In the second place, my brother-in-law's face was so inveterately and completely ugly as to set every artifice of pictorial improvement at flat defiance.

When a man has a nose an inch long, with the nostrils set perpendicularly, it is impossible to flatter it--you must either change it into a fancy nose, or resignedly acquiesce in it.

When a man has no perceptible eyelids, and when his eyes globularly project so far out of his head, that you expect to have to pick them up for him whenever you see him lean forward, how are mortal fingers and bushes to diffuse the right complimentary expression over them?
You must either do them the most hideous and complete justice, or give them up altogether.

The late Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was undoubtedly the most artful and uncompromising flatterer that ever smoothed out all the natural characteristic blemishes from a sitter's face; but even that accomplished parasite would have found Mr.Batterbury too much for him, and would have been driven, for the first time in his practice of art, to the uncustomary and uncourtly resource of absolutely painting a genuine likeness.
As for me, I put my trust in Lady Malkinshaw's power of living, and portrayed the face of Mr.Batterbury in all its native horror.

At the same time, I sensibly guarded against even the most improbable accidents, by making him pay me the fifty pounds as we went on, by installments.