If an eye or a nose be an excellent part in the face,
therefore be all eye or nose! I think the eyebrow, the forehead,
the cheek, chin, lip, or any part else are as necessary and natural
in the place. But now nothing is good that is natural; right and
natural language seems to have least of the wit in it; that which is
writhed and tortured is counted the more exquisite. Cloth of bodkin
or tissue must be embroidered; as if no face were fair that were not
powdered or painted! no beauty to be had but in wresting and
writhing our own tongue! Nothing is fashionable till it be
deformed; and this is to write like a gentleman. All must be
affected and preposterous as our gallants' clothes, sweet-bags, and
night-dressings, in which you would think our men lay in, like
ladies, it is so curious.
Censura de poetis.--Nothing in our age, I have observed, is more
preposterous than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when
we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best
writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome
drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men
almost named for miracles, who yet are so vile that if a man should
go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have
done but one blot.
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