1792-1822
[Sidenote: Stoddard’s _Anecdote Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley_.]
“As I felt in truth but a slight interest in the subject of his
conversation, I had leisure to examine, and, I may add, admire the
appearance of my very extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many
contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones
and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much
that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and
made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were
tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt and sometimes
violent, occasionally even awkward. His complexion was delicate and
almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and
freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said,
in shooting. His features, his whole face, and particularly his head,
were, in fact, unusually small; yet the last _appeared_ of a remarkable
bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in
the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed
it fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his
locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In
times when it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as
possible in costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like
that of our soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features
were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect
of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an
enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met
with in any other countenance.”--1810.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarke’s _Recollections of Writers_.]
“Shelley’s figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and
of delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or
waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded barely
of muscle and tendon; and that the power of walking was an achievement
with him and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not
a valetudinarian, although that has been said of him on account of his
spare and vegetable diet; for I have the remembrance of his scampering
and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath late one
night--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height like a wild
school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which
do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round,
flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair bright
brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely in the human or
any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent expression,
yet wonderfully alert and engrossing; nothing appeared to escape his
knowledge.”
[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_.]
“Shelley, when he died, was in his thirtieth year. His figure was tall
and slight, and his constitution consumptive. He was subject to violent
spasmodic pains, which would sometimes force him to lie on the ground
until they were over; but he had always a kind word to give to those
about him when his pangs allowed him to speak. In this organisation,
as well as in some other respects, he resembled the German poet
Schiller. Though well-turned, his shoulders were bent a little, owing
to premature thought and trouble. The same causes had touched his
hair with gray; and though his habits of temperance and exercise gave
him a remarkable degree of strength, it is not supposed that he could
have lived many years. He used to say that he had lived three times as
long as the calendar gave out; which he would prove, between jest and
earnest, by some remarks on Time,
‘That would have puzzled that stout Stagyrite.’
Like the Stagyrites, his voice was high and weak. His eyes were large
and animated, with a dash of wildness in them; his face small, but well
shaped, particularly the mouth and chin, the turn of which was very
sensitive and graceful. His complexion was naturally fair and delicate,
with a colour in the cheeks. He had brown hair, which, though tinged
with gray, surmounted his face well, being in considerable quantity,
and tending to a curl. His side face, upon the whole, was deficient
in strength, and his features would not have told well in a bust; but
when fronting and looking at you attentively, his aspect had a certain
seraphical character that would have suited a portrait of John the
Baptist, or the angel whom Milton describes as holding a reed ‘tipt
with fire.’”--1822.