The Essays of Francis Bacon/XLIII Of Beauty
XLIII. Of Beauty.
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 almost[1] seen, that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue; as if nature were rather busy not to err, than in labour to produce excellency.[2] And therefore they prove accomplished, but not of great spirit; and study rather behaviour than virtue. But this holds not always: for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel[3] of France, Edward the Fourth[4] of England, Alcibiades[5] of Athens, Ismael the Sophy[6] of Persia, were all high and great spirits; and yet the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour[7] is more than that of colour; and that of decent[8] and gracious[9] motion more than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express; no nor the first sight of life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles[10] or Albert Durer[11] were the more[12] trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers[13] 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,[14] (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;[15] 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.
- ↑ Almost. For the most part.
- ↑ Excellency. Excellence. "Ascribe ye strength unto God: his excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds." Psalms lxviii. 34.
- ↑ Philippe le Bel, 'Philip the Fair,' Philippe IV. of the House of Capet, 1268–1314, King of France from 1285 to 1314.
- ↑ Edward IV., 1441–1483, King of England, 1461–1483.
- ↑ Alcibiades, 450(?)–404 B.C., an Athenian politician and general, nephew of Pericles. He was rich, handsome, accomplished, and an admirable orator, but reckless and unsteady in character.
- ↑ Ismail I., Shah (Sophy) of Persia, 1487–1524, founder of the Suffarian dynasty.
- ↑ Favor. Features, looks, a fossiliferous sense of favor, surviving in 'hard-favored,' that is, 'hard-looking,' 'ugly.' He favors his father means 'he looks like his father.' So 'kissing goes by favor' means by 'looks,' not by 'preference,' as is commonly understood.
- ↑ Decent. Fit, becoming. "Let all things be done decently and in order." I. Corinthians xiv. 40.
- ↑ Gracious. Graceful.
It is Coriolanus's greeting to his wife, Virgilia, on his return from war.
"My gracious silence, hail."
Coriolanus. ii. 1.
- ↑ Apelles, a celebrated Greek painter of the time of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, 4th century B.C. His most famous picture was the Aphrodite Anadyomene, 'Venus rising from the sea.' Both Cicero and Pliny tell us that the Greek painter of a composite face Bacon alludes to here was not Apelles, but Zeuxis, who was probably a native of Heraclea (Magna Graecia), and lived from 420 to 390 B.C. According to Cicero, when Zeuxis was commissioned to paint a picture of Helena for the temple of Juno Lacinia at Croton, he was allowed, at his own request, the presence of five of the most beautiful maidens of Croton, "ut mutum in simulacrum ex animali exemplo veritas transferatur," that he might transfer the truth of life to a mute image. M. Tullii Ciceronis Rhetoricorum seu De Inventione Rhetorica Liber II. 2, 3. Compare, C. Plinii Secundi Naturalis Historiae Liber XXXV. 36. ix.
- ↑ Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, a famous German painter, designer of woodcuts, and engraver. He wrote a book on human proportions, Hierinnen sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion. (Nuremberg. 1528.)
- ↑ More. Greater.
- ↑ Divers. Many. "And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far." Mark viii. 3.
- ↑ felicitate quâdam et casu. Keats seems to have felt that this is true also with regard to his own art:—
"When I behold upon the night's starred face
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance."
Life, Letters, &c. of John Keats, vol. ii. p. 293. S.
- ↑ The autumn of the beautiful is beautiful. A thought from Euripides, quoted in the beginning of Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades. "Euripides would say of persons that were beautiful, and yet in some years, In fair bodies not only the spring is pleasant, but also the autumn." Bacon. Apophthegmes New and Old. 145.
The spiritual beauty of old age as one sees it in the faces of old men and women who have lived good lives is nowhere so finely described as by Edmund Waller:"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made."
Edmund Waller. Old Age.
T. Livii Patavini Historiarum Ab Urbe Condita Liber XXXVIII. Caput 53. He probably recollected the thought, "in effect," not from Livy, but from Ovid:
"Coepisti melius, quam desinis : ultima primis
Cedunt:"
P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroides. Epistola IX. Deianira Herculi. 23–24.
"Alonso of Arragon was wont to say, in commendation of age, That age appeared to be best in four things: Old wood to burn; old wine to drink; old friends to trust; and old authors to read." Bacon. Apophthegmes New and Old. 97 (75).