Beauty.

1. Though the danger of disappointment is always in proportion to the height of expectation, yet I this day claim the attention of the ladies, and profess to teach an art by which all may obtain what has hitherto been deemed the prerogative of a few: an art by which their predominant passion may be gratified, and their conquest not only extended, but secured; "The art of being PRETTY."

2. But though my subject may interest the ladies, it may, perhaps, offend those profound moralists who have long since determined, that beauty ought rather to be despised than desired; that, like strength, it is a mere natural excellence, the effect that causes wholly out of our power, and not intended either as the pledge of happiness or the distinction of merit.

3. To these gentlemen I shall remark, that beauty is among those qualities which no effort of human wit could ever bring into contempt: it is therefore to be wished at least, that beauty was in some degree dependent upon sentiment and manners, that so high a privilege might not be possessed by the unworthy, and that human reason might no longer suffer the mortification of those who are compelled to adore an idol, which differs from a stone or log only by the skill of the artificer: and if they cannot themselves behold beauty with indifference, they must, surely, approve an attempt to shew that it merits their regard.

4. I shall, however, principally consider that species of beauty which is expressed in the countenance; for this alone is peculiar to human beings, and is not less complicated than their nature. In the countenance there are but two requisites to perfect beauty, which are wholly produced by external causes, colour and proportion: and it will appear, that even in common estimation these are not the chief; but that though there may be beauty without them, yet there cannot be beauty without something more.

5. The finest features, ranged in the most exact symmetry, and heightened by the most blooming complexion, must be animated before they can strike; and when they are animated, will generally excite the same passions which they express. If they are fixed in the dead calm of insensibility, they will be examined without emotion; and if they do not express kindness, they will be beheld without love.

6. Looks of contempt, disdain, or malevolence, will be reflected, as from a mirror, by every countenance on which they are turned; and if a wanton aspect excites desire; it is but like that of a savage for his prey, which cannot be gratified without the destruction of its object.

7. Among particular graces, the dimple has always been allowed the pre-eminence, and the reason is evident; dimples are produced by a smile, and a smile is an expression of complacency; so the contraction of the brows into a frown, as it is an indication of a contrary temper, has always been deemed a capital defect.

8. The lover is generally at a loss to define the beauty, by which his passion was suddenly and irresistibly determined to a particular object; but this could never happen, if it depended upon any known rule of proportion, upon the shape and disposition of the features, or the colour of the skin: he tells you that it is something which he cannot fully express, something not fixed in any part, but diffused over the whole; he calls it a sweetness, a softness, a placid sensibility, or gives it some other appellation which connects beauty with sentiment, and expresses a charm which is not peculiar to any set of features, but is perhaps possible to all.

9. This beauty, however, does not always consist in smiles, but varies as expressions of meekness and kindness vary with their objects: it is extremely forcible in the silent complaint of patient sufferance, the tender solicitude of friendship, and the glow of filial obedience; and in tears, whether of joy, of pity, or of grief, it is almost irresistible.

10. This is the charm which captivates without the aid of nature, and without which her utmost bounty is ineffectual. But it cannot be assumed as a mask to conceal insensibility or malevolence; it must be the genuine effect of corresponding sentiments, or it will impress upon the countenance a new and more disgusting deformity, affectation: it will produce the grin, the simper, the stare, the languish, the pout, and innumerable other grimaces, that render folly ridiculous, and change pity to contempt.

11. By some, indeed, this species of hypocrisy has been practised with such skill as to deceive superficial observers, though it can deceive even those but for a moment.—Looks which do not correspond with the heart, cannot be assumed without labour, nor continued without pain; the motive to relinquish them must, therefore, soon preponderate, and the aspect and apparel of the visit will be laid by together; the smiles and languishments of art will vanish, and the fierceness of rage, or the gloom of discontent, will either obscure or destroy all the elegance of symmetry and complexion.

12. The artificial aspect is, indeed, as wretched a substitute for the expression of sentiment; as the smear of paint for the blushes of health: it is not only equally transient, and equally liable to dejection; but as paint leaves the countenance yet more withered and ghastly, the passions burst out with move violence after restraint, the features become more distorted and excite more determined aversion.

