“His countenance was the theme of continual jokes. It was ‘ugly,’ if not repulsive. The expression was in no way, nor under any circumstances, good; he had a drooping eye and a thick underlip; his forehead was broad, his head large—out of proportion indeed to his form; but it was without the organs of benevolence and veneration, although preponderating in that of ideality. His features were ‘cadaverous.’ Lord Dudley once asked him why, now that he could afford it, he did not set up his hearse; and it is said that Sydney Smith gave him mortal offence by recommending him, ‘when he sat for his portrait, to be drawn saying his prayers, with his face hidden by his hands.’”

“His personal appearance was extraordinary, or rather his countenance was unique. His skull and facial expression bore so striking a likeness to the skeleton pictures which we sometimes see of Death, that the facetious Sydney Smith (at one of the dressed evening parties ...) entitled him the ‘Death dandy.’ And it was told (probably with truth), that the same satirical wag inscribed upon the capital portrait in his breakfast-room, ‘Painted in his lifetime.’”

“My first look at the poet, then in his seventy-eighth year, was an agreeable surprise, and a protest in my mind against the malignant injustice which had been done him. As a young man he might have been uncomely, if not as ugly as his revilers had painted him, but as an old man there was an intellectual charm in his countenance, and a fascination in his manner which more than atoned for any deficiency of personal beauty.”—1840.