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.”