Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/308

This page has been validated.

198

BACON'S ESSAYS

beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour^[1] is more than that of colour; and that of decent^[2] and gracious^[3] 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^[4] or Albert Durer^[5] were the more^[6] trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers^[7] faces, to

↑ 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.

"My gracious silence, hail."

Coriolanus. ii. 1.

It is Coriolanus's greeting to his wife, Virgilia, on his return from war.
↑ 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.

[1] 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.

[2] Decent. Fit, becoming. "Let all things be done decently and in order." I. Corinthians xiv. 40.

[3] Gracious. Graceful.

"My gracious silence, hail."

Coriolanus. ii. 1.

It is Coriolanus's greeting to his wife, Virgilia, on his return from war.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.)

[6] More. Greater.

[7] 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.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]