Part 5

“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.