13. Beauty, therefore, depends principally upon the mind, and, consequently, may be influenced by education. It has been remarked, that the predominant passion may generally be discovered in the countenance; because the muscles by which it is expressed, being almost perpetually contracted, lose their tone, and never totally relax; so that the expression remains when the passion is suspended; thus an angry, a disdainful, a subtle and a suspicious temper, is displayed in characters that are almost universally understood.

14. It is equally true of the pleasing and the softer passions, that they leave their signatures upon the countenance when they cease to act: the prevalence of these passions, therefore, produces a mechanical effect upon the aspect, and gives a turn and cast to the features which makes a more favorable and forcible impression upon the mind of others, than any charm produced by mere external causes.

15. Neither does the beauty which depends upon temper and sentiment, equally endanger the possessor: "It is," to use an eastern metaphor, "like the towers of a city, not only an ornament, but a defence;" if it excites desire, it at once controls and refines it; it represses with awe, it softens with delicacy, and it wins to imitation. The love of reason and virtue is mingled with the love of beauty; because this beauty is little more than the emanation of intellectual excellence, which is not an object of corporeal appetite.

16. As it excites a purer passion, it also more forcibly engages to fidelity: every man finds himself more powerfully restrained from giving pain to goodness than to beauty; and every look of a countenance in which they are blended, in which beauty is the expression of goodness, is a silent reproach of the first irregular wish: and the purpose immediately appears to be disingenious and cruel, by which the tender hope of ineffable affection would be disappointed, the placid confidence of unsuspected simplicity abased, and the peace even of virtue endangered by the most sordid infidelity, and the breach of the strongest obligations.

17. But the hope of the hypocrite must perish. When the fictitious beauty has laid by her smiles, when the lustre of her eyes and the bloom of her cheeks have lost their influence with their novelty; what remains but a tyrant divested of power, who will never be seen without a mixture of indignation and disdain? The only desire which this object could gratify, will be transferred to another, not only without reluctance, but with triumph.

18. As resentment will succeed to disappointment, a desire to mortify will succeed to a desire to please; and the husband may be urged to solicit a mistress, merely by a remembrance of the beauty of his wife, which lasted only till she was known.

Let it therefore be remembered, that none can be disciples of the Graces, but in the school of Virtue; and that those who wish to be lovely, must learn early to be good.

19. A FRIEND of mine has two daughters, whom I will call Lætitia and Daphne. The former is one of the greatest beauties of the age in which she lives; the latter no way remarkable for any charms in her person. Upon this one circumstance of their outward form, the good and ill of their life seem to turn. Lætitia has not from her very childhood heard any thing else but commendations of her features and complexion, by which means she is no other than nature made her, a very beautiful outside.

20. The consciousness of her charms has rendered her insupportably vain and insolent towards all who have to do with her. Daphne, who was almost twenty before one civil thing had ever been said to her, found herself obliged to acquire some accomplishments to make up for the want of those attractions which she saw in her sister.

21. Poor Daphne was seldom submitted to in a debate wherein she was concerned; her discourse had nothing to recommend it but the good sense of it, and she was always under a necessity to have very well considered what she was to say before she uttered it; while Lætitia was listened to with partiality, and approbation sat in the countenances of those she conversed with, before she communicated what she had to say.

22. These causes have produced suitable effects, and Lætitia is as insipid a companion as Daphne is an agreeable one. Lætitia, confident of favour, has studied no arts to please: Daphne, despairing of any inclination towards her person, has depended only on her merit. Lætitia has always something in her air that is sullen, grave and disconsolate.

23. Daphne has a countenance that appears cheerful, open and unconcerned. A young gentleman saw Lætitia this winter at play, and became her captive. His fortune was such, that he wanted very little introduction to speak his sentiments to her father. The lover was admitted with the utmost freedom into the family, where a constrained behaviour, severe looks, and distant civilities were the highest favours he could obtain from Lætitia; while Daphne used him with the good humour, familiarity, and innocence of a sister.

24. Insomuch that he would often say to her, Dear Daphne, wert thou but as handsome as Lætitia!—She received such language with that ingenious and pleasing mirth, which is natural to a woman without design. He still sighed in vain for Lætitia but found certain relief in the agreeable conversation of Daphne. At length, heartily tired with the haughty impertinence of Lætitia, and charmed with repeated instances of good humour he had observed in Daphne, he one day told the latter, that he had something to say to her he hoped she would be pleased with.

