“His companion, Who is he? He looks a little older, and is a great deal slenderer, and very much better dressed; that is, his clothes are well made, but alas! they are also well worn. He has an air of faded fashion about him. There is decision in every line of the lank, and long, and melancholy visage; it is a veritable Quixotic face. Meagre and proud, and high and pale. An exceeding ‘woeful countenance,’ which sadness and scorn alternately cloud and corrugate. It is mixed up with extreme diversities. The brow and eye are intellectual and bright, while the lower features are sensual and coarse: humour and passion both lurk in the mouth, yet few smiles expand those lips from which laughter seems altogether banished, while the voice is sweet, soft, and lute-like; the pace is slow, and the gait has a certain pretension to importance, which ill harmonises with the rest of his appearance. This person is Richard Savage, a man whose rare talents might have brought him poetic immortality, and a lofty pedestal in the muse’s temple, had not his coarser vices, together with his pride and his ingratitude, dragged him down to the lowest moral depth, and buried the many bright things he had in brain and bosom, head and heart, in the same mud-heap.”

“He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, a long visage, coarse features, and melancholy aspect; of a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity of mien, but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, softened into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk was slow, and his voice tremulous and mournful. He was easily excited to smiles, but very seldom provoked to laughter.”