Part 4

“Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time I ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man, easy of access, affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has a good, sensible face, rather full, with little gray eyes, a hard square forehead, a ruddy complexion, with hair gray or powdered; and had on a scarlet broadcloth waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was the custom for gentleman farmers in the last century, or as we see it in pictures of members of parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did not think less favourably of him for seeing him.”

[Sidenote: Watson’s _Biographies of Wilkes and Cobbett_.]

“In stature the late Mr. Cobbett was tall and athletic. I should think he could not have been less than six feet two, while his breadth was proportionately great. He was indeed one of the stoutest men in the House.... His hair was of a milk-white colour, and his complexion ruddy. His features were not strongly marked. What struck you most about his face was his small, sparkling, laughing eyes. When disposed to be humorous yourself, you had only to look at his eyes, and you were sure to sympathise with his merriment. When not speaking, the expression of his eye and his countenance was very different. He was one of the most striking refutations of the principles of Lavater I ever witnessed. Never were the looks of any man more completely at variance with his character. There was something so heavy and dull about his whole appearance, that any one who did not know him would at once set him down for some country clodpole, to use a favourite expression of his own, who not only had never read a book, or had a single idea in his head, but who was a mere mass of mortality, without a particle of sensibility of any kind in his composition. He usually sat with one leg over the other, his head slightly drooping, as if sleeping, on his breast, and his hat down almost to his eyes. His usual dress was a light-gray coat of a full make, a white waistcoat, and kerseymere breeches of a sandy colour. When he walked about the House, he generally had his hands inserted in his breeches’ pocket. Considering his advanced age, seventy-three, he looked remarkably hale and healthy, and walked with a firm but slow step.”--1835.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE

1796-1849

[Sidenote: Derwent Coleridge’s _Memoir of Hartley Coleridge_.]

“I first saw Hartley in the beginning, I think, of 1837, when I was at Sedbergh, and he heard us our lesson in Mr. Green’s parlour. My impression of him was what I conceived Shakespeare’s idea of a gentleman to be, something which we like to have in a picture. He was dressed in black, his hair, just touched with gray, fell in thick waves down his back, and he had a frilled shirt on; and there was a sort of autumnal ripeness and brightness about him. His shrill voice, and his quick, authoritative ‘Right! right!’ and the chuckle with which he translated ‘rerum repetundarum’ as ‘peculation, a very common vice in governors of all ages,’ after which he took a turn round the sofa--all struck me amazingly.”--1837.

[Sidenote: Derwent Coleridge’s _Memoir of Hartley Coleridge_.]

“His manners and appearance were peculiar. Though not dwarfish either in form or expression, his stature was remarkably low, scarcely exceeding five feet, and he early acquired the gait and general appearance of advanced age. His once dark, lustrous hair, was prematurely silvered, and became latterly quite white. His eyes, dark, soft, and brilliant, were remarkably responsive to the movements of his mind, flashing with a light from within. His complexion, originally clear and sanguine, looked weather-beaten, and the contour of his face was rendered less pleasing by the breadth of his nose. His head was very small, the ear delicately formed, and the forehead, which receded slightly, very wide and expansive. His hands and feet were also small and delicate. His countenance when in repose, or rather in stillness, was stern and thoughtful in the extreme, indicating deep and passionate meditation, so much so as to be at times almost startling. His low bow on entering a room, in which there were ladies or strangers, gave a formality to his address, which wore at first the appearance of constraint; but when he began to talk these impressions were presently changed,--he threw off the seeming weight of years, his countenance became genial, and his manner free and gracious.”--1843.

[Sidenote: Littell’s _Living Age_, 1849.]

“His head was large and expressive, with dark eyes and white waving locks, and resting upon broad shoulders, with the smallest possible apology for a neck. To a sturdy and ample frame were appended legs and arms of a most disproportioned shortness, and, ‘in his whole aspect there was something indescribably elfish and grotesque, such as limners do not love to paint, nor ladies to look upon.’ He reminded you of a spy-glass shut up, and you wanted to take hold of him and pull him out into a man of goodly proportions and average stature. It was difficult to repress a smile at his appearance as he approached, for the elements were so quaintly combined in him that he seemed like one of Cowley’s conceits translated into flesh and blood.... His manners were like those of men accustomed to live much alone, simple, frank, and direct, but not in all respects governed by the rules of conventional politeness. It was difficult for him to sit still. He was constantly leaving his chair, walking about the room, and then sitting down again, as if he were haunted by an incurable restlessness. His conversation was very interesting, and marked by a vein of quiet humour not found in his writings. He spoke with much deliberation, and in regularly-constructed periods, which might have been printed without any alteration. There was a peculiarity in his voice not easily described. He would begin a sentence in a sort of subdued tone, hardly above a whisper, and end it in something between a bark and a growl.”--1848.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

1772-1834

[Sidenote: de Quincey’s _Life and Writings_.]

