Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound; wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true As honest Madam’s issue? why brand they thus With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality, Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to creating a whole tribe of fops Got ’tween asleep and wake? I hear a devil speaking, but in the form of an angel of light. When, on the contrary, the Earl of Gloucester says,[153]— But I,—that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty; To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionably, That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time; Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, And descant on mine own deformity; And, therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair, well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain. I hear a devil and see a devil, in a shape which only the devil should wear. XXIV. Such is the use which the poet makes of ugliness of form. How can the painter legitimately employ it? Painting as imitative skill can express ugliness; painting as a fine art will not express it. In the former capacity its sphere extends over all visible objects; in the latter it confines itself to those which produce agreeable impressions.