“He was distinctly below the middle height, not above five feet seven inches, but he had a certain dignity of carriage, despite the entire absence of any self-assertion of manner, which in the pulpit, where only his head and shoulders were observable, removed the impression of small stature.... His hair was now of a silvery white, very ample in quantity, fine and soft as silk. The rush of his start for a walk had gone. His movements had, like his life, become quiet and measured. At no time had there been so much beauty about his face and figure. There was now—partly from manner, partly from face, partly from a character that seemed expressed in all,—beauty which seemed to shine round him, and was very commonly observed by those amongst whom he was. It made undergraduates, not specially impressionable, stop and watch him.... Servants and poor people whom he visited often spoke of him as ‘beautiful.’”—1866.

The Spectator,
1872.

“Yet though Mr. Maurice’s voice seemed to be the essential part of him as a religious teacher, his face, if you ever looked at it, was quite in keeping with his voice. His eye was full of sweetness, but fixed, and, as it were, fascinated on some ideal point. His countenance expressed nervous, high-strung tension, as though all the various play of feelings in ordinary human nature converged, in him, towards a single focus, the declaration of the divine purpose. Yet this tension, this peremptoriness, this convergence of his whole nature on a single point, never gave the effect of a dictatorial air for a moment. There was a quiver in his voice, a tremulousness in the strong deep lines of his face, a tenderness in his eye, which assured you at once that nothing of the hard crystallising character of a dogmatic belief in the Absolute had conquered his heart, and most men recognised this, for the hardest and most business-like voices took a tender and almost caressing tone in addressing him.”

JOHN MILTON
1608-1674

D’Israeli’s
Curiosities of
Literature.

“Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man, an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being composed of nothing but skin and bone, a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys; and rising into a poetic frenzy applies to him the words of Virgil: ‘Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.’ Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches mediocrity than the diminutive; that he still felt the same courage and the same strength which he possessed when young, when, with his sword, he felt no difficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, was sufficiently creditable to him: for though he had passed his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years younger. And very pathetically he adds, ‘That even his eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their appearance; in this instance alone, and much against my inclination, I am a deceiver!’”

Aubrey’s
Lives of
Eminent
Persons.

“He was scarce as tall as I am.[5] He had light browne hayre. His complexion exceeding fayre. Ovall face, his eie a darke gray. His widowe has his picture drawne very well and like, when a Cambridge scollar. She has his picture when a Cambridge scollar, which ought to be engraven; for the pictures before his books are not at all like him.... He was a spare man.... Extreme pleasant in his conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satyricall. He pronounced the letter r very hard. He had a delicate tuneable voice, and had good skill. His harmonicall and ingeniose soul did lodge in a beautiful and well-proportioned body:—‘In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit.’—Ovid.”

Keightley’s
Life of Milton.
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