1672-1719
[Sidenote: _Temple Bar_, 1874. *]
“Of his personal appearance we have at least two portraits by good
hands. Before us are three carefully-engraved portraits of him, but
there is a great dissimilarity between the three except in the wig.
Sir Godfrey Kneller painted one of these portraits, which is entirely
unlike the two others; let us, however, give Sir Godfrey the credit
of the best picture, and judge Addison’s appearance from that. The
wig almost prevents our judging the shape of the head, yet it seems
very high behind. The forehead is very lofty, the sort of forehead
which is called ‘commanding’ by those people who do not know that some
of the least decided men in the world have had high foreheads. The
eyebrows are delicately ‘pencilled,’ yet show a vast deal of vigour and
expression; they are what his old Latin friends, who knew so well the
power of expression in the eyebrow, would have called ‘supercilious,’
and yet the nasal end of the supercilium is only slightly raised, and
it droops pleasantly at the temporal end, so that there is nothing
Satanic or ill-natured about it. The eyebrow of Addison, according to
Kneller, seems to say, ‘You are a greater fool than you think yourself
to be, but I would die sooner than tell you so.’ The eye, which is
generally supposed to convey so much expression, but which very often
does not, is very much like the eyes of other amiable and talented
people. The nose is long, as becomes an orthodox Whig; quite as long,
we should say, as the nose of any member of Peel’s famous long-nosed
ministry, and quite as delicately chiselled. The mouth is very tender
and beautiful, firm, yet with a delicate curve upwards at each end of
the upper lip, suggestive of a good joke, and of a calm waiting to
hear if any man is going to beat it. Below the mouth there follows of
course the nearly inevitable double chin of the eighteenth century,
with a deep incision in the centre of the jaw-bone, which shows through
the flesh like a dimple. On the whole a singularly handsome and
pleasant face, wanting the wonderful form which one sees in the faces
of Shakespeare, Prior, Congreve, Castlereagh, Byron, or Napoleon, but
still extremely fine of its own.”
[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_.]
“Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned as
that timorous or sullen taciturnity, which his friends called modesty
by too mild a name. Steele mentions, with great tenderness, ‘that
remarkable bashfulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit;’
and tells us ‘that his abilities were covered only by modesty, which
doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all
that are concealed.’ Chesterfield affirms that ‘Addison was the most
timorous and awkward man that he ever saw.’ And Addison, speaking of
his own deficiency in conversation, used to say of himself that, with
respect to intellectual wealth, ‘he could draw bills for a thousand
pounds though he had not a guinea in his pocket.’... ‘Addison’s
conversation,’ says Pope, ‘had something in it more charming than I
have found in any other man. But this was only when familiar; before
strangers, or, perhaps, a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by
a stiff silence.’”