and will scorn to bear any part with him in any base and dishonorable
actions, unless, as people sometimes catch blear eyes, he may
chance insensibly to contract some ill habit or other by the very
contagion of familiarity and conversation. Thus they say Plato’s
acquaintance learned his stoop, Aristotle’s his lisp, and Alexander’s
the inclination of his neck and the rapidity of his speech. For
some persons, ere they are aware, get a touch of the humors and
infirmities of those with whom they converse. But now as a true friend
endeavors only to copy the fairest originals, so, on the contrary,
the flatterer, like the chameleon, which puts on all colors but the
innocent white, being unable to reach those strokes of virtue which
are worth his imitation, takes care that no failure or imperfection
escape him. As unskilful painters, when they cannot hit the features
and air of a face, content themselves with the faint resemblance
in a wrinkle, a wart, or a scar, so he takes up with his friend’s
intemperance, superstition, cholericness, severity to his servants,
distrust of his relations and domestics or the like. For, besides
that a natural propensity to evil inclines him always to follow the
worst examples, he imagines his assuming other men’s vices will best
secure him from the suspicion of being disaffected towards them; for
their fidelity is often suspected who seem dissatisfied with faults
and wish a reformation. Which very thing lost Dion in the good opinion
of Dionysius, Samius in Philip’s, Cleomenes in Ptolemy’s, and at last
proved the occasion of their ruin. And therefore the flatterer pretends
not only to the good humor of a companion, but to the faithfulness of
a friend too, and would be thought to have so great a respect for you
that he cannot be disgusted at the very worst of your actions, being
indeed of the same make and constitution with yourself. Hence you shall
have him pretend a share in the most common casualties that befall
another, nay, in complaisance, feign even diseases themselves. In
company of those who are thick of hearing, he is presently half deaf,
and with the dim-sighted can see no more than they do. So the parasites
about Dionysius at an entertainment, to humor his blindness, stumbled
one upon another and jostled the dishes off his table.
But there are others who refine upon the former by a pretended
fellow-suffering in the more private concernments of life, whereby they
wriggle themselves deeper into the affections of those they flatter;
as, if they find a man unhappily married, or distrustful of his
children or domestics, they spare not their own family, but immediately
entertain you with some lamentable story of the hard fortune they have
met with in their children, their wife, their servants, or relations.
For, by the parallel circumstances they pretend to, they seem more
passionately concerned for the misfortunes of their friends, who, as if
they had already received some pawn and assurance of their fidelity,
blab forth those secrets which they cannot afterwards handsomely
retract, and dare not betray the least distrust of their new confidant
for the future. I myself knew a man who turned his wife out of doors
because a gentleman of his acquaintance divorced his, though the latter
lady smelt the intrigue afterwards by the messages the flatterer sent
to his wife after the pretended divorce and the private visits he was
observed to make her. So little did he understand the flatterer who
took these following verses for the description of a crab rather than
his:—
The shapeless thing’s all over paunch and gut:
Who can the monster’s mighty hunger glut?
It crawls on teeth, and with a watchful eye
Does into every secret corner pry.
For this is the true portraiture of those sharpers, who, as Eupolis
speaks, sponge upon their acquaintance for a dinner.
10. But we will reserve these remarks for a more proper place. In
the mean time I must not omit the other artifice observable in his
imitation, which is this: that if at any time he counterfeit the good
qualities of his friend, he immediately yields him the pre-eminence;
whereas there is no competition, no emulation or envy amongst true
friends, but whether they are equally accomplished or not, they bear
the same even unconcerned temper of mind towards each other. But the
flatterer, remembering that he is but to act another’s part, pretends
only to such strokes as fall short of the original, and is willing to
confess himself outdone in any thing but his vices, wherein alone he
claims the precedency to himself; as, if the man he is to wheedle be
difficult and morose, he is quite overrun with choler; if something
superstitious, he is a perfect enthusiast; if a little in love, for
his part he is most desperately smitten. I laughed heartily at such a
passage, says one; But I had like to have died with laughter, says the
other. But now in speaking of any laudable qualities, he inverts his
style; as, I can run fast enough, says he, but you perfectly fly. I can
sit an horse tolerably well, but alas! what’s that to this Hippocentaur
for good horsemanship? I have a tolerable good genius for poetry, and
am none of the worst versifiers of the age;
But thunder is the language of you Gods, not mine.
And thus at the same time he obliges his friend both in approving of
his abilities by his owning of them, and in confessing him incomparable
in his way by himself coming short of his example. These then are the
distinguishing characters of a friend and flatterer, as far as concerns
the counterfeit resemblance betwixt them.
11. But because, as we have before observed, it is common to them both
to please (for a good man is no less taken with the company of his
friends than an ill one is with a flatterer’s), let us discriminate
them here too. And the way will be to have an eye to the end to
which they direct the satisfaction they create, which may be thus
illustrated. Your perfumed oils have a fine odoriferous scent, and so,
it may be, have some medicines too; but with this difference, that
the former are prepared barely for the gratification of the sense,
whilst the other, besides their odor, purge, heal, and fatten. Again,
the colors used by painters are certainly very florid and the mixture
agreeable; and yet so it is in some medicinal compositions too. Wherein
then lies the difference? Why, in the end or use for which they are
designed, the one purely for pleasure the other for profit. In like
manner the civilities of one friend to another, besides the main point
of their honesty and mutual advantage, are always attended with an
overplus of delight and satisfaction. Nay, they can now and then
indulge themselves the liberty of an innocent diversion, a collation,
or a glass of wine, and, believe me, can be as cheerful and jocund as
the best; all which they use only as sauce, to give a relish to the
more serious and weighty concernments of life. To which purpose was
that of the poet,
With pleasing chat they did delight each other;
as likewise this too,