IOLÄUS
IOLÄUS
AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRIENDSHIP
EDITED BY
EDWARD CARPENTER
[_Second edition, enlarged_]
PUBLISHED BY
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co. LIMITED
HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, LONDON
AND BY S. CLARKE AT
41, GRANBY ROW, MANCHESTER
MCMVI
“_And as to the loves of Hercules it is difficult to record them
because of their number. But some who think that Ioläus was one
of them, do to this day worship and honour him; and make their
loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb._”
(_Plutarch_)
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
The degree to which Friendship, in the early history of the world, has
been recognised as an institution, and the dignity ascribed to it, are
things hardly realized to-day. Yet a very slight examination of the
subject shows the important part it has played. In making the following
collection I have been much struck by the remarkable manner in which the
customs of various races and times illustrate each other, and the way in
which they point to a solid and enduring body of human sentiment on the
subject. By arranging the extracts in a kind of rough chronological and
evolutionary order from those dealing with primitive races onwards, the
continuity of these customs comes out all the more clearly, as well as
their slow modification in course of time. But it must be confessed that
the present collection is only incomplete, and a small contribution, at
best, towards a large subject.
In the matter of quotation and translation, my best thanks are due to
various authors and holders of literary copyrights for their assistance
and authority; and especially to the Master and Fellows of Balliol
College for permission to quote from the late Professor Jowett’s
translation of Plato’s dialogues; to Messrs. George Bell & Sons for
leave to make use of the Bohn series; to Messrs. A. & C. Black for leave
of quotation from the late J. Addington Symonds’ _Studies of the Greek
Poets_; and to Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for sanction of extracts
from the Rev. W. H. Hutchings’ translation of the _Confessions of St.
Augustine_. In cases where no reference is given the translations are by
the Editor.
E. C.
_March, 1902._
CONTENTS
_page_
Preface v.
I. Friendship-customs in the Pagan and Early World 1
II. The place of Friendship in Greek Life and Thought 39
III. Poetry of Friendship among the Greeks and Romans 65
IV. Friendship in Early Christian and Mediæval Times 95
V. The Renaissance and Modern Times 121
Additions [1906] 183
Index 225
I.
_Friendship-Customs in the Pagan & Early World_
_Friendship-Customs in the Pagan & Early World_
Friendship-Customs, of a very marked and definite character, have
apparently prevailed among a great many primitive peoples; but the
information that we have about them is seldom thoroughly satisfactory.
Travellers have been content to note external ceremonies, like the
exchange of names between comrades, or the mutual tasting of each other’s
blood, but—either from want of perception or want of opportunity—have
not been able to tell us anything about the inner meaning of these
formalities, or the sentiments which may have inspired them. Still,
we have material enough to indicate that comrade-attachment has been
recognised as an important institution, and held in high esteem,
among quite savage tribes; and some of the following quotations will
show this. When we come to the higher culture of the Greek age the
material fortunately is abundant—not only for the customs, but (in Greek
philosophy and poetry) for the inner sentiments which inspired these
customs. Consequently it will be found that the major part of this and
the following two chapters deals with matter from Greek sources. The
later chapters carry on the subject in loosely historical sequence
through the Christian centuries down to modern times.
[Sidenote: _Primitive Ceremony_]
The Balonda are an African tribe inhabiting Londa land, among the
Southern tributaries of the Congo River. They were visited by
Livingstone, and the following account of their customs is derived from
him:—
“The Balonda have a most remarkable custom of cementing
friendship. When two men agree to be special friends they go
through a singular ceremony. The men sit opposite each other
holding hands, and by the side of each is a vessel of beer.
Slight cuts are then made on the clasped hands, on the pit of the
stomach, on the right cheek, and on the forehead. The point of a
grass-blade is pressed against each of these cuts, so as to take
up a little of the blood, and each man washes the grass-blade
in his own beer vessel. The vessels are then exchanged and the
contents drunk, so that each imbibes the blood of the other.
The two are thenceforth considered as blood-relations, and are
bound to assist each other in every possible manner. While the
beer is being drunk, the friends of each of the men beat on the
ground with clubs, and bawl out certain sentences as ratification
of the treaty. It is thought correct for all the friends of
each party to the contract to drink a little of the beer. The
ceremony is called ‘Kasendi.’ After it has been completed, gifts
are exchanged, and both parties always give their most precious
possessions.” _Natural History of Man. Rev. J. G. Wood. Vol:
Africa_, p. 419.
[Sidenote: _Exchange of Names_]
Among the Manganjas and other tribes of the Zambesi region, Livingstone
found the custom of changing names prevalent.
“Sininyane (a headman) had exchanged names with a Zulu at
Shupanga, and on being called the next morning made no answer;
to a second and third summons he paid no attention; but at
length one of his men replied, ‘He is not Sininyane now, he is
Moshoshoma;’ and to this name he answered promptly. The custom of
exchanging names with men of other tribes is not uncommon; and
the exchangers regard themselves as close comrades, owing special
duties to each other ever after. Should one by chance visit his
comrade’s town, he expects to receive food, lodging, and other
friendly offices from him.” _Narrative of an Expedition to the
Zambesi. By David and Charles Livingstone. Murray_, 1865, p. 148.
[Sidenote: _David and Jonathan_]
In the story of David and Jonathan, which follows, we have an example,
from much the same stage of primitive tribal life, of a compact between
two friends—one the son of the chief, the other a shepherd youth—only in
this case, in the song of David (“I am distressed for thee, my brother
Jonathan, thy love to me was wonderful”) we are fortunate in having the
inner feeling preserved for us. It should be noted that Jonathan gives to
David his “most precious possessions.”
“And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine
(Goliath), he said unto Abner, the captain of the host, ‘Abner,
whose son is this youth?’ And Abner said, ‘As thy soul liveth, O
King, I cannot tell.’ And the King said, ‘Inquire thou whose son
the stripling is.’ And as David returned from the slaughter of
the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with
the head of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him,
‘Whose son art thou, young man?’ And David answered, ‘The son of
thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.’
“And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto
Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that
day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house.
Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as
his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was
upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his
sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.” _1 Sam._ ch. xvii. 55.
[Sidenote: _Flower Friends_]
With regard to the exchange of names, a slightly different custom
prevails among the Bengali coolies. Two youths, or two girls, will
exchange two flowers (of the same kind) with each other, in token of
perpetual alliance. After that, one speaks of the other as “my flower,”
but never alludes to the other by _name_ again—only by some roundabout
phrase.
[Sidenote: _Polynesia Tahiti_]
Herman Melville, who voyaged among the Pacific Islands in 1841-1845,
gives some interesting and reliable accounts of Polynesian customs of
that period. He says:—
“The really curious way in which all the Polynesians are in the
habit of making bosom friends at the shortest possible notice is
deserving of remark. Although, among a people like the Tahitians,
vitiated as they are by sophisticating influences, this custom
has in most cases degenerated into a mere mercenary relation,
it nevertheless had its origin in a fine, and in some instances
heroic, sentiment formerly entertained by their fathers.
“In the annals of the island (Tahiti) are examples of extravagant
friendships, unsurpassed by the story of Damon and Pythias, in
truth, much more wonderful; for notwithstanding the devotion—even
of life in some cases—to which they led, they were frequently
entertained at first sight for some stranger from another
island.” _Omoo_, _Herman Melville_, ch. 39, p. 154.
“Though little inclined to jealousy in (ordinary) love-matters,
the Tahitian will hear of no rivals in his friendship.” _Ibid_,
ch. 40.
[Sidenote: _Marquesas Islands_]
Melville spent some months on one of the Marquesas Islands, in a valley
occupied by a tribe called Typees; one day there turned up a stranger
belonging to a hostile tribe who occupied another part of the island:—
“The stranger could not have been more than twenty-five years of
age, and was a little above the ordinary height; had he been a
single hair’s breadth taller, the matchless symmetry of his form
would have been destroyed. His unclad limbs were beautifully
formed; whilst the elegant outline of his figure, together with
his beardless cheeks, might have entitled him to the distinction
of standing for the statue of the Polynesian Apollo; and indeed
the oval of his countenance and the regularity of every feature
reminded me of an antique bust. But the marble repose of art
was supplied by a warmth and liveliness of expression only to
be seen in the South Sea Islander under the most favourable
developments of nature.... When I expressed my surprise (at his
venturing among the Typees) he looked at me for a moment as
if enjoying my perplexity, and then with his strange vivacity
exclaimed—‘Ah! me taboo—me go Nukuheva—me go Tior—me go Typee—me
go everywhere—nobody harm me, me taboo.’
“This explanation would have been altogether unintelligible to
me, had it not recalled to my mind something I had previously
heard concerning a singular custom among these islanders.
Though the country is possessed by various tribes, whose mutual
hostilities almost wholly preclude any intercourse between
them; yet there are instances where a person having ratified
friendly relations with some individual belonging to the valley,
whose inmates are at war with his own, may under particular
restrictions venture with impunity into the country of his
friend, where under other circumstances he would have been
treated as an enemy. In this light are personal friendships
regarded among them, and the individual so protected is said to
be ‘taboo,’ and his person to a certain extent is held as sacred.
Thus the stranger informed me he had access to all the valleys in
the island.” _Typee_, _Herman Melville_, ch. xviii.
In almost all primitive nations, warfare has given rise to institutions
of military comradeship—including, for instance, institutions of
instruction for young warriors, of personal devotion to their leaders,
or of personal attachment to each other. In Greece these customs were
specially defined, as later quotations will show.
[Sidenote: _Tacitus on Military Comradeship_]
Tacitus, speaking of the arrangement among the Germans by which each
military chief was surrounded by younger companions in arms, says:—
“There is great emulation among the companions, which shall
possess the highest place in the favour of their chief; and
among the chiefs, which shall excel in the number and valour
of his companions. It is their dignity, their strength, to be
always surrounded with a large body of select youth, an ornament
in peace, a bulwark in war... In the field of battle, it is
disgraceful for the chief to be surpassed in valour; it is
disgraceful for the companions not to equal their chief; but it
is reproach and infamy during a whole succeeding life to retreat
from the field surviving him. To aid, to protect him; to place
their own gallant actions to the account of his glory is their
first and most sacred engagement.” _Tacitus_, _Germania_, 13, 14,
_Bohn Series_.
[Sidenote: _The Khalifa at Khartoum_]
Among the Arab tribes very much the same thing may be found, every Sheikh
having his bodyguard of young men, whom he instructs and educates, while
they render to him their military and personal devotion. In the late
expedition of the British to Khartoum (Nov., 1899), when Colonel Wingate
and his troops mowed down the Khalifa and his followers with their
Maxims, the death of the Khalifa was thus described by a correspondent of
the daily papers:—
“In the centre of what was evidently the main attack on our right
we came across a very large number of bodies all huddled together
in a very small place; their horses lay dead behind them, the
Khalifa lay dead on his furma, or sheepskin, the typical end of
the Arab Sheikh who disdains surrender; on his right was the
Khalifa Aly Wad Hila, and on his left Ahmed Fedil, his great
fighting leader, whilst all around him lay his faithful emirs,
all content to meet their death when he had chosen to meet his.
His black Mulamirin, or bodyguard, all lay dead in a straight
line about 40 yards in front of their master’s body, with their
faces to the foe and faithful to the last. It was truly a
touching sight, and one could not help but feel that ... their
end was truly grand.... Amongst the dead were found two men tied
together by the arms, who had charged towards the guns and had
got nearer than any others. On enquiring of the prisoners Colonel
Wingate was told these two were great friends, and on seeing the
Egyptian guns come up had tied themselves by the arms with a
cord, swearing to reach the guns or die together.”
[Sidenote: _Primitive Germans_]
Compare also the following quotation from Ammianus Marcellinus (xvi.
13), who says that when Chonodomarus, “King of the Alamanni,” was taken
prisoner by the Romans,
“His companions, two hundred in number, and three friends
peculiarly attached to him, thinking it infamous to survive their
prince, or not to die for him, surrendered themselves to be put
in bonds.”
[Sidenote: _South African Tribes_]
The following passage from Livingstone shows the existence among the
African tribes of his time of a system, which Wood rightly says “has
a singular resemblance to the instruction of pages in the days of
chivalry”:—
“Monina (one of the confederate chiefs of the Banyai) had a great
number of young men about him, from twelve to fifteen years of
age. These were all sons of free men, and bands of young lads
like them in the different districts leave their parents about
the age of puberty and live with such men as Monina for the sake
of instruction. When I asked the nature of the instruction I was
told ‘Bonyái,’ which I suppose may be understood as indicating
manhood, for it sounds as if we should say, ‘to teach an American
Americanism,’ or, ‘an Englishman to be English.’ While here they
are kept in subjection to rather stringent regulations.... They
remain unmarried until a fresh set of youths is ready to occupy
their place under the same instruction.” _Missionary Travels and
Researches in South Africa._ _By David Livingstone_, 1857, p. 618.
M. Foley (Bulln. Soc. d’Anthr. de Paris, 1879) speaks of fraternity in
arms among the natives of New Caledonia as forming a close tie—closer
even than consanguinity.
[Sidenote: _Greek Friendship and Mediæval Chivalry_]
With regard to Greece, J. Addington Symonds has some interesting remarks,
which are well worthy of consideration; he says:—
“Nearly all the historians of Greece have failed to insist upon
the fact that fraternity in arms played for the Greek race the
same part as the idealisation of women for the knighthood of
feudal Europe. Greek mythology and history are full of tales
of friendship, which can only be paralleled by the story of
David and Jonathan in the Bible. The legends of Herakles and
Hylas, of Theseus and Pirithöus, of Apollo and Hyacinth, of
Orestes and Pylades, occur immediately to the mind. Among the
noblest patriots, tyrannicides, lawgivers, and self-devoted
heroes in the early times of Greece, we always find the names of
friends and comrades received with peculiar honour. Harmodius
and Aristogeiton, who slew the despot Hipparchus at Athens;
Diocles and Philolaus, who gave laws to Thebes; Chariton and
Melanippus, who resisted the sway of Phalaris in Sicily; Cratinus
and Aristodemus, who devoted their lives to propitiate offended
deities when a plague had fallen on Athens; these comrades,
staunch to each other in their love, and elevated by friendship
to the pitch of noblest enthusiasm, were among the favourite
saints of Greek legend and history. In a word, the chivalry
of Hellas found its motive force in friendship rather than in
the love of women; and the motive force of all chivalry is a
generous, soul-exalting, unselfish passion. The fruit which
friendship bore among the Greeks was courage in the face of
danger, indifference to life when honour was at stake, patriotic
ardour, the love of liberty, and lion-hearted rivalry in battle.
‘Tyrants,’ said Plato, ‘stand in awe of friends.’” _Studies of
the Greek Poets._ _By J. A. Symonds_, vol. 1, p. 97.
[Sidenote: _Fraternity in Arms in Sparta_]
The customs connected with this fraternity in arms, in Sparta and
in Crete, are described with care and at considerable length in the
following extract from Müller’s _History and Antiquities of the Doric
Race_, book iv., ch. 4, par. 6:—
“At Sparta the party loving was called εἰσπνήλας, and his
affection was termed a _breathing in_, or _inspiring_ (εἰσπνεῖν);
which expresses the pure and mental connection between the two
persons, and corresponds with the name of the other, viz.: ἀίτας,
_i.e._, _listener_ or _bearer_. Now it appears to have been the
practice for every youth of good character to have his lover; and
on the other hand every well-educated man was bound by custom
to be the lover of some youth. Instances of this connection
are furnished by several of the royal family of Sparta; thus,
Agesilaus, while he still belonged to the herd (ἀγέλη) of
youths, was the hearer (ἀίτας) of Lysander, and himself had in
his turn also a hearer; his son Archidamus was the lover of the
son of Sphodrias, the noble Cleonymus; Cleomenes III. was when
a young man the hearer of Xenares, and later in life the lover
of the brave Panteus. The connection usually originated from the
proposal of the lover; yet it was necessary that the listener
should accept him with real affection, as a regard to the riches
of the proposer was considered very disgraceful; sometimes,
however, it happened that the proposal originated from the other
party. The connection appears to have been very intimate and
faithful; and was recognised by the State. If his relations were
absent, the youth might be represented in the public assembly by
his lover; in battle too they stood near one another, where their
fidelity and affection were often shown till death; while at home
the youth was constantly under the eyes of his lover, who was to
him as it were a model and pattern of life; which explains why,
for many faults, particularly want of ambition, the lover could
be punished instead of the listener.”
[Sidenote: _Crete_]
“This ancient national custom prevailed with still greater force
in Crete; which island was hence by many persons considered as
the original seat of the connection in question. Here too it was
disgraceful for a well-educated youth to be without a lover;
and hence the party loved was termed κλεινὸς, the _praised_;
the lover being simply called φιλήτωρ. It appears that the
youth was always carried away by force, the intention of the
ravisher being previously communicated to the relations, who
however took no measures of precaution, and only made a feigned
resistance; except when the ravisher appeared, either in family
or talent, unworthy of the youth. The lover then led him away
to his apartment (ἀνδρεῖον), and afterwards, with any chance
companions, either to the mountains or to his estate. Here they
remained two months (the period prescribed by custom), which were
passed chiefly in hunting together. After this time had expired,
the lover dismissed the youth, and at his departure gave him,
according to custom, an ox, a military dress, and brazen cup,
with other things; and frequently these gifts were increased by
the friends of the ravisher. The youth then sacrificed the ox
to Jupiter, with which he gave a feast to his companions: and
now he stated how he had been pleased with his lover; and he
had complete liberty by law to punish any insult or disgraceful
treatment. It depended now on the choice of the youth whether the
connection should be broken off or not. If it was kept up, the
companion in arms (παραστάτης), as the youth was then called,
wore the military dress which had been given him, and fought in
battle next his lover, inspired with double valour by the gods of
war and love, according to the notions of the Cretans; and even
in man’s age he was distinguished by the first place and rank in
the course, and certain insignia worn about the body.
