ess, white and fair,
The milk, the lily do not thee come near;
The rose so white, the rose so red to see,
And Indian ivory comes short of thee."

Such a description our English Homer makes of a fair lady

[5403] _That Emilia that was fairer to seen,
Then is lily upon the stalk green:
And fresher then May with flowers new,
For with the rose colour strove her hue,
I no't which was the fairer of the two_.

In this very phrase [5404]Polyphemus courts Galatea:

"Candidior folio nivei Galatea ligustri,
Floridior prato, longa procerior alno,
Splendidior vitro, tenero lascivior haedo, &c.
Mollior et cygni plumis, et lacte coacto."

"Whiter Galet than the white withie-wind,
Fresher than a field, higher than a tree,
Brighter than glass, more wanton than a kid,
Softer than swan's down, or ought that may be."

So she admires him again, in that conceited dialogue of Lucian, which John
Secundus, an elegant Dutch modern poet, hath translated into verse. When
Doris and those other sea nymphs upbraided her with her ugly misshapen
lover, Polyphemus; she replies, they speak out of envy and malice,

[5405] "Et plane invidia huc mera vos stimulare videtur.
Quod non vos itidem ut me Polyphemus amet;"

Say what they could, he was a proper man. And as Heloise writ to her
sweetheart Peter Abelard, _Si me Augustus orbis imperator uxorem expeteret,
mallem tua esse meretrix quam orbis imperatrix_; she had rather be his
vassal, his quean, than the world's empress or queen.--_non si me Jupiter
ipse forte velit_,--she would not change her love for Jupiter himself.

To thy thinking she is a most loathsome creature; and as when a country
fellow discommended once that exquisite picture of Helen, made by Zeuxis,
[5406]for he saw no such beauty in it; Nichomachus a lovesick spectator
replied, _Sume tibi meos oculos et deam existimabis_, take mine eyes, and
thou wilt think she is a goddess, dote on her forthwith, count all her
vices virtues; her imperfections infirmities, absolute and perfect: if she
be flat-nosed, she is lovely; if hook-nosed, kingly; if dwarfish and
little, pretty; if tall, proper and man-like, our brave British Boadicea;
if crooked, wise; if monstrous, comely; her defects are no defects at all,
she hath no deformities. _Immo nec ipsum amicae stercus foetet_, though she
be nasty, fulsome, as Sostratus'