combination with fantastic playfulness; and sometimes by fiery gleams obliterating for the moment that pure light of benignity which was the predominant reading on his features.”--1822. [Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.] “He was the leanest of mankind; tiny black breeches buttoned to the knee-cap and no further, surmounting spindle-legs also in black, face and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and of a Jew type rather; in the eyes a kind of smoky brightness, or confused sharpness; spoke with a stutter; in walking tottered and shuffled, emblem of imbecility, bodily and spiritual (something of real insanity, I have understood), and yet something, too, of human, ingenuous, pathetic, sportfully much enduring. Poor Lamb! he was infinitely astonished at my wife, and her quiet encounter of his too ghastly London wit by a cheerful native ditto. Adieu! poor Lamb!” [Sidenote: Talfourd’s _Reminiscence of Charles Lamb_.] “Methinks I see him before me now, as he appeared then, and as he continued with scarcely any perceptible alteration to me, during the twenty years of intimacy which followed, and were closed by his death. A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerklike black, was surmounted by a head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering sweetness, and fix it for ever in words? There are none, alas, to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought striving with humour, the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth, and a smile of painful sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose. His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what he himself says in one of his letters to Manning, of Braham, ‘a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.’”--_Written shortly after Lamb’s death._ LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON 1802-1838 [Sidenote: Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_.] “... Miss Landon, a young poetess--a starling--the L. E. L. of the _Gazette_, with a gay good-humoured face, which gave me a favourable impression.”--1826. [Sidenote: Blanchard’s _Life of L. E. L._]