The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant Part 4

8. With what prudence does he caution us in the choice of our friends!

And with what strokes of nature (I could almost say of humour) has he described the behaviour of a treacherous and self-interested friend--"If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him: for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of thy trouble."

9. "And there is a friend, who being turned to enmity and strife, will discover thy reproach." Again, "Some friend is a companion at the table, and will not continue in the day of thy affliction: but in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be bold over thy servants. If thou be brought low, he will be against thee, and hide himself from thy face."

10. What can be more strong and pointed than the following verse?

"Separate thyself from thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends." In the next words he particularizes one of those fruits of friends.h.i.+p which is described at length by the two famous authors above mentioned, and falls into a general eulogium of friends.h.i.+p, which is very just as well as very sublime.

11. "A faithful friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such a one, hath found a treasure. Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellence is invaluable. A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the Lord, shall find him. Whoso feareth the Lord, shall direct his friends.h.i.+p aright; for as he is, so shall his neighbour (that is, his friend) be also."

12. I do not remember to have met with any saying that has pleased me more than that of a friend's being the medicine of life, to express the efficacy of friends.h.i.+p in healing the pains and anguish which naturally cleave to our existence in this world; and am wonderfully pleased with the turn in the last sentence, That a virtuous man shall, as a blessing, meet with a friend who is as virtuous as himself.

13. There is another saying in the same author, which would have been very much admired in an heathen writer: "Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure."

14. With what strength of allusion, and force of thought, has he described the breaches and violations of friends.h.i.+p! "Whoso casteth a stone at the birds, frayeth them away; and he that upbraideth his friend, breaketh friends.h.i.+p. Though thou drawest a sword at a friend, yet despair not, for there may be a returning to favor; if thou hast opened thy mouth against thy friend, fear not, for there may be a reconciliation; except for upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous wound; for, for these things, every friend will depart."

15. We may observe in this and several other precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and ill.u.s.trations which are so much admired in the moral writings of _Horace_ and _Epictetus_. There are very beautiful instances of this nature in the following pages, which are likewise written upon the same subject:

16. "Whoso discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind. Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if thou betrayest his secret, follow no more after him; for as a man hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go, and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As for a wound, it may be bound up, and after reviling, there may be reconciliation; but he that betrayeth secrets, is without hope."

17. Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the princ.i.p.al; to these, others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and fortune, and, as _Cicero_ calls it, _morum comitas_, a pleasantness of temper.

18. If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a certain aequibility or evenness of behaviour. A man often contracts a friends.h.i.+p with one whom perhaps he does not find out till after a year's conversation: when, on a sudden, some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him.

19. There are several persons who, in some certain periods of their lives, are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable. _Martial_ has given us a very pretty picture of one of these species in the following epigram:

_Difficilis facilas, jocundus, acerbus, es idem_, _Nec tec.u.m possum vivere; nec sine te_. Epig. 47. 1. 12.

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee nor without thee.

20. It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friends.h.i.+p with one, who by these changes and vicissitudes of humour is sometimes amiable, and sometimes odious: and as most men are at some times in an admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our character.

SPECTATOR, Vol. 1. No. 68.

21. "Friends.h.i.+p is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another." Though the pleasures and advantages of friends.h.i.+p have been largely celebrated by the best moral writers, and are considered by all as great ingredients of human happiness, we very rarely meet with the practice of this virtue an the world.

22. Every man is ready to give a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend, but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves.

Love and esteem are the first principles of friends.h.i.+p, which always is imperfect where either of these two is wanting.

23. As on the one hand, we are soon ashamed of loving a man whom we cannot esteem; so on the other, though we are truly sensible of a man's abilities, we can never raise ourselves to the warmths of friends.h.i.+p, without an affectionate good will towards his person.

24. Friends.h.i.+p immediately banishes envy under all its disguises. A man who can once doubt whether he should rejoice in his friend's being happier than himself, may depend upon it, that he is an utter stranger to this virtue.

25. There is something in friends.h.i.+p so very great and n.o.ble, that in those fict.i.tious stories which are invented to the honor of any particular person, the authors have thought it as necessary to make their hero a friend as a lover. _Achilles_ has his _Patroclus_, and _aeneas_ his _Achates_.

26. In the first of these instances we may observe, for the reputation of the subject I am treating of, that _Greece_ was almost ruined by the hero's love, but was preserved by his friends.h.i.+p.

27. The character of _Achates_ suggests to us an observation we may often make on the intimacies of great men, who frequently choose their companions rather for the qualities of the heart, than those of the head: and prefer fidelity, in an easy, inoffensive, complying temper, to those endowments which make a much greater figure among mankind.

28. I do not remember that _Achates_, who is represented as the first favourite, either gives his advice, or strikes a blow through the whole _aeneid_.

A friends.h.i.+p, which makes the least noise, is very often most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one.

29. _Atticus_, one of the best men of ancient _Rome_, was a very remarkable instance of what I am here speaking.--This extraordinary person, amidst the civil wars of his country, when he saw the designs of all parties equally tended to the subvention of liberty, by constantly preserving the esteem and affection of both the compet.i.tors, found means to serve his friends on either side: and while he sent money to young _Marius_, whose father was declared an enemy of the commonwealth, he was himself one of _Sylla's_ chief favourites, and always near that general.

