Boswell records the following conversation on this subject between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Knowles (a Quaker lady).

Johnson: “All friendship is preferring the interest of a friend to the neglect or perhaps against the interest of others; so that an old Greek said, he that has friends has no friend.' Now Christianity recommends universal benevolence, to consider all men as our brethren; which is contrary to the virtue of friendship, as described by the ancient philosophers. Surely, madam, your sect must approve of this; for you call all men friends." Mrs. Knowles: "We are commanded to do good to all men, but especially to them that are of the household of faith!" Johnson : "Well, madam, the household of faith is wide enough." Mrs. Knowles: "But, Doctor, our Saviour had twelve Apostles, yet there was one whom he loved. John was called the disciple whom Jesus loved!" Johnson : (with eyes sparkling benignantly,) "Very well, indeed, madam. You have said very well." Boswell: "A fine application. Pray sir, had you ever thought of it?" Johnson: "I had not, sir."

But though there is certainly a spirit of exclusiveness in friendship itself, it does not follow that it is necessarily opposed to that universal philanthropy which is so incessantly and so beautifully recommended by the Christian religion. To entertain exactly the same esteem and love for all men is utterly impossible, because we esteem and love individuals for qualities with which all men are not equally endowed. There are also natural instincts which interfere with this equality of regard. Every mother must prefer the interest of her own offspring to that of others. All that can be expected from us is, the cultivation of a spirit of charity and good-will towards the whole human race; and they who are capable of an intense and passionate friendship cannot be cruel or cold-hearted towards any portion of their fellow-creatures. In fact, in the composition of a genuine friendship there are many of the highest and most generous virtues. A merely selfish man

cannot be a friend, neither can an evil-minded or a foolish one. Voltaire defines friendship

a tacit contract between two sensible

and virtuous persons." “The wicked,” he says, "have only

accomplices; the voluptuous, companions; the interested, asso

ciates; idle men, connexions; and princes, courtiers. Cethegus," he adds, "was the accomplice of Cataline, and Mæcenas, the courtier of Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus."

There are many delightful examples of literary friendship. Perhaps one reason of the fervour of friendship between men of letters is their facility of mental intercourse. They are in the habit of clothing their most subtle thoughts and associations in a transparent diction. The communion of such men is perfect, and the intense delight with which they compare minds, and kindle at the social collision of their most secret conceptions, is inconceivable by ordinary persons. Their mental characters are more firmly fixed, and their opinions are not liable to be affected by the breath of frivolous scandal or by slight external occurrences. They live as it were in a world of their own, in which there are fewer mutabilities than in the material world with which other men are connected. They do not care for the idle gossip of society. Their conversation is about departed spirits, and is full of glorious abstractions. They are hand and glove with Milton and Shakspeare, with Bacon and with Newton, while they have not even a bowing acquaintance with their next-door neighbour. How beautiful an instance of literary friendship is that of Beaumont and Fletcher, whose labours were so mingled, that no critic has been able to separate them! Their union is eternal! It is scarcely necessary to allude to the friendship of Virgil and Horace, Petrarch and Boccacio, Chaucer and Gower, Surrey and Wyatt, Milton and Marvel, Cowley and Harvey, Isaac Walton and Charles Cotton, Lloyd and Churchill, Pope and Swift, and Byron and Moore. Of these interesting literary friendships almost every one must have read. How touchingly has Gray commemorated his affection for West, in the following Sonnet. "In vain to me the smiling morning shines,

And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.

These ears, alas, for other notes repine;
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;

To warm their little loves the birds complain,
I fruitless mourn for him that cannot hear,

And weep the more because I weep in vain."

The friendship of Montaigne and Stephen de Boetius was such as is rarely known in ordinary life,—“ a friendship so entire, and so perfect, that certainly the like is hardly to be found in story." Nothing can exceed the passionate and disinterested tenderness with which they regarded each other. After the death of Boetius, of which his friend has given us so pathetic a relation, life seemed one dark tedious night" to the survivor. "From the day that

I lost him," says Montaigne, "I have only languished in life, and the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of comforting me, double my affliction for the loss of him. We were half-sharers in every thing; and methinks, by outliving him, I defraud him of his share." This approaches nearly to Dryden's somewhat extravagant description of friendship in his "All for Love."

"I was his soul: he lived not but in me;
We were so closed within each other's breast,
The rivets were not found that joined us first;
That does not reach us yet; we were so mixed,
As meeting streams, both to ourselves were lost:
We were one mass: we could not give nor take,
But from the same; for he was I, I he.

Young puts the loss of a friend in a still stronger light:

"When friends part

'Tis the survivor dies."

It is this kind of social intercourse which is described by Seneca.

Friendship," says he, "lays all things common, and nothing can be good to the one that is ill to the other. I do not speak of such a community as to destroy one another's propriety; but as the father and mother have two childern, not one a piece, but each of them two." When we consider what are the real claims of friendship, and look around us in the world in search of a true friend, we may well despair of success. He who has one such treasure may think himself supremely fortunate. Ordinary connections in society are merely supported by an interchange of interests, which is interrupted at the first inequality. This commerce of benefits is attended with as much selfishness and mean arithmetic on both sides as the negociations of the lowest traders. It resolves itself into the simple question of profit and loss. The general craving for society and intolerance of solitude is not so much traceable to a spirit of sociality as to an uneasy vacancy of mind, and the absence of internal and independent sources of amusement. Most men are anxious to escape from their own thoughts, and dread the dulness of a self-conversation. They find their own company insupportable, and are sometimes compelled to fly for relief even to those whom they despise. Thus, kings," as Burke says, are fond of low company," because in such society they can best forget their own wearisome identity, and throw off that uneasy weight of satiety and care which is peculiar to their isolated condition. The friendship which seems so abundant in general society is a sad illusion, and nothing can be more contradictory and absurd than the manner in which the mass of people speak, in their absence, of those whom they call their friends. They should ask themselves how far they would be ready to sacrifice their own immediate interest for the benefit of

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these dear associates. If the life of one of them depended on an expensive voyage that was beyond his means, would they pay the cost? If he were to die, would it deprive them of any portion of their usual appetite or sleep? "Not a jot!" Dr. Johnson, who was at least as capable of the

virtue of friendship

as the generality of men, has very candidly confessed the small extent of his own sympathy in the fate of others. If he had not the requisite fervour and disinterestedness of genuine friendship, he was at all events no hypocrite, and was equally willing to read his own heart, and to lay it open to the gaze of others. When he was asked, what his feelings would be if one of his friends were apprehended for an offence for which he might be hanged: he replied, "I should do what I could to bail him, and give him any other assistance; but if he were once fairly hanged I should not suffer." "Would you eat your dinner that day, sir?" inquired Boswell. "Yes, sir; and eat it as if he were eating with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow; friends have risen up for him on all sides; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in depressing the mind." This seems a disheartening account of human nature; but I am afraid it is the true one. Those who have more sympathy for their fellows are perhaps but rare exceptions to the general character of mankind. Dr. Johnson, cursed as he was with a hypochondriacal temperament, had a deep sense of the necessity of friendship. After the loss of many friends, whose praise he valued, he makes a touching allusion to his desolate condition, in the preface to his Dictionary. "I may surely," says he, "be contented without the praise of perfection, which if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me?" But the death of friends made little impression upon him when he had the means of supplying their place with other associates. He used to talk of the necessity of repairing his friendships with new