1775-1834
[Sidenote: de Quincey’s _Life and Writings_.]
“Lamb, at this period of his life, then passed regularly, after taking
wine, under a brief eclipse of sleep. It descended upon him as soft as
a shadow. In a gross person laden with superfluous flesh, and sleeping
heavily, this would have been disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even
to meagreness, spare and wiry as an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas
Aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed
rather a net-work of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb,--more like
a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud
exhaling upwards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair as a bust,
breathing so gently as scarcely to seem entirely alive, he presented
the image of repose midway between life and death like the repose
of sculpture, and to one who knew his history, a repose contrasting
with the calamities and internal storms of his life. I have heard
more persons than I can now distinctly recall, observe of Lamb when
sleeping, that his countenance in that state assumed an expression
almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike
simplicity, and its benignity. It could not be called a transfiguration
that sleep worked in his face; for the features wore essentially the
same expression when waking; but sleep spiritualised that expression,
exalted it, and also harmonised it. Much of the change lay in that
last process. The eyes it was that disturbed the unity of effect in
Lamb’s waking face. They gave a restlessness to the character of his
intellect, shifting, like northern lights, through every mode of
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._