30. During the war between _Caesar_ and _Pompey_, he still maintained the same conduct. After the death of Caesar, he sent money to _Brutus_, in his troubles, and did a thousand good offices to _Anthony's_ wife and friends, when the party seemed ruined. Lastly, even in that b.l.o.o.d.y war between _Anthony_ and _Augustus_, _Atticus_ still kept his place in both their friends.h.i.+ps; insomuch, that the first, says _Cornelius Nepos_, whenever he was absent from _Rome_, in any part of the empire, writ punctually to him what he was doing, what he read, and whither he intended to go; and the latter gave him constantly an exact account of all his affairs.

31. A likeness of inclinations in every particular is so far from being requisite to form a benevolence in two minds towards each other, as it is generally imagined, that I believe we shall find some of the firmest friends.h.i.+ps to have been contracted between persons of different humours; the mind being often pleased with those perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own accomplishments.

32. Besides that a man in some measure supplies his own defects, and fancies himself at second-hand possessed of those good qualities and endowments, which are in the possession of him who in the eye of the world is looked on as his other self.

33. The most difficult province in friends.h.i.+p is the letting a man see his faults and errors, which should, if possible, be so contrived, that he may perceive our advice is given him not so much to please ourselves, as for his own advantage. The reproaches, therefore, of a friend, should always be strictly just, and not too frequent.

34. The violent desire of pleasing in the person reproved may otherwise change into a despair of doing it, while he finds himself censured for faults he is not conscious of. A mind that is softened and humanized by friends.h.i.+p, cannot bear frequent reproaches: either it must quite sink under the oppression, or abate considerably of the value and esteem it had for him who bestows them.

35. The proper business of friends.h.i.+p is to inspire life and courage; and a soul, thus supported, out-does itself; whereas if it be unexpectedly deprived of those succours, it droops and languishes.

36. We are in some measure more inexcusable if we violate our duties to a friend, than to a relation; since the former arise from a voluntary choice, the latter from a necessity, to which we could not give our own consent.

37. As it has been said on one side, that a man ought not to break with a faulty friend, that he may not expose the weakness of his choice; it will doubtless hold much stronger with respect to a worthy one, that he may never be upbraided for having lost so valuable a treasure which was once in his possession.

_Detraction and Falsehood_

1. I have not seen you lately at any of the places where I visit, so that I am afraid you are wholly unacquainted with what pa.s.ses among my part of the world, who are, though I say it, without controversy, the most accomplished and best bred in the town.

2. Give me leave to tell you, that I am extremely discomposed when I hear scandal, and am an utter enemy to all manner of detraction, and think it the greatest meanness that people of distinction can be guilty of; however, it is hardly possible to come into company, where you do not find them pulling one another to pieces, and that from no other provocation but that of hearing any one commended.

3. Merit, both as to wit and beauty, is become no other than the possession of a few trifling people's favor, which you cannot possibly arrive at, if you have really any thing in you that is deserving.

4. What they would bring to pa.s.s is, to make all good and evil consist in report, and with whisper, calumnies, and impertinence, to have the conduct of those reports.

5. By this means innocents are blasted upon their first appearance in town: and there is nothing more required to make a young woman the object of envy and hatred, than to deserve love and admiration.

6. This abominable endeavour to suppressor lessen every thing that is praise-worthy, is as frequent among the men as women. If I can remember what pa.s.sed at a visit last night, it will serve as an instance that the s.e.xes are equally inclined to defamation, with equal malice, with equal impotence.

7. _Jack Triplett_ came into my Lady _Airy_'s about eight of the clock.

You know the manner we sit at a visit, and I need not describe the circle; but Mr. _Triplett_ came in, introduced by two tapers supported by a spruce servant, whose hair is under a cap till my lady's candles are all lighted up, and the hour of ceremony begins.

8. I say _Jack Triplett_ came in, and singing (for he is really good company) 'Every feature, charming creature,'--he went on. It is a most unreasonable thing that people cannot go peaceably to see their friends, but these murderers are let loose.

9. Such a shape! such an air! what a glance was that as her chariot pa.s.sed by mine!--My lady herself interrupted him: Pray, who is this fine thing?--I warrant, says another, 'tis the creature I was telling your ladys.h.i.+p of just now.

10. You were telling of? says _Jack_; I wish I had been so happy as to have come in and heard you, for I have not words to say what she is: but if an agreeable height, a modest air, a virgin shame, and impatience of being beheld, amidst a blaze of ten thousand charms--The whole room flew out--Oh, Mr. _Triplett_! When Mrs. _Lofty_, a known prude, said she believed she knew whom the gentleman meant; but she was, indeed, as he civilly represented her, impatient of being beheld. Then turning to the lady next her--The most unbred creature you ever saw.

11. Another pursued the discourse:--As unbred, madam, as you may think her, she is extremely belied if she is the novice she appears; she was last week at a ball till two in the morning: Mr. _Triplett_ knows whether he was the happy man that took care of her home; but--This was followed by some particular exception that each woman in the room made to some peculiar grace or advantage; so that Mr. _Triplett_ was beaten from one limb and feature to another, till he was forced to resign the whole woman.