ABSTRACT
Lavater's Physiognomy anticipated a crucial focus of Romanticism: that every created entity is unique. 'Each leaf a world', wrote Lavater, none identical with another. Physiognomy was 'practiced by Pythagoras, defended by Socrates, approved by Plato, and treated by Aristotle', according to the Thomas Cooper, whose learned and thoughtful estimate of the Lavater's achievement appeared in 1790. Although Byron mentioned Lavater several times and his incidental comments on his own portraits indicate an awareness of Lavaterian notions, he found phrenology more relevant in understanding his own temperament. Lavater considered painting 'the mother and daughter of physiognomy'; drawing was the physiognomist's natural tool. Lawrence interprets Byron as contradictory and paradoxical of feature, but also matches him, point by point, against Lavater's analyses of the physiognomical features. Lavater's search for demonstrable traces of the divine in humanity drove him to intense study of the human countenance.
