“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.

“... 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.

“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.