1697-1743
[Sidenote: _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.”
[Sidenote: 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.”