Of Beauty.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features, and that hath rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect; neither is it almost seen that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue, as if nature were rather busy not to err, than in labour to produce excellency, and therefore they prove accomplished, but not of great spirit, and study rather behaviour than virtue. But this holds not always; for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward IV. of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the sophy of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour is 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 the 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 pro portions, 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 altogether 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 autumnus pulcher"—["The autumn of the beautiful is beauteous"]; 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 virtues shine, and vices blush.