, indeed, his expression when in
repose was decidedly severe. This, however, vanished when he spoke. He
talked well, and had generally a great deal to say; but his talk was
disjointed, and he but rarely laughed. In manner he was brusque, and
one of his most striking peculiarities was his voice, which was of an
extraordinarily large compass.”--1873.
EDMUND WALLER
1605-1687
[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_.]
“His intellectuals are very good yet; but he growes feeble. He is
somewhat above a middle stature, thin body, not at all robust: fine
thin skin, his face somewhat of an olivaster; his hayre frized, of a
brownish colour, full eie, popping out and working; ovall faced, his
forehead high and full of wrinkles. His head but small, braine very
hott, and apt to be cholerique. _Quarto doctior, eo iracundior._--CIC.
He is somewhat magisteriall, and hath received a great mastership of
the English language. He is of admirable elocution, and gracefull, and
exceeding ready.”--1680.
[Sidenote: _Life of Edmund Waller._ *]
“Waller’s person was handsome and graceful. That delicacy of soul
which produces instinctive propriety, gave him an easy manner, which
was improved and finished by a polite education, and by a familiar
intercourse with the Great. The symmetry of his features was dignified
with a manly aspect, and his eye was animated with sentiment and
poetry. His elocution, like his verse, was musical and flowing. In the
senate, indeed, it often assumed a vigorous and majestick tone, which,
it must be owned, is not a leading characteristick of his numbers....
His conversation was chatised by politeness, enriched by learning, and
brightened by wit.”
[Sidenote: _An account of the life of Mr. Edmund Waller._ *]
“’Twas the politeness of his manners, as well as the excellence of his
genius, which endeared him to these foreign wits. All the world knows
Mr. St. Evremond was polite almost to a fault, for ev’ry virtue has its
opposite vice, and this has affectation; and yet writing to my Lord St.
Albans he says, ‘Mr. Waller vous garde une conversation délicieuse, je
ne suis pas si vain de vous _parleur_ de mienne.’... We shall close
what we intend to say of his manners and personal endowments with the
Earl of Clarendon’s short character of him: ‘There was of the House
of Commons one Mr. Waller, and a gentleman of very good fortune and
estate, and of admirable parts and faculty of wit, and of an intimate
conversation with those who had that reputation.’ This, and what has
been taken out of his lordship’s history which has respect to Mr.
Waller’s qualities, confirm the judgment we endeavour to form of him
that he was one of the most polite, the most gallant, and the most
witty men of his time, and he supported that character above half a
century.”
HORACE WALPOLE
1717-1797
[Sidenote: _Walpoliana._]
“The person of Horace Walpole was short and slender, but compact and
neatly formed. When viewed from behind he had somewhat of a boyish
appearance, owing to the form of his person, and the simplicity of his
dress. His features may be seen in many portraits; but none can express
the placid goodness of his eyes, which would often sparkle with sudden
rays of wit, or dart forth flashes of the most keen and intuitive
intelligence. His laugh was forced and uncouth, and even his smile not
the most pleasing. His walk was enfeebled by the gout; which, if the
editor’s memory do not deceive, he mentioned he had been tormented
with since the age of twenty-five.... This painful complaint not only
affected his feet, but attacked his hands to such a degree that his
fingers were always swelled and deformed.... His engaging manners and
gentle endearing affability to his friends exceed all praise.”
[Sidenote: Cunningham’s _Letters of Walpole_. *]
“The person of Horace Walpole[6] was short and slender, but compact,
and neatly formed. When viewed from behind he had, from the simplicity
of his dress, somewhat of a boyish appearance: fifty years ago, he
says, ‘Mr. Winnington told me I ran along like a pewet.’ His forehead
was high and pale. His eyes remarkably bright and penetrating. His
laugh was forced and uncouth, and his smile not the most pleasing.
His walk, for more than half his life, was enfeebled by the gout,
which not only affected his feet, but attacked his hands. Latterly
his fingers were swelled and deformed, having, as he would say, more
chalk-stones than joints in them, and adding with a smile, that he
must set up an inn, for he could chalk a score with more ease and
rapidity than any man in England.... His entrance into a room was
in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had made almost
natural--_chapeau bras_ between his hands as if he wished to compress
it, or under his arm, knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of
a wet floor. His summer dress of ceremony was usually a lavender suit,
the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked
in the tambour, partridge silk stockings, gold buckles, ruffles, and
lace frills. In winter he wore powder. He disliked hats, and in his
grounds at Strawberry would even in winter walk without one. The same
antipathy, Cole tells us, extended to a greatcoat.”
