Charles Lamb was about forty years of age when I first saw him; and I knew him intimately for the greater part of twenty years. Small and spare in person, and with small legs ("immaterial legs" Hood called them), he had a dark complexion, dark, curling hair, almost black, and a grave look, lightening up occasionally, and capable of sudden merriment. His laugh was seldom excited by jokes merely ludicrous; it was never spiteful; and his quiet smile was sometimes inexpressibly sweet: perhaps it had a touch of sadness in it. His mouth was well shaped; his lip tremulous with expression; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and glittering; and he had a grand head, full of thought. Leigh Hunt said that "he had a head worthy of Aristotle." Hazlitt calls it "a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." I knew that, before he had attained the age of twenty years, he had to make his way in the world, and that his lines had not been cast in pleasant places. I had heard, indeed, that his family had at one time consisted of a father and mother and an insane sister; all helpless and poor, and all huddled together in a small lodging, scarcely large enough to admit of their moving about without restraint. It is difficult to imagine a more disheartening youth. Nevertheless, out of this desert, in which no hope was visible, he rose up eventually a cheerful man (cheerful when his days were not clouded by his sister's illness); a charming companion, full of pleasant and gentle fancies, and the finest humorist of his age. Although sometimes strange in manner, he was thoroughly unaffected; in serious matters thoroughly sincere. He was, indeed (as he confesses), terribly shy; diffident, not awkward in manner; with occasionally nervous, twitching motions that betrayed this infirmity. He dreaded the criticisms of servants far more than the observations of their masters. To undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said to me, when we were going to breakfast with Mr. Rogers one morning, was "terrible." His speech was brief and pithy; not too often humorous; never sententious nor didactic. Although he sometimes talked whilst walking up and down the room (at which time he seldom looked at the person with whom he was talking), he very often spoke as if impelled by the necessity of speaking--suddenly, precipitately. If he could have spoken very easily, he might possibly have uttered long sentences, expositions, or orations; such as some of his friends indulged in, to the utter confusion of their hearers. But he knew the value of silence; and he knew that even truth may be damaged by too many words. When he did speak, his words had a flavor in them beyond any that I have heard elsewhere. His conversation dwelt upon persons or things within his own recollection, or it opened (with a startling doubt, or a question, or a piece of quaint humor) the great circle of thought.