s appearance at about that period
of his life, quoted from Froude's _History of Carlyle's Life in
London_:

"He is a fine little fellow--Boz--I think. Clear blue, intelligent
eyes, eyebrows that he arches amazingly, large, protrusive, rather
loose mouth, a face of most extreme mobility, which he shuttles
about--eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all--in a very singular manner when
speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of common-coloured hair,
and set it on a small compact figure, very small, and dressed _a la_
D'Orsay rather than well--this is Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet,
shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems to guess pretty well what he
is and what others are."

One may perhaps venture to suppose that had the second of these
guesses been less accurate, the description might have been a less
kindly one.

But there are two errors to be noted in this sketch, graphic as it
is. Firstly, Dickens's eyes were not blue, but of a very distinct and
brilliant hazel--the colour traditionally assigned to Shakspeare's
eyes. Secondly, Dickens, although truly of a slight, compact figure,
was _not a very_ small man. I do not think he was below the average
middle height. I speak from my remembrance of him at a later day,
when I had become intimate with him; but curiously enough, I find on
looking back into my memory, that if I had been asked to describe him,
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_