Thoughts on Man [100]
What he seeks for, is a true friend, a being who sincerely loves, one who is attached to him, not for the accidents that attend him, hut for what most strictly belongs to him, and of which he cannot be divested. In this friend there is neither interested intention nor rivalry.
Such are the characteristic features of the superior party in these exemplars of friendship among the ancients. Of the unpretending, unassuming party Homer, the great master of the affections and emotions in remoter ages, has given us the fullest portrait in the character of Patroclus. The distinguishing feature of his disposition is a melting and affectionate spirit, the concentred essence of tenderness and humanity. When Patroclus comes from witnessing the disasters of the Greeks, to collect a report of which he had been sent by Achilles, he is "overwhelmed with floods of tears, like a spring which pours down its waters from the steep edge of a precipice." It is thus that Jupiter characterises him when he lies dead in the field of battle:
Thou [addressing himself in his thoughts to Hector] hast slain the friend of Achilles, not less memorable for the blandness of his temper, than the bravery of his deeds.
It is thus that Menelaus undertakes to excite the Grecian chiefs to rescue his body:
Let each man recollect the sweetness of his disposition for, as long as he lived, he was unremitted in kindness to all. When Achilles proposes the games at the funeral, he says, "On any other occasion my horses should have started for the prize, but now it cannot be. They have lost their incomparable groom, who was accustomed to refresh their limbs with water, and anoint their flowing manes; and they are inconsolable." Briseis also makes her appearance among the mourners, avowing that, "when her husband had been slain in battle, and her native city laid in ashes, this generous man prevented her tears, averring to her, that she should be the wife of her conqueror, and that he would himself spread the nuptial banquet for her in the hero's native kingdom of Phthia."
The reciprocity which belongs to a friendship between unequals may well be expected to give a higher zest to their union. Each party is necessary to the other. The superior considers him towards whom he pours out his affection, as a part of himself.
The head is not more native to the heart, The hand more instrumental to the mouth.
He cannot separate himself from him, but at the cost of a fearful maim. When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all necessary to him. He is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. If the principal, instead of being a public man, is a man of science, this kind of unbending becomes certainly not the less welcome to him. He wishes occasionally to forget the severity of his investigations, neither to have his mind any longer wound up and stretched to the height of meditation, nor to feel that he needs to be any way on his guard, or not completely to give the rein to all his sallies and the sportiveness of his soul. Having been for a considerable time shut up in sequestered reflection, he wishes, it may be, to have the world, the busy impassioned world, brought to his ears, without his being obliged to enter into its formalities and mummeries. If he desires to speak of the topics which had so deeply engaged him, he can keep as near the edge as he pleases, and drop or resume them as his fancy may prompt. And it seems useless to say, how much his modest and unassuming friend will be gratified in being instrumental to relieve the labours of his principal, in feeling that he is necessary to him, and in meditating on the delight he receives in being made the chosen companion and confident of him whom he so ardently admires. It was precisely in this spirit, that Fulke Greville, two hundred years ago, directed that it should be inscribed on his tomb, "Here lies the friend of Sir Philip
Such are the characteristic features of the superior party in these exemplars of friendship among the ancients. Of the unpretending, unassuming party Homer, the great master of the affections and emotions in remoter ages, has given us the fullest portrait in the character of Patroclus. The distinguishing feature of his disposition is a melting and affectionate spirit, the concentred essence of tenderness and humanity. When Patroclus comes from witnessing the disasters of the Greeks, to collect a report of which he had been sent by Achilles, he is "overwhelmed with floods of tears, like a spring which pours down its waters from the steep edge of a precipice." It is thus that Jupiter characterises him when he lies dead in the field of battle:
Thou [addressing himself in his thoughts to Hector] hast slain the friend of Achilles, not less memorable for the blandness of his temper, than the bravery of his deeds.
It is thus that Menelaus undertakes to excite the Grecian chiefs to rescue his body:
Let each man recollect the sweetness of his disposition for, as long as he lived, he was unremitted in kindness to all. When Achilles proposes the games at the funeral, he says, "On any other occasion my horses should have started for the prize, but now it cannot be. They have lost their incomparable groom, who was accustomed to refresh their limbs with water, and anoint their flowing manes; and they are inconsolable." Briseis also makes her appearance among the mourners, avowing that, "when her husband had been slain in battle, and her native city laid in ashes, this generous man prevented her tears, averring to her, that she should be the wife of her conqueror, and that he would himself spread the nuptial banquet for her in the hero's native kingdom of Phthia."
The reciprocity which belongs to a friendship between unequals may well be expected to give a higher zest to their union. Each party is necessary to the other. The superior considers him towards whom he pours out his affection, as a part of himself.
The head is not more native to the heart, The hand more instrumental to the mouth.
He cannot separate himself from him, but at the cost of a fearful maim. When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all necessary to him. He is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. If the principal, instead of being a public man, is a man of science, this kind of unbending becomes certainly not the less welcome to him. He wishes occasionally to forget the severity of his investigations, neither to have his mind any longer wound up and stretched to the height of meditation, nor to feel that he needs to be any way on his guard, or not completely to give the rein to all his sallies and the sportiveness of his soul. Having been for a considerable time shut up in sequestered reflection, he wishes, it may be, to have the world, the busy impassioned world, brought to his ears, without his being obliged to enter into its formalities and mummeries. If he desires to speak of the topics which had so deeply engaged him, he can keep as near the edge as he pleases, and drop or resume them as his fancy may prompt. And it seems useless to say, how much his modest and unassuming friend will be gratified in being instrumental to relieve the labours of his principal, in feeling that he is necessary to him, and in meditating on the delight he receives in being made the chosen companion and confident of him whom he so ardently admires. It was precisely in this spirit, that Fulke Greville, two hundred years ago, directed that it should be inscribed on his tomb, "Here lies the friend of Sir Philip