Stevenson, Bayard Taylor (dark brown), William the Silent and Chopin. The eyes of Rufus Choate, Alexander Hamilton, Fielding, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Beethoven and John G. Whittier are described as "dark," Whittier's being described by most biographers as black. Hazel-eyed were S. T. Coleridge (given variously as hazel and gray), Farragut, Albert Gallatin, Hobbes, Keats (hazel brown), Walter Pater (light hazel, almost gray green), Southey (dark eyes, in youth light hazel), Tennyson (gray, according to Caroline Fox). Black eyes gleamed, according to biographers, from the brows of Cæsar (by others, however, spoken of as dark gray), Leigh Hunt, Paul Jones, John Marshall, Peter the Great, George Ripley, Daniel Webster and John Greenleaf Whittier.
With Agassiz, Peter the Great, E. L. Stevenson and George Washington, the eyes were set well apart, but precisely the reverse was true in the case of Robespierre. The eyes of Browning, Charlemagne, Coleridge, G. W. Curtis, Eugene Field, N. Hawthorne, Paul Jones, Napoleon, Peter the Great, Shelley and Tennyson were large—betokening, according to the "Encyclopedia of Superstitions," a faculty for talking and "for the use of effective language"; whereas those of Captain Cook, Patrick Henry, Ibsen, John Marshall, Tolstoy, Whitman, Chopin, Beethoven and Michael Angelo were small. As poseessed of deep-set eyes—surrounded in the majority of instances by high arching eyebrows—we have the names of George W. Curtis, Darwin, Stephen A. Douglas, Eugene Field, Fielding, Gladstone, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Huxley, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Paul Jones, Landor, Thoreau, Tolstoy, George Washington, Daniel Webster and Whitman. A profound power of observation appears to link with these names—an impression made more marked by shaggy eyebrows in the cases of Curtis, Darwin, Douglas, Jackson, Tolstoy and Whitman.
Next after the eyes, perhaps, the feature of the countenance which impresses the beholder is the formation of the jaw. Even before the lines of the mouth this aspect of the face engages attention. By no mere coincidence, doubtless, does a powerful jaw—the emblem of indomitable will—form the distinguishing marks of such physiognomies as those of Carnegie, Stonewall Jackson, Frederick the Great, Chinese Gordon, Grant, Alexander Hamilton, W. S. Landor, Walter Pater, George Washington, Arthur Sullivan and Schumann, nor does it seem without significance that in the case of Robespierre "an insufficient development of the jaw" is noticeable, and that in the case of Michael Angelo the "lower part of the face was much smaller than the upper." Quite suggestive, moreover, of something primitive, akin perhaps to ferocity, are the high cheek bones of the great navigators Columbus, Captain Cook and Farragut, on the one hand, and Robespierre and Daniel Webster on the other.
