DRAMATIC SKETCH OF A THIN MAN.
A long lean man, with all his limbs rambling—no way to reduce him to compass, unless you could double him like a pocket rule—with his arms spread, he'd lie on the bed of Ware like a cross on a Good Friday bun—standing still, he is a pilaster without a base—he appears rolled out or run up against a wall—so thin that his front face is but the moiety of a profile—if he stands cross-legged, he looks like a Caduceus, and put him in a fencing attitude, you would take him for a piece of chevaux-de-frise—to make any use of him, it must be as a spontoon or a fishing-rod—when his wife's by, he follows like a note of admiration—see them together, one's a mast and the other all hulk—she's a dome, and he's built together like a glass-house—when they part, you wonder to see the steeple separate from the chancel, and were they to embrace, he must hang round her neck like a skein of thread on a lace-maker's bolster—to sing her praise, you should choose a rondeau; and to celebrate him, you must write all Alexandrines.—Sheridan's MSS. in Moore's Life of him.
A man of words and not of deeds,
Is like a garden full of seeds.