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.

A cast of the eye à la Montmorency was much admired at the Court of Louis XIII. where the representative of that illustrious family had rendered it fashionable by his example. Descartes is said to have liked all persons who squinted for his nurse's sake, and the anecdote tells equally in favour of her and of him.

St. Evremond says in writing the Eulogy of Turenne. Je ne m'amuserai point à depeindre tous les traits de son visage. Les caractéres des Grands Hommes n'ont rien de commun avec les portraits des belles femmes. Mais je puis dire en gros qu'il avoit quelque chose d'auguste et d'agréable; quelque chose en sa physionomie qui faisoit concevoir je ne sai quoi de grand en son ame, et en son esprit. On pouvoit juger à le voir, que par un disposition particuliere la Nature l'avoit préparé à faire tout ce qu'il a fait. If Turenne had not been an illlooking man, the skilful eulogist would not thus have excused himself from giving any

description of his countenance; a countenance from which indeed, if portraits belie it not, it might be inferred that nature had prepared him to change his party during the civil wars, as lightly as he would have changed his seat at a card-table,-to renounce the Protestant faith, and to ravage the Palatinate. Ne souvenez-vous pas de la physionomie funeste de ce grand homme, says Bussy Rabutin to Madame de Sevigné. An Italian bravo said che non teneva specchio in camera, perche quando si crucciava diveniva tanto terribile nell' aspetto, che veggendosi haria fatto troppo gran paura a se stesso.*

Queen Elizabeth could not endure the sight of deformity; when she went into public her guards it is said removed all mishapen and hideous persons out of her way.

Extreme ugliness has once proved as advantageous to its possessor as extreme beauty, if there be truth in those Triads wherein the Three Men are recorded who escaped from the battle of Camlan. They were Morvran ab

* IL CORTEGIANO, 27.