as Euripides speaks; but friendship extends itself to both fortunes, as
well brightens and adorns prosperity as allays the sorrows that attend
adversity. And as Evenus used to say that fire makes the best sauce,
so friendship, wherewith God has seasoned the circumstances of our
mortality, gives a relish to every condition, renders them all easy,
sweet, and agreeable enough. And indeed, did not the laws of friendship
admit of a little pleasantry and good humor, why should the parasite
insinuate himself under that disguise? And yet he, as counterfeit gold
imitates the brightness and lustre of the true, always puts on the
easiness and freedom of a friend, is always pleasant and obliging, and
ready to comply with the humor of his company. And therefore it is
no way reasonable either, to look upon every just character that is
given us as a piece of flattery; for certainly a due and seasonable
commendation is as much the duty of one friend to another as a
pertinent and serious reprehension; nay indeed, a sour querulous temper
is perfectly repugnant to the laws of friendship and conversation;
whereas a man takes a chiding patiently from a friend who is as ready
to praise his virtues as to animadvert upon his vices, willingly
persuading himself that mere necessity obliged him to reprimand, whom
kindness had first moved to commend.
3. Why then, some may say, it is infinitely difficult at this rate
to distinguish a flatterer from a friend, since there is no apparent
difference either betwixt the satisfaction they create or the praises
they bestow. Nay, it is observable, that a parasite is frequently
more obsequious and obliging than a friend himself. Well, the way
then to discover the disparity? Why, I will tell you; if you would
learn the character of a true subtle flatterer, who nicks his point
_secundum artem_, you must not, with the vulgar, mistake those
sordid smell-feasts and poor trencher-slaves for your men, who begin to
prate as soon as they have washed their hands in order to dinner, as
one says of them, and ere they are well warmed with a good cut of the
first dish and a glass of wine, betray the narrow soul that acts them
by the nauseous and fulsome buffoonery they vent at table. For sure
it needed no great sagacity to detect the flattery of Melanthius, the
parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, being asked how his master was
murdered, made answer, With a thrust which went in at his side, but
into my belly. Nor must we, again, confine our notions of flatterers to
those sharping fellows who ply about rich men’s tables, whom neither
fire nor sword nor porter can keep from supper; nor yet to such as were
those female parasites of Cyprus, who going into Syria were nick-named
Steps, because they cringed so to the great ladies of that country that
they mounted their chariots on their backs.
4. Well, but after all, who is this flatterer then, whom we ought so
industriously to avoid?
I answer: He who neither professes nor seems to flatter; who never
haunts your kitchen, is never observed to watch the dial that he may
nick your supper-time; who won’t drink to excess, but will keep his
brains about him; who is prying and inquisitive, would mix in your
business, and wind himself into your secrets: in short, he who acts
the friend, not with the air of a comedian or a satirist, but with the
port and gravity of a tragedian. For, as Plato says, It is the height
of injustice to appear just and be really a knave. So are we to look
upon those flatterers as most dangerous who walk not barefaced but in
disguise, who make no sport but mind their business; for these often
personate the true and sincere friend so exactly, that it is enough
to make him fall under the like suspicion of a cheat, unless we be
extremely curious in remarking the difference betwixt them. It is
storied of Gobryas (one of the Persian nobility, who joined with Darius
against the Magi), that he pursued one of them into a dark room, and
there fell upon him; during the scuffle Darius came in and drew upon
the enemy, but durst not push at him, lest perhaps he might wound his
confederate Gobryas with the thrust; whereupon Gobryas bade him, rather
than fail, run both through together. But since we can by no means
admit of that vulgar saying, Let my friend perish, so my enemy perish
with him, but had rather still endeavor at the discovery of a parasite
from a friend, notwithstanding the nearness of the resemblance, we
ought to use our utmost care, lest at any time we indifferently reject
the good with the bad, or unadvisedly retain the bad with the good, the
friend and flatterer together. For as those wild grains which usually
grow up with wheat, and are of the same figure and bigness with it,
are not easily winnowed from it,—for they either cannot pass through
the holes of the sieve, if narrow, or pass together with the wheat,
if larger,—so is it infinitely difficult to distinguish flattery from
friendship, because the one so exquisitely mixes with all the passions,
humors, interests, and inclinations of the other.
5. Now because the enjoyment of a friend is attended with the
greatest satisfaction incident to humanity, therefore the flatterer
always endeavors to entrap us by rendering his conversation highly
pleasant and agreeable. Again, because all acts of kindness and mutual
beneficence are the constant attendants upon true friendship (on which
account we usually say, A friend is more necessary than fire or water),
therefore the flatterer is ready upon every occasion to obtrude his
service upon you, and will with an indefatigable bustle and zeal seek
to oblige you if he can.
