Thomas Otway 1651-1685
Gentleman’s Magazine , 1745.
“You’ll be glad to know any trifling circumstance concerning Otway. His person was of the middle size, about five feet seven inches in height, inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and, like the unhappy wits of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting jollity and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Pl——th, and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Tower Hill.”
Sir Walter Scott’s Memoir of Mrs. Radcliffe . *
“Otway, heavy, squalid, unhappy; yet tender countenance, but not so squalid as one we formerly saw; full-speaking, black eyes; it seems as if dissolute habits had overcome all his finer feelings, and left him little of mind, except a sense of sorrow.” On a picture.