Flattered on Northcote’s canvas, and flattered still more in Mr. Kegan Paul’s photograph of Northcote’s picture, William Godwin’s presence was on the whole by no means agreeably impressive; but for the badness of the worst feature of his more remarkable than pleasing countenance he was almost compensated by the goodness of his eyes. ‘He has,’ Southey wrote in 1797, ‘large noble eyes, and a nose,--oh, most abominable nose! Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation.’ Interfering with the effect of a shapely mouth, this grotesquely elongated nose seemed set on moving down to the chin of corresponding prominence. From the portrait to which reference has been made, Godwin seems in his earlier middle age to have had a visage remarkable rather for tenuity than massiveness; but Hogg’s account of the philosopher’s appearance affords evidence that delicacy was no characteristic of the Skinner-Street bookseller’s personal aspect. It would have been well if, on dropping his title to reverence, the young _littérateur_ had also dropt the garb and manner that long afterwards reminded beholders of his original calling. When he dined _tête-à-tête_, and for the first time with William Godwin, Hogg observed that the ‘short, stout, thickset old man, of very fair complexion,’ and a head no less remarkable for baldness than magnitude, had altogether the ‘appearance of a Dissenting minister;’--a statement to be regarded as sufficient testimony that the author of _Caleb Williams_ had not altogether the appearance of a gentleman, at least in the opinion of Mr. Hogg, ever disdainful of Dissenters. Another thing to come under the saucy young Templar’s notice was that, whilst having altogether the ‘appearance of a Dissenting minister,’ his companion lacked the colloquial address of a gentleman of society and breeding. His articulation wanted distinctness, and his uneasy utterance was attended by a show of effort and distress, that might almost be called an impediment. But though painful on being noticed for the first time, this difficulty ceased to trouble listeners when they grew accustomed to it, and even gave an agreeable distinctiveness to a somewhat harsh and discordant voice.