ever find him engaged in; and I imagine that the hours which he devotes
to me were snatched from a higher society. The sorest insult which I
ever received from a Friend was when he behaved with the licence which
only long and cheap acquaintance allows to one’s faults, in my presence,
without shame, and still addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, lest
thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an
obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love. There are times when we
have had enough even of our Friends, when we begin inevitably to profane
one another, and must withdraw religiously into solitude and silence,
the better to prepare ourselves for a loftier intimacy. Silence is the
[Sidenote: The language of friendship]
ambrosial night in the intercourse of Friends, in which their sincerity
is recruited and takes deeper root.
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. Do you demand
that I be less your Friend that you may know it? Yet what right have I
to think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for me? It is a
miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest
imagination and the rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent
behaviour--‘I will be so related to thee as thou canst imagine; even so
thou mayest believe. I will spend truth--all my wealth on thee,’--and
the Friend responds silently through his nature and life, and treats his
Friend with the same divine courtesy. He knows us literally through
thick and thin. He never asks for a sign
[Sidenote: Not words but meanings]
of love, but can distinguish it by the features which it naturally
wears. We never need to stand upon ceremony with him with regard to his
visits. Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that I am glad to see
thee when thou comest. It would be paying too dear for thy visit to ask
for it. Where my Friend lives there are all riches and every attraction,
and no slight obstacle can keep me from him. Let me never have to tell
thee what I have not to tell. Let our intercourse be wholly above
ourselves, and draw us up to it.
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an
intelligence above language. One imagines endless conversations with his
Friend, in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be spoken
without hesitancy or
[Sidenote: Acquaintances and friends]
end; but the experience is commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances may
come and go, and have a word ready for every occasion; but what puny
word shall he utter whose very breath is thought and meaning? Suppose
you go to bid farewell to your Friend who is setting out on a journey;
what other outward sign do you know than to shake his hand? Have you any
palaver ready for him then? any box of salve to commit to his pocket?
any particular message to send by him? any statement which you had
forgotten to make?--as if you could forget anything. No; it is much that
you take his hand and say Farewell; that you could easily omit; so far
custom has prevailed. It is even painful, if he is to go, that he should
linger so long. If he must go, let him go quickly. Have you any _last_
words?
[Sidenote: The word of words]
Alas, it is only the word of words which _you_ have so long sought and
found not; you have not a _first_ word yet. There are few even whom I
should venture to call earnestly by their most proper names. A name
pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He
who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my
love and service. Yet reserve is the freedom and abandonment of lovers.
It is the reserve of what is hostile or indifferent in their natures to
give place to what is kindred and harmonious.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it
is durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only
with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain
be. It is one proof of a man’s
[Sidenote: Man’s fitness for friendship]
fitness for Friendship that he is able to do without that which is cheap
and passionate. A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The
parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know
no other law nor kindness. It is not extravagant and insane, but what it
says is something established henceforth, and will bear to be
stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is better and fairer news, and no
time will ever shame it, or prove it false. This is a plant which
thrives best in a temperate zone, where summer and winter alternate with
one another. The Friend is a _necessarius_, and meets his Friend on
homely ground; not on carpets and cushions, but on the ground and on
rocks they will sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws. They will
meet without any outcry, and part without loud
[Sidenote: Friendship not an idle sympathy]
sorrow. Their relation implies such qualities as the warrior prizes; for
it takes a valour to open the hearts of men as well as the gates of
castles. It is not an idle sympathy and mutual consolation merely, but a
heroic sympathy of aspiration and endeavour.
