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.”
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
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.”
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.”