FRIENDSHIP. Thick waters shew no images of things: Nothing can 'scape their search who know the thoughts; Is like a painter when his hands are tied. CATH. PHILLIPS. THERE is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art. Let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters than thy inferiors, shunning always such as are poor and needy; for if thou givest twenty gifts, and refuse to do the like but once, all that thou hast done will be lost, and such men will become thy mortal enemies. Such therefore, as are thy inferiors, will follow thee but to eat thee out, and when thou leavest to feed them, they will hate thee. SIR WALTER RALEGH. IF thy friends be of better quality than thyself, thou mayest be sure of two things; the First, that they will be more careful to keep thy counsel, because they have more to lose than thou hast. The Second, they will esteem thee for thyself, and not for that which thou dost possess. But, if thou be subject to any great vanity or ill, then therein trust no man, for every man's folly ought to be his greatest secret. 1 SIR WALTER RALEGH. TAKE special care that thou never trust any friend or servant with any matter that may endanger thine estate; for so shalt thou make thyself a bond-slave to him that thou trustest, and leave thyself always to his mercy. And be sure of this, thou shalt never find a friend in thy young years, whose conditions and qualities. will please thee after thou comest to more discretion and judgment, and then all thou givest is lost, and all wherein thou shalt trust such an one will be discovered. IBID. THOU mayest be sure, that he that will in private tell thee thy faults, is thy friend, for he adventures thy mislike, and doth hazard thy hatred, for there are few men that can endure it, every man, for the most part, delighting in self praise, which is one of the most universal follies which bewitcheth mankind. SIR WALTER RALEGH. THERE is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals, which are wont to be magnified. That that is, is between superior and inferior, whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other. LORD BACON. TO take advice of some few friends, is ever honourable, for lookers-on many times see more than gamesters, and the vale best discovereth the hill. IBID. THE 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 to open the liver; steel to open the spleen; flower of sulphur for the lungs; castoreum 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. IBID. THE parable of Pythagoras is dark but true, Cor ne edito; "Eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their own hearts. 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. 2 LORD BACON. 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 other's, is sometimes unproper for our case: but the best receipt (best I say to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. IBID. 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. LORD BACON. HOW many things there are 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. IBID. 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; because, in a great town, |