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
always most seen, that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great
virtue; as if nature were rather busy not to err, than in labor to
produce excellency; and therefore they prove accomplished, but not of
great spirit, and study rather behavior than virtue. But this holds
not always; for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of
France, Edward the Fourth of England,[451] 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 favor is more than
that of color; and that of decent and gracious motion, more than that
of favor.[452] 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;”[453] for
no youth can be comely but by pardon,[454] 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.