Another portrait of him had been painted in 1805 by William Hazlitt; his last work with the brush, we are told by his grandson. This figure, in the costume of a Venetian senator, is well known in its engravings, and is considered an interesting presentation of the man. But, beyond the fine and forcible poise of the head--the noble head which resembled that of Bacon, said Leigh Hunt, except that it had less worldly vigour and more sensibility--this is to me an unpleasing picture. It robs Lamb of just that sensibility, and transforms him into a burly, truculent, ill-conditioned creature! He was thirty years old at the time this was painted. When he was twenty-three, an admirable drawing in chalk had been made by Hancock; a profile likeness, in which the superb sweep of the cranial arch and the subtle sweet lines about the mouth are most noticeable. This, the first portrait known of him, was engraved on steel for Cottle’s “Early Recollections of Coleridge.”
A striking piece of portraiture of his mature manhood has been found within a few years. It is a water-colour sketch by Mr. Joseph, A. R. A., and had been inserted, along with many other portraits, in a copy of Byron’s “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” This volume had been thus enlarged, in 1819, by Mr. William Evans, Lamb’s desk-companion in the East India House, and he had doubtless induced Lamb to sit for this portrait with this intent. Another admirable likeness was painted in oil, in 1827, by Henry Meyer, and this was engraved for the quarto edition of Leigh Hunt’s “Lord Byron and his Contemporaries,” published by Colburn, in 1828.
The frontispiece of our volume is a reproduction of the portrait first engraved for Talfourd’s “Letters,” published in 1837. It is known as the Wageman portrait, engraved by Finden, and is perhaps the most noted and
the most attractive of any likeness we have. Our Maclise portrait is made from an etching done by Daniel Maclise, R. A., for _Fraser’s Magazine_; in which pages it appeared, as one of “A Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters,” published from the year 1830 to 1838. Of all the portraits of Lamb, however, it was always held by those who had seen him that Brook Pulham’s etching on copper was the most life-like in every way ever done. We are fortunate in having so many portraits, some of them so good; for Lamb never liked to sit, regarding the desire to pose for a picture as an avowal of personal vanity.