“Institutions, so systematic and regular as these, did not exist
in any Doric State except Crete and Sparta; but the feelings
on which they were founded seem to have been common to all the
Dorians. The loves of Philolaus, a Corinthian of the family of
the Bacchiadae, and the lawgiver of Thebes, and of Diocles the
Olympic conqueror, lasted until death; and even their graves
were turned towards one another in token of their affection;
and another person of the same name was honoured in Megara, as
a noble instance of self-devotion for the object of his love.”
_Ibid._
[Sidenote: _Diocles_]
For an account of Philolaus and Diocles, Aristotle (Pol. ii. 9) may be
referred to. The second Diocles was an Athenian who died in battle for
the youth he loved.
“His tomb was honoured with the ἐναγίσματα of heroes, and a
yearly contest for skill in kissing formed part of his memorial
celebration.” _J. A. Symonds’_ “_A Problem in Greek Ethics_,”
_privately printed_, 1883; _see also Theocritus_, Idyll xii.
infra.
[Sidenote: _Albanian Customs_]
Hahn, in his _Albanesische Studien_, says that the Dorian customs
of comradeship still flourish in Albania “just as described by the
ancients,” and are closely entwined with the whole life of the
people—though he says nothing of any military signification. It appears
to be a quite recognised institution for a young man to take to himself
a youth or boy as his special comrade. He instructs, and when necessary
reproves, the younger; protects him, and makes him presents of various
kinds. The relation generally, though not always ends with the marriage
of the elder. The following is reported by Hahn as in the actual words of
his informant (an Albanian):—
“Love of this kind is occasioned by the sight of a beautiful
youth; who thus kindles in the lover a feeling of wonder and
causes his heart to open to the sweet sense which springs from
the contemplation of beauty. By degrees love steals in and takes
possession of the lover, and to such a degree that all his
thoughts and feelings are absorbed in it. When near the beloved
he loses himself in the sight of him; when absent he thinks of
him only.” These loves, he continued, “are with a few exceptions
as pure as sunshine, and the highest and noblest affections that
the human heart can entertain.” _Hahn_, vol. 1, p. 166.
Hahn also mentions that troops of youths, like the Cretan and Spartan
_agelae_, are formed in Albania, of twenty-five or thirty members each.
The comradeship usually begins during adolescence, each member paying
a fixed sum into a common fund, and the interest being spent on two or
three annual feasts, generally held out of doors.
[Sidenote: _The Theban Band_]
The Sacred Band of Thebes, or Theban Band, was a battalion composed
entirely of friends and lovers; and forms a remarkable example of
military comradeship. The references to it in later Greek literature are
very numerous, and there seems no reason to doubt the general truth of
the traditions concerning its formation and its complete annihilation by
Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea (B.C. 338). Thebes was the
last stronghold of Hellenic independence, and with the Theban Band Greek
freedom perished. But the mere existence of this phalanx, and the fact of
its renown, show to what an extent comradeship was recognised and prized
as an _institution_ among these peoples. The following account is taken
from Plutarch’s _Life of Pelopidas_, Clough’s translation:—
“Gorgidas, according to some, first formed the Sacred Band of 300
chosen men, to whom as being a guard for the citadel the State
allowed provision, and all things necessary for exercise; and
hence they were called the city band, as citadels of old were
usually called cities. Others say that it was composed of young
men attached to each other by personal affection, and a pleasant
saying of Pammenes is current, that Homer’s Nestor was not well
skilled in ordering an army, when he advised the Greeks to rank
tribe and tribe, and family and family, together, that so ‘tribe
might tribe, and kinsmen kinsmen aid,’ but that he should have
joined lovers and their beloved. For men of the same tribe or
family little value one another when dangers press; but a band
cemented together by friendship grounded upon love is never to
be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base
in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers,
willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another. Nor can
that be wondered at since they have more regard for their absent
lovers than for others present; as in the instance of the man
who, when his enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested
him to run him through the breast, that his lover might not blush
to see him wounded in the back. It is a tradition likewise that
Ioläus, who assisted Hercules in his labours and fought at his
side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes that even in his
time lovers plighted their faith at Ioläus’ tomb. It is likely,
therefore, that this band was called sacred on this account; as
Plato calls a lover a divine friend. It is stated that it was
never beaten till the battle at Chaeronea; and when Philip after
the fight took a view of the slain, and came to the place where
the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together, he
wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he
shed tears and said, ‘Perish any man who suspects that these men
either did or suffered anything that was base.’
“It was not the disaster of Laius, as the poets imagine, that
first gave rise to this form of attachment among the Thebans,
but their lawgivers, designing to soften whilst they were young
their natural fickleness, brought for example the pipe into great
esteem, both in serious and sportive occasions, and gave great
encouragement to these friendships in the Palaestra, to temper
the manner and character of the youth. With a view to this, they
did well again to make Harmony, the daughter of Mars and Venus,
their tutelar deity; since where force and courage is joined
with gracefulness and winning behaviour, a harmony ensues that
combines all the elements of society in perfect consonance and
order.
“Gorgidas distributed this sacred Band all through the front
ranks of the infantry, and thus made their gallantry less
conspicuous; not being united in one body, but mingled with many
others of inferior resolution, they had no fair opportunity of
showing what they could do. But Pelopidas, having sufficiently
tried their bravery at Tegyrae, where they had fought alone,
and around his own person, never afterwards divided them, but
keeping them entire, and as one man, gave them the first duty in
the greatest battles. For as horses run brisker in a chariot than
single, not that their joint force divides the air with greater
ease, but because being matched one against another circulation
kindles and enflames their courage; thus, he thought, brave
men, provoking one another to noble actions, would prove most
serviceable and most resolute where all were united together.”
[Sidenote: _Athenæus_]
Stories of romantic friendship form a staple subject of Greek literature,
and were everywhere accepted and prized. The following quotations from
Athenæus and Plutarch contain allusions to the Theban Band, and other
examples:—
“And the Lacedæmonians offer sacrifices to Love before they go to
battle, thinking that safety and victory depend on the friendship
of those who stand side by side in the battle array.... And the
regiment among the Thebans, which is called the _Sacred Band_,
is wholly composed of mutual lovers, indicating the majesty of
the God, as these men prefer a glorious death to a shameful and
discreditable life.” _Athenæus_, bk. xiii., ch. 12.
[Sidenote: _Ioläus_]
Ioläus, above-mentioned, is said to have been the charioteer of
Hercules, and his faithful companion. As the comrade of Hercules he was
worshipped beside him in Thebes, where the gymnasium was named after
him. Plutarch alludes to this friendship again in his treatise on Love
(_Eroticus_, par. 17):—
“And as to the loves of Hercules, it is difficult to record them
because of their number; but those who think that Ioläus was one
of them do to this day worship and honour him, and make their
loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb.”
[Sidenote: _Plutarch on Love_]
And in the same treatise:—
“Consider also how Love (Eros) excels in warlike feats, and is
by no means idle, as Euripides called him, nor a carpet knight,
nor ‘sleeping on soft maidens’ cheeks.’ For a man inspired by
Love needs not Ares to help him when he goes out as a warrior
against the enemy, but at the bidding of his own god is ‘ready’
for his friend ‘to go through fire and water and whirlwinds.’ And
in Sophocles’ play, when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and
dying, one of them calls out for no helper or assister but his
lover.
“And you know of course how it was that Cleomachus, the
Pharsalian, fell in battle.... When the war between the
Eretrians and Chalcidians was at its height, Cleomachus had come
to aid the latter with a Thessalian force; and the Chalcidian
infantry seemed strong enough, but they had great difficulty in
repelling the enemy’s cavalry. So they begged that high-souled
hero, Cleomachus, to charge the Eretrian cavalry first. And he
asked the youth he loved, who was by, if he would be a spectator
of the fight, and he saying he would, and affectionately kissing
him and putting his helmet on his head, Cleomachus, with a proud
joy, put himself at the head of the bravest of the Thessalians,
and charged the enemy’s cavalry with such impetuosity that he
threw them into disorder and routed them; and the Eretrian
infantry also fleeing in consequence, the Chalcidians won a
splendid victory. However, Cleomachus got killed, and they show
his tomb in the market place at Chalcis, over which a huge
pillar stands to this day.” _Eroticus_, par. 17, _trans. Bohn’s
Classics_.
And further on in the same:—
“And among you Thebans, Pemptides, is it not usual for the
lover to give his boylove a complete suit of armour when he is
enrolled among the men? And did not the erotic Pammenes change
the disposition of the heavy-armed infantry, censuring Homer as
knowing nothing about love, because he drew up the Achæans in
order of battle in tribes and clans, and did not put lover and
love together, that so ‘spear should be next to spear and helmet
to helmet’ (_Iliad_, xiii. 131), seeing that love is the only
invincible general. For men in battle will leave in the lurch
clansmen and friends, aye, and parents and sons, but what warrior
ever broke through or charged through lover and love, seeing
that when there is no necessity lovers frequently display their
bravery and contempt of life.”
[Sidenote: _Athenæus on the same_]
The following is from the _Deipnosophists_ of Athenæus (bk. xiii. ch.
78):—
“But Hieronymus the Peripatetic says that the loves of youths
used to be much encouraged, for this reason, that the vigour
of the young and their close agreement in comradeship have led
to the overthrow of many a tyranny. For in the presence of his
favorite a lover would rather endure anything than earn the name
of coward; a thing which was proved in practice by the Sacred
Band, established at Thebes under Epaminondas; as well as by the
death of the Pisistratidæ, which was brought about by Harmodius
and Aristogeiton.
“And at Agrigentum in Sicily the same was shown by the mutual
love of Chariton and Melanippus—of whom Melanippus was the
younger beloved, as Heraclides of Pontus tells in his Treatise
on Love. For these two having been accused of plotting against
Phalaris, and being put to torture in order to force them to
betray their accomplices, not only did not tell, but even
compelled Phalaris to such pity of their tortures that he
released them with many words of praise. Whereupon Apollo,
pleased at his conduct, granted to Phalaris a respite from
death; and declared the same to the men who inquired of the
Pythian priestess how they might best attack him. He also gave an
oracular saying concerning Chariton....
‘Blessed indeed was Chariton and Melanippus,
Pioneers of Godhead, and of mortals the one most[1] beloved.’”
Epaminondas, the great Theban general and statesman, so we are told by
the same author, had for his young comrades Asopichus and Cephisodorus,
“the latter of whom fell with him at Mantineia, and is buried near him.”
[Sidenote: _Parmenides and Zeno_]
These are mainly instances of what might be called “military
comradeship,” but as may be supposed, friendship in the early world
did not rest on this alone. With the growth of culture other interests
came in; and among the Greeks especially association in the pursuit of
art or politics or philosophy became a common ground. Parmenides, the
philosopher, whose life was held peculiarly holy, loved his pupil Zeno
(see Plato _Parm_, 127A):
“Parmenides and Zeno came to Athens, he said, at the great
Panathenæan festival; the former was, at the time of his visit,
about 65 years old, very white with age, but well-favoured. Zeno
was nearly 40 years of age, of a noble figure and fair aspect;
and in the days of his youth he was reported to have been beloved
of Parmenides.”
[Sidenote: _Phædo_]
Pheidias, the sculptor, loved Pantarkes, a youth of Elis, and carved
his portrait at the foot of the Olympian Zeus (Pausanias v. II), and
politicians and orators like Demosthenes and Æschines were proud to avow
their attachments. It was in a house of ill-fame, according to Diogenes
Laertius (ii. 105) that Socrates first met Phædo:—
“This unfortunate youth was a native of Elis. Taken prisoner in
war, he was sold in the public market to a slave dealer, who
then acquired the right by Attic law to engross his earnings
for his own pocket. A friend of Socrates, perhaps Cebes, bought
him from his master, and he became one of the chief members
of the Socratic circle. His name is given to the Platonic
dialogue on immortality, and he lived to found what is called
the Eleo-Socratic School. No reader of Plato forgets how the
sage on the eve of his death stroked the beautiful long hair of
Phædo, and prophesied that he would soon have to cut it short in
mourning for his teacher.” _J. A. Symonds_, _A Problem in Greek
Ethics_ p. 58.
The relation of friendship to the pursuit of philosophy is a favorite
subject with Plato, and is illustrated by some later quotations (see
_infra_ ch. 2).
[Sidenote: _The Story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton_]
I conclude the present section by the insertion of three stories taken
from classical sources. Though of a legendary character, it is probable
that they enshrine some memory or tradition of actual facts. The story
of Harmodius and Aristogeiton at any rate is treated by Herodotus and
Thucydides as a matter of serious history. The names of these two friends
were ever on the lips of the Athenians as the founders of the city’s
freedom, and to be born of their blood was esteemed among the highest of
honours. But whether historical or not, these stories have much the same
value for us, in so far as they indicate the ideals on which the Greek
mind dwelt, and which it considered possible of realisation.
“Now the attempt of Aristogeiton and Harmodius arose out of a
love affair, which I will narrate at length; and the narrative
will show that the Athenians themselves give quite an inaccurate
account of their own tyrants, and of the incident in question,
and know no more than other Hellenes. Pisistratus died at an
advanced age in possession of the tyranny, and then, not as is
the common opinion Hipparchus, but Hippias (who was the eldest of
his sons) succeeded to his power.
“Harmodius was in the flower of his youth, and Aristogeiton, a
citizen of the middle class, became his lover. Hipparchus made an
attempt to gain the affections of Harmodius, but he would not
listen to him, and told Aristogeiton. The latter was naturally
tormented at the idea, and fearing that Hipparchus, who was
powerful, would resort to violence, at once formed such a plot
as a man in his station might for the overthrow of the tyranny.
Meanwhile Hipparchus made another attempt; he had no better
success, and thereupon he determined, not indeed to take any
violent step, but to insult Harmodius in some underhand manner,
so that his motive could not be suspected[2]....
“When Hipparchus found his advances repelled by Harmodius he
carried out his intention of insulting him. There was a young
sister of his whom Hipparchus and his friends first invited
to come and carry a sacred basket in a procession, and then
rejected her, declaring that she had never been invited by them
at all because she was unworthy. At this Harmodius was very
angry, and Aristogeiton for his sake more angry still. They and
the other conspirators had already laid their preparations, but
were waiting for the festival of the great Panathenæa, when the
citizens who took part in the procession assembled in arms; for
to wear arms on any other day would have aroused suspicion.
Harmodius and Aristogeiton were to begin the attack, and the rest
were immediately to join in, and engage with the guards. The
plot had been communicated to a few only, the better to avoid
detection; but they hoped that, however few struck the blow, the
crowd who would be armed, although not in the secret, would at
once rise and assist in the recovery of their own liberties.
“The day of the festival arrived, and Hippias went out of the
city to the place called the Ceramicus, where he was occupied
with his guards in marshalling the procession. Harmodius and
Aristogeiton, who were ready with their daggers, stepped forward
to do the deed. But seeing one of the conspirators in familiar
conversation with Hippias, who was readily accessible to all,
they took alarm and imagined that they had been betrayed, and
were on the point or being seized. Whereupon they determined to
take their revenge first on the man who had outraged them and
was the cause of their desperate attempt. So they rushed, just
as they were, within the gates. They found Hipparchus near the
Leocorium, as it was called, and then and there falling upon him
with all the blind fury, one of an injured lover, the other of a
man smarting under an insult, they smote and slew him. The crowd
ran together, and so Aristogeiton for the present escaped the
guards; but he was afterwards taken, and not very gently handled
(_i.e._, _tortured_). Harmodius perished on the spot.” _Thuc_:
vi. 54-56, _trans. by B. Jowett_.
[Sidenote: _The Story of Orestes and Pylades_]
“Phocis preserves from early times the memory of the union
between Orestes and Pylades, who taking a god as witness of the
passion between them, sailed through life together as though in
one boat. Both together put to death Klytemnestra, as though
both were sons of Agamemnon; and Ægisthus was slain by both.
Pylades suffered more than his friend by the punishment which
pursued Orestes. He stood by him when condemned, nor did they
limit their tender friendship by the bounds of Greece, but sailed
to the furthest boundaries of the Scythians—the one sick, the
other ministering to him. When they had come into the Tauric
land straightway they were met by the matricidal fury; and while
the barbarians were standing round in a circle Orestes fell down
and lay on the ground, seized by his usual mania, while Pylades
‘wiped away the foam, tended his body, and covered him with his
well-woven cloak’—acting not only like a lover but like a father.
“When it was determined that one should remain to be put to
death, and the other should go to Mycenæ to convey a letter, each
wishes to remain for the sake of the other, thinking that if
he saves the life of his friend he saves his own life. Orestes
refused to take the letter, saying that Pylades was more worthy
to carry it, acting more like the lover than the beloved. ‘For,’
he said, ‘the slaying of this man would be a great grief to me,
as I am the cause of these misfortunes.’ And he added, ‘Give
the tablet to him, for (turning to Pylades) I will send thee to
Argos, in order that it may be well with thee; as for me, let
anyone kill me who desires it.’
