By ELSA D’ESTERRE-KEELING, Author of “Old Maids and Young.”
PART VIII.
THE BEAUTIFUL GIRL.
“Onely man,” says Sir Philip Sidney quaintly, meaning by “man” what we term a human creature, for there is here no sex limitation, “onely man, and no beast, hath that gift, to discerne beauty.”
When “that gift” is of generous proportions, as happens once in a while, there is given the further ability to discern “something than beauty dearer.” That phrase is a poet’s. Beauty has been from of old a theme of poets, and the poets of this country, from Chaucer to Browning, have made beautiful girls their theme. Chaucer has good and bad to tell of them. The good may be read in many a tale, and the bad will be best left unread. Browning has good and bad to tell of them. There is good told of “beautiful Evelyn Hope—sixteen years old when she died,” and there is bad told of “the beautiful girl, too white, who lived at Pornic by the sea,” the girl who hoarded gold.
Browning, perhaps better than any English poet who ever lived, could describe a beautiful girl’s face and incidentally point out a thing in it detracting from its beauty. He does this with remarkable directness in his poem called “A Face,” which opens—
“If one could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold,
Such as the Tuscan’s early art prefers!
No shade encroaching on the matchless mould