pass him by without recollecting his countenance: it was full of
sensibility, and it came upon you like a new thought, which you could not
help dwelling upon afterwards; it gave rise to meditation, and did you
good. This small, half-clerical man was--Charles Lamb.

I had known him for a short time previously to 1818, having been
introduced to him at Mr. Leigh Hunt's house, where I enjoyed his company
once or twice over agreeable suppers; but I knew him slightly only, and
did not see much of him until he and his sister went to occupy the
lodgings in Russell Street, where he invited me to come and see him. They
lived in the corner house adjoining Bow Street. This house belonged, at
that time, to an ironmonger (or brazier), and was comfortable and clean,--
and a little noisy.

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