ore than
that of color; and that of decent and gracious motion, more than that of
favor. 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 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 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; 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.

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 Scripture 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 peccat in uno, periclitatur in altero. But because there is,
in man, an election touching the frame of his mind, and a necessity in
the frame of his body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes
obscured, by the sun of discipline and virtue. Therefore it is good to
consider of deformity, not as a sign, which is more deceivable; but as a
cause, which seldom faileth of the effect. Whosoever hath anything fixed
in his person, that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur
in himself, to rescue and deliver himself from scorn. Therefore all
deformed persons, are extreme bold. First, as in their own defence, as
being exposed to scorn; but in process of time, by a general habit