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WORD PORTRAITS
OF
FAMOUS WRITERS
WORD PORTRAITS
OF
FAMOUS WRITERS
EDITED BY
MABEL E. WOTTON
‘What manner of man is he?’
Twelfth Night
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1887
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.
INTRODUCTION
“The world has always been fond ofpersonal details respecting men who havebeen celebrated.” These were the words ofLord Beaconsfield, and with them he prefixedhis description of the personal appearance ofIsaac D’Israeli; but we hardly need thedictum of our greatest statesman to convinceourselves that at all events every honestliterature-lover takes a very real interest inthe individuality of those men whose namesare perpetually on his lips. It is not enoughfor such a one merely to make himselffamiliar with their writings. It does notsuffice for him that the Essays of Elia, forinstance, can be got by heart, but he feels that[Pg viii]he must also be able to linger in the playgroundat Christ’s with the “lame-footedboy,” and in after years pace the Templegardens with the gentle-faced scholar, beforehe can properly be said to have made Lamb’sthoughts his own. At the best it is but avery incomplete notion that most of uspossess as to the actual personality of eventhe most prominent of our British writers.The almost womanly beauty of Sidney, andthe keen eyes and razor face of Pope, would,perhaps, be recognised as easily as the well-knownform of Dr. Johnson; but taking themen masse even a widely-read man might beforgiven if, from amongst the scraps of hearsayand curtly-recorded impressions on whichat rare intervals he may alight, he cannotvery readily conjure up the ghosts of thevery men whose books he has studied, and towhose haunts he has been an eager pilgrim.
Such a power the following pages have[Pg ix]attempted to supply. They contain anaccount of the face, figure, dress, voice, andmanner of our best-known writers rangingfrom Geoffrey Chaucer to Mrs. Henry Wood,—drawnin all cases when it is possible bytheir contemporaries, and when through lackof material this endeavour has failed, the taskof portrait-pai