Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
correspondences of their parts; and usually by artists her face was said
to be Grecian. Perhaps the nostrils, mouth, and forehead, might be
so; but nothing could be less Grecian, or more eccentric in form and
position, than the eyes. They were placed obliquely, in a way that I
do not remember to have seen repeated in any other face whatever. Large
they were, and particularly long, tending to an almond-shape; equally
strange, in fact, as to color, shape, and position: but the remarkable
position of these eyes would have absorbed your gaze to the obliteration
of all other features or peculiarities in the face, were it not for one
other even more remarkable distinction affecting her complexion: this
lay in a suffusion that mantled upon her cheeks, of a color amounting
almost to carmine. Perhaps it might be no more than what Pindar meant by
the _porphyreon phos erotos_, which Gray has falsely [Footnote: Falsely,
because poxphuxeos rarely, perhaps, means in the Greek use what we mean
properly by _purple_, and _could_ not mean it in the Pindaric passage;
much oftener it denotes some shade of _crimson_, or else of _puniceus_,
or blood-red. Gibbon was never more mistaken than when he argued that
all the endless disputing about the _purpureus_ of the ancients
might have been evaded by attending to its Greek designation, namely,
_porphyry_-colored: since, said he, porphyry is always of the same
color. Not at all. Porphyry, I have heard, runs through as large a gamut
of hues as marble; but, if this should be an exaggeration, at all events
porphyry is far from being so monochromatic as Gibbon's argument would
presume. The truth is, colors were as loosely and latitudinarially
distinguished by the Greeks and Romans as degrees of affinity and
consanguinity are everywhere. _My son-in-law_, says a woman, and she
means _my stepson._ _My cousin_, she says, and she means any mode
of relationship in the wide, wide world. _Nos neveux_, says a French
writer, and means not _our nephews_, but _our grandchildren_, or more
generally _our descendants_.] translated as "the bloom of young desire,
and PURPLE light of love." It was not unpleasing, and gave a lustre
to the eyes, but it added to the eccentricity of the face; and by all
strangers it was presumed to be an artificial color, resulting from
some mode of applying a preparation more brilliant than rouge. But to us
children, so constantly admitted to her toilet, it was well known to
be entirely natural. Generally speaking, it is not likely to assist the
effect of a young woman's charms, that she presents any such variety in
her style of countenance as could naturally be called _odd_. But Miss
Watson, by the somewhat scenical effect resulting from the harmony
between her fine figure and her fine countenance, triumphed over all
that might else have been thought a blemish; and when she was presented
at court on occasion of her marriage, the king himself pronounced her,
to friends of Mrs.
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