“Such love is always like that; for when from boyhood a serious
love has grown up and it becomes adult at the age of reason, the
long-loved object returns reciprocal affection, and it is hard to
determine which is the lover of which, for—as from a mirror—the
affection of the lover is reflected from the beloved.” _Trans.
from Lucian’s Amores, by W. J. Baylis._
[Sidenote: _The Story of Damon and Pythias (or Phintias)_]
“Damon and Phintias, initiates in the Pythagorean mysteries,
contracted so faithful a friendship towards each other, that
when Dionysius of Syracuse intended to execute one of them, and
he had obtained permission from the tyrant to return home and
arrange his affairs before his death, the other did not hesitate
to give himself up as a pledge of his friend’s return[3]. He
whose neck had been in danger was now free; and he who might have
lived in safety was now in danger of death. So everybody, and
especially Dionysius, were wondering what would be the upshot
of this novel and dubious affair. At last, when the day fixed
was close at hand, and he had not returned, everyone condemned
the one who stood security, for his stupidity and rashness. But
he insisted that he had nothing to fear in the matter of his
friend’s constancy. And indeed at the same moment and the hour
fixed by Dionysius, he who had received leave, returned. The
tyrant, admiring the courage of both, remitted the sentence which
had so tried their loyalty, and asked them besides to receive
him in the bonds of their friendship, saying that he would make
his third place in their affection agreeable by his utmost
goodwill and effort. Such indeed are the powers of friendship:
to breed contempt of death, to overcome the sweet desire of
life, to humanise cruelty, to turn hate into love, to compensate
punishment by largess; to which powers almost as much veneration
is due as to the cult of the immortal gods. For if with these
rests the public safety, on those does private happiness depend;
and as the temples are the sacred domiciles of these, so of those
are the loyal hearts of men as it were the shrines consecrated
by some holy spirit.” _Valerius Maximus_, bk. iv. ch. 7. _De
Amicitiæ Vinculo_.
II.
_The Place of Friendship in Greek Life & Thought_
_The Place of Friendship in Greek Life & Thought_
The extent to which the idea of friendship (in a quite romantic sense)
penetrated the Greek mind is a thing very difficult for us to realise;
and some modern critics entirely miss this point. They laud the Greek
culture to the skies, extolling the warlike bravery of the people, their
enthusiastic political and social sentiment, their wonderful artistic
sense, and so forth; and at the same time speak of the stress they laid
on friendship as a little peculiarity of no particular importance—not
seeing that the latter was the chief source of their bravery and
independence, one of the main motives of their art, and so far an organic
part of their whole polity that it is difficult to imagine the one
without the other. The Greeks themselves never made this mistake; and
their literature abounds with references to the romantic attachment as
the great inspiration of political and individual life. Plato, himself,
may almost be said to have founded his philosophy on this sentiment.
Nothing is more surprising to the modern than to find Plato speaking,
page after page, of Love, as the safeguard of states and the tutoress
of philosophy, and then to discover that what we call love, _i.e._, the
love between man and woman, is not meant at all—scarcely comes within his
consideration—but only the love between men—what we should call romantic
friendship. His ideal of this latter love is ascetic; it is an absorbing
passion, but it is held in strong control. The other love—the love of
women—is for him a mere sensuality. In this, to some extent, lies the
explanation of his philosophical position.
But it is evident that in this fact—in the fact that among the Greeks
the love of women was considered for the most part sensual, while the
_romance_ of love went to the account of friendship, we have the strength
and the weakness of the Greek civilisation. Strength, because by the
recognition everywhere of romantic comradeship, public and private
life was filled by a kind of divine fire; weakness, because by the
non-recognition of woman’s equal part in such comradeship, her saving,
healing, and redeeming influence was lost, and the Greek culture doomed
to be to that extent one-sided. It will, we may hope, be the great
triumph of the modern love (when it becomes more of a true comradeship
between man and woman than it yet is) to give both to society and to the
individual the grandest inspirations, and perhaps in conjunction with
the other attachment, to lift the modern nations to a higher level of
political and artistic advancement than even the Greeks attained. I quote
one or two modern writers on the subject, and then some passages from
Plato and others indicating the philosophy of friendship as entertained
among the Greeks.
[Sidenote: _Bishop Thirlwall on Greek Friendship_]
Bishop Thirlwall, that excellent thinker and scholar, in his _History of
Greece_ (vol. 1, p. 176) says:—
“One of the noblest and most amiable sides of the Greek character
is the readiness with which it lent itself to construct intimate
and durable friendships; and this is a feature no less prominent
in the earliest than in the latest times. It was indeed
connected with the comparatively low estimation in which female
society was held; but the devotedness and constancy with which
these attachments were maintained was not the less admirable
and engaging. The heroic companions whom we find celebrated,
partly by Homer and partly in traditions, which if not of equal
antiquity were grounded on the same feeling, seem to have but one
heart and soul, with scarcely a wish or object apart, and only
to live, as they are always ready to die, for one another. It is
true that the relation between them is not always one of perfect
equality: but this is a circumstance which, while it often adds
a peculiar charm to the poetical description, detracts little
from the dignity of the idea which it presents. Such were the
friendships of Hercules and Ioläus, of Theseus and Pirithöus, of
Orestes and Pylades: and though these may owe the greater part
of their fame to the later epic or even dramatic poetry, the
moral groundwork undoubtedly subsisted in the period to which
the tradition referred. The argument of the Iliad mainly turns
on the affection of Achilles for Patroclus—whose love for the
greater hero is only tempered by reverence for his higher birth
and his unequalled prowess. But the mutual regard which united
Idomeneus and Meriones, Diomedes and Sthenelus—though, as the
persons themselves are less important, it is kept more in the
background—is manifestly viewed by the poet in the same light.
The idea of a Greek hero seems not to have been thought complete,
without such a brother in arms by his side.”
[Sidenote: _Compared to Chivalry_]
The following is from Ludwig Frey (_Der Eros und die Kunst_, p. 33):—
“Let it then be repeated: love for a youth was for the Greeks
something sacred, and can only be compared with our German homage
to women—say the chivalric love of mediæval times.”
[Sidenote: _Educational and Political Value_]
G. Lowes Dickinson, in his _Greek View of Life_, noting the absence of
romance in the relations between men and women of that civilisation,
says:
“Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude, from these
conditions, that the element of romance was absent from Greek
life. The fact is simply that with them it took a different form,
that of passionate friendship between men. Such friendships, of
course, occur in all nations and at all times, but among the
Greeks they were, we might say, an institution. Their ideal was
the development and education of the younger by the older man,
and in this view they were recognised and approved by custom and
law as an important factor in the state.” _Greek View of Life_,
p. 167.
“So much indeed were the Greeks impressed with the manliness of
this passion, with its power to prompt to high thought and heroic
action, that some of the best of them set the love of man for man
far above that of man for woman. The one, they maintained, was
primarily of the spirit, the other primarily of the flesh; the
one bent upon shaping to the type of all manly excellence both
the body and the soul of the beloved, the other upon a passing
pleasure of the senses.” _Ibid_, p. 172.
[Sidenote: _Relation to Women_]
The following are some remarks of J. A. Symonds on the same subject:—
“Partly owing to the social habits of their cities, and partly
to the peculiar notions which they entertained regarding the
seclusion of free women in the home, all the higher elements of
spiritual and mental activity, and the conditions under which
a generous passion was conceivable, had become the exclusive
privileges of men. It was not that women occupied a semi-servile
station, as some students have imagined, or that within the
sphere of the household they were not the respected and trusted
helpmates of men. But circumstances rendered it impossible for
them to excite romantic and enthusiastic passion. The exaltation
of the emotions was reserved for the male sex.” _A Problem in
Greek Ethics_, p. 68.
[Sidenote: _J. A. Symonds on Socrates_]
And he continues:—
“Socrates therefore sought to direct and moralise a force already
existing. In the _Phædrus_ he describes the passion of love
between man and boy as a ‘_mania_,’ not different in quality
from that which inspires poets; and after painting that fervid
picture of the lover, he declares that the true object of a noble
life can only be attained by passionate friends, bound together
in the chains of close yet temperate comradeship, seeking always
to advance in knowledge, self-restraint, and intellectual
illumination. The doctrine of the _Symposium_ is not different,
except that Socrates here takes a higher flight. The same love
is treated as the method whereby the soul may begin her mystic
journey to the region of essential beauty, truth, and goodness.
It has frequently been remarked that Plato’s dialogues have to
be read as poems even more than as philosophical treatises; and
if this be true at all, it is particularly true of both the
_Phædrus_ and the _Symposium_. The lesson which both essays seem
intended to inculcate, is this: love, like poetry and prophecy,
is a divine gift, which diverts men from the common current of
their lives; but in the right use of this gift lies the secret of
all human excellence. The passion which grovels in the filth of
sensual grossness may be transformed into a glorious enthusiasm,
a winged splendour, capable of soaring to the contemplation of
eternal verities.”
In the _Symposium_ or _Banquet_ of Plato (B.C. 428—B.C. 347), a supper
party is supposed, at which a discussion on love and friendship takes
place. The friends present speak in turn—the enthusiastic Phædrus, the
clear-headed Pausanias, the grave doctor Eryximachus, the comic and
acute Aristophanes, the young poet Agathon; Socrates, tantalising,
suggestive, and quoting the profound sayings of the prophetess Diotima;
and Alcibiades, drunk, and quite ready to drink more;—each in his turn,
out of the fulness of his heart, speaks; and thus in this most dramatic
dialogue we have love discussed from every point of view, and with
insight, acumen, romance and humour unrivalled.
[Sidenote: _From the Speech of Phædrus in the Symposium_]
Phædrus and Pausanias, in the two following quotations, take the line
which perhaps most thoroughly represents the public opinion of the day—as
to the value of friendship in nurturing a spirit of honour and freedom,
especially in matters military and political:—
“Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge love to be the
eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also
the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any
greater blessing to a young man beginning life than a virtuous
lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle
which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live—that
principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor
any other motive is able to implant so well as love. Of what am
I speaking? of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which
neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work.
And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonorable
act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done
to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his
beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions,
or by anyone else. The beloved too, when he is seen in any
disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And
if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an
army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be
the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all
dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting
at one another’s side, although a mere handful, they would
overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be
seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning
his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a
thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his
beloved, or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward
would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a
time; love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says,
the god breathes into the soul of heroes, love of his own nature
infuses into the lover.” _Symposium of Plato_, _trans. B. Jowett_.
[Sidenote: _Speech of Pausanias_]
“In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which
are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be
dishonorable; loves of youths share the evil repute of philosophy
and gymnastics, because they are inimical to tyranny; for the
interests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in
spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or
society among them, which love above all other motives is likely
to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience.”
_Ibid._
[Sidenote: _Speech of Aristophanes_]
Aristophanes goes more deeply into the nature of this love of which
they are speaking. He says it is a profound reality—a deep and intimate
union, abiding after death, and making of the lovers “one departed soul
instead of two.” But in order to explain his allusion to “the other half”
it must be premised that in the earlier part of his speech he has in a
serio-comic vein pretended that human beings were originally constructed
double, with four legs, four arms, etc.; but that as a punishment for
their sins Zeus divided them perpendicularly, “as folk cut eggs before
they salt them,” the males into two parts, the females into two, and
the hermaphrodites likewise into two—since when, these divided people
have ever pursued their lost halves, and “thrown their arms around and
embraced each other, seeking to grow together again.” And so, speaking of
those who were originally males, he says:
“And these when they grow up are our statesmen, and these only,
which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saying. And
when they reach manhood they are lovers of youth, and are not
naturally inclined to marry or beget children, which they do,
if at all, only in obedience to the law, but they are satisfied
if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded; and
such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always
embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them finds
his other half, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of
another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and
friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s
sight, as I may say, even for a moment: they will pass their
whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they
desire of one another. For the intense yearning that each of
them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of
lovers’ intercourse, but of something else which the soul of
either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she only
has a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephæstus, with
his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side
and say to them, ‘What do you people want of one another?’ they
would be unable to explain. And suppose further that when he
saw their perplexity he said: ‘Do you desire to be wholly one;
always day and night to be in one another’s company? for if this
is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you
grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while
you live, live a common life as if you were a single man, and
after your death in the world below still be one departed soul
instead of two—I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire,
and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’—there is not a man
of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not
acknowledge that this meeting and melting in one another’s arms,
this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his
ancient need.” _Ibid._
[Sidenote: _Speech of Socrates_]
Socrates, in his speech, and especially in the later portion of it where
he quotes his supposed tutoress Diotima, carries the argument up to its
highest issue. After contending for the essentially creative, generative
nature of love, not only in the Body but in the Soul, he proceeds to
say that it is not so much the seeking of a lost half which causes the
creative impulse in lovers, as the fact that in our mortal friends we are
contemplating (though unconsciously) an image of the Essential and Divine
Beauty; it is this that affects us with that wonderful “mania,” and lifts
us into the region where we become creators. And he follows on to the
conclusion that it is by wisely and truly loving our visible friends that
at last, after long long experience, there dawns upon us the vision of
that Absolute Beauty which by mortal eyes must ever remain unseen:—
“He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and
who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession,
when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature
of wondrous beauty ... beauty absolute, separate, simple and
everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or
any change, is imparted to the evergrowing and perishing beauties
of all other things. He who, from these ascending under the
influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not
far from the end.” _Ibid._
This is indeed the culmination, for Plato, of all existence—the ascent
into the presence of that endless Beauty of which all fair mortal things
are but the mirrors. But to condense this great speech of Socrates is
impossible; only to persistent and careful reading (if even then) will it
yield up all its treasures.
[Sidenote: _Socrates in the Phædrus_]
In the dialogue named _Phædrus_ the same idea is worked out, only to
some extent in reverse order. As in the _Symposium_ the lover by rightly
loving at last rises to the vision of the Supreme Beauty; so in the
_Phædrus_ it is explained that in reality every soul _has_ at some time
seen that Vision (at the time, namely, of its true initiation, when
it was indeed winged)—but has forgotten it; and that it is the dim
_reminiscence_ of that Vision, constantly working within us, which guides
us to our earthly loves and renders their effect upon us so transporting.
Long ago, in some other condition of being, we saw Beauty herself:—
“But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining
in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we
find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest
aperture of sense. For sight is the keenest of our bodily senses;
though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have
been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and
the same is true of the loveliness of the other ideas as well.
But this is the privilege of beauty, that she is the loveliest
and also the most palpable to sight. Now he who is not newly
initiated, or who has become corrupted, does not easily rise
out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other; he
looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed
at the sight of her, like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy
and beget; he consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or
ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But he
whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of
many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees anyone
having a god-like face or form, which is the expression of Divine
Beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the
old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his
beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid
of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to
his beloved as to the image of a god.” _The Phædrus of Plato_,
_trans. B. Jowett_.
And again:—
“And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and
loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality,
being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in
former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his
lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously
told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the
appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For
fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among
the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship
among the good. And when he has received him into communion and
intimacy, then the beloved is amazed at the goodwill of the
lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other
friendships or kinships, which have nothing of friendship in them
in comparison. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer
to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other
times of meeting, then does the fountain of that stream, which
Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named desire, overflow
upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he
is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds
from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the
stream of beauty, passing the eyes which are the natural doors
and windows of the soul, return again to the beautiful one; there
arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them
and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved
also with love.” _Ibid._
For Plato the real power which ever moves the soul is this reminiscence
of the Beauty which exists before all worlds. In the actual world the
soul lives but in anguish, an exile from her true home; but in the
presence of her friend, who reveals the Divine, she is loosed from her
suffering and comes to her haven of rest.
“And wherever she [the soul] thinks that she will behold the
beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs. And when she has
seen him, and bathed herself with the waters of desire, her
constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more
pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at
the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never
forsake his beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has
forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he thinks
nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the rules and
proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now
despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is
allowed, as near as he can to his beautiful one, who is not only
the object of his worship, but the only physician who can heal
him in his extreme agony.” _Ibid._
[Sidenote: _The Banquet of Xenophon_]
At another time, in the Banquet of Xenophon, Socrates is again made to
speak at length on the subject of Love—though not in so inspired a strain
as in Plato:—
“Truly, to speak for one, I never remember the time when I
was not in love; I know too that Charmides has had a great
many lovers, and being much beloved has loved again. As for
Critobulus, he is still of an age to love, and to be beloved;
and Nicerates too, who loves so passionately his wife, at least
as report goes, is equally beloved by her.... And as for you,
Callias, you love, as well as the rest of us; for who is it that
is ignorant of your love for Autolycus? It is the town-talk;
and foreigners, as well as our citizens, are acquainted with
it. The reason for your loving him, I believe to be that you
are both born of illustrious families; and at the same time are
both possessed of personal qualities that render you yet more
illustrious. For me, I always admired the sweetness and evenness
of your temper; but much more when I consider that your passion
for Autolycus is placed on a person who has nothing luxurious or
affected in him; but in all things shows a vigour and temperance
worthy of a virtuous soul; which is a proof at the same time that
if he is infinitely beloved, he deserves to be so. I confess
indeed I am not firmly persuaded whether there be but one Venus
or two, the celestial and the vulgar; and it may be with this
goddess, as with Jupiter, who has many different names though
there is still but one Jupiter. But I know very well that both
the Venuses have quite different altars, temples and sacrifices.
