iable and delicious, _tam scitula,
forma_, if she do but laugh or smile, makes an ugly sparrow-mouthed face,
and shows a pair of uneven, loathsome, rotten, foul teeth: she hath a black
skin, gouty legs, a deformed crooked carcass under a fine coat. It may be
for all her costly tires she is bald, and though she seem so fair by dark,
by candlelight, or afar off at such a distance, as Callicratides observed
in [5714]Lucian, "If thou should see her near, or in a morning, she would
appear more ugly than a beast;" [5715]_si diligenter consideres, quid per
os et nares et caeteros corporis meatus egreditur, vilius sterquilinium
nunquam vidisti_. Follow my counsel, see her undressed, see her, if it be
possible, out of her attires, _furtivis nudatam coloribus_, it may be she
is like Aesop's jay, or [5716]Pliny's cantharides, she will be loathsome,
ridiculous, thou wilt not endure her sight: or suppose thou saw'st her,
pale, in a consumption, on her death-bed, skin and bones, or now dead,
_Cujus erat gratissimus amplexus_ (whose embrace was so agreeable) as
Barnard saith, _erit horribilis aspectus; Non redolet, sed olet, quae,
redolere solet_, "As a posy she smells sweet, is most fresh and fair one
day, but dried up, withered, and stinks another." Beautiful Nireus, by that
Homer so much admired, once dead, is more deformed than Thersites, and
Solomon deceased as ugly as Marcolphus: thy lovely mistress that was erst
[5717]_Charis charior ocellis_, "dearer to thee than thine eyes," once sick
or departed, is _Vili vilior aestimata coeno_, "worse than any dirt or
dunghill." Her embraces were not so acceptable, as now her looks be
terrible: thou hadst better behold a Gorgon's head, than Helen's carcass.

Some are of opinion, that to see a woman naked is able of itself to alter
his affection; and it is worthy of consideration, saith [5718]Montaigne the
Frenchman in his Essays, that the skilfulest masters of amorous dalliance,
appoint for a remedy of venerous passions, a full survey of the body; which
the poet insinuates,

[5719] "Ille quod obscaenas in aperto corpore partes
Viderat, in cursu qui fuit, haesit amor."

"The love stood still, that run in full career,
When once it saw those parts should not appear."

It is reported of Seleucus, king of Syria, that seeing his wife
Stratonice's bald pate, as she was undressing her by chance, he could never
affect her after. Remundus Lullius, the physician, spying an ul