25. ——Faith Daphne, continued he, I am in love with thee, and despise thy sister sincerely. The manner of his declaring himself gave his mistress occasion for a very hearty laughter.—Nay, says he, I knew you would laugh at me, but I'll ask your father. He did so; the father received his intelligence with no less joy than surprize, and was very glad he had now no care left but for his beauty, which he thought he would carry to market at his leisure.

26. I do not know any thing that has pleased me so much a great while, as this conquest of my friend Daphne's. All her acquaintance congratulate her upon her chance medley, and laugh at that premeditating murderer, her sister. As it is an argument of a light mind, to think the worse of ourselves for the imperfections of our persons, it is equally below us to value ourselves upon the advantages of them.

27. The female world seems to be almost incorrigibly gone astray in this particular; for which reason, I shall recommend the following extract out of a friend's letter to the profess'd beauties, who are a people almost as insufferable as the profess'd wits.

'Monsier St. Evrement has concluded one of his essays with affirming, that the last sighs of a handsome woman are not so much for the loss of her life, as her beauty.

28. 'Perhaps this raillery is pursued too far, yet it is turned upon a very obvious remark, that woman's strongest passion is for her own beauty, and that she values it as her favourite distinction. From hence it is that all hearts, which intend to improve or preserve it, meet with so general a reception among the sex.

29. To say nothing Of many false helps, and contraband wares of beauty, which are daily vended in this great mart, there is not a maiden gentlewoman, of a good family, in any county of South Britain, who has not heard of the virtues of may-dew, or is unfurnished with some receipt or other in favour of her complexion; and I have known a physician of learning and sense, after eight years study in the university and a course of travels into most countries of Europe, owe the first raising of his fortune to a cosmetic wash.

30. 'This has given me occasion to consider how so universal a disposition in womankind, which springs from a laudable motive, the desire of pleasing, and proceeds upon an opinion, not altogether groundless, that nature may be helped by art, may be turned to their advantage. And, methinks, it would be an acceptable service to take them out of the hands of quacks and pretenders, and to prevent their imposing upon themselves, by discovering to them the true secret and art of improving beauty.

31. 'In order to do this, before I touch upon it directly, it will be necessary to lay down a few preliminary maxims, viz.

That no woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more she can be witty only by the help of speech.

That pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

That no woman is capable of being beautiful, who is not incapable of being false.

And, that what would be odious in a friend, is deformity in a mistress.

32. 'From these few principles thus laid down, it will be easy to prove that the true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper ornaments of virtuous and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is, that those who are the favourite work of nature, or, as Mr. Dryden expresses it, the porcelain clay of human kind, become animated, and are in a capacity of exerting their charms: and those who seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable, in a great measure, of finishing what she has left imperfect.

33. 'It is, methinks, a low and degrading idea of that sex, which was created to refine the joys, and soften the cares of humanity, by the most agreeable participation, to consider them merely as objects of sight.—This is abridging them of their natural extent of power to put them upon a level with their pictures at the pantheon. How much nobler is the contemplation of beauty heightened by virtue, and commanding our esteem and love, while it draws our observation?

34. 'How faint and spiritless are the charms of a coquette, when compared with the real loveliness of Sophronia's innocence, piety, good-humour, and truth; virtues which add a new softness to her sex, and even beautify her beauty! That agreeableness, which must otherwise have appeared no longer in the modest virgin, is now preserved in the tender mother, the prudent friend and faithful wife'.

35. 'Colours artfully spread upon canvas may entertain the eye, but not affect the heart; and she, who takes no care to add to the natural graces of her person, any excelling qualities, may be allowed still to amuse as a picture, but not to triumph as a beauty.

'When Adam is introduced by Milton describing Eve in Paradise, and relating to the angel the impressions he felt upon seeing her at her first creation, he does not represent her like a Grecian Venus, by her shape of features, but by the lustre of her mind which shone in them, and gave them their power of charming.

36.

'Without this irradiating power, the proudest fair-one ought to know, whatever her glass may tell her to the contrary, that her most perfect features are uninformed and dead.

'I cannot better close this moral, than by a short epitaph, written by Ben Johnson with a spirit which nothing could inspire, but such an object as I have been describing.

I am, Sir Your most humble Servant, R.B. SPECTATOR, Vol. I. No.33.