* * * * *
Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it has not much human blood in
it, but consists with a certain disregard for men and their erections,
the Christian duties and humanities, while it purifies the air like
electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy in the relation of two
more than usually innocent and true to their highest instincts. We may
call it an essentially heathenish intercourse, free and irresponsible in
its nature, and practising all the virtues gratuitously. It is
[Sidenote: Godlike intercourse]
not the highest sympathy merely, but a pure and lofty society, a
fragmentary and godlike intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at
intervals, which, remembering itself, does not hesitate to disregard the
humbler rights and duties of humanity. It requires immaculate and
godlike qualities full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension
and anticipation of the remotest future. We love nothing which is merely
good and not fair, if such a thing is possible. Nature puts some kind of
blossom before every fruit, not simply a calyx behind it. When the
Friend comes out of his heathenism and superstition, and breaks his
idols, being converted by the precepts of a newer testament; when he
forgets his mythology, and treats his Friend like a Christian, or as he
can afford; then Friendship ceases to be Friendship,
[Sidenote: The cessation of friendship]
and becomes charity; that principle which established the almshouse is
now beginning with its charity at home, and establishing an almshouse
and pauper relations there.
As for the number which this society admits, it is at any rate to be
begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we know, and whether the
world will ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms,
‘There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,’
remains to be proved;
‘And certaine he is well begone
Among a thousand that findeth one.’
We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any, while we are conscious
that another is more deserving of our love. Yet Friendship does not
stand for numbers; the Friend does not count his
[Sidenote: We cannot have too many friends]
Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable. The more there are
included by this bond, if they are indeed included, the rarer and
diviner the quality of the love that binds them. I am ready to believe
that as private and intimate a relation may exist by which three are
embraced as between two. Indeed, we cannot have too many friends; the
virtue which we appreciate we to some extent appropriate, so that thus
we are made at last more fit for every relation of life. A base
Friendship is of a narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble one is
not exclusive; its very superfluity and dispersed love is the humanity
which sweetens society, and sympathises with foreign nations; for though
its foundations are private, it is, in effect, a public affair and a
public advantage, and the Friend more
[Sidenote: Faults attract faults]
than the father of a family deserves well of the state.
The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a delicate
plant, though a native. The least unworthiness, even if it be unknown to
one’s self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know that those faults which he
observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There is no rule more
invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we
suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have so much
and such of you, my Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable,
none disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough for a true and
lasting Friendship.
I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do not appreciate
their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do
[Sidenote: Silence is better than speech]
or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which
they uttered or did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be
that your silence was the finest thing of the two. There are some things
which a man never speaks of which are much finer kept silent about. To
the highest communications we only lend a silent ear. Our finest
relations are not simply kept silent about, but buried under a positive
depth of silence never to be revealed. It may be that we are not even
yet acquainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there
is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Then there can never be an explanation. What avails it that another
loves you if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse. What sort
of
[Sidenote: The man with the ears]
companions are they who are presuming always that their silence is more
expressive than yours? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and unjust, to
conduct as if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not your Friend
always equal ground of complaint? No doubt my friends sometimes speak to
me in vain, but they do not know what things I hear which they are not
aware that they have spoken. I know that I have frequently disappointed
them by not giving them words when they expected them, or such as they
expected. Whenever I see my Friend I speak to him; but the expecter, the
man with the ears, is not he. They will complain too that you are hard.
O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side outwards, when next I weep
I will let you know. They ask for words and deeds, when a
[Sidenote: My friend is my real brother]
true relation is word and deed. If they know not of these things, how
can they be informed? We often forbear to confess our feelings, not from
pride, but for fear that we could not continue to love the one who
required us to give such proof of our affection.
* * * * *
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my
flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature groping
yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart. Have not the fates
associated us in many ways? It says in the Vishnu Purana: ‘Seven paces
together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and
I have dwelt together.’ Is it of no significance that we have so long
partaken of the
[Sidenote: Friendship consecrated by time]
same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the same air summer and
winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same fruits have been
pleased to refresh us both, and we have never had a thought of different
fibre the one from the other!
* * * * *
As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the
ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely
as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make
age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of Nature
survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall
for ever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall
foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no
[Sidenote: Love for a friend]
less than the ruins of temples. As I love Nature, as I love singing
birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and
evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
[Illustration]
III
THE SENTIMENT OF FRIENDSHIP
THOMAS CARLYLE
THE SENTIMENT OF FRIENDSHIP
[Sidenote: A university friend]
Let us present the following small thread of Moral relation; and
therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place,
conclude our dim arras-picture of these University years.
Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as it
is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality
(_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by
blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zähdarm, in this quarter of
Germany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by
[Sidenote: A character sketch]
his means, with all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair
talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of
character: and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except
Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic
impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers
of his nation. To him I owe my first practical knowledge of the English
and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I
have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without
an eye, could he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the
presence of the Zähdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost
frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet
been those of infancy,
[Sidenote: Great and small cost]
hither to a University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to
say the effort after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole over
the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how, after all our toil, we
were to be turned-out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed,
but with few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were
trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as Believe. ‘How has
our head on the outside a polished Hat,’ would Towgood exclaim, ‘and in
the inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a
small cost men are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great
cost, what am I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I have
already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable
[Sidenote: Looking bravely on life]
Hospital of Incurables.’--‘Man, indeed,’ I would answer, ‘has a
Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by
stealth. But as for our Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the
time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no
figs. _Frisch zu, Bruder!_ Here are Books, and we have brains to read
them; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look
on them: _Frisch zu!_’
Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. We
looked out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once
harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not
unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For
myself, these were perhaps my
[Sidenote: Spiritual union]
most genial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and
wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near experiencing the now obsolete
sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that,
under certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken him to
my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees, however, I
understood the new time, and its wants. If man’s _Soul_ is indeed, as in
the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_,
what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together?
Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere
have cast away chimeras.
* * * * *
Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain
[Sidenote: A fearful unbelief]
Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest
Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in
yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first, last Faith in
myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to
love, been all-too cruelly belied? The speculative Mystery of Life grew
ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical Mystery had I made
the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and
contemptuously cast-out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening
Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to
discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of
Enchantment, divided me from all living: was there, in the wide world,
any true bosom I could press
[Sidenote: A man is sufficient for himself]
trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon my
lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety of so-called
Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but
an incredible tradition? In such cases, your resource is to talk little,
and that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was
a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and women around me, even
speaking with me, were but Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that
they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In midst of their
crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it
was my own heart, not another’s, that I kept devouring) savage also, as
the tiger in his jungle.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Two phantoms]
How were Friendship possible? ‘In mutual devotedness to the Good and
True: otherwise impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow
Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for
himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing
what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can
yield to man.’ And now in conjunction therewith consider this other: ‘It
is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid
the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as
if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY
and ATHEISM, with the Ghoul, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the Earth,
and call it theirs: well at ease are the sleepers for whom Existence is
a shallow Dream.’
IV
ON THE ACQUISITION OF FRIENDS
HENRY MACKENZIE
ON THE ACQUISITION OF FRIENDS
[Sidenote: Ruined by friends]
The praises of friendship, and descriptions of the happiness arising
from it, I remember to have met with in almost every book and poem since
first I could read. I was never much addicted to reading: and, in this
instance, I think, I have little reason to put confidence in authors.
How it may be in their experience, I know not; but in mine, this same
virtue of friendship has tended very little to my happiness; on the
contrary, when I tell you my situation, you will find that I am almost
ruined by my friends.
From my earliest days I was reckoned one of the best-natured fellows in
the world; and at school, though I must
[Sidenote: Friends acquired at some expense]
confess I did not acquire so much learning as many of my companions,
yet, even there, I was remarkable for the acquisition of friends. Even
there, too, I acquired them at some expense; I was flogged, I dare say,
a hundred times for the faults of others, but was too generous ever to
_peach_; my companions were generous fellows too; but it always
happened, I don’t know how, that my generosity was on the losing side of
the adventure.
I had not been above three years at college, when the death of an uncle
put me in possession of a very considerable estate. As I was not
violently inclined towards literature, I soon took the opportunity,
which this presented me, of leaving the university and entering upon the
world. I put myself under the tuition
[Sidenote: London friends]
of one of my companions, who generally spent the vacations, and indeed
some of the terms too, in London; and took up my residence in that city.
