美文共享:Of Beauty

冬天1234

    Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. And
surely virtue is best, in a body that is comely, though not of
delicated features. And that has 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 labor to produce excellency. And therefore they
prove accomplished, but not of great spirit, and study rather behavior,
than virtue. But this holds not aways, for Augustus Caesar, Titus
Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward the fouth 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 favor, is more 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 can
not express, no, nor the first sight of the life. There is no excellent
beauty, that has not some strangeness in the proportion. A man can not
tell whether Apelles, or Albert Durer, were the more trifler; where of
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 personage, 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 makes 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 all together 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
can not last; and for the most part it makes a disolute youth, and an
age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light
well, it makes virtue shine, and vices blush.





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