The vulgar Venus is worshipped after a common negligent manner;
whereas the celestial one is adored in purity and sanctity of
life. The vulgar inspires mankind with the love of the body only,
but the celestial fires the mind with the love of the soul, with
friendship, and a generous thirst after noble actions.... Nor is
it hard to prove, Callias, that gods and heroes have always had
more passion and esteem for the charms of the soul, than those
of the body: at least this seems to have been the opinion of our
ancient authors. For we may observe in the fables of antiquity
that Jupiter, who loved several mortals on account of their
personal beauty only, never conferred upon them immortality.
Whereas it was otherwise with Hercules, Castor, Pollux, and
several others; for having admired and applauded the greatness
of their courage and the beauty of their minds, he enrolled them
in the number of the gods.... You are then infinitely obliged to
the gods, Callias, who have inspired you with love and friendship
for Autolycus, as they have inspired Critobulus with the same
for Amandra; for real and pure friendship knows no difference in
sexes.” _Banquet of Xenophon_ § viii. (_Bohn_).
[Sidenote: _Plutarch Philosophises_]
Plutarch, who wrote in the first century A.D. (nearly 500 years after
Plato), carried on the tradition of his master, though with an admixture
of later influences; and philosophised about friendship, on the basis of
true love being a reminiscence.
“The rainbow is I suppose a reflection caused by the sun’s
rays falling on a moist cloud, making us think the appearance
is in the cloud. Similarly erotic fancy in the case of noble
souls causes a reflection of the memory from things which here
appear and are called beautiful to what is really divine and
lovely and felicitous and wonderful. But most lovers pursuing
and groping after the semblance of beauty in youths and women,
as in mirrors,[4] can derive nothing more certain than pleasure
mixed with pain. And this seems the love-delirium of Ixion, who
instead of the joy he desired embraced only a cloud, as children
who desire to take the rainbow into their hands, clutching at
whatever they see. But different is the behaviour of the noble
and chaste lover: for he reflects on the divine beauty that can
only be felt, while he uses the beauty of the visible body only
as an organ of the memory, though he embraces it and loves it,
and associating with it is still more inflamed in mind. And so
neither in the body do they sit ever gazing at and desiring
_this_ light, nor after death do they return to this world
again, and skulk and loiter about the doors and bedchambers of
newly-married people, disagreeable ghosts of pleasure-loving and
sensual men and women, who do not rightly deserve the name of
lovers. For the true lover, when he has got into the other world
and associated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings and
is initiated and passes his time above in the presence of his
Deity, dancing and waiting upon him, until he goes back to the
meadows of the Moon and Aphrodite, and sleeping there commences
a new existence. But this is a subject too high for the present
occasion.” _Plutarch’s Eroticus_ § xx. _trans. Bohn’s Classics_.
III.
_Poetry of Friendship among Greeks & Romans_
_Poetry of Friendship among Greeks & Romans_
The fact, already mentioned, that the _romance_ of love among the Greeks
was chiefly felt towards male friends, naturally led to their poetry
being largely inspired by friendship; and Greek literature contains such
a great number of poems of this sort, that I have thought it worth while
to dedicate the main portion of the following section to quotations from
them. No translations of course can do justice to the beauty of the
originals, but the few specimens given may help to illustrate the depth
and tenderness as well as the temperance and sobriety which on the whole
characterised Greek feeling on this subject, at any rate during the best
period of Hellenic culture. The remainder of the section is devoted to
Roman poetry of the time of the Cæsars.
[Sidenote: _Motive of Homer’s Iliad_]
It is not always realised that the Iliad of Homer turns upon the motive
of friendship, but the extracts immediately following will perhaps make
this clear. E. F. M. Benecke in his _Position of Women in Greek Poetry_
(p. 76) says of the Iliad:—
“It is a story of which the main motive is the love of Achilles
for Patroclus. This solution is astoundingly simple, and yet
it took me so long to bring myself to accept it that I am
quite ready to forgive anyone who feels a similar hesitation.
But those who do accept it cannot fail to observe, on further
consideration, how thoroughly suitable a motive of this kind
would be in a national Greek epic. For this is the motive running
through the whole of Greek life, till that life was transmuted
by the influence of Macedonia. The lover-warriors Achilles and
Patroclus are the direct spiritual ancestors of the sacred Band
of Thebans, who died to a man on the field of Chæronæa.”
[Sidenote: _J. A. Symonds on the same_]
The following two quotations are from _The Greek Poets_ by J. A. Symonds,
ch. iii. p. 80 _et seq._:—
“The _Iliad_ therefore has for its whole subject the passion of
Achilles—that ardent energy or μῆνις of the hero which displayed
itself first as anger against Agamemnon, and afterwards as love
for the lost Patroclus. The truth of this was perceived by one of
the greatest poets and profoundest, critics of the modern world,
Dante. When Dante, in the _Inferno_, wished to describe Achilles,
he wrote, with characteristic brevity:—
“Achille
Che per amore al fine combatteo.”
(“Achilles
Who at the last was brought to fight by love.”)
“In this pregnant sentence Dante sounded the whole depth of the
_Iliad_. The wrath of Achilles for Agamemnon, which prevented him
at first from fighting; the love of Achilles, passing the love of
women, for Patroclus, which induced him to forego his anger and
to fight at last; these are the two poles on which the _Iliad_
turns.”
[Sidenote: _Achilles and Patroclus_]
After his quarrel with Agamemnon, not even all the losses of the Greeks
and the entreaties of Agamemnon himself will induce Achilles to fight—not
till Patroclus is slain by Hector—Patroclus, his dear friend “whom above
all my comrades I honoured, even as myself.” Then he rises up, dons his
armour, and driving the Trojans before him revenges himself on the body
of Hector. But Patroclus lies yet unburied; and when the fighting is
over, to Achilles comes the ghost of his dead friend:—
“The son of Peleus, by the shore of the roaring sea lay, heavily
groaning, surrounded by his Myrmidons; on a fair space of sand
he lay, where the waves lapped the beach. Then slumber took him,
loosing the cares of his heart, and mantling softly around him,
for sorely wearied were his radiant limbs with driving Hector on
by windy Troy. There to him came the soul of poor Patroclus, in
all things like himself, in stature, and in the beauty of his
eyes and voice, and on the form was raiment like his own. He
stood above the hero’s head, and spake to him:—
“‘Sleepest thou, and me hast thou forgotten, Achilles? Not in my
life wert thou neglectful of me, but in death. Bury me soon, that
I may pass the gates of Hades. Far off the souls, the shadows of
the dead, repel me, nor suffer me to join them on the river bank;
but, as it is, thus I roam around the wide-doored house of Hades.
But stretch to me thy hand I entreat; for never again shall I
return from Hades when once ye shall have given me the meed of
funeral fire. Nay, never shall we sit in life apart from our dear
comrades and take counsel together. But me hath hateful fate
enveloped—fate that was mine at the moment of my birth. And for
thyself, divine Achilles, it is doomed to die beneath the noble
Trojan’s wall. Another thing I say to thee, and bid thee do it if
thou wilt obey me:—lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles,
but lay them together; for we were brought up together in your
house, when Menœtius brought me, a child, from Opus to your
house, because of woeful bloodshed on the day in which I slew the
son of Amphidamas, myself a child, not willing it but in anger at
our games. Then did the horseman, Peleus, take me, and rear me
in his house, and cause me to be called thy squire. So then let
one grave also hide the bones of both of us, the golden urn thy
goddess-mother gave to thee.’
“Him answered swift-footed Achilles:—
‘Why, dearest and most honoured, hast thou hither come, to lay
on me this thy behest? All things most certainly will I perform,
and bow to what thou biddest. But stand thou near: even for one
moment let us throw our arms upon each other’s neck, and take our
fill of sorrowful wailing.’
“So spake he, and with his outstretched hands he clasped, but
could not seize. The spirit, earthward, like smoke, vanished with
a shriek. Then all astonished arose Achilles, and beat his palms
together, and spake a piteous word:—
‘Heavens! is there then, among the dead, soul and the shade of
life, but thought is theirs no more at all? For through the
night the soul of poor Patroclus stood above my head, wailing
and sorrowing loud, and bade me do his will; it was the very
semblance of himself.’
“So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire
of lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them
appeared rose-fingered dawn about the piteous corpse.” _Iliad_,
xxiii. 59 _et seq._
[Sidenote: _Plato on the above_]
Plato in the _Symposium_ dwells tenderly on this relation between
Achilles and Patroclus:—
[And great] “was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards
his lover Patroclus—his lover and not his love (the notion that
Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which
Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the
two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs
us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the
gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the
part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and
rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine and
worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware, for he had been
told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return home,
and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector.
Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared
to die, not only on his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore
the gods honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the
Islands of the Blest.” _Symposium, speech of Phædrus_, _trans. by
B. Jowett_.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of Plato’s View_]
And on this passage Symonds has the following note:—
“Plato, discussing the _Myrmidones_ of Æschylus, remarks in the
_Symposium_ that the tragic poet was wrong to make Achilles
the lover of Patroclus, seeing that Patroclus was the elder of
the two, and that Achilles was the youngest and most beautiful
of all the Greeks. The fact however is that Homer raises no
question in our minds about the relation of lover and beloved.
Achilles and Patroclus are comrades. Their friendship is equal.
It was only the reflective activity of the Greek mind, working
upon the Homeric legend by the light of subsequent custom, which
introduced these distinctions.” _The Greek Poets_, ch. iii. p.
103.
[Sidenote: _Athenæus_]
From the time of Homer onwards, Greek literature was full of songs
celebrating friendship:—
“And in fact there was such emulation about composing poems of
this sort, and so far was any one from thinking lightly of the
amatory poets, that Æschylus, who was a very great poet, and
Sophocles too introduced the subject of the loves of men on the
stage in their tragedies: the one describing the love of Achilles
for Patroclus, and the other, in his Niobe, the mutual love of
her sons (on which account some have given an ill name to that
tragedy); and all such passages as those are very agreeable to
the spectators.” _Athenæus_, bk. xiii. ch. 75.
[Sidenote: _From Theognis_]
One of the earlier Greek poets was Theognis (B.C. 550) whose Gnomæ or
Maxims were a series of verses mostly addressed to his young friend
Kurnus, whom by this means he sought to guide and instruct out of the
stores of his own riper experience. The verses are reserved and didactic
for the most part, but now and then, as in the following passage, show
deep underlying feeling:—
“Lo, I have given thee wings wherewith to fly
Over the boundless ocean and the earth;
Yea, on the lips of many shalt thou lie
The comrade of their banquet and their mirth.
Youths in their loveliness shall make thee sound
Upon the silver flute’s melodious breath;
And when thou goest darkling underground
Down to the lamentable house of death,
Oh yet not then from honour shalt thou cease,
But wander, an imperishable name,
Kurnus, about the seas and shores of Greece,
Crossing from isle to isle the barren main.
Horses thou shalt not need, but lightly ride
Sped by the Muses of the violet crown,
And men to come, while earth and sun abide,
Who cherish song shall cherish thy renown.
Yea, I have given thee wings! and in return
Thou givest me the scorn with which I burn.”
_Theognis Gnomai_, lines 237-254,
_trans. by G. Lowes Dickinson_.
[Sidenote: _Sappho_]
As Theognis had his well-loved disciples, so had the poetess Sappho
(600 B.C.) Her devotion to her girl-friends and companions is indeed
proverbial.
“What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phædrus were to Socrates,
Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian.” _Max
Tyrius_, _quoted in H. T. Wharton’s Sappho_, p. 23.
[Sidenote: _To Lesbia_]
Perhaps the few lines of Sappho, translated or paraphrased by Catullus
under the title _To Lesbia_, form the most celebrated fragment of her
extant work. They may be roughly rendered thus:—
“Peer of all the gods unto me appeareth
He of men who sitting beside thee heareth
Close at hand thy syllabled words sweet spoken,
Or loving laughter—
That sweet laugh which flutters my heart and bosom.
For, at sight of thee, in an instant fail me
Voice and speech, and under my skin there courses
Swiftly a thin flame;
Darkness is on my eyes, in my ears a drumming,
Drenched in sweat my frame, my body trembling;
Paler ev’n than grass—’tis, I doubt, but little
From death divides me.”
[Sidenote: _Anacreon to Bathyllus_]
Several of the odes of Anacreon (B.C. 520) are addressed to his young
friend Bathyllus. The following short one has been preserved to us by
Athenæus (bk. xiii. § 17):—
“O boy, with virgin-glancing eye,
I call thee, but thou dost not hear;
Thou know’st not how my soul doth cry
For thee, its charioteer.”
[Sidenote: _Epigram on Lovers_]
Anacreon had not the passion and depth of Sappho, but there is a mark of
genuine feeling in some of his poems, as in this simple little epigram:—
“On their hindquarters horses
Are branded oft with fire,
And anyone knows a Parthian
Because he wears a tiar;
And I at sight of lovers
Their nature can declare,
For in their hearts they too
Some subtle flame-mark bear.”
[Sidenote: _Pindar to Theoxenos_]
The following fragment is from Pindar’s Ode to his young friend
Theoxenos—in whose arms Pindar is said to have died (B.C. 442):—
“O soul, ’tis thine in season meet,
To pluck of love the blossom sweet,
When hearts are young:
But he who sees the blazing beams,
The light that from _that_ forehead streams,
And is not stung;—
Who is not storm-tossed with desire,—
Lo! he, I ween, with frozen fire,
Of adamant or stubborn steel
Is forged in his cold heart that cannot feel.”
_Trans. by J. Addington Symonds_,
_The Greek Poets_, vol. 1, p. 286.
[Sidenote: _Epigrams of Plato_]
Plato’s epigrams on Aster and Agathon are well known. The two
first-quoted make a play of course on the name Aster (star).
_To Aster_:
“Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled;
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.”
(_Shelley._)
_To the same_:
“Thou at the stars dost gaze, who art _my_ star—O would that I were
Heaven, to gaze on thee, ever with thousands of eyes.”
_To Agathon_:
“Thee as I kist, behold! on my lips my own soul was trembling;
For, bold one, she had come, meaning to find her way through.”
[Sidenote: _Meleager_]
There are many other epigrams and songs on the same subject from the
Greek writers. The following is by Meleager (a native of Gadara in
Palestine) about 60 B.C., and one of the sweetest and most human of the
lyric poets:—
“O mortals crossed in love! the Southwind, see!
That blows so fair for sailor folk, hath ta’en
Half of my soul, Andragathos, from me.
Thrice happy ships, thrice blesséd billowy main,
And four times favored wind that bears the youth,
O would I were a Dolphin! so, in truth,
High on my shoulders ferried he should come
To Rhodes, sweet haunt of boys, his island-home.”
_From the Greek Anthology_, ii. 402.
[Sidenote: _Epigram_]
Also from the Greek Anthology:—
“O say, and again repeat, fair, fair—and still I will say it—
How fair, my friend, and good to see, thou art;
On pine or oak or wall thy name I do not blazon—
Love has too deeply graved it in my heart.”
[Sidenote: _Epitaph Anonymous_]
“Perhaps the most beautiful [says J. A. Symonds] of the
sepulchral epigrams is one by an unknown writer, of which I here
give a free paraphrase. _Anth. Pal._, vii. 346:—
‘Of our great love, Parthenophil,
This little stone abideth still
Sole sign and token:
I seek thee yet, and yet shall seek,
Tho’ faint mine eyes, my spirit weak
With prayers unspoken.
Meanwhile best friend of friends, do thou,
If this the cruel fates allow,
By death’s dark river,
Among those shadowy people, drink
No drop for me on Lethe’s brink:
Forget me never!’”
_The Greek Poets_, vol. 2, p. 298.
Theocritus, though coming late in the Greek age (about 300 B.C.) when
Athens had yielded place to Alexandria, still carried on the Greek
tradition in a remarkable way. A native of Syracuse, he caught and
echoed in a finer form the life and songs of the country folk of that
region—themselves descendants of Dorian settlers. Songs and ballads
full of similar notes linger among the Greek peasants, shepherds and
fisher-folk, even down to the present day.
[Sidenote: _Theocritus Idyl XII._]
The following poem (trans. by M. J. Chapman, 1836) is one of the best
known and most beautiful of his Idyls:—
IDYL XII.
“Art come, dear youth? two days and nights away!
(Who burn with love, grow aged in a day.)
As much as apples sweet the damson crude
Excel; the blooming spring the winter rude;
In fleece the sheep her lamb; the maid in sweetness
The thrice-wed dame; the fawn the calf in fleetness;
The nightingale in song all feathered kind—
So much thy longed-for presence cheers my mind.
To thee I hasten, as to shady beech,
The traveller, when from the heaven’s reach
The sun fierce blazes. May our love be strong,
To all hereafter times the theme of song!
‘Two men each other loved to that degree,
That either friend did in the other see
A dearer than himself. They lived of old
Both golden natures in an age of gold.’
O father Zeus! ageless immortals all!
Two hundred ages hence may one recall,
Down-coming to the irremeable river,
This to my mind, and this good news deliver:
‘E’en now from east to west, from north to south,
Your mutual friendship lives in every mouth.’