“I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was visiting; and in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this was standing and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe! In height he might seem to be about five feet eight (he was in reality about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which drowns the height); his person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair; his eyes were large and soft in their expression, and it was from the peculiar haze or dreaminess which mixed with their light that I recognised my object. This was Coleridge.”--1807.

[Sidenote: Bryan Procter’s _Recollections of Men of Letters_.]

“Coleridge had a weighty head, dreaming gray eyes, full, sensual lips, and a look and manner which were entirely wanting in firmness and decision. His motions also appeared weak and undecided, and his voice had nothing of the sharpness or ring of a resolute man. When he spoke his words were thick and slow, and when he read poetry his utterance was altogether a chant.”--About 1820.

[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]

“I have seen many curiosities; not the least of them I reckon Coleridge, the Kantian metaphysician and quondam Lake Poet. I will tell you all about our interview when we meet. Figure a fat, flabby, incurvated personage, at once short, rotund, and relaxed, with a watery mouth, a snuffy nose, a pair of strange brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes, a high tapering brow, and a great bush of gray hair, and you have some faint idea of Coleridge. He is a kind, good soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism. His cardinal sin is that he wants _will_. He has no resolution. He shrinks from pain or labour in any of its shapes. His very attitude bespeaks this. He never straightens his knee-joints. He stoops with his fat, ill-shapen shoulders, and in walking he does not tread, but shovel and slide. My father would call it ‘skluiffing.’ He is also always busied to keep, by strong and frequent inhalations, the water of his mouth from overflowing, and his eyes have a look of anxious impotence. He _would_ do with all his heart, but he knows he dares not. The conversation of the man is much as I anticipated--a forest of thoughts, some true, many false, more _part_ dubious, all of them ingenious in some degree, often in a high degree. But there is no method in his talk; he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches, or rather soliloquises. He cannot speak, he can only _tal-k_ (so he names it). Hence I found him unprofitable, even tedious; but we parted very good friends, I promising to go back and see him some evening--a promise which I fully intend to keep. I sent him a copy of _Meister_, about which we had some friendly talk. I reckon him a man of great and useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.”--1824.

WILLIAM COLLINS

1720-1756

[Sidenote: _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1781.]

“Collins I was intimately acquainted with from the time that he came to reside at Oxford. In London I met him often.... He was of moderate stature, of a light and clear complexion, with gray eyes so very weak at times as hardly to bear a candle in the room, and often raising within him apprehensions of blindness. He was passionately fond of music, good-natured and affable, warm in his friendships and visionary in his pursuits, and, as long as I knew him, temperate in his eating and drinking.”

[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Collins_.]

“About this time I fell into his company. His appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful.”--1744.

[Sidenote: J. Langhorne’s _Memoirs of William Collins_.]

“Mr. Collins was, in stature, somewhat above the middle size; of a brown complexion, keen expressive eyes, and a fixed sedate aspect, which, from intense thinking, had contracted an habitual frown. His proficiency in letters was greater than could have been expected from his years. He was skilled in the learned languages, and acquainted with the Italian, French, and Spanish.”

WILLIAM COWPER

1731-1800

[Sidenote: Cowper’s _Letters_.]

“As for me, I am a very smart youth of my years. I am not indeed grown gray so much as I am grown bald. No matter. There was more hair in the world than ever had the honour to belong to me. Accordingly, having found just enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermingle with a little of my own that still hangs behind, I appear, if you see me in an afternoon, to have a very decent head-dress, not easily distinguished from my natural growth; which being worn with a small bag, and a black ribbon about my neck, continues to me the charms of my youth, even on the verge of age. Away with the fear of writing too often.

“Yours, my dearest cousin, “W. C.

“_P.S._--That the view I give you of myself may be complete, I add the two following items,--that I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat.”--1785.

