“The person of Horace Walpole was short and slender, but compact and neatly formed. When viewed from behind he had somewhat of a boyish appearance, owing to the form of his person, and the simplicity of his dress. His features may be seen in many portraits; but none can express the placid goodness of his eyes, which would often sparkle with sudden rays of wit, or dart forth flashes of the most keen and intuitive intelligence. His laugh was forced and uncouth, and even his smile not the most pleasing. His walk was enfeebled by the gout; which, if the editor’s memory do not deceive, he mentioned he had been tormented with since the age of twenty-five.... This painful complaint not only affected his feet, but attacked his hands to such a degree that his fingers were always swelled and deformed.... His engaging manners and gentle endearing affability to his friends exceed all praise.” [Sidenote: Cunningham’s _Letters of Walpole_. *] “The person of Horace Walpole[6] was short and slender, but compact, and neatly formed. When viewed from behind he had, from the simplicity of his dress, somewhat of a boyish appearance: fifty years ago, he says, ‘Mr. Winnington told me I ran along like a pewet.’ His forehead was high and pale. His eyes remarkably bright and penetrating. His laugh was forced and uncouth, and his smile not the most pleasing. His walk, for more than half his life, was enfeebled by the gout, which not only affected his feet, but attacked his hands. Latterly his fingers were swelled and deformed, having, as he would say, more chalk-stones than joints in them, and adding with a smile, that he must set up an inn, for he could chalk a score with more ease and rapidity than any man in England.... His entrance into a room was in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had made almost natural--_chapeau bras_ between his hands as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm, knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His summer dress of ceremony was usually a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour, partridge silk stockings, gold buckles, ruffles, and lace frills. In winter he wore powder. He disliked hats, and in his grounds at Strawberry would even in winter walk without one. The same antipathy, Cole tells us, extended to a greatcoat.” [Sidenote: Hawkins’s _Memoirs_.]