as I first saw him, I too should have said that he was very small.
Carlyle's words refer to Dickens's youth soon after he had published
_Pickwick_; and no doubt at this period he had a look of delicacy,
almost of effeminacy, if one may accept Maclise's well-known portrait
as a truthful record, which might give those who saw him the
impression of his being smaller and more fragile in build than was
the fact. In later life he lost this D'Orsay look completely, and was
bronzed and reddened by wind and weather like a seaman.

In fact, when I saw him subsequently in London, I think I should have
passed him in the street without recognising him. I never saw a man so
changed.

Any attempt to draw a complete pen-and-ink portrait of Dickens has
been rendered for evermore superfluous, if it were not presumptuous,
by the masterly and exhaustive life of him by John Forster. But one
may be allowed to record one's own impressions, and any small incident
or anecdote which memory holds, on the grounds set forth by the great
writer himself, who says in the introduction to the _American Notes_
(first printed in the biography)--"Very many works having just the
same scope and range have been already published. But I think that
these two volumes stand in need of no apology on that account. The
interest of such productions, if they have any, lies in the varying
impressions made by the same novel things on different minds, and not
in new discoveries or extraordinary adventures."

At Florence Dickens made a pilgrimage to Landor's villa, the owner
being then absent in England, and gathered a leaf of ivy from Fiesole
to carry back to the veteran poet, as narrated by Mr. Forster. Dickens
is as accurate as a topographer in his description of the villa, as