Not a wart, or a wrinkle was to be left out.
Lely accordingly produced a stronger and bluffer face than is usual with
him; though it is to be doubted, whether the sense of beauty to which he
afterwards made such a sacrifice of his pencil, would have permitted him
to go to the extent of Cromwell's direction, granting even that the
instinct of a courtier had not prevented it. Nor are we to suppose, that
Cromwell himself, however great a man, was displeased to think that his
warts and wrinkles had been found less inimical to pleasingness of aspect,
than might have been looked for. Be this as it may, I was afterwards when
I came to see the picture, highly struck with the resemblance it bore to
him at the period of this interview. If there was any defect on the wrong
side it was, that the eyes were not fine enough; not sufficiently deep and
full of meaning. And yet they are not vulgar eyes, in Lely's picture. The
forehead, and the open flow of hair on either side, as if he was looking
out upon the realm he governed, and the air of it was breathing upon him,
are wonderfully like; and so is the determined yet unaffected look of the
mouth. The nose, which in every face is, perhaps, the seat of refinement
or coarseness, (at least I have never found the symptom fail) is hardly
coarse enough; and in a similar proportion, it is wanting in power.
Cromwell's nose looked almost like a knob of oak. Indeed, throughout his
face there was something of the knobbed and gnarled character of that
monarch of our woods.
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