1713-1768
[Sidenote: Sir Walter Scott’s _Memoir of Sterne_. *]
“We are well acquainted with Sterne’s features and personal appearance,
to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a
hectic and consumptive appearance. His features, though capable of
expressing with peculiar effect the sentimental emotions by which
he was often affected, had also a shrewd, humorous, and sarcastic
expression, proper to the wit and the satirist. His conversation was
as animated as witty, but Johnson complained that it was marked by
licence, better suiting the company of the Lord of Crazy Castle than of
the great moralist.”
[Sidenote: Timbs’s _Anecdote Biography_. *]
“In the same year (1761) that Reynolds exhibited the large equestrian
portrait of Lord Ligonier, now in the National Gallery, he also
exhibited the half-length of Sterne, seated, and leaning on his hand.
This portrait was painted for the Earl of Ossary, and afterwards came
into the possession of Lord Holland, on whose death in 1840, it was
purchased for 500 guineas by the Marquis of Lansdowne. ‘This,’ says
Mrs. Jameson, ‘is the most astonishing head for truth of character
I ever beheld; I do not except Titian; the character, to be sure,
is different: the subtle evanescent expression of satire round the
lips, the shrewd significance in the eye, the earnest contemplative
attitude,--all convey the strongest impression of the man, of his
peculiar genius, and peculiar humour.’”
[Sidenote: _Memoir of Sterne._ *]
“Speaking of Sterne’s physiognomy, Lavater says, ‘In this face
you discover the arch, satirical Sterne, the shrewd and exquisite
observer, more limited in his object, but on that very account more
profound,--you discover him, I say, in the eyes, in the space which
separates them, in the nose and the mouth of this figure.’”