Littell's Living Age/Volume 139/Issue 1791/Miscellany

Hazlitt's Portrait of Lamb. — A portrait round which a very exceptional amount of literary interest clusters has, according to the Athenæum, been offered to the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery for purchase. It is a likeness of Charles Lamb, painted by the artist and essayist, William Hazlitt, and presented to Coleridge; Coleridge left it to his friend and host, Mr. Gillman, and from the widow of Mr. Gillman it has come to its present owner, Mr. Moger. The likeness has been spoken of with special approval by Crabb Robinson in his diary. This picture represents Lamb at the age of about thirty, in a sixteenth-century Spanish costume, half length and full size; the amount of lifelike, variable expression in the face is very considerable, and the execution is sufficiently good to show that Hazlitt, however superior he may have been as a writer, was not by any means without capacity as a painter. A duplicate of this portrait is in the possession of Mrs. Moxon; there cannot be a doubt that the original is the one now offered by Mr. Moger for purchase. It has been engraved in one of the collections of Lamb's letters, but the oil picture is vastly better than the engraving.