the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as
expression of his fine countenance lay.

"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. Still the glossy dark-brown curls,
clustering over his head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this is
added that his nose, though handsomely was rather thickly shaped, that
his teeth were white and regular, and his complexion colorless, as good
an idea perhaps as it is in the power of mere words to convey may be
conceived of his features.

"In height he was, as he himself has informed us, five feet eight inches
and a half, and to the length of his limbs he attributed his being such
a good swimmer. His hands were very white, and, according to his own
notions of the size of hands as indicating birth, aristocratically
small."

"What I chiefly remember to have remarked," adds Moore, "when I was
first introduced to him, was the gentleness of his voice and manners,
the nobleness of his air, his beauty, and his marked kindness to myself.
Being in mourning for his mother, the color as well of his dress, as of
his glossy, curling and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure,
spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he
spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy
was their habitual character when in repose."

When Moore saw him again at Venice, some eight years after the first
impressions which Byron's beauty had produced upon him in London (1812),
he noted a change in the character of that beauty.

"He had grown fatter both in person and face, and the latter had most
suffered by the change--having lost by the enlargement of the features
some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other times
distinguished it.... He was still, however, eminently handsome, and in
exchange for whatever his features might have lost of their high
romantic character, they had become more fitted for the expression of
that arch, waggish wisdom, that epicurean play of humor, which he had
shown to be equally inherent in his various and prodigally gifted
nature; while by the somewhat increased roundness of the contours the
resemblance of his finely-formed mouth and chin to those of the
Belvedere Apollo had become still more striking."[8]

He