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.”

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

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.’”

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.”