OF BEAUTY 107 



more than that of colour ; and that of decent and gracious 

 motion more than that of favour. That is the best part 

 of beauty, which a picture cannot express ; no nor the first 

 sight of life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not 

 some strangeness in the proportion} A man cannot tell 

 whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler ; 

 whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical 

 proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of 

 divers faces, to make one excellent. Such personages, I 

 think, would please nobody but the painter that made 

 them. Not but I think a painter may make a better face 

 than ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity, (as 

 a musician that maketh an excellent air in music,) and not 

 by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you examine them 

 part by part, you shall find never a good ; and yet alto- 

 gether do well. 



If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in 

 decent motion, certainly it is no marvel though persons in 

 years seem many times more amiable ; pulchrorum autum- 

 nus pulcher ; for no youth can be comely but by pardon, 

 and considering the youth as to make up the comeliness. 

 Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and 

 cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute 

 youth, and an age a little out of countenance ; but yet 

 certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and 

 vices blush. 



XLIV 

 OF DEFORMITY 



DEFORMED persons are commonly even with nature; for 

 as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature; 

 being for the most part (as the Scriptures saith) 'void of 

 natural affection ' ; and so they have their revenge of 

 nature. Certainly there is a consent between the body 

 and the mind ; and where nature erreth in the one, she 

 ventureth in the other. Ubi peaat in uno, feriditatur in 