[Sidenote: H. F. Cary’s _Notice of Cowper_.]

“Cowper was of a middle height, with limbs strongly framed, hair of light brown, eyes of a bluish gray, and ruddy complexion.”

[Sidenote: Rossetti’s _Memoir of Cowper_. *]

“The eager, sudden-looking, large-eyed, shaven face of Cowper is familiar to us in his portraits--a face sharp-cut and sufficiently well-moulded, without being handsome, nor particularly sympathetic. It is a high-strung, excitable face, as of a man too susceptible and touchy to put himself forward willingly among his fellows, but who, feeling a ‘vocation’ upon him, would be more than merely earnest,--self-asserting, aggressive, and unyielding. This is in fact very much the character of his writings.”

GEORGE CRABBE

1754-1832

[Sidenote: _Life of Crabbe_, by his son.]

“In the eye of memory I can still see him as he was at that period of his life,--his fatherly countenance unmixed with any of the less lovable expressions that in too many faces obscure that character; but pre-eminently _fatherly_, conveying the ideas of kindness, intellect, and purity; his manner grave, manly, and cheerful, in unison with his high and open forehead; his very attitudes, whether as he sat absorbed in the arrangement of his minerals, shells, and insects; or as he laboured in his garden until his naturally pale complexion acquired a tinge of fresh healthy red; or as, coming lightly towards us with some unexpected present, his smile of indescribable benevolence spoke exultation in the foretaste of our raptures.”--1789.

[Sidenote: _Life of Crabbe_, by his son.]

“... Mr. Lockhart ... recently favoured me with the following letter.... ‘His noble forehead, his bright beaming eye, without anything of old age about it--though he was then, I presume, above seventy; his sweet, and, I would say, innocent smile, and the calm mellow tones of his voice, are all reproduced the moment I open any page of his poetry.’”--1822.

[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Memories of Great Men_.]

“In the appearance of Crabbe there was little of the poet, but even less of the stern critic of mankind, who looked at nature askance, and ever contemplated beauty animate or inanimate,--

‘The simple loves and simple joys,’

‘through a glass darkly.’ On the contrary, he seemed to my eyes the representative of the class of rarely troubled, and seldom thinking, English farmers. A clear gray eye, a ruddy complexion, as if he loved exercise and wooed mountain breezes, were the leading characteristics of his countenance. It is a picture of age, ‘frosty but kindly,’--that of a tall and stalwart man gradually grown old, to whom age was rather an ornament than a blemish. He was one of those instances of men, plain perhaps in youth, and homely of countenance in manhood, who become absolutely handsome when white hairs have become a crown of glory, and indulgence in excesses or perilous passions has left no lines that speak of remorse, or even of errors unatoned.”--1825-26.

DANIEL DE FOE

1661-1731

[Sidenote: Secretary of State’s Proclamation.]

“Whereas, Daniel De Foe, _alias_ De Fooe, is charged with writing a scandalous and seditious pamphlet entitled _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_. He is a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown-colored hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.”--1703.

[Sidenote: Wilson’s _De Foe_. *]

“A likeness of the author, engraved by M. Vandergucht, from a painting by Taverner, is prefixed.” (_To a volume of treatises published in 1703._) “It is the first portrait of De Foe, and probably the most like him. The following description of it by a recent biographer is strikingly characteristic: ‘No portrait can have more verisimilitude, to say the least of it. It exhibits a set of features rather regular than otherwise, very determined in its outlines, more particularly the mouth, which expresses great firmness and resolution of character. The eyes are full, black, and grave-looking, but the impression of the whole countenance is rather a striking than a pleasing one. Daniel is here set forth in a most lordly and full-bottomed wig, which flows down lower than his elbow, and rises above his forehead with great amplitude of curl. A richly-laced cravat, and fine loose-flowing cloak completes his attire, and preserve, we may suppose, the likeness of that civic “gallantry” which Oldmixon ascribes to Daniel on the occasion of his escorting King William to the Lord Mayor’s feast. It is altogether more like a picture of a substantial citizen of the “surly breed” De Foe has himself so often satirised, than that of a poor pamphleteer languishing in jail after the terrors of the pillory.’”