[Sidenote: Hawkins’s _Memoirs_.]
“His figure was not merely tall, but more properly long and slender to
excess; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy
paleness. His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark
and lively: his voice was not strong, but his tones were exceedingly
pleasant, and if I may say so, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember
his common gait; he always entered a room in that style of affected
delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural--_chapeau bras_
between his hands, as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm,
knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His
dress in visiting was most usually, in summer, when I most saw him,
a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or
of white silk worked in the tambour, partridge silk stockings, and
gold buckles, ruffles and frill generally lace. I remember, when a
child, thinking him very much under-dressed, if at any time, except in
mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer, no powder, but his wig
combed straight, and showing his very smooth, pale forehead, and queued
behind; in winter, powder.”
IZAAC WALTON
1593-1683
[Sidenote: Zouch’s _Memoir of Izaac Walton_. *]
“The features of the countenance often enable us to form a judgment,
not very fallible, of the disposition of the mind. In few portraits
can this discovery be more successfully pursued than in that of Izaac
Walton. Lavater, the acute master of physiognomy, would, I think,
instantly acknowledge in it the decisive traits of the original,--mild
complacency, forbearance, mature consideration, calm activity, peace,
sound understanding, power of thought, discerning attention, and
secretly active friendship. Happy in his unblemished integrity, happy
in the approbation and esteem of others, he inwraps himself in his own
virtue. The exaltation of a good conscience eminently shines forth in
this venerable person--
‘Candida semper
Gaudia, et in vultu curarum ignara voluptas.’”
JOHN WILSON
1785-1854
[Sidenote: de Quincey’s _Life and writings_.]
“William Wordsworth it was who ... did me the favour of making me
known to John Wilson.... A man in a sailor’s dress, manifestly in
robust health, _fervidus juventa_, and wearing upon his countenance
a powerful expression of ardour and animated intelligence, mixed
with much good nature. ‘Mr. Wilson of Elleray’--delivered as the
formula of introduction, in the deep tones of Mr. Wordsworth--at once
banished the momentary surprise I felt on finding a stranger where I
had expected nobody, and substituted a surprise of another kind; and
there was no wonder in his being at Allan Bank, Elleray standing within
nine miles; but (as usually happens in such cases) I felt a shock of
surprise on seeing a person so little corresponding to the one I had
at first half-consciously prefigured. Figure to yourself a tall man
about six feet high, within half an inch or so, built with tolerable
appearance of strength; but at the date of my description (that is, in
the very spring-tide and bloom of youth) wearing, for the predominant
character of his person, lightness and agility or (in our Westmoreland
phrase) _lishness_, he seemed framed with an express view to gymnastic
exercises of every sort. Ask in one of your public libraries for that
little quarto edition of the ‘_Rhetorical Works of Cicero_’ ... and you
will there see ... a reduced whole-length of Cicero from the antique,
which in the mouth and chin, and indeed generally, if I do not greatly
forget, will give you a lively representation of the contour and
expression of Professor Wilson’s face. Of all this array of personal
features, however, I then saw nothing at all, my attention being
altogether occupied with Mr. Wilson’s conversation and demeanour, which
were in the highest degree agreeable; the points which chiefly struck
me, being the humility and gravity with which he spoke of himself, his
large expansion of heart, and a certain air of noble frankness which
overspread everything he said; he seemed to have an intense enjoyment
of life; indeed, being young, rich, healthy, and full of intellectual
activity, it could not be very wonderful that he should feel happy and
pleased with himself and others; but it was something unusual to find
that so rare an assemblage of endowments had communicated no tinge of
arrogance to his manner, or at all disturbed the general temperance of
his mind.”--1808.
[Sidenote: Harriet Martineau’s _Biographical Sketches_.]
“If the marvel of his eloquence is not lessened, it is at least
accounted for to those who have seen him,--or even his portrait. Such
a presence is rarely seen; and more than one person has said that he
reminded them of the first man, Adam, so full was that large frame
of vitality, force, and sentience. His tread seemed almost to shake
the streets, his eye almost saw through stone walls, and as for his
voice, there was no heart which could stand before it. He swept away
all hearts, whithersoever he would. No less striking was it to see him
in a mood of repose, as when he steered the old packet-boat that used
to pass between Bowness and Ambleside, before the steamers were put
upon the Lake. Sitting motionless with his hand upon the rudder, in
the presence of journey-men and market-women, with his eyes apparently
looking beyond everything into nothing, and his mouth closed under his
beard, as if he meant never to speak again, he was quite as impressive
and immortal an image as he could have been to the students of his
class or the comrades of his jovial hours.”
