1651-1685
[Sidenote: _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1745.]
“You’ll be glad to know any trifling circumstance concerning Otway. His
person was of the middle size, about five feet seven inches in height,
inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was
all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and, like the unhappy wits
of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting
jollity and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Pl----th,
and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Tower Hill.”
[Sidenote: Sir Walter Scott’s _Memoir of Mrs. Radcliffe_. *]
“Otway, heavy, squalid, unhappy; yet tender countenance, but not so
squalid as one we formerly saw; full-speaking, black eyes; it seems as
if dissolute habits had overcome all his finer feelings, and left him
little of mind, except a sense of sorrow.” _On a picture._