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
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.
Lockhart’s
Peter’s Letters.