INDISCRIMINATE FRIENDSHIP.
THE future Cicero, who composes a modern "De Amicitia," when he has exhausted the common stock of platitudes on the subject of friendship will propound, no doubt, an interesting conundrum. What, he will ask, in his slightly pedantic manner, is the quantitative limit of friendship ? How many friends is it possible for a man to have, so that the relation between him and them still maintains its true character and does not decline into mere acquaintance ? And then he will point out in his luminous way that the puzzle cannot be solved by arithmetic. The answer will vary with the nature of the individual man. One will have a genius for friendship and be .able to bring a multitude within the circle of his life ; another will be a man of rare and intimate attachments. Friendship in the one case may be as real a thing as in the other, provided that each gives and receives what is due to it. For our philosopher will share the modern suspicion of those people who swim through life on a current of thin popularity. We all know the man against whom no one has a word to say. The. whole world speaks well of him, for he speaks well of all the world ; but there is no great. fervour of conviction in the compliments of either. He will never " crab " an acquaintance ; he will find excuses for everybody; his manners are kindly and agreeable, with just a suspicion of detachment in them. He inspires no enmities, but, on the other hand, he awakens. no very real attachments. His easy good nature does harm to no one, but be is too negative, too colourless, to be of great service to anybody. The majority of mankind do lip-service to his merits, but in their heart of hearts they condemn him. For the world at the back of its head has a tenderness for the "rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntary." It prefers a man to have bold preferences and to declare them boldly, to dislike as well as to like, and to show that next to the love of his friends be courts the hatred of those whom he despises. It is an unregenerate spirit,' but it is in accordance with human nature, which has an old liking for positives. This is the reason why a number of epithets which appear com- mendatory on the surface are generally looked on as debased currency. "Worthy," "honest," "good-natured," a "good sort,"—there is something dim and shallow about the beings they describe. They seem to imply an absence of other virtues, so that the sum total of character is insignificant. " Worthy " has come to denote a kind of bourgeois dulness of mind. "Honest" in common parlance suggests that a man comes, like Bunyan's Old Honest, from the "Town of Stupidity which lieth four leagues beyond the City of Destruction." A "good sort" means too often, as Lady Louisa Stuart said, "a good person of a bad sort." And the same significance has come to attach to the man who is reported to have a thousand friends and not an enemy.
This prejudice against indiscriminate friendship is amply justified when we consider the meaning of that much-abused term. Bacon, it will be remembered, makes a distinction between " friends " and "followers." A man may have as many as he pleases of the latter, for lie gives them nothing but a little easy patronage. They are his inferiors, not hie equals, and friendship is only for the latter. For it means that two people are desperately interested in each other's well- being. According to the old saying of the Greeks, "a friend is a second self." This second self must be prepared to deal faithfully with the other—" there is no such Remedy against Flattery of a Man's Selfe as the Liberty of a Friend "—to sacrifice its own interests on occasion, to identify its fortunes with those of its countertype. Bacon has summed up in famous words the character of such an alliance. "After these two Noble Fruits of Friendship (Peace in the Affections and Support of the Judgement) follocveth the last Fruit, which is like the Posnegranat, full of many kernels ; I meane Aid, and Bearing a Part in all Actions and Occasions." Every man who is capable of friendship knows in his heart that the gibe of the French maximist, "Thieve is something not entirely displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends," is ludicrously untrue. It derives its point solely from the loose usage which in ordinary life treats acquaintance and friendship as identical, and uses the latter word for both. But if friendship be this rare and perfect understanding, which the world admits it to be, it can never be indiscriminate. The capacity of man is limited, and since friendship involves giving and taking, it clearly admits of no indefinite extension. Some men, to be sure, have a genius for it. Quite sincerely and truthfully they can say that they have many friends, each of whom is a vital part of their life. Men of superabundant vitality and warm affections may reasonably snake the claim, and their fellows will admit it. But the ordinary person has no vitality to spare. If his friendship has a large area, we may be sure that it is spread very thin. For most men only a few friend- ships are possible, and the world instinctively recognises the fact, and looks with suspicion upon the friend of every- body. For what value can there be in the friendship of such a one ? A weak toleration means either intellectual stupidity or a cold heart. "If you call me your friend," it may be argued, "and extend the same friendship to some one I despise, you pay me a poor compliment. And if I find that half the world shares in the inestimable privilege, I am entitled to rate it pretty low. For you are neither saint nor genius, and your good humour is due neither to Christian charity nor to surpassing wisdom. Either you are singularly stupid or singularly lacking in taste, and in either case you do not know what friendship means."
This prejudice against a weak amiability is so solidly founded in reason that it may be taken as part of the rough. philosophy of life. But, like all sound instincts, it can be exaggerated ; and, carried too far, it becomes a very un- pleasing compound of cynicism and irritable jealousy. In his " Flight of the Duchess" Browning has drawn a picture of another Sir Willoughby Patterne, pompous, jealous, with a crazy feudal sense of possession. The unhappy Duchess, who looks out on the world with frank and kindly eyes, is crushed by his narrow proprietorship, and most properly goes off to gipsyland. But Browning never forgot that there were two sides to all human quarrels, and in "My Last Duchess" he allowed the Duke—a different and less ignoble Duke, to be sure—to state his case. He complains of a friendliness so universal and unthinking that it left no place for the affection he desired :—
"She had A heart—bow shall I say P—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed ; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one ! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good ! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-year-old name With anybody's gift."
No doubt the Duke was a fool and a prig, but—it is hard to avoid the admission that he had something to say for himself. And the old complaint, which comes most commonly from the lover, is not less in reason in the mouth of the friend.
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