others;—if I should compare it all, I say, with the four years I had the happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, 'tis nothing but smoke, an obscure and tedious night. From the day that I lost him

"A day to me forever sad, forever sacred, so have you willed, ye gods" (Virgil)—

I have only led a languishing life; and the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of administering anything of consolation, double my affliction for his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree that methinks by outliving him I defraud him of his part:

"I have prescribed to myself that it is not rightful

to enjoy any pleasure, so long as he, my partner in
such great ones, is away" (Terence).

I was so grown and accustomed to be always his double in all places and in all things that methinks I am no more than half of myself:

"If a superior force has taken that part of my soul, why do I, the remaining one, linger behind? What is left is not so dear, nor an entire thing: this day has wrought the destruction of both" (Horace). There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss him; as I know that he would have missed me: for as he surpassed me by infinite degrees in virtue and all other accomplishments, so he also did in the duties of friendship:

"What shame can there be, or measure, in lamenting so dear a friend?" (Horace).

"O brother, taken from me miserable! With thee all our joys have vanished, those joys which, in thy life, thy dear love nourished. Dying, thou, my brother, hast destroyed all my happiness. My whole soul is buried with thee. Thou dead, I have bidden adieu to the muses, to all the studies which charmed my mind. No more can I speak to thee; no more hear thy voice. Never again shall I see thee, O brother dearer to me than life. Naught remains, but that I love thee while life shall endure" (Catullus).

IT

OF FRIENDSHIP1

Francis Bacon

had been hard for him that spake it to have put more

truth and untruth together, in few words, than in that speech: Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the Divine Nature; except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. 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,2 because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of

1 The text is that of the third edition of the Essays, considerably modernized.

2 Where the inhabitants are many, great is the solitude.

the fullness 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; flowers 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.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak, so great as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes in regard of the distance of their fortuné from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be as it were companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privados,1 as if it were matter of grace or conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum,2 for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's overmatch. For when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and

1 Spanish for favorites or court minions.

2 Partners in care.

that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again and in effect bade him be quiet, for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun setting. With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder, after his nephew. And this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death. For when Cæsar would have discharged the Senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm, out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the Senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream.1 And it seemeth his favor was so great as Antonius in a letter, which is recited verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him venefica (witch), as if he had enchanted Cæsar. Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height as when he consulted with Mecenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took the liberty to tell him that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa or take away his life, there was no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus had ascended to that height as they two were termed and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith: Haec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi; 2 and the whole Senate dedicated an altar to friendship as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two. The like or more was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son, and did write also in a letter to the Senate, by these words: I love the man so well as I wish he may over-live me. Now if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength

1 Would not, that is, refuse to convene the Senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream.

2 These things, because of our friendship, I have not concealed.

and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire; and yet, which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews, and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

It is not to be forgotten, what Commineus 1 observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none; and least of all those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on and saith that towards his latter time that closeness did impair and a little perish 2 his understanding. Surely Commineus might have. made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Lewis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. 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. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is that this 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. So that it is, in truth of operation upon a man's mind, of like virtue as the alchemists use to attribute to their stone, for man's body: that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature. For in bodies union strengtheneth and cher

3

1 A Latinized form of Commynes.

2 That is, cause to perish.

That is, without resorting to alchemists for a comparison.