“He was a man of florid complexion, with large full eyes, and altogether a leonine man, and with a fierceness of tone well suited to his name; his decisions being confident, and on all subjects, whether of taste or life, unqualified, each standing for itself, not caring whether it was in harmony with what had gone before or would follow from the same oracular lips. But why should I trouble myself to describe him? He is painted by a master hand in Dickens’s novel Bleak House, now in course of publication, where he figures as Mr. Boythorn. The combination of superficial ferocity and inherent tenderness, so admirably portrayed in Bleak House, still at first strikes every stranger,—for twenty-two years have not materially changed him,—no less than his perfect frankness and reckless indifference to what he says.”—1830.

“... He was at that time sixty years of age, although he did not look so old; his form and features were essentially masculine; he was not tall, but stalwart; of a robust constitution, and was proud even to arrogance of his physical and intellectual strength. He was a man to whom passers-by would have looked back and asked, ‘Who is that?’ His forehead was high, but retreated, showing remarkable absence of the organs of benevolence and veneration. It was a large head, fullest at the back, where the animal propensities predominate; it was a powerful, but not a good head, the expression the opposite of genial. In short, physiognomists and phrenologists would have selected it,—each to illustrate his theory.”—1836.

“His tall, broad, muscular, active frame was characteristic, and so was his head, with the strange elevation of the eyebrows which expresses self-will as strongly in some cases as astonishment in others. Those eyebrows, mounting up until they comprehend a good portion of the forehead, have been observed in many more paradoxical persons than one. Then there was the retreating but broad forehead, showing the deficiency of reasoning and speculative power, with the preponderance of imagination and a huge passion for destruction. The massive self-love and self-will carried up his head to something more than a dignified bearing—even to one of arrogance. His vivid and quick eye, and the thoughtful mouth, were fine, and his whole air was that of a man distinguished in his own eyes certainly, but also in those of others. Tradition reports he was handsome in his youth. In age he was more.”