Sir Walter Scott’s
Memoir of
Sterne.
*

“We are well acquainted with Sterne’s features and personal appearance, to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a hectic and consumptive appearance. His features, though capable of expressing with peculiar effect the sentimental emotions by which he was often affected, had also a shrewd, humorous, and sarcastic expression, proper to the wit and the satirist. His conversation was as animated as witty, but Johnson complained that it was marked by licence, better suiting the company of the Lord of Crazy Castle than of the great moralist.”

“In the same year (1761) that Reynolds exhibited the large equestrian portrait of Lord Ligonier, now in the National Gallery, he also exhibited the half-length of Sterne, seated, and leaning on his hand. This portrait was painted for the Earl of Ossary, and afterwards came into the possession of Lord Holland, on whose death in 1840, it was purchased for 500 guineas by the Marquis of Lansdowne. ‘This,’ says Mrs. Jameson, ‘is the most astonishing head for truth of character I ever beheld; I do not except Titian; the character, to be sure, is different: the subtle evanescent expression of satire round the lips, the shrewd significance in the eye, the earnest contemplative attitude,—all convey the strongest impression of the man, of his peculiar genius, and peculiar humour.’”

“Speaking of Sterne’s physiognomy, Lavater says, ‘In this face you discover the arch, satirical Sterne, the shrewd and exquisite observer, more limited in his object, but on that very account more profound,—you discover him, I say, in the eyes, in the space which separates them, in the nose and the mouth of this figure.’”

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