This, as they please, th’ Olympians will decide:
Of thee, by blooming virtue beautified,
My glowing song shall only truth disclose;
With falsehood’s pustules I’ll not shame my nose.
If thou dost sometime grieve me, sweet the pleasure
Of reconcilement, joy in double measure
To find thou never didst intend the pain,
And feel myself from all doubt free again.
And ye Megarians, at Nisæa dwelling,
Expert at rowing, mariners excelling,
Be happy ever! for with honours due
Th’ Athenian Diocles, to friendship true
Ye celebrate. With the first blush of spring
The youth surround his tomb: there who shall bring
The sweetest kiss, whose lip is purest found,
Back to his mother goes with garlands crowned.
Nice touch the arbiter must have indeed,
And must, methinks, the blue-eyed Ganymede
Invoke with many prayers—a mouth to own
True to the touch of lips, as Lydian stone
To proof of gold—which test will instant show
The pure or base, as money changers know.”
[Sidenote: _Idyl XXIX._]
The following Idyl, of which I append a rendering, is attributed to
Theocritus:—
IDYL XXIX.
“They say, dear boy, that wine and truth agree;
And, being in wine, I’ll tell the truth to thee—
Yes, all that works in secret in my soul.
’Tis this: thou dost not love me with thy whole
Untampered heart. I know; for half my time
Is spent in gazing on thy beauty’s prime;
The other half is nought. When thou art good,
My days are like the gods’; but when the mood
Tormenting takes thee, ’tis my night of woe.
How were it right to vex a lover so?
Take my advice, my lad, thine elder friend,
’Twill make thee glad and grateful in the end:
In one tree build one nest, so no grim snake
May creep upon thee. For to-day thou’lt make
Thy home on one branch, and to-morrow changing
Wilt seek another, to what’s new still ranging;
And should a stranger praise your handsome face,
Him more than three-year-proven friend you’ll grace,
While him who loved you first you’ll treat as cold
As some acquaintanceship of three days old.
Thou fliest high, methinks, in love and pride;
But I would say: keep ever at thy side
A mate that is thine equal; doing so,
The townsfolk shall speak well of thee alway,
And love shall never visit thee with woe—
Love that so easily men’s hearts can flay,
And mine has conquered that was erst of steel.
Nay, by thy gracious lips I make appeal:
Remember thou wert younger a year agone
And we grow grey and wrinkled, all, or e’er
We can escape our doom; of mortals none
His youth retakes again, for azure wings
Are on her shoulders, and we sons of care
Are all too slow to catch such flying things.
Mindful of this, be gentle, is my prayer,
And love me, guileless, ev’n as I love thee;
So when thou hast a beard, such friends as were
Achilles and Patroclus we may be.”
[Sidenote: _Bion_]
Bion was a poet of about the same period as Theocritus, but of whom
little is known. The following is a fragment translated by A. Lang:—
“Happy are they that love, when with equal love they are
rewarded. Happy was Theseus, when Pirithöus was by his side, yea
tho’ he went down to the house of implacable Hades. Happy among
hard men and inhospitable was Orestes, for that Pylades chose to
share his wanderings. And _he_ was happy, Achilles Æacides, while
his darling lived,—happy was he in his death, because he avenged
the dread fate of Patroclus.” _Theocritus_, _Bion and Moschus_,
_Golden Treasury series_, p. 182.
[Sidenote: _Lament for Bion by Moschus_]
The beautiful _Lament for Bion_ by Moschus is interesting in this
connection, and should be compared with Shelley’s lament for Keats in
_Adonais_—for which latter poem indeed it supplied some suggestions:—
“Ye mountain valleys, pitifully groan!
Rivers and Dorian springs for Bion weep!
Ye plants drop tears! ye groves lamenting moan!
Exhale your life, wan flowers; your blushes deep
In grief, anemonies and roses, steep!
In softest murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong
The sad, sad woe thy lettered petals keep;
Our minstrel sings no more his friends among
Sicilian muses! now begin the doleful song.”
_M. J. Chapman trans. in the
Greek Pastoral Poets, 1836._
[Sidenote: _Story of Hyacinthus_]
The allusion to Hyacinth is thus explained by Chapman:—
“Hyacinthus, a Spartan youth, the son of Clio, was in great
favour with Apollo. Zephyrus, being enraged that he preferred
Apollo to him, blew the discus when flung by Apollo, on a day
that Hyacinthus was playing at discus-throwing with that god,
against the head of the youth, and so killed him. Apollo, being
unable to save his life, changed him into the flower which was
named after him, and on whose petals the Greeks fancied they
could trace the notes of a grief, ἂι, ἂι.[5] A festival called
the Hyacinthia was celebrated for three days in each year at
Sparta, in honour of the god and his unhappy favorite.” _Note to
Moschus_, Idyl iii.
[Sidenote: _Told by Ovid_]
The story of Apollo and Hyacinth is gracefully told by Ovid, in the tenth
book of his Metamorphoses:—
“Midway betwixt the past and coming night
Stood Titan[6] when the pair, their limbs unrobed,
And glist’ning with the olive’s unctuous juice,
In friendly contest with the discus vied.”
[The younger one is struck by the discus; and like a fading flower]
“To its own weight unequal drooped the head
Of Hyacinth; and o’er him wailed the god:—
Liest thou so, Œbalia’s child, of youth
Untimely robbed, and wounded by my fault—
At once my grief and guilt?—This hand hath dealt
Thy death! ’Tis I who send thee to the grave!
And yet scarce guilty, unless guilt it were
To sport, or guilt to love thee! Would this life
Might thine redeem, or be with thine resigned!
But thou—since Fate denies a god to die—
Be present with me ever! Let thy name
Dwell ever in my heart and on my lips,
Theme of my lyre and burden of my song;
And ever bear the echo of my wail
Writ on thy new-born flower! The time shall come
When, with thyself associate, to its name
The mightiest of the Greeks shall link his own.
Prophetic as Apollo mourned, the blood
That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf
Was blood no more: and sudden sprang to life
A flower.”
_Ovid’s Metamorphoses_ _trans.
H. King_, _London_, 1871.
[Sidenote: _Virgil Eclogue II._]
In Roman literature, generally, as might be expected, with its more
materialistic spirit, the romance of a friendship is little dwelt upon;
though the grosser side of the passion, in such writers as Catullus
and Martial, is much in evidence. Still we find in Virgil a notable
instance. His 2nd Eclogue bears the marks of genuine feeling; and,
according to some critics, he there under the guise of Shepherd Corydon’s
love for Alexis celebrates his own attachment to the youthful Alexander:—
“Corydon, keeper of cattle, once loved the fair lad Alexis;
But he, the delight of his master, permitted no hope to the shepherd.
Corydon, lovesick swain, went into the forest of beeches,
And there to the mountains and woods—the one relief of his passion—
With useless effort outpoured the following artless complainings:—
Alexis, barbarous youth, say, do not my mournful lays move thee?
Showing me no compassion, thou’lt surely compel me to perish.
Even the cattle now seek after places both cool and shady;
Even the lizards green conceal themselves in the thorn-bush.
Thestylis, taking sweet herbs, such as garlic and thyme, for the reapers
Faint with the scorching noon, doth mash them and bray in a mortar.
Alone in the heat of the day am I left with the screaming cicalas,
While patient in tracking thy path, I ever pursue thee, Belovéd.”
_Trans. by J. W. Baylis._
[Sidenote: _Corydon and Alexis_]
There is a translation of this same 2nd Eclogue, by Abraham Fraunce
(1591) which is interesting not only on account of its felicity of
phrase, but because, as in the case of some other Elizabethan hexameters,
the metre is ruled by _quantity_, _i.e._, length of syllables, instead
of by _accent_. The following are the first five lines of Fraunce’s
translation:—
“Silly shepherd Corydon lov’d hartyly fayre lad Alexis,
His master’s dearling, but saw noe matter of hoping;
Only amydst darck groves thickset with broade-shadoe beech-trees
Dayly resort did he make, thus alone to the woods, to the mountayns,
With broken speeches fond thoughts there vainly revealing.”
[Sidenote: _Catullus to Quintius_]
Catullus also (b. B.C. 87) has some verses of real feeling:—
“Quintius, if ’tis thy wish and will
That I should owe my eyes to thee,
Or anything that’s dearer still,
If aught that’s dearer there can be;
Then rob me not of that I prize,
Of the dear form that is to me,
Oh! far far dearer than my eyes,
Or aught, if dearer aught there be.”
_Catullus_, _trans. Hon.
J. Lamb_, 1821.
[Sidenote: _To Juventius_]
“If all complying, thou would’st grant
Thy lovely eyes to kiss, my fair,
Long as I pleased; oh! I would plant
Three hundred thousand kisses there.
Nor could I even then refrain,
Nor satiate leave that fount of blisses,
Tho’ thicker than autumnal grain
Should be our growing crop of kisses.”
(_Ibid._)
[Sidenote: _To Licinius_]
“Long at our leisure yesterday
Idling, Licinius, we wrote
Upon my tablets verses gay,
Or took our turns, as fancy smote,
At rhymes and dice and wine.
But when I left, Licinius mine,
Your grace and your facetious mood
Had fired me so, that neither food
Would stay my misery, nor sleep
My roving eyes in quiet keep.
But still consumed, without respite,
I tossed about my couch in vain
And longed for day—if speak I might,
Or be with you again.
But when my limbs with all the strain
Worn out, half dead lay on my bed,
Sweet friend to thee this verse I penned,
That so thou mayest condescend
To understand my pain.
So now, Licinius, beware!
And be not rash, but to my prayer
A gracious hearing tender;
Lest on thy head pounce Nemesis:
A goddess sudden and swift she is—
Beware lest thou offend her!”
[Sidenote: _Martial to Diadumenos_]
The following little poem is taken from Martial:
“As a vineyard breathes, whose boughs with grapes are bending,
Or garden where are hived Sicanian bees;
As upturned clods when summer rain’s descending
Or orchards rich with blossom-laden trees;
So, cruel youth, thy kisses breathe—so sweet—
Would’st thou but grant me all their grace, complete!”
IV.
_Friendship in Early Christian & Mediæval Times_
_Friendship in Early Christian & Mediæval Times_
The quotations we have given from Plato and others show the very high
ideal of friendship which obtained in the old world, and the respect
accorded to it. With the incoming of the Christian centuries, and the
growth of Alexandrian and Germanic influences, a change began to take
place. Woman rose to greater freedom and dignity and influence than
before. The romance of love began to centre round her.[7] The days of
chivalry brought a new devotion into the world, and the Church exalted
the Virgin Mother to the highest place in heaven. Friendship between
men ceased to be regarded in the old light—_i.e._, as a thing of deep
feeling, and an important social institution. It was even, here and
there, looked on with disfavour—and lapses from the purity or chastity of
its standard were readily suspected and violently reprobated. Certainly
it survived in the monastic life for a long period; but though inspiring
this to a great extent, its influence was not generally acknowledged.
The Family, in the modern and more limited sense of the word (as opposed
to the clan), became the recognised unit of social life, and the ideal
centre of all good influences (as illustrated in the worship of the Holy
Family). At the same time, by this very shrinkage of the Family, as well
as by other influences, the solidarity of society became to some extent
weakened, and gradually the more communistic forms of the early world
gave place to the individualism of the commercial period.
The special sentiment of comrade-love or attachment (being a thing
inherent in human nature) remained of course through the Christian
centuries, as before, and unaltered—except that being no longer
recognised it became a private and personal affair, running often
powerfully enough beneath the surface of society, but openly
unacknowledged, and so far deprived of some of its dignity and influence.
Owing to this fact there is nothing, for this period, to be quoted in
the way of general ideal or public opinion on the subject of friendship,
and the following sections therefore become limited to the expression
of individual sentiments and experiences, in prose and poetry. These we
find, during the mediæval period, largely colored by religion; while
at the Renaissance and afterwards they are evidently affected by Greek
associations.
[Sidenote: _Saint Augustine_]
Following are some passages from S. Augustine:—
“In those years when I first began to teach in my native town,
I had made a friend, one who through having the same interests
was very dear to me, one of my own age, and like me in the first
flower of youth. We had grown up together, and went together to
school, and used to play together. But he was not yet so great
a friend as afterwards, nor even then was our friendship true;
for friendship is not true unless Thou cementest it between
those who are united to Thee by that ‘love which is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’ Yet
our friendship was but too sweet, and fermented by the pursuit
of kindred studies. For I had turned him aside from the true
faith (of which as a youth he had but an imperfect grasp) to
pernicious and superstitious fables, for which my mother grieved
over me. And now in mind he erred with me, and my soul could not
endure to be separated from him. But lo, Thou didst follow close
behind Thy fugitives, Thou—both God of vengeance and fountain of
mercies—didst convert us by wonderful ways; behold, Thou didst
take him out of this life, when scarcely a year had our close
intimacy lasted—sweet to me beyond the sweetness of my whole
life....
“No ray of light pierced the gloom with which my heart was
enveloped by this grief, and wherever I looked I beheld death.
My native place was a torment to me, and my father’s house
strangely joyless; and whatever I had shared with him, without
him was now turned into a huge torture. My longing eyes sought
him everywhere, and found him not; and I hated the very places,
because he was not in them, neither could they say to me ‘he is
coming,’ as they used to do when he was alive and was absent.
And I became a great puzzle to myself, and I asked my soul why
it was so sad, and why so disquieted within me; and it knew not
what to answer. And if I said ‘Trust thou in God,’ it rightly
did not obey; for that dearest one whom it had lost was both
truer and better than that phantasm in which it was bidden to
trust. Weeping was the only thing which was sweet to me, and
it succeeded my friend in the dearest place in my heart.” _S.
Augustine, Confessions_, bk. 4, ch. iv. _Trans. by Rev. W. H.
Hutchings, M.A._
“I was miserable, and miserable is every soul which is fettered
by the love of perishable things; he is torn to pieces when
he loses them, and then he perceives how miserable he was in
reality while he possessed them. And so was I then, and I wept
most bitterly, and in that bitterness I found rest. Thus was I
miserable, and that miserable life I held dearer than my friend.
For though I would fain have changed it, yet to it I clung even
more than to him; and I cannot say whether I would have parted
with it for his sake, as it is related, if true, that Orestes
and Pylades were willing to do, for they would gladly have
died for each other, or together, for they preferred death to
separation from each other. But in me a feeling which I cannot
explain, and one of a contradictory nature had arisen; for I
had at once an unbearable weariness of living, and a fear of
dying. For I believe the more I loved him, the more I hated and
dreaded death which had taken him from me, and regarded it as
a most cruel enemy; and I felt as if it would soon devour all
men, now that its power had reached him.... For I marvelled that
other mortals lived, because he whom I had loved, without thought
of his ever dying, was dead; and that I still lived—I who was
another self—when he was gone, was a greater marvel still. Well
said a certain one of his friend, ‘Thou half of my soul;’ for I
felt that his soul and mine were ‘one soul in two bodies’: and
therefore life was to me horrible, because I hated to live as
half of a life; and therefore perhaps I feared to die, lest he
should wholly die whom I had loved so greatly.” _Ibid_, ch. vi.
[Sidenote: _Montalembert on the Monks_]
It is interesting to see, in these extracts from S. Augustine, and
in those which follow from Montalembert, the points of likeness and
difference between the Christian ideal of love and that of Plato. Both
are highly transcendental, both seem to contemplate an inner union of
souls, beyond the reach of space and time; but in Plato the union is in
contemplation of the Eternal Beauty, while in the Christian teachers it
is in devotion to a personal God.
“If inanimate nature was to them an abundant source of pleasure
they had a life still more lively and elevated in the life of the
heart, in the double love which burned in them—the love of their
brethren inspired and consecrated by the love of God.” _Monks of
the West_, introdn., ch. v.
“Everything invited and encouraged them to choose one or several
souls as the intimate companions of their life.... And to prove
how little the divine love, thus understood and practised, tends
to exclude or chill the love of man for man, never was human
eloquence more touching or more sincere than in that immortal
elegy by which S. Bernard laments a lost brother snatched by
death from the cloister:—‘Flow, flow my tears, so eager to flow!
he who prevented your flowing is here no more! It is not he who
is dead, it is I who now live only to die. Why, O why have we
loved, and why have we lost each other.’” _Ibid._
“The mutual affection which reigned among the monks flowed as a
mighty stream through the annals of the cloister. It has left
its trace even in the ‘formulas,’ collected with care by modern
erudition.... The correspondence of the most illustrious, of
Geoffrey de Vendôme, of Pierre le Vénérable, and of S. Bernard,
give proofs of it at every page.” _Ibid._
[Sidenote: _Saint Anselm_]
Saint Anselm’s letters to brother monks are full of expressions of the
same ardent affection. Montalembert gives several examples:—
“Souls well-beloved of my soul,” he wrote to two near relatives
whom he wished to draw to Bec, “my eyes ardently desire to behold
you; my arms expand to embrace you; my lips sigh for your kisses;
all the life that remains to me is consumed with waiting for
you. I hope in praying, and I pray in hoping—come and taste how
gracious the Lord is—you cannot fully know it while you find
sweetness in the world.”
