[5710] “Fallunt nos oculi vagique sensus,
        Oppressa ratione mentiuntur,”

“our eyes and other senses will commonly deceive us;” it may be, to thee thyself upon a more serious examination, or after a little absence, she is not so fair as she seems. Quaedam videntur et non sunt; compare her to another standing by, ’tis a touchstone to try, confer hand to hand, body to body, face to face, eye to eye, nose to nose, neck to neck, &c., examine every part by itself, then altogether, in all postures, several sites, and tell me how thou likest her.  It may be not she, that is so fair, but her coats, or put another in her clothes, and she will seem all out as fair; as the [5711]poet then prescribes, separate her from her clothes:  suppose thou saw her in a base beggar’s weed, or else dressed in some old hirsute attires out of fashion, foul linen, coarse raiment, besmeared with soot, colly, perfumed with opoponax, sagapenum, asafoetida, or some such filthy gums, dirty, about some indecent action or other; or in such a case as [5712]Brassivola, the physician, found Malatasta, his patient, after a potion of hellebore, which he had prescribed:  Manibus in terram depositis, et ano versus caelum elevato (ac si videretur Socraticus ille Aristophanes, qui Geometricas figuras in terram scribens, tubera colligere videbatur) atram bilem in album parietem injiciebat, adeoque totam cameram, et se deturpabat, ut, &c., all to bewrayed, or worse; if thou saw’st her (I say) would thou affect her as thou dost?  Suppose thou beheldest her in a [5713] frosty morning, in cold weather, in some passion or perturbation of mind, weeping, chafing, &c., rivelled and ill-favoured to behold.  She many times that in a composed look seems so amiable and delicious, tam scitula, forma, if she do but laugh or smile, makes an ugly sparrow-mouthed face, and shows a pair of uneven, loathsome, rotten, foul teeth:  she hath a black skin, gouty legs, a deformed crooked carcass under a fine coat.  It may be for all her costly tires she is bald, and though she seem so fair by dark, by candlelight, or afar off at such a distance, as Callicratides observed in [5714]Lucian, “If thou should see her near, or in a morning, she would appear more ugly than a beast;” [5715]_si diligenter consideres, quid per os et nares et caeteros corporis meatus egreditur, vilius sterquilinium nunquam vidisti_.  Follow my counsel, see her undressed, see her, if it be possible, out of her attires, furtivis nudatam coloribus, it may be she is like Aesop’s jay, or [5716]Pliny’s cantharides, she will be loathsome, ridiculous, thou wilt not endure her sight:  or suppose thou saw’st her, pale, in a consumption, on her death-bed, skin and bones, or now dead, Cujus erat gratissimus amplexus (whose embrace was so agreeable) as Barnard saith, erit horribilis aspectus; Non redolet, sed olet, quae, redolere solet, “As a posy she smells sweet, is most fresh and fair one