There I needed not that propensity, which I have told you I always
possessed, to acquire a multitude of friends. I found myself surrounded
by them in every tavern and coffee-house about town. But I soon
experienced, that though the commodity was plenty, the price was high.
Besides a considerable mortgage on my estate, of which one of my best
friends contrived to possess himself, I was obliged to expose my life to
a couple of duels, and had very near lost it.
* * * * *
From this sort of bondage I contrived to emancipate myself by matrimony.
I married the sister of one of my friends,
[Sidenote: The country life]
a girl good-natured and thoughtless like myself, with whom I soon
retired into the country, and set out upon what we thought a sober,
well-regulated plan. The situation was so distant as to be quite out of
reach of my former town-companions; provisions were cheap and servants
faithful; in short, everything so circumstanced that we made no doubt of
living considerably within our income. Our manner of life, however, was
to be happy and prudent. By the improvement of my estate, I was to be
equally amused and enriched; my skill in sportsmanship (for I had
acquired that science to great perfection at the university) was to
procure vigour to my constitution, and dainties to my table; and,
against the long nights of winter, we were provided with an excellent
_neighbourhood_.
[Sidenote: A talent for friend-making]
This last-mentioned article is the only one which we have found come up
entirely to our expectations. My talent for friend-making has indeed
extended the limits of _neighbourhood_ a good deal farther than the word
is commonly understood to reach. The parish, which is not a small
one--the county, which is proportionally extensive, comes within the
denomination of neighbourhood with us; and my neighbour Goostry, who
pays me an annual sporting visit of several weeks, lives at least fifty
miles off.
Some of these _neighbours_, who always become _friends_ at my house,
have endeavoured to pay me for their entertainment with their advice as
to the cultivation of my farm, or the management of my estate; but I
have generally found their counsel, like other friendly exertions, put
[Sidenote: Our friends’ attentions]
me out of pocket in the end. Their theories of agriculture failed in my
practice of them; and the ingenious men they recommended to me for
tenants, seldom paid their rent by their ingenuity.
The attentions of our friends are sometimes carried farther than mere
words or visits of compliment; yet, even then, unfortunately, their
favours are just so many taxes upon us. When I receive a present of a
delicate salmon, or a nice haunch of venison, it is but a signal for all
my good neighbours to come and eat at my expense; and some time ago,
when a nephew of my wife, settled abroad, sent me a hogshead of
excellent claret, it cost me, in entertainments for the honour of the
liquor, what might have purchased a tun from the wine-merchant.
After so many instances in which my
[Sidenote: Disappointed expectations]
friendships were hurtful to my fortune, I wished to hit on the way to
making some of them beneficial to it. For this purpose, my wife and I
have, for a good while past, been employed in looking out for some snug
office, or reversion, to which my interest with several powerful friends
might recommend me. But, somehow or other, our expectations have been
always disappointed; not from any want of inclination in our friends to
serve us, as we have been repeatedly assured, but from various
unforeseen accidents, to which expectations of that sort are
particularly liable. In the course of these solicitations I was lead to
engage in the political interests of a gentleman on whose influence I
built the strongest hopes of success in my own schemes; and I flattered
myself that, from the friendly footing
[Sidenote: A resolution]
on which I stood with my neighbours, I might be of considerable service
to him. This, indeed, he is extremely ready to acknowledge, though he
has yet found no opportunity of returning the favour; but, in the
meantime, it kept my table open to all his _friends_, as well as my own,
and cost me, besides, a headache twice a week during the whole period of
the canvass.
In short, I find I can afford to keep myself in friends no longer. I
mean to give them warning of this my resolution as speedily as
possible.... I have shut my gates, locked my cellar, turned off my cook,
disposed of my dogs, forgot my acquaintance, and am resolved
henceforward, let people say of me what they will, to be _no one’s
friend but my own_.
V
ON FRIENDSHIP
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
ON FRIENDSHIP
[Sidenote: The virtue of friendship]