_Mrs. Siddons._—“I met Mrs. Siddons at dinner one day, just before the death of her spouse,—’twas at Walter Scott’s,—and you cannot imagine how it annoyed me to behold Belvidera guzzle boiled beef and mustard, swill streams of porter, cram up her nose with handfuls of snuff, and laugh till she made the whole room shake again.” _Madame de Stäel._—“Her face was that of a blackamoor attempted to be washed white. She wore a wig like a bunch of withered heather, and over that a turban which looked as if it had been put on in the dark; a short neck, and shoulders rising so much behind that they almost amounted to a hump. With all this ugliness all the airs of a beauty,—for ever tormenting her shawl into new draperies, and distorting her fingers as you see them in the ridiculous French portraits by Mignard and his followers.” _Queen Caroline._—“Her eyes projected, like those of the royal family. She made her head large by wearing an immense wig; she also painted her eyebrows, which gave her face a strange, fierce look. Her skin,—and she showed a great deal,—was very red. She wore very high-heeled shoes, so that she bent forward when she stood or walked: her feet and ankles were dreadful.” _Shelley._—“We have lately had a literary sun shine forth upon us here [at Oxford], before whom our former luminaries must hide their diminished heads,—a Mr. Shelley, of University College, who lives upon arsenic, aquafortis, half-an-hour’s sleep in the night, and is desperately in love with the memory of Margaret Nicholson.” _The Rev. Dr. M’Crie._—“The villainous biographer of John Knox.” “That villain, Dr. M’Crie.” _The Rev. H. Philpotts (afterwards Bishop of Exeter)._—“A hideous fellow of the name of Fillpot.” _Sir Walter Scott_:—(1) _First Sight of Scott at Oxford in 1803._—“The Border Minstrel paid me a visit some time since on his way to town, and I very courteously invited him to breakfast. He is dreadfully lame, and much too _poetical_. He spouts without mercy, and pays compliments so high-flown that my self-conceit, though a tolerable good shot, could not even wing one of them.” (2) _Opinion of the Waverley Novels in 1839, seven years after Scott’s death._—“As to Sir Walter’s harmless _romances_,—not harmless, however, as to bad English,—they contain _nothing_: pictures of manners that never were, are, or will be, besides ten thousand blunders as to chronology, costume, etc. etc., which must mislead the million who admire such captivating comfits.” _Rachel and Jenny Lind._—“I have seen and heard Misses Rachel and J. Lind. The Jewess has a good voice,—far inferior, however, to that of Mrs. Siddons,—but an ungraceful and often vulgar action. As to Miss Jenny, she sings very prettily; but her highest note is a downright squall, and the buzz like a bee she can make (I have heard boys in Annandale do something like it) is a trick,—not music.”