“On arriving at Bolton Row I was shown into a large room littered over with books, MSS. agenda, newspapers of every description from the Times and the New York Herald down to the Police News. Before me stood a stately and imposing man of fifty or fifty-one, over six feet high, a massive chest, herculean limbs, a bearded and leonine face, giving traces of a manly beauty which ripened into majesty as he grew older. Large brown eyes which could at times become exceedingly fierce, a fine head, quite bald on the top but covered at the sides with soft brown hair, a head strangely disproportioned to the bulk of the body; in fact I could never understand how so large a brain could be confined in so small a skull. On the desk before him lay a huge sheet of drab paper on which he had been writing—it was about the size of two sheets of ordinary foolscap; in his hand one of Gillott’s double-barrelled pens. (Before I left the room he told me he sent Gillott his books, and Gillott sent him his pens.)

“His voice, though very pleasant, was very penetrating. He was rather deaf, but I don’t think quite so deaf as he pretended to be. This deafness gave him an advantage in conversation; it afforded him time to take stock of the situation, and either to seek refuge in silence or to request his interlocutor to propound his proposal afresh. At first he was very cold, but at last, carried away by the ardour of my admiration for his works, he thawed, and in half an hour he was eager, excited, delighted and delightful.”—1856.

“The man in truth justified Lavater, for his physiognomy was noble, and his body the perfection of symmetry and grace. Nature gave him a forehead as high as Shakespeare’s, but broader; the mild, pensive ox-eye so dear to the old Greek Æsthetes; a marble skin, a mouth that was sarcasm itself. His personal attractiveness was phenomenal. In any roomful of people, however illustrious, he became involuntarily—for he was as little self-asserting off his paper as he was dogmatic on it—the centre. Living immersed in Bohemianism, and in the society of a large-hearted, yet not very cultured woman, he never parted company with his Ipsden breeding, and his natural bearing was that of one born to command.”

“In personal appearance Mr. Reade is tall, erect, of a commanding presence, with a full, expressive brown eye and a noble brow. His manner is singularly dignified without being arrogant, and in society he sustains an enviable reputation as a conversationalist.”