I Have His Figure This
Moment Before My Eyes, And Think There Was That In It Which
Deserved Better.
The monk, as I judged by the break in his tonsure, a few scattered
white hairs upon his temples,
Being all that remained of it, might
be about seventy; - but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which
was in them, which seemed more temper'd by courtesy than years,
could be no more than sixty: - Truth might lie between - He was
certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance,
notwithstanding something seem'd to have been planting-wrinkles in
it before their time, agreed to the account.
It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted, - mild,
pale - penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented
ignorance looking downwards upon the earth; - it look'd forwards;
but look'd as if it look'd at something beyond this world. - How one
of his order came by it, heaven above, who let it fall upon a
monk's shoulders best knows: but it would have suited a Bramin,
and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it.
The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might
put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither
elegant nor otherwise, but as character and expression made it so:
it was a thin, spare form, something above the common size, if it
lost not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure, - but it
was the attitude of Intreaty; and, as it now stands presented to my
imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.
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