“I found him seated at an open window, a bottle of claret at his right hand, and the proof-sheets of _Lord Kilgobbin_ before him.... At the date of our visit he looked a hale, hearty, laughter-loving man of sixty. There was mirth in his gray eye, joviality in the wink that twittered on his eyelid, saucy humour in his smile, and _bon-mot_, wit, repartee, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair very thin, but of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when it curtained his eyes he would jerk back his head--this, too, at some telling crisis in a narrative, when the particular action was just the exact finish required to make the story perfect. Mr. Lever’s teeth were all his own and very brilliant, and whether from accident or habit, he flashed them on us in conjunction with his wonderful eyes, a battery at once powerful and irresistible.... Mr. Lever made great use of his hands, which were small and white and delicate as those of a woman. He made play with them, threw them up in ecstasy, or wrung them in mournfulness, just as the action of the moment demanded. He did not require eyes or teeth with such a voice and such hands; they could tell and illustrate the workings of his brain. He was somewhat careless in his dress, but clung to the traditional high shirt-collar, merely compromising the unswerving stock of the Brummell period.” MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS 1775-1818 [Sidenote: _The Southern Literary Messenger_, 1849.] “In person, Mat Lewis (as his intimate friends at first termed him) was quite ordinary; his stature was rather diminutive; his face was almost an ellipse, looking upon it from the side, and his features though pleasant were not to be regarded as handsome. His forehead, however, was high and his eyes very lustrous.” [Sidenote: Jeaffreson’s _Novels and Novelists_.] “Lewis’s personal appearance was not prepossessing. He describes himself as ‘Of passions strong, of hasty nature, Of graceless form and dwarfish stature.’ He had, moreover, large gray eyes, thick features, and an inexpressive countenance. When he talked he had an insufferable habit of drawing the fore-finger of his right hand across his eyelid, and in conversation he was guilty of the absurd affectation of a drawling tone such as was popular with dandies.” [Sidenote: _New Monthly Magazine_, 1848.] “Matthew Gregory Lewis. Of this gentleman I knew but little, not having encountered him half a dozen times after my introduction to him at the house of Nat Middleton, the banker. With a short thick-set figure, unintellectual features, and a disagreeable habit of peering, being very short-sighted, his aspect was by no means prepossessing; but as he had ‘that within which passeth show,’ he recovered the ground lost at starting as rapidly as Wilkes could have done.” JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 1794-1854 [Sidenote: _The Times_, 9th Dec. 1854.]