“At twenty-one years of age ... David was a tall young man, slightly but firmly built, and with a stoop at the shoulders. His head was small, fringed with black curly hair. Want of candour was not his fault, though he seldom looked one in the face; his eyes, however, were large and dark, full of intelligence and humour, harmonising well with the long thin nose and nervous lips. The great black eyes and woman’s mouth betrayed the creature of impulse; one whose reasoning faculties were small, but whose temperament was like red-hot coal. He sympathised with much that was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and with much that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. He carried sympathy to the highest pitch of enthusiasm; he shed tears over the memories of Keats and Burns, and he was corybantic in his execution of a Scotch ‘reel.’”—1859.

“I was told a young man wished to see me, and when he came into the room I at once saw it was no other than the young Scotch poet. It was a light, well-built, but somewhat stooping figure, with a countenance that at once brought strongly to my recollection a cast of a face of Shelley in his youth, which I had seen at Mr. Leigh Hunt’s. There was the same full brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy mouth.”

“In person, the deceased poet was tall, with a slight stoop. His head was not large, but his temperament was of the keenest and brightest edge. With black curling hair, eyes dark, large, and lustrous, and a complexion of almost feminine delicacy, his appearance never failed to make a favourable impression on strangers.”