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.  Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound religious veneration, that characterizes the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls), of the great masters of Florence and of Rome.  I recognized the very peculiar expression in these wonderful productions long afterwards, and with a satisfaction mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the decease of him in whose countenance I had first observed it.”

In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the impression of Shelley’s personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated by Trelawny’s recollections of a later date.  “There were many striking contrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the most remarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness with agility—­of the clumsy with the graceful.  He would stumble in stepping across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable manner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase of an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper steps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally to disturb the composure of a well-bred footman; on the contrary, he would often glide without collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerring dexterity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the most arduous and uncertain ways.”

This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the descriptions furnished by other biographers, who had the privilege of Shelley’s friendship.  His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous.  His hair was brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth.  It is admitted on all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him.  Mulready is reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint.  And yet, although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal fascination.  One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon.  Shelley’s voice “was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh and discordant.”  This is strongly stated; but, though the terms are certainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first impression made on Shelley’s friend.  There is a considerable mass of convergent testimony to the fact that Shelley’s voice was high pitched, and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream.  The epithets “shrill,”