“If thou beest not so handsome as thou wouldest have been thank God thou art not more unhandsome than thou art. 'Tis His mercy thou art not the mark for passenger's fingers to point at, an Heteroclite in nature, with some member defective or redundant. Be glad that thy clay cottage hath all the necessary forms thereto belonging, though the outside be not so fairly plaistered as some others.”
FULLER'S HOLY STATE, B. iii. c. 15.
I asked him once if there was not a degree of ugliness which might be deemed unfortunate, because a consciousness of it affected the ill-favoured individual so as to excite in him discontent and envy, and other evil feelings. He admitted that in an evil disposition it might have this tendency; but he said a disposition which was injuriously affected by such a cause, would have had other propensities quite as injurious in themselves and in their direction, evolved and brought into full action by an opposite cause. To exemplify this he instanced the two brothers Edward IV. and Richard III.
Fidus Cornelius burst into tears in the Roman Senate, because Corbulo called him a plucked ostrich: adversus alia maledicta mores et vitam convulnerantia, frontis illi firmitas constitit; adversus hoc tam absurdum lacrimæ prociderunt; tanta animorum imbecillitas est ubi ratio discessit. But instances of such weakness, the Doctor said, are as rare as they are ridiculous. Most people see themselves in the most favourable light. “Ugly!” a very ugly, but a very conceited fellow exclaimed one day when he contemplated himself in a looking-glass; “ugly! and yet there's something genteel in the face!” There are more coxcombs in the world than there are vain women; in the one sex there is a weakness for which time soon brings a certain cure, in the other it deserves a harsher appellation.
As to ugliness, not only in this respect do we make large allowances for ourselves, but our friends make large allowances for us also. Some one praised Palisson to Madame de Sevigné for the elegance of his manners, the magnanimity, the rectitude and other virtues which he ought to have possessed; hé bien she replied, pour moi je ne connois que sa laideur; qu'on me le dedouble donc. Wilkes, who pretended as little to beauty, as he did to public virtue, when he was off the stage used to say, that in winning the good graces of a lady there was not more than three days difference between himself and the handsomest man in England. One of his female partizans praised him for his agreeable person, and being reminded of his squinting, she replied indignantly, that it was not more than a gentleman ought to squint. So rightly has Madame de Villedieu observed that
En mille occasions l'amour a sçeu prouver
Que tout devient pour luy, matiere à sympathie,
Quand il fait tant que d'en vouloir trouver.
She no doubt spoke sincerely, according to the light wherein, in the obliquity of her intellectual eyesight she beheld him. Just as that prince of republican and unbelieving bigots, Thomas Holles said of the same person, “I am sorry for the irregularities of Wilkes; they are however only as spots in the sun!” “It is the weakness of the many,” says a once noted Journalist “that when they have taken a fancy to a man, or to the name of a man they take a fancy even to his failings.” But there must have been no ordinary charm in the manners of John Wilkes, who in one interview overcame Johnson's well-founded and vehement dislike. The good nature of his countenance, and its vivacity and cleverness made its physical ugliness be overlooked; and probably his cast of the eye, which was a squint of the first water, seemed only a peculiarity which gave effect to the sallies of his wit.
Hogarth's portrait of him he treated with characteristic good humour, and allowed it “to be an excellent compound caricature, or a caricature of what Nature had already caricatured. I know but one short apology said he, to be made for this gentleman, or to speak more properly, for the person of Mr. Wilkes; it is, that he did not make himself; and that he never was solicitous about the case (as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never heard that he ever hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus admiring the image in it; nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain, while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cottage to which he is tenant for life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order. While the share of health and animal spirits which heaven has given out, should hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation; or will ever be brought to our Ingenium Galbæ malè habitat:—Monsieur est mal logé.” This was part of a note for his intended edition of Churchill.
Squinting, according to a French writer, is not unpleasing, when it is not in excess. He is probably right in this observation. A slight obliquity of vision sometimes gives an archness of expression, and always adds to the countenance a peculiarity, which when the countenance has once become agreeable to the beholder, renders it more so. But when the eye-balls recede from each other to the outer verge of their orbits, or approach so closely that nothing but the intervention of the nose seems to prevent their meeting, a sense of distortion is produced, and consequently of pain. Il y a des gens, says Vigneul Marville, qui ne sauroient regarder des louches sans en sentir quelque douleur aux yeux. Je suis des ceux-la. This is because the deformity is catching, which it is well known to be in children; the tendency to imitation is easily excited in a highly sensitive frame—as in them; and the pain felt in the eyes gives warning that this action which is safe only while it is unconscious and unobserved, is in danger of being deranged.