silence his calumniators. All those who saw him must have
experienced the charm which surrounded him as a kind of sympathetic
atmosphere, gaining all hearts to him. What can be said to those who
never saw him? Tell them to look at the pictures of him which were
painted by Saunders, by Phillips, by Holmes, or by Westall? All these,
although the works of great artists, are full of faults. Saunders's
picture represents him with thick lips, whereas his lips were
harmoniously perfect: Holmes almost gives him a large instead of his
well-proportioned and elegant head! In Phillips's picture the expression
is one of haughtiness and affected dignity, never once visible to those
who ever saw him.[7]

"These portraits," says Dallas, "will certainly present to the stranger
and to posterity that which it is possible for the brush to reproduce
so far as the features are concerned, but the charm of speech and the
grace of movement must be left to the imagination of those who have had
no opportunity to observe them. No brush can paint these."

The picture of Byron by Westall is superior to the others, but does not
come up to the original. As for the copies and engravings which have
been taken from these pictures, and circulated, they are all
exaggerated, and deserve the appellation of caricatures.

Can his portrait be found in the descriptions given by his biographers?
But biographers seek far more to amuse and astonish, in order that their
writings may be read, than to adhere to the simple truth.

It can not be denied, however, that in the portraits which several, such
as Moore, Dallas, Sir Walter Scott, Disraeli in London, the Countess
Albrizzi at Venice, Beyle (Stendhal) at Milan, Lady Blessington and Mrs.
Shelley in Italy, have drawn of Lord Byron there is much truth,
accompanied by certain qualifications which it is well to explain. I
shall therefore give in their own words (preferring them to my own
impressions) the unanimous testimony of those who saw him, be they
friends or beings for whom he was indifferent. Here are Moore's
words:--"Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been of the
highest order, as combining at once regularity of features with the most
varied and interesting expression.

"His eyes, though of a light gray, were capable of all extremes of
expression, from the most joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness, from
the very sunshine of benevolence to the most concentrated scorn or rage.
But it was in