[Sidenote: John Forster’s _Bibliographical Essays_. *]

“It is, to us, very pleasing to contemplate the meeting of such a sovereign and such a subject, as William and De Foe. There was something not dissimilar in their physical aspect, as in their moral temperament resemblances undoubtedly existed. The King was the elder by ten years, but the middle size, the spare figure, the hooked nose, the sharp chin, the keen gray eye, the large forehead, and grave appearance, were common to both. William’s manner was cold, except in battle, and little warmth was ascribed to De Foe’s, unless he spoke of civil liberty.”

CHARLES DICKENS

1812-1870

[Sidenote: Forster’s _Life of Dickens_.]

“Very different was his face in those days from that which photography has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostrils, eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it was extremely spirited. The hair so scant and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books, and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion flashed from every part of it. _It was as if made of steel_, was said of it, four or five years after the time to which I am referring, by a most original and delicate observer, the late Mrs. Carlyle. ‘What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room!’ wrote Leigh Hunt to me, the morning after I had made them known to each other. ‘It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.’ In such sayings are expressed not alone the restless and resistless vivacity and force of which I have spoken, but that also which lay beneath them of steadiness and hard endurance.”--1838.

[Sidenote: J. T. Fields’s _Yesterdays with Authors_.]

“How well I recall the bleak winter evening in 1842 when I first saw the handsome, glowing face of the young man who was even then famous over half the globe! He came bounding into the Tremont House, fresh from the steamer that had brought him to our shores, and his cheery voice rang through the hall, as he gave a quick glance at the new scenes opening upon him in a strange land on first arriving at a Transatlantic hotel. ‘Here we are!’ he shouted, as the lights burst upon the merry party just entering the house, and several gentlemen came forward to meet him. Ah, how happy and buoyant he was then! Young, handsome, almost worshipped for his genius, belted round by such troops of friends as rarely ever man had, coming to a new country to make new conquests of fame and honor,--surely it was a sight long to be remembered and never wholly to be forgotten. The splendour of his endowments and the personal interest he had won to himself called forth all the enthusiasm of old and young America, and I am glad to have been among the first to welcome his arrival. You ask me what was his appearance as he ran, or rather flew, up the steps of the hotel, and sprang into the hall? He seemed all on fire with curiosity, and alive as I never saw mortal before. From top to toe every fibre of his body was unrestrained and alert. What vigor, what keenness, what freshness of spirit, possessed him! He laughed all over, and did not care who heard him! He seemed like the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise of pleasure, determined to conquer a realm or two of fun every hour of his overflowing existence. That night impressed itself on my memory for all time, so far as I am concerned with things sublunary. It was Dickens, the true ‘Boz,’ in flesh and blood, who stood before us at last, and with my companions, three or four lads of my own age, I determined to sit up late that night.”--1842.

[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of writers_.]

“Charles Dickens had that acute perception of the comic side of things which causes irrepressible brimming of the eyes; and what eyes his were! Large, dark blue, exquisitely shaped, fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes--they now swam in liquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started into them from a sense of humour or a sense of pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when some generous indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant, truly superb orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly, handsome face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped, and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to impression that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him. He, who saw into apparently slightest trifles that were fraught to his perception with deeper significance; he, who beheld human nature with insight almost superhuman, and who revered good and abhorred evil with intensity, showed instantaneously by his expressive countenance the kind of idea that possessed him. This made his conversation enthralling, his acting first-rate, and his reading superlative.”

ISAAC D’ISRAELI

1766-1848

[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]

“I found him a most kindly and courteous gentleman, obviously of a tender, loving nature, and certainly more than willing to give me what I asked for. I do not recall him as like his illustrious son; if my memory serves me rightly, he was rather fair than dark; not above the middle height, with features calm in expression; his eyes (which, however, were always covered with spectacles) sparkling, and searching, but indicating less the fire of genius than the patient inquiry that formed the staple of his books.”--1823.

[Sidenote: Beaconsfield’s _Memoirs of Isaac D’Israeli_.]

“As the world has always been fond of personal details respecting men who have been celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon nose, and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Everything interested him, and blind and eighty-two, he was still as susceptible as a child.... He more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to: in his conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas ending with some felicitous phrase of genius, his _naïveté_, his simplicity not untouched with a dash of sarcasm affecting innocence--one was often reminded of the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. There was, however, one trait in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith; he had no vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was rather a deficiency of self-esteem.”

[Sidenote: Chorley’s _Personal Reminiscences_.]