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Page 5
'_Elles._ When the world was younger, perhaps there was more of this
friendship. David and Jonathan!--How does their friendship begin? I
know it is very beautiful; but I have forgotten the words. Dunsford
will tell us.
'_Dunsford._ "And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young
man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the
Bethlehemite. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking
unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."
'_Elles._ Now that men are more complex, they would require so much.
For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an
uncommunicative man: that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen
people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that
you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more
openly than most people; but there is a skilful fencing even in our
talk. We are not inclined to say the whole of what we think.
'_Mil._. What I should need in a friend would be a certain breadth of
nature: I have no sympathy with people who can disturb themselves
about small things; who crave the world's good opinion; are anxious to
prove themselves always in the right; can be immersed in personal talk
or devoted to self-advancement; who seem to have grown up entirely
from the _earth_, whereas even the plants draw most of their
sustenance from the air of heaven.
'_Elles._ That is a high flight. I am not prepared to say all that. I
do not object to a little earthiness. What I should fear in friendship
is the comment, and interference, and talebearing, I often see
connected with it.
'_Mil._ That does not particularly belong to friendship, but comes
under the general head of injudicious comment on the part of those who
live with us. Divines often remind us, that in forming our ideas of
the government of Providence, we should recollect that we see only a
fragment. The same observation, in its degree, is true too as regards
human conduct. We see a little bit here and there, and assume the
nature of the whole. Even a very silly man's actions are often more to
the purpose than his friend's comments upon them.
'_Elles._ True! Then I should not like to have a man for a friend who
would bind me down to be consistent, who would form a minute theory of
me which was not to be contradicted.
'_Mil._ If he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with
yours--to use the words of Scripture--he would not demand this
consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable
vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with
another, he would not be greatly surprised or vexed at that other's
inconsistencies.
'_Duns._ There always seems to me a want of tenderness in what are
called friendships in the present day. Now, for instance, I don't
understand a man ridiculing his friend. The joking of intimates often
appears to me coarse and harsh. You will laugh at this in me, and
think it rather effeminate, I am afraid.
'_Mil._ No; I do not. I think a great deal of jocose raillery may pass
between intimates without the requisite tenderness being infringed
upon. If any friend had been in a painful and ludicrous position (such
as when Cardinal Balue in full dress is run away with on horseback,
which Scott comments upon as one of a class of situations combining
"pain, peril, and absurdity"), I would not remind him of it. Why
should I bring back a disagreeable impression to his mind? Besides, it
would be more painful than ludicrous to me. I should enter into his
feelings rather than into those of the ordinary spectator.
'_Duns._ I am glad we are of the same mind in this.
'_Mil._ I have also a notion that, even in the common friendships of
the world, we should be very stanch defenders of our absent friends.
Supposing that our friend's character or conduct is justly attacked in
our hearing upon some point, we should be careful to let the light and
worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they
should go away with something of the impression that we have of him;
instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that
was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our
hearts--mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and
rather liked than otherwise, if the truth must be told.
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