scription), was a man of slightly less
than middle height, but with broadish shoulders, limbs well put
together, and long fingers. He had a rather swarthy face, with black
hair, and a beard a span and a half long, also black, but latterly
turning grey. The face was somewhat long, the nose decidedly so, the
mouth large, and the lips full, so that the upper lip in particular
seemed to be swollen. The chief peculiarity of his face was that his
eyes--sunk between a rather narrow forehead, with a strong ridge of
eyebrow, above, and ruddy and swelling cheeks, below--looked hollow and
retreating. But those eyes were of a darkish blue colour, their glance
was keen and vivid, and the whole face was 'not unpleasing.' We can
easily believe that 'in his settled and severe countenance there dwelt a
natural dignity and majesty, which was by no means ungracious, but in
anger authority sat upon his brow.'[119]

This seems to be a true portraiture of Knox in the days of his vigour;
if we are to speak of vigour in the case of a man with a small and frail
body (one of his early biographers speaks of him as a mere _corpuscle_),
and a man throughout his whole public life struggling with disease. In
the last year of his prematurely 'decrepit age,' we have another
description of him; and this time it is taken in St Andrews. Edinburgh
and Leith were now again at war, and the quarter of Knox's house was the
most unsafe in the city. The 'King's Men' outside were always attempting
to force the Netherbow Port; and their guns, planted close by on the Dow
Craig,[120] and a little farther off on Salisbury Crags, smote from
either side. They were crossed and answered, not only by the great guns
of the castle, held by the Queen's Men under Kirkaldy, but by a nearer
battery on the Blackfriars' Yard, and by guns planted on the roof of St
Giles (the biggest of which the soldiers of course christened 'John
Knox'). In these circumstances Knox was safer away; and from May 1571 to
August 1572 his residence was St Andrews. There the mild James Melville,
a student at St Leonards, watched the old man with the wistful reverence
of youth.

'I saw him every day of his doctrine go _hulie and fear_,[121]
with a furring of martricks about his neck, a staff in the one
hand, and good godly Richard Ballanden, his servant, holding up
the other oxter,[122] from the Abbey to the parish kirk; and by
the said Richard and another servant, lifted up to the