The real man was reconcilable with all these descriptions. His traits
suggested everything that has been said of him; but his aspect,
conformation, and personal qualities contained more than any one has
ascribed to him, and more indeed than all put together. A few plain
matters-of-fact will make this intelligible. Shelley was a tall
man,--nearly, if not quite, five feet ten in height. He was peculiarly
slender, and, as I have said already, his chest had palpably
enlarged after the usual growing period. He retained the same kind
of straitness in the perpendicular outline on each side of him; his
shoulders were the reverse of broad, but yet they were not sloping,
and a certain squareness in them was naturally incompatible with
anything feminine in his appearance. To his last days he still
suffered his chest to collapse; but it was less a stoop than a
peculiar mode of holding the head and shoulders,--the face thrown a
little forward, and the shoulders slightly elevated; though the whole
attitude below the shoulders, when standing, was unusually upright,
and had the appearance of litheness and activity. I have mentioned
that bodily vigor which he could display; and from his action when I
last saw him, as well as from Mary's account, it is evident that he
had not abandoned his exercises, but the reverse.
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