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coursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words. Finally, he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said. by Themistocles 1 to the king of Persia, "That speech was like cloth of arras, opened, and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas, in thoughts, they lie but as in packs." 2 Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are best); but even without that a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation, which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas: "Dry light is ever the best." And certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth and that a man giveth himself as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self; and there is no such

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1 Themistocles, statesman and commander of Athens. "Another reading: "Themistocles said of speech: That it was like Arras that spread abroad shews fair images, but contracted is but like packs."

A Greek philosopher.

remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometime too piercing and corrosive. Reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case. But the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities many, especially of the greater sort, do commit for want of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their fame and fortune. For, as St. James saith, they are as men "that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favour." As for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-andtwenty letters;1 or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations to think himself all in all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight; and if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces, asking counsel in one business of one man and in another business of another man, it is well-that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all; but he runneth two dangers: one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled: for it is a rare thing,

1U and J are modern letters. In the 16th Century J and I were not differentiated, and the distinction between U and V was not established.

except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it; the other, that he shall have counsel given hurtful and unsafe, though with good meaning, and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy; even as if you would call a physician that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body, and therefore may put you in way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and so cure the disease and kill the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience. And therefore rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead than settle and direct.

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections and support of the judgment) followeth the last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels. I mean aid, and bearing a part, in all actions and occasions. Here 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. How many things are there 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. But to enumerate these things were endless. I have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his own part. If he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.

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OF ADVERSITY

T was an high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired: Bona rerum secundarum, optabilia; adversarum mirabilia. Certainly, if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen). It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a God: Verè magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei. This would have done better in poetry, where transcendencies are more allowed. And the poets, indeed, have been busy with it; for it is, in effect, the thing which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without mystery; nay, and to have some approach to the state of a Christian: that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus,1 by whom human nature is represented, sailed the length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher, lively describing Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail barque of the flesh through the waves of the world. But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old

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1 Prometheus, one of the Titans, whom Jupiter punished for fashioning men of clay and animating them with fire, by binding him to a rock and sending an eagle to prey on his liver. Hercules released him.