a. (UN-1 7.)
1495. Trevisa’s Barth. De P. R., XIX. viii. (W. de W.), hh vij b/2. Euery mannes face is moste made bewtefull or vnbewtefull with colour.
1580. Lupton, Sivquila, 60. Both fayre and foule, beautiful and unbeautiful, go so al alike, that none can know the fair from the foule.
1647. Clarendon, Contempl. Ps., Tracts (1727), 503. If we … by … adorning it [sc. guilt] with specious Excuses … render it less unbeautiful and unpleasant to our View.
a. 1680. Charnock, Attrib. God (1834), II. 223. To … deny him this, is to frame him as an unbeautiful monster, a deformed power.
1692. South, Serm. (1727), III. xi. 434. I cannot persuade myself, that God ever designed his Church for a rude, naked, unbeautiful Lump.
1828. Tennyson, Lover’s Tale, I. 342. Nothing in nature is unbeautiful.
1870. Swinburne, Ess. & Stud. (1875), 379. No good art is unbeautiful; but much able and effective work may be, and is.
absol. 1887. Hissey, Holiday on Road, 299. The beginning of the reign of ugliness has commenced, and once the unbeautiful puts her foot in anywhere, there, alas! she remains, and prospers exceedingly.
Hence Unbeautifully adv. (1847 Webster), Unbeautifulness (1727 Bailey).
