A man of many—tiny—letters

Ricky Jay, 67, is a polymath—magician, actor, author, collector—with a fondness for the language of earlier eras. He describes the legless and armless German entertainer Matthias Buchinger (1674-1739), whose work Jay has loaned for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum (until 11 April), as “an overachieving phocomelic”, referring to the congenital disease that left him without limbs, and a “micro-indefatigabilist”.
Standing at just 29 inches tall, Buchinge