[Sidenote: _To his Friend Lanfranc_]
“‘Far from the eyes, far from the heart’ say the vulgar. Believe
nothing of it; if it was so, the farther you were distant from
me the cooler my love for you would be; whilst on the contrary,
the less I can enjoy your presence, the more the desire of that
pleasure burns in the soul of your friend.”
[Sidenote: _To Gondulph_]
“To Gondulf, Anselm——I put no other or longer salutations at the
head of my letter, because I can say nothing more to him whom I
love. All who know Gondulph and Anselm know well what this means,
and how much love is understood in these two names.” ... “How
could I forget thee? Can a man forget one who is placed like a
seal upon his heart? In thy silence I know that thou lovest me;
and thou also, when I say nothing, thou knowest that I love thee.
Not only have I no doubt of thee, but I answer for thee that thou
art sure of me. What can my letter tell thee that thou knowest
not already, thou who art my second soul? Go into the secret
place of thy heart, look there at thy love for me, and thou shalt
see mine for thee.” ... “Thou knewest how much I love thee, but
I knew it not. He who has separated us has alone instructed me
how dear to me thou wert. No, I knew not before the experience
of thy absence how sweet it was to have thee, how bitter to have
thee not. Thou hast another friend whom thou hast loved as much
or more than me to console thee, but I have no longer thee!—thee!
thee! thou understandest? and nothing to replace thee. Those who
rejoice in the possession of thee may perhaps be offended by what
I say. Ah! let them content themselves with their joy, and permit
me to weep for him whom I ever love.”
[Sidenote: _The Story of Amis and Amile_]
The story of Amis and Amile, a mediæval legend, translated by William
Morris (as well as by Walter Pater) from the _Bibliotheca Elzeviriana_,
is very quaint and engaging in its old-world extravagance and
supernaturalism:—
Amis and Amile were devoted friends, twins in resemblance and
life. On one occasion, having strayed apart, they ceased not to
seek each other for two whole years. And when at last they met
“they lighted down from their horses, and embraced and kissed
each other, and gave thanks to God that they were found. And they
swore fealty and friendship and fellowship perpetual, the one to
the other, on the sword of Amile, wherein were relics.” Thence
they went together to the court of “Charles, king of France.”
Here soon after, Amis took Amile’s place in a tournament, saved
his life from a traitor, and won for him the King’s daughter
to wife. But so it happened that, not long after, he himself
was stricken with leprosy and brought to Amile’s door. And
when Amile and his royal bride knew who it was they were sore
grieved, and they brought him in and placed him on a fair bed,
and put all that they had at his service. And it came to pass
one night “whenas Amis and Amile lay in one chamber without other
company, that God sent to Amis Raphael his angel, who said to
him: ‘Sleepest thou, Amis?’ And he, who deemed that Amile had
called to him, answered: ‘I sleep not, fair sweet fellow.’ Then
the angel said to him: ‘Thou hast answered well, for thou art the
fellow of the citizens of heaven, and thou hast followed after
Job, and Thoby in patience. Now I am Raphael, an angel of our
Lord, and am come to tell thee of a medicine for thine healing,
whereas he hath heard thy prayers. Thou shalt tell to Amile thy
fellow, that he slay his two children and wash thee in their
blood, and thence thou shalt get the healing of thy body.’”
Amis was shocked when he heard these words, and at first refused
to tell Amile; but the latter had also heard the angel’s voice,
and pressed him to tell. Then, when he knew, he too was sorely
grieved. But at last he determined in his mind not even to spare
his children for the sake of his friend, and going secretly to
their chamber he slew them, and bringing some of their blood
washed Amis—who immediately was healed. He then arrayed Amis in
his best clothes and, after going to the church to give thanks,
they met Amile’s wife who (not knowing all) rejoiced greatly
too. But Amile, going apart again to the children’s chamber to
weep over them, found them at play in bed, with only a thread of
crimson round their throats to mark what had been done!
The two knights fell afterwards and were killed in the same
battle; “for even as God had joined them together by good accord
in their life-days, so in their death they were not sundered.”
And a miracle was added, for even when they were buried apart
from each other the two coffins leapt together in the night and
were found side by side in the morning.
Of this story Mr. Jacobs, in his introduction to William Morris’
translation, says: “Amis and Amile were the David and Jonathan, the
Orestes and Pylades, of the mediæval world.” There were some thirty other
versions of the legend “in almost all the tongues of Western and Northern
Europe”—their “peerless friendship” having given them a place among the
mediæval saints. (See _Old French Romances_ trans. by William Morris,
London, 1896.)
[Sidenote: _Eastern Poets_]
It may not be out of place here, and before passing on to the times of
the Renaissance and Modern Europe, to give one or two extracts relating
to Eastern countries. The honour paid to friendship in Persia, Arabia,
Syria and other Oriental lands has always been great, and the tradition
of this attachment there should be especially interesting to us, as
having arisen independently of classic or Christian ideals. The poets of
Persia, Saadi and Jalal-ud-din Rumi (13th cent.), Hafiz (14th cent.),
Jami (15th cent.), and others, have drawn much of their inspiration from
this source; but unfortunately for those who cannot read the originals,
their work has been scantily translated, and the translations themselves
are not always very reliable. The extraordinary way in which, following
the method of the Sufis, and of Plato, they identify the mortal and the
divine love, and see in their beloved an image or revelation of God
himself, makes their poems difficult of comprehension to the Western
mind. Apostrophes to Love, Wine, and Beauty often, with them, bear a
frankly twofold sense, material and spiritual. To these poets of the
mid-region of the earth, the bitter antagonism between matter and spirit,
which like an evil dream has haunted so long both the extreme Western and
the extreme Eastern mind, scarcely exists; and even the body “which is a
portion of the dust-pit” has become perfect and divine.
[Sidenote: _Jalal-ud-din Rumi_]
“Every form you see has its archetype in the placeless world....
From the moment you came into the world of being
A ladder was placed before you that you might escape (ascend).
First you were mineral, later you turned to plant,
Then you became an animal: how should this be a secret to you?
Afterwards you were made man, with knowledge, reason, faith;
Behold the body, which is a portion of the dust-pit, how perfect it has
grown!
When you have travelled on from man, you will doubtless become an angel;
After that you are done with earth: your station is in heaven.
Pass again even from angelhood: enter that ocean,
That your drop may become a sea which is a hundred seas of ‘Oman.’”
_From the Divani Shamsi Tabriz of Jalal-ud-din
Rumi, trans. by R. A. Nicholson._
“’Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment
Had not been: its being is but shame.
Be drunken in love, for love is all that exists....
Dismiss cares and be utterly clear of heart,
Like the face of a mirror, without image or picture.
When it becomes clear of images, all images are contained in it.”
_Ibid._
“Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, thou and I,
With two forms and with two figures, but with one soul, thou and I.”
_Ibid._
“Once a man came and knocked at the door of his friend.
His friend said, ‘Who art thou, O faithful one?’
He said, ‘’Tis I.’ He answered, ‘There is no admittance.
There is no room for the raw at my well-cooked feast.
Naught but fire of separation and absence
Can cook the raw one and free him from hypocrisy!
Since thy _self_ has not yet left thee,
Thou must be burned in fiery flames.’
The poor man went away, and for one whole year
Journeyed burning with grief for his friend’s absence.
His heart burned till it was cooked; then he went again
And drew near to the house of his friend.
He knocked at the door in fear and trepidation
Lest some careless word should fall from his lips.
His friend shouted, ‘Who is that at the door?’
He answered, ‘’Tis thou who art at the door, O beloved!’
The friend said, ‘Since ’tis I, let me come in,
There is not room for two I’s in one house.’”
_From the Masnavi of Jalal-ud-din Rumi,
trans, by E. H. Whinfield._
[Sidenote: _Hafiz and Saadi_]
Some short quotations here following are taken from _Flowers culled from
Persian Gardens_ (Manchester, 1872):
“Everyone, whether he be abstemious or self-indulgent is
searching after the Friend. Every place may be the abode of love,
whether it be a mosque or a synagogue.... On thy last day, though
the cup be in thy hand, thou may’st be borne away to Paradise
even from the corner of the tavern.” _Hafiz_.
“I have heard a sweet word which was spoken by the old man of
Canaan (Jacob)—‘No tongue can express what means the separation
of friends.’” _Hafiz_.
“Neither of my own free will cast I myself into the fire; for
the chain of affection was laid upon my neck. I was still at a
distance when the fire began to glow, nor is this the moment
that it was lighted up within me. Who shall impute it to me as
a fault, that I am enchanted by my friend, that I am content in
casting myself at his feet?” _Saadi_.
Hahn in his _Albanesische Studien_, already quoted (p. 20), gives some
of the verses of Neçin or Nesim Bey, a Turco-Albanian poet, of which the
following is an example:—
“Whate’er, my friend, or false or true,
The world may tell thee, give no ear,
For to separate us, dear,
The world will say that one is two.
Who should seek to separate us
May he never cease to weep.
The rain at times may cease; but he
In Summer’s warmth or Winter’s sleep
May he never cease to weep.”
Besides literature there is no doubt a vast amount of material embedded
in the customs and traditions of these countries and awaiting adequate
recognition and interpretation. The following quotations may afford some
glimpses of interest.
[Sidenote: _Suleyman and Ibrahim_]
Suleyman the Magnificent.—The story of Suleyman’s attachment to his Vezir
Ibrahim is told as follows by Stanley Lane-Poole:—
“Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with a second
mind, to which his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand
Vezir Ibrahim was the counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman.
He was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by
corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at
Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince
Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary
talents and address brought him promotion.... From being Grand
Falconer on the accession of Suleyman, he rose to be first
minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523.
“He was the object of the Sultan’s tender regard: an emperor
knows better than most men how solitary is life without
friendship and love, and Suleyman loved this man more than a
brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining
and instructive companion. He read Persian, Greek and Italian;
he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan’s mind, and
Suleyman drank in his Vezir’s wisdom with assiduity. They lived
together: their meals were shared in common; even their beds were
in the same room. The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the
sailor’s son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power.” _Turkey,
Story of Nations series_, p. 174.
[Sidenote: _Story of a Bagdad Dervish_]
J. S. Buckingham, in his _Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia_, speaking
of his guide whom he had engaged at Bagdad, and who was supposed to have
left his heart behind him in that city, says:—
“Amidst all this I was at a loss to conceive how the Dervish
could find much enjoyment [in the expedition] while laboring
under the strong passion which I supposed he must then be
feeling for the object of his affections at Bagdad, whom he had
quitted with so much reluctance. What was my surprise however on
seeking an explanation of this seeming inconsistency, to find
it was the son, and not the daughter, of his friend Elias who
held so powerful a hold on his heart. I shrank back from the
confession as a man would recoil from a serpent on which he had
unexpectedly trodden ... but in answer to enquiries naturally
suggested by the subject he declared he would rather suffer death
than do the slightest harm to so pure, so innocent, so heavenly a
creature as this....
“I took the greatest pains to ascertain by a severe and
minute investigation, how far it might be possible to doubt
of the purity of the passion by which this Affgan Dervish was
possessed, and whether it deserved to be classed with that
described as prevailing among the ancient Greeks; and the result
fully satisfied me that both were the same. Ismael was however
surprised beyond measure when I assured him that such a feeling
was not known at all among the peoples of Europe.” _Travels,
&c._, 2nd edition, vol. 1, p. 159.
[Sidenote: _Another Story_]
“The Dervish added a striking instance of the force of these
attachments, and the sympathy which was felt in the sorrows to
which they led, by the following fact from his own history. The
place of his residence, and of his usual labour, was near the
bridge of the Tigris, at the gate of the Mosque of the Vizier.
While he sat here, about five or six years since, surrounded by
several of his friends who came often to enjoy his conversation
and beguile the tedium of his work, he observed, passing among
the crowd, a young and beautiful Turkish boy, whose eyes met his,
as if by destiny, and they remained fixedly gazing on each other
for some time. The boy, after ‘blushing like the first hue of a
summer morning,’ passed on, frequently turning back to look on
the person who had regarded him so ardently. The Dervish felt
his heart ‘revolve within him,’ for such was his expression, and
a cold sweat came across his brow. He hung his head upon his
graving-tool in dejection, and excused himself to those about
him by saying he felt suddenly ill. Shortly afterwards the boy
returned, and after walking to and fro several times, drawing
nearer and nearer, as if under the influence of some attracting
charm, he came up to his observer and said, ‘Is it really true,
then, that you love me?’ ‘This,’ said Ismael, ‘was a dagger in my
heart; I could make no reply.’ The friends who were near him, and
now saw all explained, asked him if there had been any previous
acquaintance existing between them. He assured them that they had
never seen each other before. ‘Then,’ they replied, ‘such an
event must be from God.’
“The boy continued to remain for a while with this party, told
with great frankness the name and rank of his parents, as well
as the place of his residence, and promised to repeat his visit
on the following day. He did this regularly for several months
in succession, sitting for hours by the Dervish, and either
singing to him or asking him interesting questions, to beguile
his labours, until as Ismael expressed himself, ‘though they were
still two bodies they became one soul.’ The youth at length fell
sick, and was confined to his bed, during which time his lover,
Ismael, discontinued entirely his usual occupations and abandoned
himself completely to the care of his beloved. He watched the
changes of his disease with more than the anxiety of a parent,
and never quitted his bedside, night or day. Death at length
separated them; but even when the stroke came the Dervish could
not be prevailed on to quit the corpse. He constantly visited the
grave that contained the remains of all he held dear on earth,
and planting myrtles and flowers there after the manner of the
East, bedewed them daily with his tears. His friends sympathised
powerfully in his distress, which he said ‘continued to feed his
grief’ until he pined away to absolute illness, and was near
following the fate of him whom he deplored.” _Ibid_, p. 160.
[Sidenote: _Explanation_]
“From all this, added to many other examples of a similar kind,
related as happening between persons who had often been pointed
out to me in Arabia and Persia, I could no longer doubt the
existence in the East of an affection for male youths, of as pure
and honorable a kind as that which is felt in Europe for those
of the other sex ... and it would be as unjust to suppose that
this necessarily implied impurity of desire as to contend that
no one could admire a lovely countenance and a beautiful form in
the other sex, and still be inspired with sentiments of the most
pure and honorable nature towards the object of his admiration.”
_Ibid_, p. 163.
“One powerful reason why this passion may exist in the East,
while it is quite unknown in the West, is probably the seclusion
of women in the former, and the freedom of access to them in the
latter.... Had they [the Asiatics] the unrestrained intercourse
which we enjoy with such superior beings as the virtuous and
accomplished females of our own country they would find nothing
in nature so deserving of their love as these.” _Ibid_, p. 165.
V.
_The Renaissance and Modern Times_
_The Renaissance and Modern Times_
[Sidenote: _Montaigne and Stephen de la Boëtie_]
With the Renaissance, and the impetus it gave at that time to the study
of Greek and Roman models, the exclusive domination of Christianity and
the Church was broken. A literature of friendship along classic lines
began to spring up. Montaigne (b. 1533) was saturated with classic
learning. His essays were doubtless largely formed upon the model of
Plutarch. His friendship with Stephen de la Boëtie was evidently of a
romantic and absorbing character. It is referred to in the following
passage by William Hazlitt; and the description of it occupies a large
part of Montaigne’s Essay on Friendship.
“The most important event of his counsellor’s life at Bordeaux
was the friendship which he there formed with Stephen de la
Boëtie, an affection which makes a streak of light in modern
biography almost as beautiful as that left us by Lord Brook and
Sir Philip Sydney. Our essayist and his friend esteemed, before
they saw, each other. La Boëtie had written a little work[8] in
which Montaigne recognised sentiments congenial with his own,
and which indeed bespeak a soul formed in the mould of classic
times. Of Montaigne, la Boëtie had also heard accounts, which
made him eager to behold him, and at length they met at a large
entertainment given by one of the magistrates of Bordeaux. They
saw and loved, and were thenceforward all in all to each other.
The picture that Montaigne in his essays draws of this friendship
is in the highest degree beautiful and touching; nor does la
Boëtie’s idea of what is due to this sacred bond betwixt soul
and soul fall far short of the grand perception which filled the
exalted mind of his friend.... Montaigne married at the age of
33, but, as he informs us, not of his own wish or choice. ‘Might
I have had my wish,’ says he, ‘I would not have married Wisdom
herself if she would have had me.’” _Life of Montaigne_, _by Wm.
Hazlitt_.
[Sidenote: _Montaigne on Friendship_]
The following is from Montaigne’s Essay, bk. 1, ch. xxvii:—
“As to marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the _making_
of which is only free, but the continuance in it forced and
compelled, having another dependence than that of our own free
will, and a bargain moreover commonly contracted to other
ends, there happen a thousand intricacies in it to unravel,
enough to break the thread, and to divert the current, of a
lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business
or traffic with anything but itself.... For the rest, what
we commonly call friends and friendships are nothing but an
acquaintance and connection, contracted either by accident or
upon some design, by means of which there happens some little
intercourse betwixt our souls: but, in the friendship I speak
of, they mingle and melt into one piece, with so universal a
mixture that there is left no more sign of the seam by which they
were first conjoined. If any one should importune me to give a
reason why I loved him [Stephen de la Boëtie] I feel it could no
otherwise be expressed than by making answer, ‘Because it was
he; because it was I.’ There is, beyond what I am able to say,
I know not what inexplicable and inevitable power that brought
on this union. We sought one another long before we met, and
from the characters we heard of one another, which wrought more
upon our affections than in reason mere reports should do, and,
as I think, by some secret appointment of heaven; we embraced
each other in our names; and at our first meeting, which was
accidentally at a great city entertainment, we found ourselves
so mutually pleased with one another—we became at once mutually
so endeared—that thenceforward nothing was so near to us as one
another....
