me--"Beware of Lord Byron, he will, some day or other, do something very
wicked." "Was it man or woman said so?" he exclaimed, suddenly turning
round upon me with a look of such intense anger as, though it lasted not
an instant, could not easily be forgot, and of which no better idea can be
given than in the words of one who, speaking of Chatterton's eyes, says
that "fire rolled at the bottom of them."

But it was in the mouth and chin that the great beauty, as well as
expression of his fine countenance lay. "Many pictures have been painted
of him (says a fair critic of his features) with various success; but the
excessive beauty of his lips escaped every painter and sculptor. In their
ceaseless play they represented every emotion, whether pale with anger,
curled in disdain, smiling in triumph, or dimpled with archness and love."
It would be injustice to the reader not to borrow from the same pencil a
few more touches of portraiture. "This extreme facility of expression was
sometimes painful, for I have seen him look absolutely ugly--I have seen
him look so hard and cold, that you must hate him, and then, in a moment,
brighter than the sun, with such playful softness in his look, such
affectionate eagerness kindling in his eyes, and dimpling his lips into
something more sweet than a smile, that you forget the man, the Lord Byron,
in the picture of beauty presented to you, and gazed with intense
curiosity--I had almost said--as if to satisfy yourself, that thus looked
the god of poetry, the god of the Vatican, when he conversed with the sons
and daughters of man."

His head was remarkably small--so much so as to be rather out of
proportion with his face. The forehead, though a little too narrow, was
high, and appeared more so from his having his hair (to preserve it, as he
said) shaved over the temples; while the glossy, dark-brown curls,
clustering over his head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this is