Excerpt from The Sea-Hawk<br><br>Lord henry goade, who had, as we shall see, some pera sonal acquaintance with Sir Oliver Tressilian, tells us quite bluntly that he was ill-favoured. But then his lordship is addicted to harsh judgments and his perceptions are not always normal. He says, for instance, of Anne of Cleves, that she was the ugliest woman that ever I saw. As far as we can glean from his own voluminous writings it would seem to be extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we suspect him here of being no more than a slavish echo of the common voice, which at tributed Cromwell's downfall to the ugliness of this bride he procured for his Bluebeard master. To the common voice I prefer the document from the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and shows us a lady who is certainly very far from deserving his lord ship's harsh stricture. Similarly, I like to believe that Lord Henry was wrong in his pronouncement upon Sir Oliver, and I am encouraged in this belief by the pen-portrait which he himself appends to it. He was, he says, a tall, powerful fellow of a good shape, if we except that his arms were too long and that his feet and hands were of an uncomely bigness. In face he was swarthy, with black hair and a black forked beard; his nose was big and very high in the bridge, and his eyes sunk deep under beet ling eyebrows were very pale-coloured and very cruel and sinister. He had - and this I have ever remarked to be the sign of great virility in a man - a big, deep, rough voice, better suited to, and no doubt oftener employed in, quarter deck oaths and foulnesses than the worship of his Maker.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.