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.
* * * * *