“In person, Mat Lewis (as his intimate friends at first termed him) was quite ordinary; his stature was rather diminutive; his face was almost an ellipse, looking upon it from the side, and his features though pleasant were not to be regarded as handsome. His forehead, however, was high and his eyes very lustrous.”

“Lewis’s personal appearance was not prepossessing. He describes himself as

He had, moreover, large gray eyes, thick features, and an inexpressive countenance. When he talked he had an insufferable habit of drawing the fore-finger of his right hand across his eyelid, and in conversation he was guilty of the absurd affectation of a drawling tone such as was popular with dandies.”

“Matthew Gregory Lewis. Of this gentleman I knew but little, not having encountered him half a dozen times after my introduction to him at the house of Nat Middleton, the banker. With a short thick-set figure, unintellectual features, and a disagreeable habit of peering, being very short-sighted, his aspect was by no means prepossessing; but as he had ‘that within which passeth show,’ he recovered the ground lost at starting as rapidly as Wilkes could have done.”