“Common friendships will admit of division, one may love the
beauty of this, the good humour of that person, the liberality
of a third, the paternal affection of a fourth, the fraternal
love of a fifth, and so on. But this friendship that possesses
the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute
sovereignty, can admit of no rival.... In good earnest, if I
compare all the rest of my life with the four years I had the
happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, ’tis
nothing but smoke, but an obscure and tedious night. From the day
that I lost him I have only led a sorrowful and languishing life;
and the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of
administering anything of consolation, double my affliction for
his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree that,
methinks, by outliving him I defraud him of his part.”
[Sidenote: _Sidney, Greville and Dyer_]
Philip Sidney, born 1554, was remarkable for his strong personal
attachments. Chief among his allies were his school-mate and distant
relative, Fulke Greville (born in the same year as himself), and his
college friend Edward Dyer (also about his own age). He wrote youthful
verses to both of them. The following, according to the fashion of the
age, are in the form of an invocation to the pastoral god Pan:—
“Only for my two loves’ sake,
In whose love I pleasure take;
Only two do me delight
With their ever-pleasing sight;
Of all men to thee retaining
Grant me with these two remaining.”
[Sidenote: _Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet_]
An interesting friendship existed also between Sidney and the well-known
French Protestant, Hubert Languet—many years his senior—whose
conversation and correspondence helped much in the formation of Sidney’s
character. These two had shared together the perils of the massacre of
S. Bartholomew, and had both escaped from France across the Rhine to
Germany, where they lived in close intimacy at Frankfort for a length of
time; and after this a warm friendship and steady correspondence—varied
by occasional meetings—continued between the two until Languet’s death.
Languet had been Professor of Civil Law at Padua, and from 1550 forwards
was recognised as one of the leading political agents of the Protestant
Powers.
“The elder man immediately discerned in Sidney a youth of no
common quality, and the attachment he conceived for him savoured
of romance. We possess a long series of Latin letters from
Languet to his friend, which breathe the tenderest spirit of
affection, mingled with wise counsel and ever watchful thought
for the young man’s higher interests.... There must have been
something inexplicably attractive in his [Sidney’s] person and
his genius at this time; for the tone of Languet’s correspondence
can only be matched by that of Shakespeare in the sonnets written
for his unknown friend.” _Sir Philip Sidney_, _English Men of
Letters Series_, pp. 27, 28.
Of this relation Fox Bourne says:—
“No love-oppressed youth can write with more earnest passion and
more fond solicitude, or can be troubled with more frequent fears
and more causeless jealousies, than Languet, at this time 55
years old, shows in his letters to Sidney, now 19.”
[Sidenote: _Giordano Bruno_]
It may be appropriate here to introduce two or three sonnets from Michel
Angelo (b. 1475). Michel Angelo, one of the greatest, perhaps the
greatest, artist of the Italian Renaissance, was deeply imbued with the
Greek spirit. His conception of Love was close along the line of Plato’s.
For him the body was the symbol, the expression, the dwelling place of
some divine beauty. The body may be loved, but it should only be loved
_as_ a symbol, not for itself. Diotima in the _Symposium_ had said that
in our mortal loves we first come to recognise (dimly) the divine form of
beauty which is Eternal. Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. xxvi. 8) commenting on
this, confirms it, saying that nowhere else but in the human form, “the
loveliest and most intelligent of bodily creatures,” does the light of
divine beauty shine so clear. Michel Angelo carried on the conception,
gave it noble expression, and held to it firmly in the midst of a society
which was certainly willing enough to love the body (or try to love it)
merely for its own sake. And Giordano Bruno (b. 1550) at a later date
wrote as follows:—
“All the loves—if they be heroic and not purely animal, or what
is called natural, and slaves to generation as instruments in
some way of nature—have for object the divinity, and tend towards
divine beauty, which first is communicated to, and shines in,
souls, and from them or rather through them is communicated to
bodies; whence it is that well-ordered affection loves the body
or corporeal beauty, insomuch as it is an indication of beauty
of spirit.” _Gli Eroici Furori_ (dial. iii. 13), _trans. L.
Williams_.
[Sidenote: _Michel Angelo’s Sonnets_]
The labours of Von Scheffler and others have now pretty conclusively
established that the love-poems of Michel Angelo were for the most part
written to male friends—though this fact was disguised by the pious
frauds of his nephew, who edited them in the first instance. Following
are three of his sonnets, translated by J. A. Symonds. It will be seen
that the last line of the first contains a play on the name of his
friend:—
_To Tommaso de’ Cavalieri:_
A CHE PIU DEBB’IO.
“Why should I seek to ease intense desire
With still more tears and windy words of grief,
When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
To souls whom love hath robed around with fire.
Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
When all must die? Nay death beyond belief
Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!
Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
Gliding between her gladness and her woe?
If only chains and bands can make me blest,
No marvel if alone and bare I go
An armèd Knight’s captive and slave confessed.”
NON VIDER GLI OCCHI MIEI.
“No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair face I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
This fair false world her wings to earth have bound;
Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.
Nay, things that suffer death quench not the fire
Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.”
VEGGIO NEL TUO BEL VISO.
“From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
That which no mortal tongue can rightly say;
The soul imprisoned in her house of clay,
Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
And tho’ the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford.
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
Nor have we first fruits or remembrances
Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
I rise to God and make death sweet by thee.”
[Sidenote: _Richard Barnfield_]
Richard Barnfield, one of the Elizabethan singers (b. 1574) wrote a
long poem, dedicated to “The Ladie Penelope Rich” and entitled “The
Affectionate Shepheard,” which he describes as “an imitation of Virgil in
the 2nd Eclogue, of Alexis.” I quote the first two stanzas:—
I.
“Scarce had the morning starre hid from the light
Heaven’s crimson Canopie with stars bespangled,
But I began to rue th’ unhappy sight
Of that fair boy that had my heart intangled;
Cursing the Time, the Place, the sense, the sin;
I came, I saw, I view’d, I slippèd in.
II.
If it be sin to love a sweet-fac’d Boy,
(Whose amber locks trust up in golden tramels
Dangle adown his lovely cheekes with joye
When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels)
If it be sin to love a lovely Lad,
Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad.”
[Sidenote: _Barnfield’s Sonnets_]
These stanzas, and the following three sonnets (also by Barnfield) from a
series addressed to a youth, give a fair sample of a considerable class
of Elizabethan verses, in which classic conceits were mingled with a
certain amount of real feeling:—
SONNET IV.
“Two stars there are in one fair firmament
(Of some intitled Ganymede’s sweet face)
Which other stars in brightness do disgrace,
As much as Po in cleanness passeth Trent.
Nor are they common-natur’d stars; for why,
These stars when other shine vaile their pure light,
And when all other vanish out of sight
They add a glory to the world’s great eie:
By these two stars my life is only led,
In them I place my joy, in them my pleasure,
Love’s piercing darts and Nature’s precious treasure,
With their sweet food my fainting soul is fed:
Then when my sunne is absent from my sight
How can it chuse (with me) but be darke night?”
SONNET XVIII.
“Not Megabetes, nor Cleonymus
(Of whom great Plutarch makes such mention,
Praysing their faire with rare invention),
As Ganymede were halfe so beauteous.
They onely pleased the eies of two great kings,
But all the world at my love stands amazed,
Nor one that on his angel’s face hath gazed,
But (ravisht with delight) him presents bring:
Some weaning lambs, and some a suckling kyd,
Some nuts, and fil-beards, others peares and plums;
Another with a milk-white heyfar comes;
As lately Ægon’s man (Damœtas) did;
But neither he nor all the Nymphs beside,
Can win my Ganymede with them t’ abide.”
SONNET XIX.
“Ah no; nor I my selfe: tho’ my pure love
(Sweete Ganymede) to thee hath still been pure,
And ev’n till my last gaspe shall aie endure,
Could ever thy obdurate beuty move:
Then cease, oh goddesse sonne (for sure thou art
A Goddesse sonne that can resist desire),
Cease thy hard heart, and entertain love’s fire
Within thy sacred breast: by Nature’s art.
And as I love thee more than any Creature
(Love thee, because thy beautie is divine,
Love thee, because my selfe, my soule, is thine:
Wholie devoted to thy lovely feature),
Even so of all the vowels, I and U
Are dearest unto me, as doth ensue.”
[Sidenote: _Francis Bacon on Friendship_]
Francis Bacon’s essay _Of friendship_ is known to everybody.
Notwithstanding the somewhat cold and pragmatic style and genius of the
author, the subject seems to inspire him with a certain enthusiasm; and
some good things are said.
“But we may go farther and affirm most truly that it is a mere
and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which
the world is but a wilderness; and even in this scene also of
solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections
is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not
from humanity. A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and
discharge of the fulness of the heart, which passions of all
kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and
suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not
much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the liver,
steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs,
castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a
true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes,
suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to
oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession....
“Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that
want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their
own hearts; but one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will
conclude this first fruit of friendship) which is, that this
communicating of a man’s self to his friend worketh two contrary
effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs;
for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but
he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his griefs to his
friend, but he grieveth the less.” Essay 27, _Of friendship_.
[Sidenote: _Shakespeare’s Sonnets_]
Shakespeare’s sonnets have been much discussed, and surprise and even
doubt have been expressed as to their having been addressed (the first
126 of them) to a man friend; but no one who reads them with open mind
can well doubt this conclusion; nor be surprised at it, who knows
anything of Elizabethan life and literature. “Were it not for the fact,”
says F. T. Furnivall, “that many critics really deserving the name of
Shakespeare students, and not Shakespeare fools, have held the Sonnets to
be merely dramatic, I could not have conceived that poems so intensely
and evidently autobiographic and self-revealing, poems so one with the
spirit and inner meaning of Shakespeare’s growth and life, could ever
have been conceived to be other than what they are—the records of his own
loves and fears.”
SONNET XVIII.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Some time too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
SONNET XX.
“A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes, and women’s souls amazeth;
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.”
SONNET CIV.
“To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forest shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons I have seen;
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived;
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.”
SONNET CVIII.
“What’s in the brain that ink may character,
Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?
What’s new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o’er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.
So that eternal love, in love’s fresh case,
Weighs not the dust and injury of age;
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.”
[Sidenote: _Merchant of Venice_]
That Shakespeare, when the drama needed it, could fully and warmly enter
into the devotion which one man may feel for another, as well as into
the tragedy which such devotion may entail, is shown in his _Merchant
of Venice_ by the figure of Antonio, over whom from the first line of
the play (“In sooth I know not why I am so sad”) there hangs a shadow of
destiny. The following lines are from Act iv. sc. 1:—
_Antonio_: “Commend me to your honorable wife;
Tell her the process of Antonio’s end;
Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death;
And when the tale is told, bid her be judge,
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
Repent not you that you shall lose your friend,
And he repents not that he pays your debt;
For, if the Jew do cut but deep enough,
I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.
_Bassanio_: Antonio, I am married to a wife,
Who is as dear to me as life itself;
But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
Are not with me esteem’d above thy life:
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all,
Here to this devil, to deliver you.”
[Sidenote: _Henry the Fifth_]
We may also, in this connection, quote his _Henry the Fifth_ (act iv.
scene 6) for the deaths of the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk at
the battle of Agincourt. Exeter, addressing Henry, says:—
“Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep’d,
And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes,
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
He cries aloud,—‘Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk!
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine; then fly abreast,
As in this glorious and well-foughten field
We kept together in our chivalry!’
Upon these words I came and cheered him up:
He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,
And, with a feeble gripe, says, ‘Dear my Lord,
Commend my service to my sovereign.’
So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck
He threw his wounded arm, and kissed his lips;
And so, espoused to death, with blood he seal’d
A testament of noble-ending love.”
[Sidenote: _Sir Thomas Browne_]
Shakespeare, with his generous many-sided nature was, as the Sonnets
seem to show, and as we should expect, capable of friendship, passionate
friendship, towards both men and women. Perhaps this marks the highest
reach of temperament. That there are cases in which devotion to a
man-friend altogether replaces the love of the opposite sex is curiously
shown by the following extract from Sir Thomas Browne:—
“I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved
my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God.... I love my friend
before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough: some
few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I
have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I
be with him; when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would
be still nearer him.... This noble affection falls not on vulgar
and common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue:
he that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will in a
competent degree affect all.” _Sir Thomas Browne_, _Religio
Medici_, 1642.
[Sidenote: _William Penn_]
William Penn (b. 1644) the founder of Pennsylvania, and of Philadelphia,
“The city of brotherly love” was a great believer in friendship. He says
in his _Fruits of Solitude_:—
“A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily,
adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and
continues a friend unchangeably.... In short, choose a friend as
thou dost a wife, till death separate you.... Death cannot kill
what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and
live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their
friendship.... This is the comfort of friends, that though they
may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the
best sense, ever present, because immortal.”
[Sidenote: _William of Orange_]
It may be worth while here to insert two passages from Macaulay’s History
of England. The first deals with the remarkable intimacy between the
Young Prince William of Orange and “a gentleman of his household” named
Bentinck. William’s escape from a malignant attack of small-pox
“was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly
to the intrepid and indefatigable, friendship of Bentinck. From
the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine—by
Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down
in it. ‘Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill,’ said
William to Temple with great tenderness, ‘I know not. But this I
know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called
for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.’ Before
the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he had
himself caught the contagion.” (But he recovered.) _History of
England_, ch. vii.
[Sidenote: _Princess Anne and Lady Churchill_]
The second passage describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter
of James II. and afterwards Queen Anne) to Lady Churchill—a devotion
which had considerable influence on the political situation.
“It is a common observation that differences of taste,
understanding, and disposition are no impediments to friendship,
and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds, each
of which supplies what is wanting in the other. Lady Churchill
was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not
live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married,
and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince
George, a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his
dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable
to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself
up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and
commanding spirit by which his wife was governed.” _History of
England_, ch. vii.
[Sidenote: _Archbishop Potter_]
That the tradition of Greek thought was not quite obliterated in England
by the Puritan movement is shown by the writings of Archbishop Potter,
who speaks with approval of friendship as followed among the Greeks, “not
only in private, but by the public allowance and encouragement of their
laws; for they thought there could be no means more effectual to excite
their youth to noble undertakings, nor any greater security to their
commonwealths, than this generous passion.” He then quotes Athenæus,
saying that “free commonwealths and all those states that consulted
the advancement of their own honour, seem to have been unanimous
in establishing laws to encourage and reward it.” _John Potter_,
_Antiquities of Greece_, 1698.
[Sidenote: _Winckelmann’s Letters_]
The 18th century however in England, with its leaning towards formalism,
was perhaps not favorable to the understanding of the Greek spirit.
At any rate there is not much to show in that direction. In Germany
the classical tradition in art was revived by Raphael Mengs, while
Winckelmann, the art critic, showed himself one of the best interpreters
of the Hellenic world that has ever lived. His letters too, to his
personal friends, breathe a spirit of the tenderest and most passionate
devotion: “Friendship,” he says, “without love is mere acquaintanceship.”
Winckelmann met, in 1762, in Rome, a young nobleman, Reinhold von Berg,
to whom he became deeply attached:—
“Almost at first sight there sprang up, on Winckelmann’s side,
an attachment as romantic, emotional and passionate as love.
In a letter to his friend he said, ‘From the first moment an
indescribable attraction towards you, excited by something more
than form and feature, caused me to catch an echo of that harmony
which passes human understanding and which is the music of the
everlasting concord of things.... I was aware of the deep consent
of our spirits, the instant I saw you.’ And in a later letter:
‘No name by which I might call you would be sweet enough or
sufficient for my love; all that I could say would be far too
feeble to give utterance to my heart and soul. Truly friendship
came from heaven and was not created by mere human impulses....
My one friend, I love you more than any living thing, and time
nor chance nor age can ever lessen this love.” _Ludwig Frey_,
_Der Eros und die Kunst_, _Leipzig_, 1898, p. 211.
[Sidenote: _Goethe on Winckelmann_]
Goethe, that universal genius, has some excellent thoughts on this
subject; speaking of Winckelmann he says:—
“The affinities of human beings in Antiquity give evidence of
an important distinction between ancient and modern times. The
relation to women, which among us has become so tender and full
of meaning, hardly aspired in those days beyond the limits of
vulgar necessity. The relation of parents to their children seems
in some respects to have been tenderer. More to them than all
other feelings was the friendship between persons of the male
sex (though female friends too, like Chloris and Thyia, were
inseparable, even in Hades). In these cases of union between two
youths, the passionate fulfilment of loving duties, the joys of
inseparableness, the devotion of one for the other, the unavoided
companionship in death, fill us with astonishment; indeed one
feels oneself ashamed when poets, historians, philosophers and
orators overwhelm us with legends, anecdotes, sentiments and
ideas, containing such meaning and feeling. Winckelmann felt
himself _born_ for a friendship of this kind—not only as capable
of it, but in the highest degree in need of it; he became
conscious of his true self only under the form of friendship.”
_Goethe on Winckelmann_.