In the next place, the parasite observes that all true friendship takes
its origin from a concurrence of like humors and inclinations, and that
the same passions, the same aversions and desires, are the first cement
of a true and lasting friendship. He therefore composes his nature,
like unformed matter, striving to fit and adapt it by imitation to the
person on whom he designs, that it may be pliant and yielding to any
impression that he shall think fit to stamp upon it; and, in fine, he
so neatly resembles the original, that one would swear,—
Sure thou the very Achilles art, and not his son.
But the most exquisite fineness of a flatterer consists in his
imitation of that freedom of discourse which friends particularly use
in mutually reprehending each other. For finding that men usually
take it for what it really is, the natural language of friendship, as
peculiar to it as certain notes or voices are to certain animals, and
that, on the contrary, a shy sheepish reservedness looks both rude and
unfriendly, he lets not even this proper character of a friend escape
his imitation. But as skilful cooks use to correct luscious meats with
sharp and poignant sauce, that they may not be so apt to overcharge
the stomach; so he seasons his flattery now and then with a little
smartness and severity, lest the fulsomeness of repeated dissimulation
should pall and cloy the company. And yet his reprehensions always
carry something in them that looks not true and genuine; he seems to
do it, but with a kind of a sneering and grinning countenance at the
best; and though his reproofs may possibly tickle the ear, yet they
never strike effectually upon the heart. On these accounts then it is
as difficult to discern a flatterer from a friend, as to know those
animals again which always wear the livery of the last thing they touch
upon. And therefore, since he puts so easily upon us under the disguise
and appearance of a friend, it will be our business at present to
unmask the hypocrite, and show him in other men’s shapes and colors, as
Plato speaks, since he has none properly his own.
6. Well then, let us enquire regularly into this affair. We have
already asserted, that friendship generally takes its rise from a
conformity of tempers and dispositions, whereby different persons come
to have the same taste of the like humors, customs, studies, exercises,
and employs, as these following verses import:—
Old men with old, and boys with boys agree;
And women’s clack with women’s company.
Men that are crazy, full of sores and pain,
Love to diseased persons to complain.
And they who labor under adverse fate,
Tell their sad stories to th’ unfortunate.
The flatterer then, observing how congenial it is to our natures
to delight in the conversation of those who are, as it were, the
counterpart of ourselves, makes his first approaches to our affections
at this avenue, where he gradually advances (like one making towards a
wild beast in a pasture, with a design to tame and bring it to hand) by
accommodating himself to the same studies, business, and color of life
with the person upon whom he designs, till at last the latter gives
him an opportunity to catch him, and becomes tractable by the man who
strokes him. All this while the flatterer falls foul upon those courses
of life, persons, and things he perceives his cully to disapprove, and
again as extravagantly commends those he is pleased to honor with his
approbation, still persuading him that his choice and dislike are the
results of a solid and discerning judgment and not of passion.
7. Well, then, by what signs or tokens shall we be able to know this
counterfeit copy of ourselves from a true and genuine likeness?
In the first place, we must accurately remark upon the whole tenor of
his life and conversation, whether or not the resemblance he pretends
to the original be of any continuance, natural and easy, and all of
a piece; whether he square his actions according to any one steady
and uniform model, as becomes an ingenuous lover of conversation and
friendship, which is all of one thread, and still like itself; for this
is a true friend indeed. But the flatterer, who has no principles in
him, and leads not a life properly his own, but forms and moulds it
according to the various humors and caprices of those he designs to
bubble, is never one and the same man, but a mere dapple or trimmer,
who changes shapes with his company, like water that always turns and
winds itself into the figure of the channel through which it flows.
Apes, it seems, are usually caught by their antic mimicry of the
motions and gesticulations of men; and yet the men themselves are
trepanned by the same craft of imitation in a flatterer, who adapts
himself to their several humors, fencing and wrestling with one,
singing and dancing with another. If he is in chase of a spark that
delights in a pack of dogs, he follows him at the heels, hollowing
almost like Phaedra,
O what a pleasure ’tis, ye Gods, to wind
The shrill-mouthed horn and chase the dappled hind;[99]
and yet the hunter himself is the game he designs for the toils. If
he be in pursuit of some bookish young gentleman, then he is always
a poring, he nourishes his reverend beard down to his heels, wears a
tattered cloak, affects the careless indifference of a philosopher, and
can now discourse of nothing under Plato’s triangles and rectangles. If
he chance to fall into the acquaintance of a drunken, idle debauchee
who has got an estate,