Chapter M: E. W (2)

“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_.]