[Sidenote: Forster’s _Life of Dickens_.]
“Walking up and down the hall of the courts of law (which was full
of advocates, writers to the signet, clerks, and idlers), was a
tall, burly, handsome man of eight and fifty, with a gait like
O’Connell’s, the bluest eye you can imagine, and long hair--longer than
mine--falling down in a wild way under the broad brim of his hat. He
had on a surtout coat, a blue checked shirt; the collar standing up,
and kept in its place with a wisp of black neckerchief; no waistcoat;
and a large pocket-handkerchief thrust into his breast, which was all
broad and open. At his heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed, shaggy devil
of a terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, now
with one man beside him, now with another, and now quite alone, but
always at a fast, rolling pace, with his head in the air, and his eyes
as wide open as he could get them. I guessed it was Wilson; and it was.
A bright, clear-complexioned, mountain-looking fellow, he looks as
though he had just come down from the Highlands and had never in his
life taken pen in hand. But he has had an attack of paralysis in his
right arm within this month. He winced when I shook hands with him, and
once or twice when we were walking up and down slipped as if he had
stumbled on a piece of orange-peel. He is a great fellow to look at,
and to talk to; and, if you could divest your mind of the actual Scott,
is just the figure you would put in his place.”--1841.
ELLEN WOOD
(MRS. HENRY WOOD)
1814-1887
[Sidenote: _The Argosy_, 1887.]
“The face was a pure oval of the most refined description; that
perfection of form that is so rarely seen. A small, straight, very
delicate and refined nose; teeth of dazzling whiteness, entire to the
day of her death; a perfect mouth, revealing at once the sensitiveness
and tender sympathy of her nature, and the steadfastness of her
disposition. Her eyes were unusually large, dark, and flashing, with
a penetrating gaze that seemed to read your inmost thoughts. One felt
that everything before her had to be outspoken; for if you uttered
only half your thoughts, she would certainly divine the rest.... The
head was well set upon the shoulders; a head perfect in form, small
except where the intellectual faculties were developed. Her complexion
was dazzling, the most lovely bloom at all times contrasting with the
brilliant whiteness of her skin. In hours of animation I have watched
the delicate flush come and go a hundred times in as many minutes
across her wonderful countenance; and, to record the simile once used
by a friend in speaking to me of this peculiar beauty, ‘chasing each
other like the rosy clouds of sunrise sweeping across a summer sky.’
She had a very keen sense of wit and humour. This strange beauty
remained with her to the end. Even in hours of illness and suffering
it never forsook her. Her face never lost its look of youth. It was
absolutely without line or wrinkle or any mark or sign of age. She kept
to the last the complexion and freshness of a young girl; that strange
radiancy which seemed the reflection of some unseen glory. This was so
great that to the last we were unable to realise that death could come
to her.”
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
1770-1850
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“Mr. Wordsworth ... had a dignified manner, with a deep and roughish
but not unpleasing voice, and an exalted mode of speaking. He had a
habit of keeping his left hand in the bosom of his waistcoat; and
in this attitude, except when he turned round to take one of the
subjects of his criticism from the shelves (for his contemporaries were
there also), he sat dealing forth his eloquent but hardly catholic
judgments.... Walter Scott said that the eyes of Burns were the finest
he ever saw. I cannot say the same of Mr. Wordsworth; that is, not in
the sense of the beautiful, or even of the profound. But certainly I
never beheld eyes which looked so inspired and supernatural. They were
like fires half burning, half smouldering with a sort of acrid fixture
of regard, and seated at the further end of two caverns. One might
imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes. The finest eyes, in
every sense of the word, which I have ever seen in a man’s head (and I
have seen many fine ones), are those of Thomas Carlyle.”--1815.
[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]
“His features were large, and not suddenly expressive; they conveyed
little idea of the ‘poetic fire’ usually associated with brilliant
imagination. His eyes were mild and up-looking, his mouth coarse rather
than refined, his forehead high rather than broad; but every action
seemed considerate, and every look self-possessed, while his voice,
low in tone, had that persuasive eloquence which invariably ‘moves
men.’”--1832.
