Pictures and bodies

After my pontificating about words being more important than pictures, I was studying Robert Browning's photo (he's the writer, you may remember, of "Porphyria's Bloke") and noticed that he was rather handsome. Here he is when young. He has a slight air of Colin Firth, don't you think? This photo mercifully shades out his rather appalling side whiskers, mind you.

You can see why Elizabeth Barrett might have leapt from her sofa when he appeared.

Still quite good-looking as an older chap.

And even when fairly venerable, he's quite sweet in a Santa-ish way - though actually he died at 77, so he does look his age, I suppose. Too many pies by that time.

On another topic: is it just me, or do you find this first sentence (edited to: this second sentence (thank you, Veg Artist))* by one of my science students (to whom I teach English) a bit ... creepy? I asked them to write about why they'd been inspired to do science at university and he wrote:

Science is a beautiful subject. The human body is an inner space, poised and ready for dissection by the inquisitive and hungry-for-knowledge biologist of the present age.

Yes... Don't think I'm going to leave my body sitting around too near this chap. Luckily I wouldn't often describe myself as poised.

* I think I meant first paragraph but you might think I'd know the difference between a sentence and a paragraph, wouldn't you? It was late at night. I was rushing. And stuff.