[Sidenote: _Poem by Goethe_]
Some of Goethe’s poems further illustrate this subject. In the Saki Nameh
of his West-Oestlichen Divan he has followed the style of a certain class
of Persian love-songs. The following poem is from a Cupbearer to his
Master:—
“In the market-place appearing
None thy Poet-fame dispute;
I too gladly hear thy singing,
I too hearken when thou’rt mute.
Yet I love thee, when thou printest
Kisses not to be forgot,
Best of all, for words may perish,
But a kiss lives on in thought.
Rhymes on rhymes fair meaning carry,
Thoughts to think bring deeper joy;
Sing to other folk, but tarry
Silent with thy serving-boy.”
[Sidenote: _August von Platen_]
Count August von Platen (born at Ansbach in Bavaria, 1796) was in respect
of style one of the most finished and perfect of German poets. His nature
(which was refined and self-controlled) led him from the first to form
the most romantic attachments with men. He freely and openly expressed
his feelings in his verses; of which a great number are practically
love-poems addressed to his friends. They include a series of twenty-six
sonnets to one of his friends, Karl Theodor German. Of these Raffalovich
says (_Uranisme_, Lyons, 1896, p. 351):—
“These sonnets to Karl Theodor German are among the most
beautiful in German literature. Platen in the sonnet surpasses
all the German poets, including even Goethe. In them perfection
of form, and poignancy or wealth of emotion are illustrated to
perfection. The sentiment is similar to that of the sonnets of
Shakespeare (with their personal note), and the form that of the
Italian or French sonnet.”
[Sidenote: _Platen’s Sonnets_]
Platen, however, was unfortunate in his affairs of the heart, and there
is a refrain of suffering in his poems which comes out characteristically
in the following sonnet:—
“Since pain is life and life is only pain,
Why he can feel what I have felt before,
Who seeing joy sees it again no more
The instant he attempts his joy to gain;
Who, caught as in a labyrinth unaware,
The outlet from it never more can find;
Whom love seems only for this end to bind—
In order to hand over to Despair;
Who prays each dizzy lightning-flash to end him,
Each star to reel his thread of life away
With all the torments which his heart are rending;
And envies even the dead their pillow of clay,
Where Love no more their foolish brains can steal.
He who knows this, knows me, and what I feel.”
[Sidenote: _On the Death of Pindar_]
One of Platen’s sonnets deals with an incident, referred to in an earlier
page, namely, the death of the poet Pindar in the theatre, in the arms
of his young friend Theoxenos:—
“Oh! when I die, would I might fade away
Like the pale stars, swiftly and silently,
Would that death’s messenger might come to me,
As once it came to Pindar—so they say.
Not that I would in Life, or in my Verse,
With him, the great Incomparable, compare;
Only his Death, my friend, I ask to share:
But let me now the gracious tale rehearse.
Long at the play, hearing sweet Harmony,
He sat; and wearied out at last, had lain
His cheek upon his dear one’s comely knee;
Then when it died away—the choral strain—
He who thus cushioned him said: Wake and come!
But to the Gods above he had gone home.”
[Sidenote: _Wagner and Ludwig II._]
The correspondence of Richard Wagner discloses the existence of a very
warm friendship between him and Ludwig II., the young king of Bavaria.
Ludwig as a young man appears to have been a very charming personality,
good looking, engaging and sympathetic; everyone was fond of him.
Yet his tastes led him away from “society,” into retirement, and the
companionship of Nature and a few chosen friends—often of humble birth.
Already at the age of fifteen he had heard Lohengrin, and silently
vowed to know the composer. One of his first acts when he came to the
throne was to send for Wagner; and from the moment of their meeting a
personal intimacy sprang up between them, which in due course led to
the establishment of the theatre at Bayreuth, and to the liberation of
Wagner’s genius to the world. Though the young king at a later time lost
his reason—probably owing to his over-sensitive emotional nature—this
does not detract from the service that he rendered to Music by his
generous attachment. How Wagner viewed the matter may be gathered from
Wagner’s letters.
“He, the king, loves me, and with the deep feeling and glow
of a first love; he perceives and knows everything about me,
and understands me as my own soul. He wants me to stay with
him always.... I am to be free and my own master, not his
music-conductor—only my very self and his friend.” _Letters to
Mme. Eliza Wille_, 4th May, 1864.
“It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me.
You cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the
dreams of my youth. I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive:
that I really saw and spoke to him: I can never forget the
impression that dream made on me. Then I would have wished to see
Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same kind
must pass in the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says
he can hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read
without astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes
to me.” _Ibid_, 9th Sept., 1864.
“I hope now for a long period to gain strength again by quiet
work. This is made possible for me by the love of an unimaginably
beautiful and thoughtful being: it seems that it _had_ to
be even so greatly gifted a man and one so destined for me,
as this young King of Bavaria. What he is to me no one can
imagine. My guardian! In his love I completely rest and fortify
myself towards the completion of my task.” _Letter to his
brother-in-law_, 10th Sept., 1865.
[For letters from Ludwig to Wagner see Additions, infra p. 183.]
[Sidenote: _Wagner on Greek Comradeship_]
In these letters we see chiefly of course the passionate sentiments
of which Ludwig was capable; but that Wagner fully understood the
feeling and appreciated it may be gathered from various passages in his
published writings—such as the following, in which he seeks to show how
the devotion of comradeship became the chief formative influence of the
Spartan State:—
“This beauteous naked man is the kernel of all Spartanhood; from
genuine delight in the beauty of the most perfect human body—that
of the male—arose that spirit of comradeship which pervades and
shapes the whole economy of the Spartan State. This love of man
to man, in its primitive purity, proclaims itself as the noblest
and least selfish utterance of man’s sense of beauty, for it
teaches man to sink and merge his entire self in the object of
his affection;” and again:—“The higher element of that love of
man to man consisted even in this: that it excluded the motive of
egoistic physicalism. Nevertheless it not only included a purely
spiritual bond of friendship, but this spiritual friendship
was the blossom and the crown of the physical friendship. The
latter sprang directly from delight in the beauty, aye in the
material bodily beauty of the beloved comrade; yet this delight
was no egoistic yearning, but a thorough stepping out of self
into unreserved sympathy with the comrade’s joy in himself;
involuntarily betrayed by his life-glad beauty-prompted bearing.
This love, which had its basis in the noblest pleasures of
both eye and soul—not like our modern postal correspondence of
sober friendship, half business-like, half sentimental—was the
Spartan’s only tutoress of youth, the never-ageing instructress
alike of boy and man, the ordainer of common feasts and valiant
enterprises; nay the inspiring helpmeet on the battlefield. For
this it was that knit the fellowship of love into battalions
of war, and fore-wrote the tactics of death-daring, in rescue
of the imperilled or vengeance for the slaughtered comrade, by
the infrangible law of the soul’s most natural necessity.” _The
Art-work of the Future_, _trans. by W. A. Ellis_.
[Sidenote: _K. H. Ulrichs_]
We may close this record of celebrated Germans with the name of K. H.
Ulrichs, a Hanoverian by birth who occupied for a long time an official
position in the revenue department at Vienna, and who became well known
about 1866 through his writings on the subject of friendship. He gives,
in his pamphlet _Memnon_, an account of the “story of his heart” in early
years. In an apparently quite natural way, and independently of outer
influences, his thoughts had from the very first been of friends of his
own sex. At the age of 14, the picture of a Greek hero or god, a statue,
seen in a book, woke in him the tenderest longings.
“This picture (he says), put away from me, as it was, a hundred
times, came again a hundred times before the eyes of my soul.
But of course for the origin of my special temperament it is in
no way responsible. It only woke up what was already slumbering
there—a thing which might have been done equally well by
something else.”
From that time forward the boy worshipped with a kind of romantic
devotion elder friends, young men in the prime of early manhood;
and later still his writings threw a flood of light on the “urning”
temperament—as he called it—of which he was himself so marked an example.
[Sidenote: _Ulrichs’ Verses_]
Some of Ulrichs’ verses are scattered among his prose writings:—
_To his friend Eberhard._
“And so farewell! perchance on Earth
God’s finger—as ’twixt thee and me—
Will never make that wonder clear
Why thus It drew me unto thee.”
_Memnon_, _Leipzig_, 1898, p. 104.
And this:—
“It was the day of our first meeting—
That happy day, in Davern’s grove—
I felt the Spring wind’s tender greeting,
And April touched my heart to love.
Thy hand in mine lay kindly mated;
Thy gaze held mine quite fascinated—
So gracious wast, and fair!
Thy glance my life-thread almost severed;
My heart for joy and gladness quivered,
Nigh more than it could bear.
There in the grove at evening’s hour
The breeze thro’ budding twigs hath ranged,
And lips have learned to meet each other,
And kisses mute exchanged.”
_Memnon_, p. 23.
[Sidenote: _Byron’s Letters_]
To return to England. With the beginning of the 19th century we find two
great poets, Byron and Shelley, both interested in and even writing in a
romantic strain on the subject in question.
Byron’s attachment, when at Cambridge, to Eddleston the chorister, a
youth two years younger than himself, is well known. In a youthful letter
to Miss Pigot he, Byron, speaks of it in enthusiastic terms:
“Trin. Coll., Camb., _July_ 5th, 1807.
“I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé; he has
been my _almost constant_ associate since October, 1805, when
I entered Trinity College. His _voice_ first attracted my
attention, his _countenance_ fixed it, and his _manners_ attached
me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in town in
October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my
minority, when I shall leave to his decision either entering as
a partner through my interest or residing with me altogether. Of
course he would in his present frame of mind prefer the latter,
but he may alter his opinion previous to that period; however he
shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human
being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect
on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short we shall
put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and
Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe
like Nisus and Euryalus to give Jonathan and David the ‘go by.’
He certainly is more attached to _me_ than even I am in return.
During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day,
summer and winter, without passing _one_ tiresome moment, and
separated each time with increasing reluctance.”
[Sidenote: _The Adieu_]
Eddleston gave Byron a cornelian (brooch-pin) which Byron prized much,
and is said to have kept all his life. He probably refers to it, and to
the inequality of condition between him and Eddleston, in the following
stanza from his poem, _The Adieu_, written about this time:—
“And thou, my friend, whose gentle love
Yet thrills my bosom’s chords,
How much thy friendship was above
Description’s power of words!
Still near my breast thy gift I wear
Which sparkled once with Feeling’s tear,
Of Love, the pure, the sacred gem;
Our souls were equal, and our lot
In that dear moment quite forgot;
Let pride alone condemn.”
The Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby mentioned in the above
letter were at that time living at Llangollen, in Wales, and were known
as the “Ladies of Llangollen,” their romantic attachment to each other
having already become proverbial. When Miss Ponsonby was seventeen, and
Lady E. Butler some twenty years older, they had run away from their
respective and respectable homes in Ireland, and taking a cottage at
Llangollen lived there, inseparable companions, for the rest of their
lives. Letters and diaries of contemporary celebrities mention their
romantic devotion. (The Duke of Wellington was among their visitors.)
Lady Eleanor died in 1829, at the age of ninety; and Miss Ponsonby only
survived her “beloved one” (as she always called her) by two years.
[Sidenote: _Byron’s Nisus and Euryalus_]
As to the allusion to Nisus and Euryalus, Byron’s paraphrase of the
episode (from the 9th book of Virgil’s Æneid) serves to show his interest
in it:—
“Nisus, the guardian of the portal, stood,
Eager to gild his arms with hostile blood;
Well-skilled in fight the quivering lance to wield,
Or pour his arrows thro’ the embattled field:
From Ida torn, he left his Sylvan cave,
And sought a foreign home, a distant grave.
To watch the movements of the Daunian host,
With him Euryalus sustains the post;
No lovelier mien adorn’d the ranks of Troy,
And beardless bloom yet graced the gallant boy;
Tho’ few the seasons of his youthful life,
As yet a novice in the martial strife,
’Twas his, with beauty, valour’s gifts to share—
A soul heroic, as his form was fair.
These burn with one pure flame of generous love;
In peace, in war, united still they move;
Friendship and glory form their joint reward;
And now combined they hold their nightly guard.”
[The two then carry out a daring raid on the enemy, in which
Euryalus is slain. Nisus, coming to his rescue is—after
performing prodigies of valor—slain too.]
“Thus Nisus all his fond affection proved—
Dying, revenged the fate of him he loved;
Then on his bosom sought his wonted place,
And death was heavenly in his friend’s embrace!
Celestial pair! if aught my verse can claim,
Wafted on Time’s broad pinion, yours is fame!
Ages on ages shall your fate admire,
No future day shall see your names expire,
While stands the Capitol, immortal dome!
And vanquished millions hail their empress, Rome!”
[Sidenote: _T. Moore on Byron_]
Byron’s friendships, in fact, with young men were so marked that Moore in
his _Life and Letters of Lord Byron_ seems to have felt it necessary to
mention and, to some extent, to explain them:—
“During his stay in Greece (in 1810) we find him forming one
of those extraordinary friendships—if attachment to persons so
inferior to himself can be called by that name—of which I have
already mentioned two or three instances in his younger days,
and in which the pride of being a protector and the pleasure
of exciting gratitude seem to have contributed to his mind the
chief, pervading charm. The person whom he now adopted in this
manner, and from similar feelings to those which had inspired his
early attachments to the cottage boy near Newstead and the young
chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek youth, named Nicolo Giraud,
the son, I believe, of a widow lady in whose house the artist
Lusieri lodged. In this young man he seems to have taken the most
lively and even brotherly interest.”
[Sidenote: _Shelley on Friendship_]
Shelley, in his fragmentary _Essay on Friendship_—stated by his friend
Hogg to have been written “not long before his death”—says:—
“I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I
cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this took
place; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or
twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own
age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle, and
the elements of human feeling seemed to have been, from his
birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy
and a simplicity in his manners, inexpressibly attractive. It
has never been my fortune to meet with him since my schoolboy
days; but either I confound my present recollections with the
delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and
utility to everyone around him. The tones of his voice were so
soft and winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and
their pathos was so deep that in listening to him the tears have
involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I
first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship.”
It may be noted that Hogg takes the reference as to himself!
[Sidenote: _Leigh Hunt on School-life_]
With this passage we may compare the following from Leigh Hunt:—
“If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ Hospital, the
school would be ever dear to me from the recollection of the
friendships I formed in it, and of the first heavenly taste it
gave me of that most spiritual of the affections.... If ever
I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those
friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of
any maturer feeling. I shall never forget the impression it made
on me. I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candour, his
truth, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier
manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any
particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking
whatsoever. I should say, in one word, it was his goodness. I
doubt whether he ever had a conception of a tithe of the regard
and respect I entertained for him; and I smile to think of the
perplexity (though he never showed it) which he probably felt
sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a
kind of angel. It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the
unspiritual part of it—the genius and the knowledge—and there is
no height of conceit indulged in by the most romantic character
in Shakespeare, which surpassed what I felt towards the merits
I ascribed to him, and the delight which I took in his society.
With the other boys I played antics, and rioted in fantastic
jests; but in his society, or whenever I thought of him, I fell
into a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I am sure I could have
died for him.
“I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive
schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into
the world and forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in
more than one instance became rivalled by a new set of emotions,
especially in regard to the last, for I fell in love with his
sister—at least, I thought so. But on the occurrence of her
death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume
an air of greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to
be relieved by the sight of the first pretty face that turned
towards me.... My friend, who died himself not long after his
quitting the University, was of a German family in the service of
the court, very refined and musical.” _Autobiography of Leigh
Hunt_, _Smith and Elder_, 1870, p. 75.
[Sidenote: _Lord Beaconsfield’s “Coningsby”_]
On this subject of boy-friendships and their intensity Lord Beaconsfield
has, in _Coningsby_, a quite romantic passage, which notwithstanding
its sentimental setting may be worth quoting; because, after all, it
signalises an often-forgotten or unconsidered aspect of school-life:—
“At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being;
it tears the soul. All loves of after-life can never bring its
rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of
jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! What tenderness and
what devotion; what illimitable confidence, infinite revelations
of inmost thoughts; what ecstatic present and romantic future;
what bitter estrangements and what melting reconciliations;
what scenes of wild recrimination, agitating explanations,
passionate correspondence; what insane sensitiveness, and what
frantic sensibility; what earthquakes of the heart and whirlwinds
of the soul are confined in that simple phrase, a schoolboy’s
friendship!”
[Sidenote: _Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”_]
Alfred Tennyson, in his great poem _In Memoriam_, published about the
middle of the 19th century, gives superb expression to his love for his
lost friend, Arthur Hallam. Reserved, dignified, in sustained meditation
and tender sentiment, yet half revealing here and there a more passionate
feeling; expressing in simplest words the most difficult and elusive
thoughts (_e.g._, Cantos 128 and 129), as well as the most intimate and
sacred moods of the soul; it is indeed a great work of art. Naturally,
being such, it was roundly abused by the critics on its first appearance.
The _Times_ solemnly rebuked its language as unfitted for any but amatory
tenderness, and because young Hallam was a barrister spent much wit upon
the poet’s “Amaryllis of the Chancery bar.” Tennyson himself, speaking of
_In Memoriam_, mentioned (see _Memoir_ by his son, p. 800) “the number of
shameful letters of abuse he had received about it!”
CANTO XIII.
“Tears of the widower, when he sees,
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weep the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing,
And glance about the approaching sails,
As tho’ they brought but merchant’s bales,
And not the burden that they bring.”