It had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and
untruth together in few words than in that speech: “Whosoever is
delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god:”[303] for it
is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards
society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most
untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature,
except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love
and desire to sequester a man’s self for a higher conversation; such
as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen;
as Epimenides,[304] the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the
Sicilian; and Apollonius, of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of
the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. But little do men
perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is
not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a
tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with
it a little: “Magna civitas, magna solitudo:”[305] because in a great
town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for
the most part, which is in less neighborhoods: but we may go further,
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 sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and
affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beasts, and not
from humanity.
A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the
fulness and swellings 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[306] to open the liver, steel to open the
spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum[307] 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.
It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and
monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak; so
great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety
and greatness; for princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune
from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit,
except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to
be as it were companions, and almost equals to themselves, which many
times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such
persons the name of favorites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of
grace or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth the true use and
cause thereof, naming them “participes curarum;”[308] for it is that
which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not
by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic
that ever reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of
their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed
others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which
is received between private men.
L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed
the Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla’s
overmatch; for when he had carried the consulship for a friend of
his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent
thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and,
in effect, bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising
than the sun setting.[309] With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus had
obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir
in remainder after his nephew; and this was the man that had power
with him to draw him forth to his death; for when Cæsar would have
discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a
dream of Calphurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his
chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his
wife had dreamt a better dream;[310] and it seemeth his favor was so
great, as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of
Cicero’s Philippics, calleth him _venefica_, “witch,” as if he had
enchanted Cæsar.[311] Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to
that height, as, when he consulted with Mæcenas about the marriage of
his daughter Julia, Mæcenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must
either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life; there was
no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus
had ascended to that height, as they two were termed and reckoned
as a pair of friends. Tiberius, in a letter to him, saith, “Hæc pro
amicitiâ nostrâ non occultavi;”[312] and the whole senate dedicated
an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great
dearness of friendship between them two. The like, or more, was between
Septimius Severus and Plautianus; for he forced his eldest son to
marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain Plautianus
in doing affronts to his son; and did write, also, in a letter to the
senate, by these words: “I love the man so well, as I wish he may
over-live me.”[313] Now, if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a
Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of
an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise,[314] of such
strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves,
as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own
felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an
half-piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire; and yet,
which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet
all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.
It is not to be forgotten what Comineus[315] observeth of his first
master, Duke Charles the Hardy,[316] namely, that he would communicate
his secrets with none, and, least of all, those secrets which troubled
him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith, that towards his latter
time, that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding.
Surely, Comineus might have made the same judgment, also, if it had
pleased him, of his second master, Louis the Eleventh, whose closeness
was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true:
“Cor ne edito,” “eat not the heart.”[317] 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 works two
contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves;
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. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a
man’s mind of like virtue as the alchemists used to attribute to their
stone for man’s body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still
to the good and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying in aid of
alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of
nature; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural
action; and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent
impression; and even so it is of minds.
The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the
understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship
maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests,
but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and
confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of
faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before
you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught
with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break
up in the communicating and discoursing with another; he tosseth his
thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how
they look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser
than himself; and that more by an hour’s discourse than by a day’s
meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia:
“That speech was like cloth of Arras,[318] opened and put abroad,
whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie
but as in packs.”[319] Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in
opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able
to give a man counsel (they indeed are best), but even without that a
man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and
whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word,
a man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to suffer
his thoughts to pass in smother.
Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other
point which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation;
which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well, in
one of his enigmas, “Dry light is ever the best;”[320] and certain it
is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is
drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and
judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and
customs. So, as there is as much difference between the counsel that a
friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the
counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer
as is a man’s self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a
man’s self, as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts,—the
one concerning manners, the other concerning business; for the first,
the best preservative to keep the mind in health, is the faithful
admonition of a friend. The calling of a man’s self to a strict account
is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive; reading good books
of morality is a little flat and dead; observing our faults in others
is sometimes improper for our case; but the best receipt (best, I say,
to work, and best to take), is the admonition of a friend. It is a
strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities many
(especially of the greater sort) do commit for want of a friend to
tell them of them, to the great damage both of their fame and fortune;
for, as St. James saith, they are as men “that look sometimes into a
glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor.”[321] As for
business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than
one; or, that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that
a man in anger is as wise as he that has said over the four and twenty
letters;[322] or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as
upon a rest;[323] and such other fond and high imaginations, to think
himself all in all; but when all is done, the help of good counsel is
that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he
will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces, asking counsel in one
business of one man, and in another business of another man; it is well
(that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all); but he
runneth two dangers,—one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled;
for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend,
to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some
ends which he hath that giveth it; the other, that he shall have
counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and
mixed partly of mischief, and partly of remedy; even as if you would
call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you
complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and, therefore, may
put you in a way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in
some other kind, and so cure the disease and kill the patient.
But a friend, that is wholly acquainted with a man’s estate, will
beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other
inconvenience; and, therefore, rest not upon scattered counsels; they
will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.
After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections,
and support of the judgment), followeth the last fruit, which is like
the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean aid, and bearing a part
in all actions and occasions. Here the best way to represent to life
the manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many things
there are which a man cannot do himself; and then it will appear that
it was a sparing speech of the ancients to say, “that a friend is
another himself,” for that a friend is far more than himself. Men have
their time, and die many times in desire of some things which they
principally take to heart; the bestowing of a child, the finishing of
a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost
secure that the care of those things will continue after him; so that
a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body,
and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all
offices of life are, as it were, granted to him and his deputy, for he
may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there, which a
man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can
scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a
man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate, or beg, and a number of the
like; but all these things are graceful in a friend’s mouth, which are
blushing in a man’s own. So, again, a man’s person hath many proper
relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as
a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms;
whereas, a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth
with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless; I have
given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part. If he have
not a friend, he may quit the stage.