The Anatomy of Melancholy

More beautiful than Phoebus and Phoebus’s sister.

His Phoebe is so beautiful, so bright, She dims the sun’s brilliance and the moon’s light.

Stars, suns, moons, metals, fragrant flowers, scents, perfumes, colours, gold, silver, ivory, pearls, precious stones, snow, brightly coloured birds, doves, honey, sugar and spice cannot describe her: so soft, so tender, so radiant, sweet and beautiful is she.

Softer than a rabbit’s fur.

Beautiful Lydia, fair girl, You far surpass milk and the lily, The white rose and the red alike, And polished Indian ivory.

Lovely Lydia, my mistress, white and fair, Neither milk nor lily comes near you; The rose so white, the rose so red to see, And Indian ivory fall short of you.

Our English Homer gives just such a description of a beautiful lady:

That Emily who was fairer to see Than a lily on its green stalk, And fresher than May with its new flowers— Her complexion rivalled the rose in colour; I do not know which of the two was fairer.

In just this language Polyphemus courts Galatea:

Galatea, whiter than the petal of snow-white privet, More blooming than a meadow, taller than a long alder, Brighter than glass, friskier than a tender young kid, Softer than swan’s down and curdled milk.

Galatea, whiter than white bindweed, Fresher than a field, taller than a tree, Brighter than glass, friskier than a kid, Softer than swan’s down or anything else.

And she admires him in return, in that witty dialogue of Lucian which Johannes Secundus, an elegant modern Dutch poet, translated into verse. When Doris and the other sea-nymphs reproached her for her ugly, misshapen lover Polyphemus, she replied that they spoke out of envy and malice:

And plainly it seems to be sheer envy that drives you to this: That Polyphemus does not love you as he loves me.

Whatever they might say, he was a handsome man. And as Heloise wrote to her sweetheart Peter Abelard, “If Augustus, emperor of the world, sought me as his wife, I would rather be your whore than empress of the world”: she would rather be his slave, his mistress, than the world’s empress or queen.

Not even if Jupiter himself should happen to desire me.

She would not exchange her lover for Jupiter himself.

To your mind she is a most loathsome creature. But once, when a country fellow disparaged Zeuxis’s exquisite painting of Helen because he saw no such beauty in it, Nicomachus, a lovesick spectator, replied, “Take my eyes and you will think her a goddess.” Take my eyes: you will immediately dote on her, count all her vices virtues, and think her imperfections and infirmities absolute perfection.