[Sidenote: Carlyle’s _Reminiscences_.]
“... He (Wordsworth) talked well in his way; with veracity, easy
brevity, and force, as a wise tradesman would of his tools and
workshop,--and as no unwise one could. His voice was good, frank, and
sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, and forcible, rather
than melodious; the tone of him business-like, sedately confident; no
discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being courteous. A fine wholesome
rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart
veteran, and on all he said and did. You would have said he was a
usually taciturn man; glad to unlock himself to audience sympathetic
and intelligent when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much,
not always peaceful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent
so much as close, impregnable, and hard: a man _multa tacere loquive
paratus_, in a world where he had experienced no lack of contradictions
as he strode along! The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a
quiet clearness; there was enough of brow, and well-shaped; rather
too much of cheek (‘horse face’ I have heard satirists say); face of
squarish shape, and decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was
(its ‘length’ going horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still
firm-knit, tall, and strong-looking when he stood, a right good old
steel-gray figure, with rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a
vivacious strength looking through him which might have suited one of
those old steel-gray markgrafs whom Henry the Fowler set up to ward the
‘marches’ and do battle with the heathen in a stalwart and judicious
manner.”
SIR HENRY WOTTON
1568-1639
[Sidenote: _Reliquiæ Wottoninæ_]
“He returned out of _Italy_ in _England_ about the thirtieth year of
his age, being then noted by many, both for his person and comportment;
for indeed he was of a choice shape, tall of stature, and of a most
persuasive behaviour; which was so mixed with sweet Discourse and
Civilities, as gained him much love from all Persons with whom he
entered into an acquaintance. And whereas he was noted in his Youth
to have a sharp Wit, and apt to jest; that, by Time, Travel, and
Conversation, was so polished, and made so useful, that his company
seemed to be one of the delights of mankind.”--1598.
[Sidenote: M. E. W. *]
“An eminently lovable face, albeit there is something in the
gravely-set mouth which recalls the old Elizabethan expression ‘_My
Dearest Dread_.’ The love of those about him for this tender-worded
amourous poet, this gentle student, this courtly gentleman, must have
struggled hard for the mastery with that reverence which they must have
felt for the learned author, the friend of kings, the diplomatist.
Something of all this, I fancy, shows in the face and figure of the man
as Jansen has portrayed him in the picture now hanging in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. The high square brow from which the hair has been
brushed up and back in short silky waves, the strongly-marked eyebrows,
the long straight nose,--they all speak of good brains and an iron
will; while there is a suspicion of daintiness in the close-cropped
whiskers, trimly-pointed beard, and flowing moustache. The eyes are
his finest feature, large and oval, with the eyelid drooping somewhat
at the outer edge, which gives him a look of sadness. So far from
bending forward under the orthodox student’s-stoop, Sir Henry is tall,
straight, and broad-shouldered, for he comes of a fighting race, and
there is more of the soldier than of the scholar in his appearance.
The hands are strong, nervous, and well shaped; the dress that of
a sober-minded gentleman. That word indeed sums up his personal
appearance as fully as it does his character: the portrait of Sir Henry
Wotton is emphatically that of a gentleman.”
THE END.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
_S. & H._
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON’S
LIST OF WORKS
FOR
_OCTOBER & NOVEMBER_
1887.
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=AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES= OF W. P. FRITH, R.A. In two
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=WHAT I REMEMBER.= By THOMAS ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. In two vols., demy
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=THE LAST OF THE VALOIS: and the= Accession of Henry of Navarre,
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=WORD PORTRAITS of FAMOUS WRITERS.= Edited by MABEL E. WOTTON. In
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XV
=A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLDEN TIME.= FRANÇOIS DE SCÉPEAUX, SIRE DE
VIEILLEVILLE, 1509-1571. From the French of Madame C. Coignet, by
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LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST.
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] All wool.
[2] “Prively a _penner_ gan he borwe,
And in a lettre wrote he all his sorwe!”
_Marchant’s Tale_, l. 9753.
[3] A puppet.
[4] Shy, reserved.
[5] _Q. Quot feet I am high? Resp. of middle stature._
[6] Drawn from Pinkerton, Miss Hawkins, Coles MSS. and his letters.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Archaic spelling that may have been in use at the time of publication
has been preserved.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been preserved.
One unpaired double quotation mark could not be corrected.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Word Portraits of Famous Writers" ***
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