“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.

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

“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.”