We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person.  In youth, he appears to have been handsome,[54] and of a pleasing countenance:  when his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured him the nickname attached to him by Rochester.[55] In his latter days, distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance.[56] Still, however, his portraits bespeak the look and features of genius; especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs.

In disposition and moral character, Dryden is represented as most amiable, by all who had access to know him; and his works, as well as letters, bear evidence to the justice of their panegyric.  Congreve’s character of the poet was drawn doubtless favourably, yet it contains points which demonstrate its fidelity.

“Whoever shall censure me, I dare be confident, you, my lord, will excuse me for anything that I shall say with due regard to a gentleman, for whose person I had as just an affection as I have an admiration of his writings.  And indeed Mr. Dryden had personal qualities to challenge both love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him.

“He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate; easily forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them who had offended him.

“Such a temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues and sociable endowments.  His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his hereditary income was little more than a bare competency.

“As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory, tenacious of everything that he had read.  He was not more possessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it.  But then his communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation; but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turns of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required.  He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him:  and full as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect of his own oversight or mistakes.  He was of very easy, I may say, of very pleasing access; but something slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others.  He had something in his nature, that abhorred intrusion into any society whatsoever.  Indeed, it is to be regretted, that he was rather blameable in the other extreme; for, by that means, he was personally less known, and, consequently, his character might become liable both to misapprehensions and misrepresentations.