RICHARD SAVAGE
1697-1743
Dublin University,
Magazine, 1858.
*
“His companion, Who is he? He looks a little older, and is a great deal slenderer, and very much better dressed; that is, his clothes are well made, but alas! they are also well worn. He has an air of faded fashion about him. There is decision in every line of the lank, and long, and melancholy visage; it is a veritable Quixotic face. Meagre and proud, and high and pale. An exceeding ‘woeful countenance,’ which sadness and scorn alternately cloud and corrugate. It is mixed up with extreme diversities. The brow and eye are intellectual and bright, while the lower features are sensual and coarse: humour and passion both lurk in the mouth, yet few smiles expand those lips from which laughter seems altogether banished, while the voice is sweet, soft, and lute-like; the pace is slow, and the gait has a certain pretension to importance, which ill harmonises with the rest of his appearance. This person is Richard Savage, a man whose rare talents might have brought him poetic immortality, and a lofty pedestal in the muse’s temple, had not his coarser vices, together with his pride and his ingratitude, dragged him down to the lowest moral depth, and buried the many bright things he had in brain and bosom, head and heart, in the same mud-heap.”
Johnson’s Life
of Savage.
“He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, a long visage, coarse features, and melancholy aspect; of a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity of mien, but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, softened into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk was slow, and his voice tremulous and mournful. He was easily excited to smiles, but very seldom provoked to laughter.”
SIR WALTER SCOTT
1771-1832
Lockhart’s Life
of Scott.
“His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging. A lady of high rank, who remembers him in the Old Assembly Rooms, says, ‘Young Walter Scott was a comely creature.’ He had outgrown the sallowness of early ill-health, and had a fresh, brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, open, and well set, with a changeful radiance, to which teeth of the most perfect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble expanse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His smile was always delightful; and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness and gravity, with playful innocent hilarity and humour in the expression, as being well calculated to fix a fair lady’s eye. His figure, excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those days have been eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual standard, it was cast in the very mould of a young Hercules; the head set on with singular grace, the throat and chest after the truest model of the antique, the hands delicately finished; the whole outline that of extraordinary vigour, without as yet a touch of clumsiness. When he had acquired a little facility of manner, his conversation must have been such as could have dispensed with any exterior advantages, and certainly brought swift forgiveness for the one unkindness of nature. I have heard him, in talking of this part of his life, say, with an arch simplicity of look and tone which those who were familiar with him can fill in for themselves—‘It was a proud night with me when I first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth her while to sit and talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of the ball-room, while all the world were capering in our view.’”—1790.