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
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.
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.
Littell’s
Living Age,
1849.