a faint idea
of coming warm in time. My face is at present tingling with the frost
and wind, as I suppose the cymbals may, when that turbaned turk attached
to the life guards' band has been newly clashing at them in St.
James's-park. I am in hopes it may be the preliminary agony of returning
animation."

[Illustration: AT 58 LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS, MONDAY THE 2^{ND} OF DECEMBER
1844.]

There was certainly no want of animation when we met. I have but to
write the words to bring back the eager face and figure, as they flashed
upon me so suddenly this wintry Saturday night that almost before I
could be conscious of his presence I felt the grasp of his hand. It is
almost all I find it possible to remember of the brief, bright, meeting.
Hardly did he seem to have come when he was gone. But all that the visit
proposed he accomplished. He saw his little book in its final form for
publication; and, to a select few brought together on Monday the 2nd of
December at my house, had the opportunity of reading it aloud. An
occasion rather memorable, in which was the germ of those readings to
larger audiences by which, as much as by his books, the world knew him
in his later life; but of which no detail beyond the fact remains in my
memory, and all are now dead who were present at it excepting only Mr.
Carlyle and myself. Among those however who have thus passed away was
one, our excellent Maclise, who, anticipating the advice of Captain
Cuttle, had "made a note of" it in pencil, which I am able here to
reproduce. It will tell the reader all he can wish to know. He will see
of whom the party consisted; and may be assured (with allowance for a
touch of caricature to which I may claim to be considered myself as the
chief victim), that in the grave attention of Carlyle, the eager
interest of Stanfield and Maclise, the keen look of poor Laman
Blanchard, Fox's rapt solemnity, Jerrold's skyward gaze, and the tears
of Harness and Dyce, the characteristic points of the scene are
sufficiently rendered. All other recollection of it is passed and gone;
but that at least its principal actor was made glad and grateful,
sufficient farther testimony survives. Such was the report made of it,
that once more, on the pressing intercession of our friend Thomas
Ingoldsby (Mr. Barham), there was a second reading to which the presence
and enjoyment of Fonblanque gave new zest;[93] and when I expressed to
Dickens, after he left us, my grief that he had had so