Excerpt: “The rich moonlight that now shone through the windows streamed on little that it could invest with poetical attraction.The room was small, though not squalid in its character and appliances.The bed-curtains, of a dull chintz, were drawn back, and showed the form of a man, past middle age, propped by pillows, and bearing on his countenance the marks of approaching death.But what a countenance it still was!The broad, pale, lofty brow; the fine, straight, Grecian nose; the short, curved lip; the full, dimpled chin; the stamp of genius in every line and lineament;--these still defied disease, or rather borrowed from its very ghastliness a more impressive majesty.”
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling novels which earned him a considerable fortune. He coined the phrases "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", "dweller on the threshold", and the well-known opening line "It was a dark and stormy night".(Wikipedia)