which would be set down for absurd caricature on the boards of a comic theatre.’  Lamb is described by Carlyle as ’the leanest of mankind; tiny black breeches buttoned to the knee-cap and no further, surmounting spindle legs also in black, face and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and of a Jew type rather’; and Talfourd says that the best portrait of him is his own description of Braham—­’a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.’  William Godwin was ’short and stout, his clothes loosely and carelessly put on, and usually old and worn; his hands were generally in his pockets; he had a remarkably large, bald head, and a weak voice; seeming generally half asleep when he walked, and even when he talked.’  Lord Charlemont spoke of David Hume as more like a ’turtle-eating alderman’ than ‘a refined philosopher.’  Mary Russell Mitford was ill-naturedly described by L.E.L. as ‘Sancho Panza in petticoats!’; and as for poor Rogers, who was somewhat cadaverous, the descriptions given of him are quite dreadful.  Lord Dudley once asked him ’why, now that he could afford it, he did not set up his hearse,’ and it is said that Sydney Smith gave him mortal offence by recommending him ’when he sat for his portrait to be drawn saying his prayers, with his face hidden in his hands,’ christened him the ‘Death dandy,’ and wrote underneath a picture of him, ‘Painted in his lifetime.’  We must console ourselves—­if not with Mr. Hardy’s statement that ’ideal physical beauty is incompatible with mental development, and a full recognition of the evil of things’—­at least with the pictures of those who had some comeliness, and grace, and charm.  Dr. Grosart says of a miniature of Edmund Spenser, ’It is an exquisitely beautiful face.  The brow is ample, the lips thin but mobile, the eyes a grayish-blue, the hair and beard a golden red (as of “red monie” of the ballads) or goldenly chestnut, the nose with semi-transparent nostril and keen, the chin firm-poised, the expression refined and delicate.  Altogether just such “presentment” of the Poet of Beauty par excellence, as one would have imagined.’  Antony Wood describes Sir Richard Lovelace as being, at the age of sixteen, ’the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld.’  Nor need we wonder at this when we remember the portrait of Lovelace that hangs at Dulwich College.  Barry Cornwall, described himself by S. C. Hall as ’a decidedly rather pretty little fellow,’ said of Keats:  ’His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and brightness,—­it had an expression as if he had been looking on some glorious sight.’  Chatterton and Byron were splendidly handsome, and beauty of a high spiritual order may be claimed both for Milton and Shelley, though an industrious gentleman lately wrote a book in two volumes apparently for the purpose of proving that the latter of these two poets had a snub nose.  Hazlitt once said that ’A man’s life may be a lie to himself and others, and yet a picture painted of him by a great artist