“It seems but yesterday--it is not so very long ago certainly--that I saw for the last time the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Her radiant beauty was then faded, but her stately form had been little impaired by years, and she had retained much of the grace that made her early womanhood so surpassingly attractive. She combined, in a singular degree, feminine delicacy with masculine vigour; though essentially womanly, she seemed to have the force of character of man. Remarkably handsome she perhaps excited admiration rather than affection. I can easily imagine greater love to be given to a far plainer woman. She had, in more than full measure, the traditional beauty of her family, and no doubt inherited with it some of the waywardness that is associated with the name of Sheridan.” THOMAS OTWAY 1651-1685 [Sidenote: _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1745.] “You’ll be glad to know any trifling circumstance concerning Otway. His person was of the middle size, about five feet seven inches in height, inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and, like the unhappy wits of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting jollity and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Pl----th, and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Tower Hill.” [Sidenote: Sir Walter Scott’s _Memoir of Mrs. Radcliffe_. *] “Otway, heavy, squalid, unhappy; yet tender countenance, but not so squalid as one we formerly saw; full-speaking, black eyes; it seems as if dissolute habits had overcome all his finer feelings, and left him little of mind, except a sense of sorrow.” _On a picture._ SAMUEL PEPYS 1632-1703 [Sidenote: _The Cornhill Magazine_, 1874. *]