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"Her face was oval and somewhat thin, as if grief had but newly left it, yet her looks were as chearful, as if it had not left the least impression on her mind."

— Anonymous

Author

Anonymous

Work Title

Vertue Rewarded; or, the Irish Princess. A New Novel

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed for R. Bentley

Date

1693

Metaphor

"Her face was oval and somewhat thin, as if grief had but newly left it, yet her looks were as chearful, as if it had not left the least impression on her mind."

Metaphor in Context

[...] He would not leave her, till he had prevailed with her to be his Partner in a Country Dance; and tho' till she was drawn out few observed her, because either Chance, or her own Modesty had placed her in a dark part of the Room, yet when she came into the light, she alone drew the admiration of all the Men, as she did the envy of the Women: Her face was oval and somewhat thin, as if grief had but newly left it, yet her looks were as chearful, as if it had not left the least impression on her mind; some signs of the Small-pox were just perceivable, yet they and her thinness, instead of lessening, served rather to increase the repute of her Beauty, while they shew'd how it had triumphed over those two great destroyers of the handsomest Faces: Her Forehead was high and smooth, as if no Frown had ever deformed it to a wrinkle; and as much beyond the whiteness of the rest of her Sex, as theirs is beyond the browner Complexion of ours; her Neck, and all the parts of her Face were equally Snowy, except her Cheeks; but they, as if they received their colour from the Rays which her Eyes darted down on them, were of such a lively Carnation, as if that and the rest of her Face were at a strife, which of those two Colours were the best. Her Eyes were of the same azure of the clearest Summer Skyes, and, like them too, so shining, that it would dazle you to look on them, and her Brows, which grew over them in an exact Arch, were inclining to a light colour, as if they got it from the brightness of those Beams which shone from beneath them. Her Stature was neither so low as that Sex usually is, nor so tall as to seem too masculine; her Shape was curiously slender, and all her Limbs after a feminine delicacy, but she had withall a Deportment so Great and so Majestick, that the comeliness of the stronger Sex was mixed with the graces of the weaker: And that the stateliness of her Carriage seemed to command that Love and Adoration, which the sweetness of her Face did invite to. [...]
(pp. 12-13)