Page:Table-Talk, vol. 2 (1822).djvu/80

 fancy I have some insight into physiognomy myself, but he could often expound to me at a single glance the characters of those of my acquaintance that I had been most at fault about. The account as it was cast up and balanced between us was not always very favourable. How finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the S! Poor and faint are my sketches compared to his! It was like looking into a camera obscura—you saw faces shining and speaking—the smoke curled, the lights dazzled, the oak wainscotting took a higher polish—there was old S, tall and gaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, M eyeing the ventilator and lying perdu for a moral, and H and A taking another friendly finishing glass!—These and many more windfalls of character he gave us in thought, word, and action. I remember his once describing three different persons together to myself and M, viz. the manager of a country theatre, a tragic and a comic performer, till we were ready to tumble on the floor with laughing at the oddity of their humours, and at R’s extraordinary powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental; and B said (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning,