IOLÄUS




                                 IOLÄUS

                       AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRIENDSHIP
                                EDITED BY
                            EDWARD CARPENTER

                      [_Second edition, enlarged_]

                              PUBLISHED BY
                     SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co. LIMITED
                     HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, LONDON
                           AND BY S. CLARKE AT
                       41, GRANBY ROW, MANCHESTER
                                  MCMVI




  “_And as to the loves of Hercules it is difficult to record them
  because of their number. But some who think that Ioläus was one
  of them, do to this day worship and honour him; and make their
  loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb._”

                                                         (_Plutarch_)




PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION


The degree to which Friendship, in the early history of the world, has
been recognised as an institution, and the dignity ascribed to it, are
things hardly realized to-day. Yet a very slight examination of the
subject shows the important part it has played. In making the following
collection I have been much struck by the remarkable manner in which the
customs of various races and times illustrate each other, and the way in
which they point to a solid and enduring body of human sentiment on the
subject. By arranging the extracts in a kind of rough chronological and
evolutionary order from those dealing with primitive races onwards, the
continuity of these customs comes out all the more clearly, as well as
their slow modification in course of time. But it must be confessed that
the present collection is only incomplete, and a small contribution, at
best, towards a large subject.

In the matter of quotation and translation, my best thanks are due to
various authors and holders of literary copyrights for their assistance
and authority; and especially to the Master and Fellows of Balliol
College for permission to quote from the late Professor Jowett’s
translation of Plato’s dialogues; to Messrs. George Bell & Sons for
leave to make use of the Bohn series; to Messrs. A. & C. Black for leave
of quotation from the late J. Addington Symonds’ _Studies of the Greek
Poets_; and to Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for sanction of extracts
from the Rev. W. H. Hutchings’ translation of the _Confessions of St.
Augustine_. In cases where no reference is given the translations are by
the Editor.

                                                                    E. C.

_March, 1902._




CONTENTS


                                                                     _page_

       Preface                                                           v.

    I. Friendship-customs in the Pagan and Early World                   1

   II. The place of Friendship in Greek Life and Thought                39

  III. Poetry of Friendship among the Greeks and Romans                 65

   IV. Friendship in Early Christian and Mediæval Times                 95

    V. The Renaissance and Modern Times                                121

       Additions [1906]                                                183

       Index                                                           225




I.

_Friendship-Customs in the Pagan & Early World_




_Friendship-Customs in the Pagan & Early World_


Friendship-Customs, of a very marked and definite character, have
apparently prevailed among a great many primitive peoples; but the
information that we have about them is seldom thoroughly satisfactory.
Travellers have been content to note external ceremonies, like the
exchange of names between comrades, or the mutual tasting of each other’s
blood, but—either from want of perception or want of opportunity—have
not been able to tell us anything about the inner meaning of these
formalities, or the sentiments which may have inspired them. Still,
we have material enough to indicate that comrade-attachment has been
recognised as an important institution, and held in high esteem,
among quite savage tribes; and some of the following quotations will
show this. When we come to the higher culture of the Greek age the
material fortunately is abundant—not only for the customs, but (in Greek
philosophy and poetry) for the inner sentiments which inspired these
customs. Consequently it will be found that the major part of this and
the following two chapters deals with matter from Greek sources. The
later chapters carry on the subject in loosely historical sequence
through the Christian centuries down to modern times.

[Sidenote: _Primitive Ceremony_]

The Balonda are an African tribe inhabiting Londa land, among the
Southern tributaries of the Congo River. They were visited by
Livingstone, and the following account of their customs is derived from
him:—

  “The Balonda have a most remarkable custom of cementing
  friendship. When two men agree to be special friends they go
  through a singular ceremony. The men sit opposite each other
  holding hands, and by the side of each is a vessel of beer.
  Slight cuts are then made on the clasped hands, on the pit of the
  stomach, on the right cheek, and on the forehead. The point of a
  grass-blade is pressed against each of these cuts, so as to take
  up a little of the blood, and each man washes the grass-blade
  in his own beer vessel. The vessels are then exchanged and the
  contents drunk, so that each imbibes the blood of the other.
  The two are thenceforth considered as blood-relations, and are
  bound to assist each other in every possible manner. While the
  beer is being drunk, the friends of each of the men beat on the
  ground with clubs, and bawl out certain sentences as ratification
  of the treaty. It is thought correct for all the friends of
  each party to the contract to drink a little of the beer. The
  ceremony is called ‘Kasendi.’ After it has been completed, gifts
  are exchanged, and both parties always give their most precious
  possessions.” _Natural History of Man. Rev. J. G. Wood. Vol:
  Africa_, p. 419.

[Sidenote: _Exchange of Names_]

Among the Manganjas and other tribes of the Zambesi region, Livingstone
found the custom of changing names prevalent.

  “Sininyane (a headman) had exchanged names with a Zulu at
  Shupanga, and on being called the next morning made no answer;
  to a second and third summons he paid no attention; but at
  length one of his men replied, ‘He is not Sininyane now, he is
  Moshoshoma;’ and to this name he answered promptly. The custom of
  exchanging names with men of other tribes is not uncommon; and
  the exchangers regard themselves as close comrades, owing special
  duties to each other ever after. Should one by chance visit his
  comrade’s town, he expects to receive food, lodging, and other
  friendly offices from him.” _Narrative of an Expedition to the
  Zambesi. By David and Charles Livingstone. Murray_, 1865, p. 148.

[Sidenote: _David and Jonathan_]

In the story of David and Jonathan, which follows, we have an example,
from much the same stage of primitive tribal life, of a compact between
two friends—one the son of the chief, the other a shepherd youth—only in
this case, in the song of David (“I am distressed for thee, my brother
Jonathan, thy love to me was wonderful”) we are fortunate in having the
inner feeling preserved for us. It should be noted that Jonathan gives to
David his “most precious possessions.”

  “And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine
  (Goliath), he said unto Abner, the captain of the host, ‘Abner,
  whose son is this youth?’ And Abner said, ‘As thy soul liveth, O
  King, I cannot tell.’ And the King said, ‘Inquire thou whose son
  the stripling is.’ And as David returned from the slaughter of
  the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with
  the head of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him,
  ‘Whose son art thou, young man?’ And David answered, ‘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. And Saul took him that
  day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house.
  Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as
  his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was
  upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his
  sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.” _1 Sam._ ch. xvii. 55.

[Sidenote: _Flower Friends_]

With regard to the exchange of names, a slightly different custom
prevails among the Bengali coolies. Two youths, or two girls, will
exchange two flowers (of the same kind) with each other, in token of
perpetual alliance. After that, one speaks of the other as “my flower,”
but never alludes to the other by _name_ again—only by some roundabout
phrase.

[Sidenote: _Polynesia Tahiti_]

Herman Melville, who voyaged among the Pacific Islands in 1841-1845,
gives some interesting and reliable accounts of Polynesian customs of
that period. He says:—

  “The really curious way in which all the Polynesians are in the
  habit of making bosom friends at the shortest possible notice is
  deserving of remark. Although, among a people like the Tahitians,
  vitiated as they are by sophisticating influences, this custom
  has in most cases degenerated into a mere mercenary relation,
  it nevertheless had its origin in a fine, and in some instances
  heroic, sentiment formerly entertained by their fathers.

  “In the annals of the island (Tahiti) are examples of extravagant
  friendships, unsurpassed by the story of Damon and Pythias, in
  truth, much more wonderful; for notwithstanding the devotion—even
  of life in some cases—to which they led, they were frequently
  entertained at first sight for some stranger from another
  island.” _Omoo_, _Herman Melville_, ch. 39, p. 154.

  “Though little inclined to jealousy in (ordinary) love-matters,
  the Tahitian will hear of no rivals in his friendship.” _Ibid_,
  ch. 40.

[Sidenote: _Marquesas Islands_]

Melville spent some months on one of the Marquesas Islands, in a valley
occupied by a tribe called Typees; one day there turned up a stranger
belonging to a hostile tribe who occupied another part of the island:—

  “The stranger could not have been more than twenty-five years of
  age, and was a little above the ordinary height; had he been a
  single hair’s breadth taller, the matchless symmetry of his form
  would have been destroyed. His unclad limbs were beautifully
  formed; whilst the elegant outline of his figure, together with
  his beardless cheeks, might have entitled him to the distinction
  of standing for the statue of the Polynesian Apollo; and indeed
  the oval of his countenance and the regularity of every feature
  reminded me of an antique bust. But the marble repose of art
  was supplied by a warmth and liveliness of expression only to
  be seen in the South Sea Islander under the most favourable
  developments of nature.... When I expressed my surprise (at his
  venturing among the Typees) he looked at me for a moment as
  if enjoying my perplexity, and then with his strange vivacity
  exclaimed—‘Ah! me taboo—me go Nukuheva—me go Tior—me go Typee—me
  go everywhere—nobody harm me, me taboo.’

  “This explanation would have been altogether unintelligible to
  me, had it not recalled to my mind something I had previously
  heard concerning a singular custom among these islanders.
  Though the country is possessed by various tribes, whose mutual
  hostilities almost wholly preclude any intercourse between
  them; yet there are instances where a person having ratified
  friendly relations with some individual belonging to the valley,
  whose inmates are at war with his own, may under particular
  restrictions venture with impunity into the country of his
  friend, where under other circumstances he would have been
  treated as an enemy. In this light are personal friendships
  regarded among them, and the individual so protected is said to
  be ‘taboo,’ and his person to a certain extent is held as sacred.
  Thus the stranger informed me he had access to all the valleys in
  the island.” _Typee_, _Herman Melville_, ch. xviii.

In almost all primitive nations, warfare has given rise to institutions
of military comradeship—including, for instance, institutions of
instruction for young warriors, of personal devotion to their leaders,
or of personal attachment to each other. In Greece these customs were
specially defined, as later quotations will show.

[Sidenote: _Tacitus on Military Comradeship_]

Tacitus, speaking of the arrangement among the Germans by which each
military chief was surrounded by younger companions in arms, says:—

  “There is great emulation among the companions, which shall
  possess the highest place in the favour of their chief; and
  among the chiefs, which shall excel in the number and valour
  of his companions. It is their dignity, their strength, to be
  always surrounded with a large body of select youth, an ornament
  in peace, a bulwark in war... In the field of battle, it is
  disgraceful for the chief to be surpassed in valour; it is
  disgraceful for the companions not to equal their chief; but it
  is reproach and infamy during a whole succeeding life to retreat
  from the field surviving him. To aid, to protect him; to place
  their own gallant actions to the account of his glory is their
  first and most sacred engagement.” _Tacitus_, _Germania_, 13, 14,
  _Bohn Series_.

[Sidenote: _The Khalifa at Khartoum_]

Among the Arab tribes very much the same thing may be found, every Sheikh
having his bodyguard of young men, whom he instructs and educates, while
they render to him their military and personal devotion. In the late
expedition of the British to Khartoum (Nov., 1899), when Colonel Wingate
and his troops mowed down the Khalifa and his followers with their
Maxims, the death of the Khalifa was thus described by a correspondent of
the daily papers:—

  “In the centre of what was evidently the main attack on our right
  we came across a very large number of bodies all huddled together
  in a very small place; their horses lay dead behind them, the
  Khalifa lay dead on his furma, or sheepskin, the typical end of
  the Arab Sheikh who disdains surrender; on his right was the
  Khalifa Aly Wad Hila, and on his left Ahmed Fedil, his great
  fighting leader, whilst all around him lay his faithful emirs,
  all content to meet their death when he had chosen to meet his.
  His black Mulamirin, or bodyguard, all lay dead in a straight
  line about 40 yards in front of their master’s body, with their
  faces to the foe and faithful to the last. It was truly a
  touching sight, and one could not help but feel that ... their
  end was truly grand.... Amongst the dead were found two men tied
  together by the arms, who had charged towards the guns and had
  got nearer than any others. On enquiring of the prisoners Colonel
  Wingate was told these two were great friends, and on seeing the
  Egyptian guns come up had tied themselves by the arms with a
  cord, swearing to reach the guns or die together.”

[Sidenote: _Primitive Germans_]

Compare also the following quotation from Ammianus Marcellinus (xvi.
13), who says that when Chonodomarus, “King of the Alamanni,” was taken
prisoner by the Romans,

  “His companions, two hundred in number, and three friends
  peculiarly attached to him, thinking it infamous to survive their
  prince, or not to die for him, surrendered themselves to be put
  in bonds.”

[Sidenote: _South African Tribes_]

The following passage from Livingstone shows the existence among the
African tribes of his time of a system, which Wood rightly says “has
a singular resemblance to the instruction of pages in the days of
chivalry”:—

  “Monina (one of the confederate chiefs of the Banyai) had a great
  number of young men about him, from twelve to fifteen years of
  age. These were all sons of free men, and bands of young lads
  like them in the different districts leave their parents about
  the age of puberty and live with such men as Monina for the sake
  of instruction. When I asked the nature of the instruction I was
  told ‘Bonyái,’ which I suppose may be understood as indicating
  manhood, for it sounds as if we should say, ‘to teach an American
  Americanism,’ or, ‘an Englishman to be English.’ While here they
  are kept in subjection to rather stringent regulations.... They
  remain unmarried until a fresh set of youths is ready to occupy
  their place under the same instruction.” _Missionary Travels and
  Researches in South Africa._ _By David Livingstone_, 1857, p. 618.

M. Foley (Bulln. Soc. d’Anthr. de Paris, 1879) speaks of fraternity in
arms among the natives of New Caledonia as forming a close tie—closer
even than consanguinity.

[Sidenote: _Greek Friendship and Mediæval Chivalry_]

With regard to Greece, J. Addington Symonds has some interesting remarks,
which are well worthy of consideration; he says:—

  “Nearly all the historians of Greece have failed to insist upon
  the fact that fraternity in arms played for the Greek race the
  same part as the idealisation of women for the knighthood of
  feudal Europe. Greek mythology and history are full of tales
  of friendship, which can only be paralleled by the story of
  David and Jonathan in the Bible. The legends of Herakles and
  Hylas, of Theseus and Pirithöus, of Apollo and Hyacinth, of
  Orestes and Pylades, occur immediately to the mind. Among the
  noblest patriots, tyrannicides, lawgivers, and self-devoted
  heroes in the early times of Greece, we always find the names of
  friends and comrades received with peculiar honour. Harmodius
  and Aristogeiton, who slew the despot Hipparchus at Athens;
  Diocles and Philolaus, who gave laws to Thebes; Chariton and
  Melanippus, who resisted the sway of Phalaris in Sicily; Cratinus
  and Aristodemus, who devoted their lives to propitiate offended
  deities when a plague had fallen on Athens; these comrades,
  staunch to each other in their love, and elevated by friendship
  to the pitch of noblest enthusiasm, were among the favourite
  saints of Greek legend and history. In a word, the chivalry
  of Hellas found its motive force in friendship rather than in
  the love of women; and the motive force of all chivalry is a
  generous, soul-exalting, unselfish passion. The fruit which
  friendship bore among the Greeks was courage in the face of
  danger, indifference to life when honour was at stake, patriotic
  ardour, the love of liberty, and lion-hearted rivalry in battle.
  ‘Tyrants,’ said Plato, ‘stand in awe of friends.’” _Studies of
  the Greek Poets._ _By J. A. Symonds_, vol. 1, p. 97.

[Sidenote: _Fraternity in Arms in Sparta_]

The customs connected with this fraternity in arms, in Sparta and
in Crete, are described with care and at considerable length in the
following extract from Müller’s _History and Antiquities of the Doric
Race_, book iv., ch. 4, par. 6:—

  “At Sparta the party loving was called εἰσπνήλας, and his
  affection was termed a _breathing in_, or _inspiring_ (εἰσπνεῖν);
  which expresses the pure and mental connection between the two
  persons, and corresponds with the name of the other, viz.: ἀίτας,
  _i.e._, _listener_ or _bearer_. Now it appears to have been the
  practice for every youth of good character to have his lover; and
  on the other hand every well-educated man was bound by custom
  to be the lover of some youth. Instances of this connection
  are furnished by several of the royal family of Sparta; thus,
  Agesilaus, while he still belonged to the herd (ἀγέλη) of
  youths, was the hearer (ἀίτας) of Lysander, and himself had in
  his turn also a hearer; his son Archidamus was the lover of the
  son of Sphodrias, the noble Cleonymus; Cleomenes III. was when
  a young man the hearer of Xenares, and later in life the lover
  of the brave Panteus. The connection usually originated from the
  proposal of the lover; yet it was necessary that the listener
  should accept him with real affection, as a regard to the riches
  of the proposer was considered very disgraceful; sometimes,
  however, it happened that the proposal originated from the other
  party. The connection appears to have been very intimate and
  faithful; and was recognised by the State. If his relations were
  absent, the youth might be represented in the public assembly by
  his lover; in battle too they stood near one another, where their
  fidelity and affection were often shown till death; while at home
  the youth was constantly under the eyes of his lover, who was to
  him as it were a model and pattern of life; which explains why,
  for many faults, particularly want of ambition, the lover could
  be punished instead of the listener.”

[Sidenote: _Crete_]

  “This ancient national custom prevailed with still greater force
  in Crete; which island was hence by many persons considered as
  the original seat of the connection in question. Here too it was
  disgraceful for a well-educated youth to be without a lover;
  and hence the party loved was termed κλεινὸς, the _praised_;
  the lover being simply called φιλήτωρ. It appears that the
  youth was always carried away by force, the intention of the
  ravisher being previously communicated to the relations, who
  however took no measures of precaution, and only made a feigned
  resistance; except when the ravisher appeared, either in family
  or talent, unworthy of the youth. The lover then led him away
  to his apartment (ἀνδρεῖον), and afterwards, with any chance
  companions, either to the mountains or to his estate. Here they
  remained two months (the period prescribed by custom), which were
  passed chiefly in hunting together. After this time had expired,
  the lover dismissed the youth, and at his departure gave him,
  according to custom, an ox, a military dress, and brazen cup,
  with other things; and frequently these gifts were increased by
  the friends of the ravisher. The youth then sacrificed the ox
  to Jupiter, with which he gave a feast to his companions: and
  now he stated how he had been pleased with his lover; and he
  had complete liberty by law to punish any insult or disgraceful
  treatment. It depended now on the choice of the youth whether the
  connection should be broken off or not. If it was kept up, the
  companion in arms (παραστάτης), as the youth was then called,
  wore the military dress which had been given him, and fought in
  battle next his lover, inspired with double valour by the gods of
  war and love, according to the notions of the Cretans; and even
  in man’s age he was distinguished by the first place and rank in
  the course, and certain insignia worn about the body.

  “Institutions, so systematic and regular as these, did not exist
  in any Doric State except Crete and Sparta; but the feelings
  on which they were founded seem to have been common to all the
  Dorians. The loves of Philolaus, a Corinthian of the family of
  the Bacchiadae, and the lawgiver of Thebes, and of Diocles the
  Olympic conqueror, lasted until death; and even their graves
  were turned towards one another in token of their affection;
  and another person of the same name was honoured in Megara, as
  a noble instance of self-devotion for the object of his love.”
  _Ibid._

[Sidenote: _Diocles_]

For an account of Philolaus and Diocles, Aristotle (Pol. ii. 9) may be
referred to. The second Diocles was an Athenian who died in battle for
the youth he loved.

  “His tomb was honoured with the ἐναγίσματα of heroes, and a
  yearly contest for skill in kissing formed part of his memorial
  celebration.” _J. A. Symonds’_ “_A Problem in Greek Ethics_,”
  _privately printed_, 1883; _see also Theocritus_, Idyll xii.
  infra.

[Sidenote: _Albanian Customs_]

Hahn, in his _Albanesische Studien_, says that the Dorian customs
of comradeship still flourish in Albania “just as described by the
ancients,” and are closely entwined with the whole life of the
people—though he says nothing of any military signification. It appears
to be a quite recognised institution for a young man to take to himself
a youth or boy as his special comrade. He instructs, and when necessary
reproves, the younger; protects him, and makes him presents of various
kinds. The relation generally, though not always ends with the marriage
of the elder. The following is reported by Hahn as in the actual words of
his informant (an Albanian):—

  “Love of this kind is occasioned by the sight of a beautiful
  youth; who thus kindles in the lover a feeling of wonder and
  causes his heart to open to the sweet sense which springs from
  the contemplation of beauty. By degrees love steals in and takes
  possession of the lover, and to such a degree that all his
  thoughts and feelings are absorbed in it. When near the beloved
  he loses himself in the sight of him; when absent he thinks of
  him only.” These loves, he continued, “are with a few exceptions
  as pure as sunshine, and the highest and noblest affections that
  the human heart can entertain.” _Hahn_, vol. 1, p. 166.

Hahn also mentions that troops of youths, like the Cretan and Spartan
_agelae_, are formed in Albania, of twenty-five or thirty members each.
The comradeship usually begins during adolescence, each member paying
a fixed sum into a common fund, and the interest being spent on two or
three annual feasts, generally held out of doors.

[Sidenote: _The Theban Band_]

The Sacred Band of Thebes, or Theban Band, was a battalion composed
entirely of friends and lovers; and forms a remarkable example of
military comradeship. The references to it in later Greek literature are
very numerous, and there seems no reason to doubt the general truth of
the traditions concerning its formation and its complete annihilation by
Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea (B.C. 338). Thebes was the
last stronghold of Hellenic independence, and with the Theban Band Greek
freedom perished. But the mere existence of this phalanx, and the fact of
its renown, show to what an extent comradeship was recognised and prized
as an _institution_ among these peoples. The following account is taken
from Plutarch’s _Life of Pelopidas_, Clough’s translation:—

  “Gorgidas, according to some, first formed the Sacred Band of 300
  chosen men, to whom as being a guard for the citadel the State
  allowed provision, and all things necessary for exercise; and
  hence they were called the city band, as citadels of old were
  usually called cities. Others say that it was composed of young
  men attached to each other by personal affection, and a pleasant
  saying of Pammenes is current, that Homer’s Nestor was not well
  skilled in ordering an army, when he advised the Greeks to rank
  tribe and tribe, and family and family, together, that so ‘tribe
  might tribe, and kinsmen kinsmen aid,’ but that he should have
  joined lovers and their beloved. For men of the same tribe or
  family little value one another when dangers press; but a band
  cemented together by friendship grounded upon love is never to
  be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base
  in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers,
  willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another. Nor can
  that be wondered at since they have more regard for their absent
  lovers than for others present; as in the instance of the man
  who, when his enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested
  him to run him through the breast, that his lover might not blush
  to see him wounded in the back. It is a tradition likewise that
  Ioläus, who assisted Hercules in his labours and fought at his
  side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes that even in his
  time lovers plighted their faith at Ioläus’ tomb. It is likely,
  therefore, that this band was called sacred on this account; as
  Plato calls a lover a divine friend. It is stated that it was
  never beaten till the battle at Chaeronea; and when Philip after
  the fight took a view of the slain, and came to the place where
  the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together, he
  wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he
  shed tears and said, ‘Perish any man who suspects that these men
  either did or suffered anything that was base.’

  “It was not the disaster of Laius, as the poets imagine, that
  first gave rise to this form of attachment among the Thebans,
  but their lawgivers, designing to soften whilst they were young
  their natural fickleness, brought for example the pipe into great
  esteem, both in serious and sportive occasions, and gave great
  encouragement to these friendships in the Palaestra, to temper
  the manner and character of the youth. With a view to this, they
  did well again to make Harmony, the daughter of Mars and Venus,
  their tutelar deity; since where force and courage is joined
  with gracefulness and winning behaviour, a harmony ensues that
  combines all the elements of society in perfect consonance and
  order.

  “Gorgidas distributed this sacred Band all through the front
  ranks of the infantry, and thus made their gallantry less
  conspicuous; not being united in one body, but mingled with many
  others of inferior resolution, they had no fair opportunity of
  showing what they could do. But Pelopidas, having sufficiently
  tried their bravery at Tegyrae, where they had fought alone,
  and around his own person, never afterwards divided them, but
  keeping them entire, and as one man, gave them the first duty in
  the greatest battles. For as horses run brisker in a chariot than
  single, not that their joint force divides the air with greater
  ease, but because being matched one against another circulation
  kindles and enflames their courage; thus, he thought, brave
  men, provoking one another to noble actions, would prove most
  serviceable and most resolute where all were united together.”

[Sidenote: _Athenæus_]

Stories of romantic friendship form a staple subject of Greek literature,
and were everywhere accepted and prized. The following quotations from
Athenæus and Plutarch contain allusions to the Theban Band, and other
examples:—

  “And the Lacedæmonians offer sacrifices to Love before they go to
  battle, thinking that safety and victory depend on the friendship
  of those who stand side by side in the battle array.... And the
  regiment among the Thebans, which is called the _Sacred Band_,
  is wholly composed of mutual lovers, indicating the majesty of
  the God, as these men prefer a glorious death to a shameful and
  discreditable life.” _Athenæus_, bk. xiii., ch. 12.

[Sidenote: _Ioläus_]

Ioläus, above-mentioned, is said to have been the charioteer of
Hercules, and his faithful companion. As the comrade of Hercules he was
worshipped beside him in Thebes, where the gymnasium was named after
him. Plutarch alludes to this friendship again in his treatise on Love
(_Eroticus_, par. 17):—

  “And as to the loves of Hercules, it is difficult to record them
  because of their number; but those who think that Ioläus was one
  of them do to this day worship and honour him, and make their
  loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb.”

[Sidenote: _Plutarch on Love_]

And in the same treatise:—

  “Consider also how Love (Eros) excels in warlike feats, and is
  by no means idle, as Euripides called him, nor a carpet knight,
  nor ‘sleeping on soft maidens’ cheeks.’ For a man inspired by
  Love needs not Ares to help him when he goes out as a warrior
  against the enemy, but at the bidding of his own god is ‘ready’
  for his friend ‘to go through fire and water and whirlwinds.’ And
  in Sophocles’ play, when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and
  dying, one of them calls out for no helper or assister but his
  lover.

  “And you know of course how it was that Cleomachus, the
  Pharsalian, fell in battle.... When the war between the
  Eretrians and Chalcidians was at its height, Cleomachus had come
  to aid the latter with a Thessalian force; and the Chalcidian
  infantry seemed strong enough, but they had great difficulty in
  repelling the enemy’s cavalry. So they begged that high-souled
  hero, Cleomachus, to charge the Eretrian cavalry first. And he
  asked the youth he loved, who was by, if he would be a spectator
  of the fight, and he saying he would, and affectionately kissing
  him and putting his helmet on his head, Cleomachus, with a proud
  joy, put himself at the head of the bravest of the Thessalians,
  and charged the enemy’s cavalry with such impetuosity that he
  threw them into disorder and routed them; and the Eretrian
  infantry also fleeing in consequence, the Chalcidians won a
  splendid victory. However, Cleomachus got killed, and they show
  his tomb in the market place at Chalcis, over which a huge
  pillar stands to this day.” _Eroticus_, par. 17, _trans. Bohn’s
  Classics_.

And further on in the same:—

  “And among you Thebans, Pemptides, is it not usual for the
  lover to give his boylove a complete suit of armour when he is
  enrolled among the men? And did not the erotic Pammenes change
  the disposition of the heavy-armed infantry, censuring Homer as
  knowing nothing about love, because he drew up the Achæans in
  order of battle in tribes and clans, and did not put lover and
  love together, that so ‘spear should be next to spear and helmet
  to helmet’ (_Iliad_, xiii. 131), seeing that love is the only
  invincible general. For men in battle will leave in the lurch
  clansmen and friends, aye, and parents and sons, but what warrior
  ever broke through or charged through lover and love, seeing
  that when there is no necessity lovers frequently display their
  bravery and contempt of life.”

[Sidenote: _Athenæus on the same_]

The following is from the _Deipnosophists_ of Athenæus (bk. xiii. ch.
78):—

  “But Hieronymus the Peripatetic says that the loves of youths
  used to be much encouraged, for this reason, that the vigour
  of the young and their close agreement in comradeship have led
  to the overthrow of many a tyranny. For in the presence of his
  favorite a lover would rather endure anything than earn the name
  of coward; a thing which was proved in practice by the Sacred
  Band, established at Thebes under Epaminondas; as well as by the
  death of the Pisistratidæ, which was brought about by Harmodius
  and Aristogeiton.

  “And at Agrigentum in Sicily the same was shown by the mutual
  love of Chariton and Melanippus—of whom Melanippus was the
  younger beloved, as Heraclides of Pontus tells in his Treatise
  on Love. For these two having been accused of plotting against
  Phalaris, and being put to torture in order to force them to
  betray their accomplices, not only did not tell, but even
  compelled Phalaris to such pity of their tortures that he
  released them with many words of praise. Whereupon Apollo,
  pleased at his conduct, granted to Phalaris a respite from
  death; and declared the same to the men who inquired of the
  Pythian priestess how they might best attack him. He also gave an
  oracular saying concerning Chariton....

    ‘Blessed indeed was Chariton and Melanippus,
    Pioneers of Godhead, and of mortals the one most[1] beloved.’”

Epaminondas, the great Theban general and statesman, so we are told by
the same author, had for his young comrades Asopichus and Cephisodorus,
“the latter of whom fell with him at Mantineia, and is buried near him.”

[Sidenote: _Parmenides and Zeno_]

These are mainly instances of what might be called “military
comradeship,” but as may be supposed, friendship in the early world
did not rest on this alone. With the growth of culture other interests
came in; and among the Greeks especially association in the pursuit of
art or politics or philosophy became a common ground. Parmenides, the
philosopher, whose life was held peculiarly holy, loved his pupil Zeno
(see Plato _Parm_, 127A):

  “Parmenides and Zeno came to Athens, he said, at the great
  Panathenæan festival; the former was, at the time of his visit,
  about 65 years old, very white with age, but well-favoured. Zeno
  was nearly 40 years of age, of a noble figure and fair aspect;
  and in the days of his youth he was reported to have been beloved
  of Parmenides.”

[Sidenote: _Phædo_]

Pheidias, the sculptor, loved Pantarkes, a youth of Elis, and carved
his portrait at the foot of the Olympian Zeus (Pausanias v. II), and
politicians and orators like Demosthenes and Æschines were proud to avow
their attachments. It was in a house of ill-fame, according to Diogenes
Laertius (ii. 105) that Socrates first met Phædo:—

  “This unfortunate youth was a native of Elis. Taken prisoner in
  war, he was sold in the public market to a slave dealer, who
  then acquired the right by Attic law to engross his earnings
  for his own pocket. A friend of Socrates, perhaps Cebes, bought
  him from his master, and he became one of the chief members
  of the Socratic circle. His name is given to the Platonic
  dialogue on immortality, and he lived to found what is called
  the Eleo-Socratic School. No reader of Plato forgets how the
  sage on the eve of his death stroked the beautiful long hair of
  Phædo, and prophesied that he would soon have to cut it short in
  mourning for his teacher.” _J. A. Symonds_, _A Problem in Greek
  Ethics_ p. 58.

The relation of friendship to the pursuit of philosophy is a favorite
subject with Plato, and is illustrated by some later quotations (see
_infra_ ch. 2).

[Sidenote: _The Story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton_]

I conclude the present section by the insertion of three stories taken
from classical sources. Though of a legendary character, it is probable
that they enshrine some memory or tradition of actual facts. The story
of Harmodius and Aristogeiton at any rate is treated by Herodotus and
Thucydides as a matter of serious history. The names of these two friends
were ever on the lips of the Athenians as the founders of the city’s
freedom, and to be born of their blood was esteemed among the highest of
honours. But whether historical or not, these stories have much the same
value for us, in so far as they indicate the ideals on which the Greek
mind dwelt, and which it considered possible of realisation.

  “Now the attempt of Aristogeiton and Harmodius arose out of a
  love affair, which I will narrate at length; and the narrative
  will show that the Athenians themselves give quite an inaccurate
  account of their own tyrants, and of the incident in question,
  and know no more than other Hellenes. Pisistratus died at an
  advanced age in possession of the tyranny, and then, not as is
  the common opinion Hipparchus, but Hippias (who was the eldest of
  his sons) succeeded to his power.

  “Harmodius was in the flower of his youth, and Aristogeiton, a
  citizen of the middle class, became his lover. Hipparchus made an
  attempt to gain the affections of Harmodius, but he would not
  listen to him, and told Aristogeiton. The latter was naturally
  tormented at the idea, and fearing that Hipparchus, who was
  powerful, would resort to violence, at once formed such a plot
  as a man in his station might for the overthrow of the tyranny.
  Meanwhile Hipparchus made another attempt; he had no better
  success, and thereupon he determined, not indeed to take any
  violent step, but to insult Harmodius in some underhand manner,
  so that his motive could not be suspected[2]....

  “When Hipparchus found his advances repelled by Harmodius he
  carried out his intention of insulting him. There was a young
  sister of his whom Hipparchus and his friends first invited
  to come and carry a sacred basket in a procession, and then
  rejected her, declaring that she had never been invited by them
  at all because she was unworthy. At this Harmodius was very
  angry, and Aristogeiton for his sake more angry still. They and
  the other conspirators had already laid their preparations, but
  were waiting for the festival of the great Panathenæa, when the
  citizens who took part in the procession assembled in arms; for
  to wear arms on any other day would have aroused suspicion.
  Harmodius and Aristogeiton were to begin the attack, and the rest
  were immediately to join in, and engage with the guards. The
  plot had been communicated to a few only, the better to avoid
  detection; but they hoped that, however few struck the blow, the
  crowd who would be armed, although not in the secret, would at
  once rise and assist in the recovery of their own liberties.

  “The day of the festival arrived, and Hippias went out of the
  city to the place called the Ceramicus, where he was occupied
  with his guards in marshalling the procession. Harmodius and
  Aristogeiton, who were ready with their daggers, stepped forward
  to do the deed. But seeing one of the conspirators in familiar
  conversation with Hippias, who was readily accessible to all,
  they took alarm and imagined that they had been betrayed, and
  were on the point or being seized. Whereupon they determined to
  take their revenge first on the man who had outraged them and
  was the cause of their desperate attempt. So they rushed, just
  as they were, within the gates. They found Hipparchus near the
  Leocorium, as it was called, and then and there falling upon him
  with all the blind fury, one of an injured lover, the other of a
  man smarting under an insult, they smote and slew him. The crowd
  ran together, and so Aristogeiton for the present escaped the
  guards; but he was afterwards taken, and not very gently handled
  (_i.e._, _tortured_). Harmodius perished on the spot.” _Thuc_:
  vi. 54-56, _trans. by B. Jowett_.

[Sidenote: _The Story of Orestes and Pylades_]

  “Phocis preserves from early times the memory of the union
  between Orestes and Pylades, who taking a god as witness of the
  passion between them, sailed through life together as though in
  one boat. Both together put to death Klytemnestra, as though
  both were sons of Agamemnon; and Ægisthus was slain by both.
  Pylades suffered more than his friend by the punishment which
  pursued Orestes. He stood by him when condemned, nor did they
  limit their tender friendship by the bounds of Greece, but sailed
  to the furthest boundaries of the Scythians—the one sick, the
  other ministering to him. When they had come into the Tauric
  land straightway they were met by the matricidal fury; and while
  the barbarians were standing round in a circle Orestes fell down
  and lay on the ground, seized by his usual mania, while Pylades
  ‘wiped away the foam, tended his body, and covered him with his
  well-woven cloak’—acting not only like a lover but like a father.

  “When it was determined that one should remain to be put to
  death, and the other should go to Mycenæ to convey a letter, each
  wishes to remain for the sake of the other, thinking that if
  he saves the life of his friend he saves his own life. Orestes
  refused to take the letter, saying that Pylades was more worthy
  to carry it, acting more like the lover than the beloved. ‘For,’
  he said, ‘the slaying of this man would be a great grief to me,
  as I am the cause of these misfortunes.’ And he added, ‘Give
  the tablet to him, for (turning to Pylades) I will send thee to
  Argos, in order that it may be well with thee; as for me, let
  anyone kill me who desires it.’

  “Such love is always like that; for when from boyhood a serious
  love has grown up and it becomes adult at the age of reason, the
  long-loved object returns reciprocal affection, and it is hard to
  determine which is the lover of which, for—as from a mirror—the
  affection of the lover is reflected from the beloved.” _Trans.
  from Lucian’s Amores, by W. J. Baylis._

[Sidenote: _The Story of Damon and Pythias (or Phintias)_]

  “Damon and Phintias, initiates in the Pythagorean mysteries,
  contracted so faithful a friendship towards each other, that
  when Dionysius of Syracuse intended to execute one of them, and
  he had obtained permission from the tyrant to return home and
  arrange his affairs before his death, the other did not hesitate
  to give himself up as a pledge of his friend’s return[3]. He
  whose neck had been in danger was now free; and he who might have
  lived in safety was now in danger of death. So everybody, and
  especially Dionysius, were wondering what would be the upshot
  of this novel and dubious affair. At last, when the day fixed
  was close at hand, and he had not returned, everyone condemned
  the one who stood security, for his stupidity and rashness. But
  he insisted that he had nothing to fear in the matter of his
  friend’s constancy. And indeed at the same moment and the hour
  fixed by Dionysius, he who had received leave, returned. The
  tyrant, admiring the courage of both, remitted the sentence which
  had so tried their loyalty, and asked them besides to receive
  him in the bonds of their friendship, saying that he would make
  his third place in their affection agreeable by his utmost
  goodwill and effort. Such indeed are the powers of friendship:
  to breed contempt of death, to overcome the sweet desire of
  life, to humanise cruelty, to turn hate into love, to compensate
  punishment by largess; to which powers almost as much veneration
  is due as to the cult of the immortal gods. For if with these
  rests the public safety, on those does private happiness depend;
  and as the temples are the sacred domiciles of these, so of those
  are the loyal hearts of men as it were the shrines consecrated
  by some holy spirit.” _Valerius Maximus_, bk. iv. ch. 7. _De
  Amicitiæ Vinculo_.




II.

_The Place of Friendship in Greek Life & Thought_




_The Place of Friendship in Greek Life & Thought_


The extent to which the idea of friendship (in a quite romantic sense)
penetrated the Greek mind is a thing very difficult for us to realise;
and some modern critics entirely miss this point. They laud the Greek
culture to the skies, extolling the warlike bravery of the people, their
enthusiastic political and social sentiment, their wonderful artistic
sense, and so forth; and at the same time speak of the stress they laid
on friendship as a little peculiarity of no particular importance—not
seeing that the latter was the chief source of their bravery and
independence, one of the main motives of their art, and so far an organic
part of their whole polity that it is difficult to imagine the one
without the other. The Greeks themselves never made this mistake; and
their literature abounds with references to the romantic attachment as
the great inspiration of political and individual life. Plato, himself,
may almost be said to have founded his philosophy on this sentiment.

Nothing is more surprising to the modern than to find Plato speaking,
page after page, of Love, as the safeguard of states and the tutoress
of philosophy, and then to discover that what we call love, _i.e._, the
love between man and woman, is not meant at all—scarcely comes within his
consideration—but only the love between men—what we should call romantic
friendship. His ideal of this latter love is ascetic; it is an absorbing
passion, but it is held in strong control. The other love—the love of
women—is for him a mere sensuality. In this, to some extent, lies the
explanation of his philosophical position.

But it is evident that in this fact—in the fact that among the Greeks
the love of women was considered for the most part sensual, while the
_romance_ of love went to the account of friendship, we have the strength
and the weakness of the Greek civilisation. Strength, because by the
recognition everywhere of romantic comradeship, public and private
life was filled by a kind of divine fire; weakness, because by the
non-recognition of woman’s equal part in such comradeship, her saving,
healing, and redeeming influence was lost, and the Greek culture doomed
to be to that extent one-sided. It will, we may hope, be the great
triumph of the modern love (when it becomes more of a true comradeship
between man and woman than it yet is) to give both to society and to the
individual the grandest inspirations, and perhaps in conjunction with
the other attachment, to lift the modern nations to a higher level of
political and artistic advancement than even the Greeks attained. I quote
one or two modern writers on the subject, and then some passages from
Plato and others indicating the philosophy of friendship as entertained
among the Greeks.

[Sidenote: _Bishop Thirlwall on Greek Friendship_]

Bishop Thirlwall, that excellent thinker and scholar, in his _History of
Greece_ (vol. 1, p. 176) says:—

  “One of the noblest and most amiable sides of the Greek character
  is the readiness with which it lent itself to construct intimate
  and durable friendships; and this is a feature no less prominent
  in the earliest than in the latest times. It was indeed
  connected with the comparatively low estimation in which female
  society was held; but the devotedness and constancy with which
  these attachments were maintained was not the less admirable
  and engaging. The heroic companions whom we find celebrated,
  partly by Homer and partly in traditions, which if not of equal
  antiquity were grounded on the same feeling, seem to have but one
  heart and soul, with scarcely a wish or object apart, and only
  to live, as they are always ready to die, for one another. It is
  true that the relation between them is not always one of perfect
  equality: but this is a circumstance which, while it often adds
  a peculiar charm to the poetical description, detracts little
  from the dignity of the idea which it presents. Such were the
  friendships of Hercules and Ioläus, of Theseus and Pirithöus, of
  Orestes and Pylades: and though these may owe the greater part
  of their fame to the later epic or even dramatic poetry, the
  moral groundwork undoubtedly subsisted in the period to which
  the tradition referred. The argument of the Iliad mainly turns
  on the affection of Achilles for Patroclus—whose love for the
  greater hero is only tempered by reverence for his higher birth
  and his unequalled prowess. But the mutual regard which united
  Idomeneus and Meriones, Diomedes and Sthenelus—though, as the
  persons themselves are less important, it is kept more in the
  background—is manifestly viewed by the poet in the same light.
  The idea of a Greek hero seems not to have been thought complete,
  without such a brother in arms by his side.”

[Sidenote: _Compared to Chivalry_]

The following is from Ludwig Frey (_Der Eros und die Kunst_, p. 33):—

  “Let it then be repeated: love for a youth was for the Greeks
  something sacred, and can only be compared with our German homage
  to women—say the chivalric love of mediæval times.”

[Sidenote: _Educational and Political Value_]

G. Lowes Dickinson, in his _Greek View of Life_, noting the absence of
romance in the relations between men and women of that civilisation,
says:

  “Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude, from these
  conditions, that the element of romance was absent from Greek
  life. The fact is simply that with them it took a different form,
  that of passionate friendship between men. Such friendships, of
  course, occur in all nations and at all times, but among the
  Greeks they were, we might say, an institution. Their ideal was
  the development and education of the younger by the older man,
  and in this view they were recognised and approved by custom and
  law as an important factor in the state.” _Greek View of Life_,
  p. 167.

  “So much indeed were the Greeks impressed with the manliness of
  this passion, with its power to prompt to high thought and heroic
  action, that some of the best of them set the love of man for man
  far above that of man for woman. The one, they maintained, was
  primarily of the spirit, the other primarily of the flesh; the
  one bent upon shaping to the type of all manly excellence both
  the body and the soul of the beloved, the other upon a passing
  pleasure of the senses.” _Ibid_, p. 172.

[Sidenote: _Relation to Women_]

The following are some remarks of J. A. Symonds on the same subject:—

  “Partly owing to the social habits of their cities, and partly
  to the peculiar notions which they entertained regarding the
  seclusion of free women in the home, all the higher elements of
  spiritual and mental activity, and the conditions under which
  a generous passion was conceivable, had become the exclusive
  privileges of men. It was not that women occupied a semi-servile
  station, as some students have imagined, or that within the
  sphere of the household they were not the respected and trusted
  helpmates of men. But circumstances rendered it impossible for
  them to excite romantic and enthusiastic passion. The exaltation
  of the emotions was reserved for the male sex.” _A Problem in
  Greek Ethics_, p. 68.

[Sidenote: _J. A. Symonds on Socrates_]

And he continues:—

  “Socrates therefore sought to direct and moralise a force already
  existing. In the _Phædrus_ he describes the passion of love
  between man and boy as a ‘_mania_,’ not different in quality
  from that which inspires poets; and after painting that fervid
  picture of the lover, he declares that the true object of a noble
  life can only be attained by passionate friends, bound together
  in the chains of close yet temperate comradeship, seeking always
  to advance in knowledge, self-restraint, and intellectual
  illumination. The doctrine of the _Symposium_ is not different,
  except that Socrates here takes a higher flight. The same love
  is treated as the method whereby the soul may begin her mystic
  journey to the region of essential beauty, truth, and goodness.
  It has frequently been remarked that Plato’s dialogues have to
  be read as poems even more than as philosophical treatises; and
  if this be true at all, it is particularly true of both the
  _Phædrus_ and the _Symposium_. The lesson which both essays seem
  intended to inculcate, is this: love, like poetry and prophecy,
  is a divine gift, which diverts men from the common current of
  their lives; but in the right use of this gift lies the secret of
  all human excellence. The passion which grovels in the filth of
  sensual grossness may be transformed into a glorious enthusiasm,
  a winged splendour, capable of soaring to the contemplation of
  eternal verities.”

In the _Symposium_ or _Banquet_ of Plato (B.C. 428—B.C. 347), a supper
party is supposed, at which a discussion on love and friendship takes
place. The friends present speak in turn—the enthusiastic Phædrus, the
clear-headed Pausanias, the grave doctor Eryximachus, the comic and
acute Aristophanes, the young poet Agathon; Socrates, tantalising,
suggestive, and quoting the profound sayings of the prophetess Diotima;
and Alcibiades, drunk, and quite ready to drink more;—each in his turn,
out of the fulness of his heart, speaks; and thus in this most dramatic
dialogue we have love discussed from every point of view, and with
insight, acumen, romance and humour unrivalled.

[Sidenote: _From the Speech of Phædrus in the Symposium_]

Phædrus and Pausanias, in the two following quotations, take the line
which perhaps most thoroughly represents the public opinion of the day—as
to the value of friendship in nurturing a spirit of honour and freedom,
especially in matters military and political:—

  “Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge love to be the
  eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also
  the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any
  greater blessing to a young man beginning life than a virtuous
  lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle
  which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live—that
  principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor
  any other motive is able to implant so well as love. Of what am
  I speaking? of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which
  neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work.
  And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonorable
  act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done
  to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his
  beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions,
  or by anyone else. The beloved too, when he is seen in any
  disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And
  if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an
  army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be
  the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all
  dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting
  at one another’s side, although a mere handful, they would
  overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be
  seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning
  his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a
  thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his
  beloved, or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward
  would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a
  time; love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says,
  the god breathes into the soul of heroes, love of his own nature
  infuses into the lover.” _Symposium of Plato_, _trans. B. Jowett_.

[Sidenote: _Speech of Pausanias_]

  “In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which
  are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be
  dishonorable; loves of youths share the evil repute of philosophy
  and gymnastics, because they are inimical to tyranny; for the
  interests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in
  spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or
  society among them, which love above all other motives is likely
  to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience.”
  _Ibid._

[Sidenote: _Speech of Aristophanes_]

Aristophanes goes more deeply into the nature of this love of which
they are speaking. He says it is a profound reality—a deep and intimate
union, abiding after death, and making of the lovers “one departed soul
instead of two.” But in order to explain his allusion to “the other half”
it must be premised that in the earlier part of his speech he has in a
serio-comic vein pretended that human beings were originally constructed
double, with four legs, four arms, etc.; but that as a punishment for
their sins Zeus divided them perpendicularly, “as folk cut eggs before
they salt them,” the males into two parts, the females into two, and
the hermaphrodites likewise into two—since when, these divided people
have ever pursued their lost halves, and “thrown their arms around and
embraced each other, seeking to grow together again.” And so, speaking of
those who were originally males, he says:

  “And these when they grow up are our statesmen, and these only,
  which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saying. And
  when they reach manhood they are lovers of youth, and are not
  naturally inclined to marry or beget children, which they do,
  if at all, only in obedience to the law, but they are satisfied
  if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded; and
  such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always
  embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them finds
  his other half, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of
  another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and
  friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s
  sight, as I may say, even for a moment: they will pass their
  whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they
  desire of one another. For the intense yearning that each of
  them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of
  lovers’ intercourse, but of something else which the soul of
  either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she only
  has a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephæstus, with
  his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side
  and say to them, ‘What do you people want of one another?’ they
  would be unable to explain. And suppose further that when he
  saw their perplexity he said: ‘Do you desire to be wholly one;
  always day and night to be in one another’s company? for if this
  is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you
  grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while
  you live, live a common life as if you were a single man, and
  after your death in the world below still be one departed soul
  instead of two—I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire,
  and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’—there is not a man
  of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not
  acknowledge that this meeting and melting in one another’s arms,
  this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his
  ancient need.” _Ibid._

[Sidenote: _Speech of Socrates_]

Socrates, in his speech, and especially in the later portion of it where
he quotes his supposed tutoress Diotima, carries the argument up to its
highest issue. After contending for the essentially creative, generative
nature of love, not only in the Body but in the Soul, he proceeds to
say that it is not so much the seeking of a lost half which causes the
creative impulse in lovers, as the fact that in our mortal friends we are
contemplating (though unconsciously) an image of the Essential and Divine
Beauty; it is this that affects us with that wonderful “mania,” and lifts
us into the region where we become creators. And he follows on to the
conclusion that it is by wisely and truly loving our visible friends that
at last, after long long experience, there dawns upon us the vision of
that Absolute Beauty which by mortal eyes must ever remain unseen:—

  “He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and
  who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession,
  when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature
  of wondrous beauty ... beauty absolute, separate, simple and
  everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or
  any change, is imparted to the evergrowing and perishing beauties
  of all other things. He who, from these ascending under the
  influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not
  far from the end.” _Ibid._

This is indeed the culmination, for Plato, of all existence—the ascent
into the presence of that endless Beauty of which all fair mortal things
are but the mirrors. But to condense this great speech of Socrates is
impossible; only to persistent and careful reading (if even then) will it
yield up all its treasures.

[Sidenote: _Socrates in the Phædrus_]

In the dialogue named _Phædrus_ the same idea is worked out, only to
some extent in reverse order. As in the _Symposium_ the lover by rightly
loving at last rises to the vision of the Supreme Beauty; so in the
_Phædrus_ it is explained that in reality every soul _has_ at some time
seen that Vision (at the time, namely, of its true initiation, when
it was indeed winged)—but has forgotten it; and that it is the dim
_reminiscence_ of that Vision, constantly working within us, which guides
us to our earthly loves and renders their effect upon us so transporting.
Long ago, in some other condition of being, we saw Beauty herself:—

  “But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining
  in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we
  find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest
  aperture of sense. For sight is the keenest of our bodily senses;
  though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have
  been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and
  the same is true of the loveliness of the other ideas as well.
  But this is the privilege of beauty, that she is the loveliest
  and also the most palpable to sight. Now he who is not newly
  initiated, or who has become corrupted, does not easily rise
  out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other; he
  looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed
  at the sight of her, like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy
  and beget; he consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or
  ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But he
  whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of
  many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees anyone
  having a god-like face or form, which is the expression of Divine
  Beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the
  old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his
  beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid
  of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to
  his beloved as to the image of a god.” _The Phædrus of Plato_,
  _trans. B. Jowett_.

And again:—

  “And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and
  loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality,
  being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in
  former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his
  lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously
  told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the
  appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For
  fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among
  the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship
  among the good. And when he has received him into communion and
  intimacy, then the beloved is amazed at the goodwill of the
  lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other
  friendships or kinships, which have nothing of friendship in them
  in comparison. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer
  to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other
  times of meeting, then does the fountain of that stream, which
  Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named desire, overflow
  upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he
  is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds
  from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the
  stream of beauty, passing the eyes which are the natural doors
  and windows of the soul, return again to the beautiful one; there
  arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them
  and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved
  also with love.” _Ibid._

For Plato the real power which ever moves the soul is this reminiscence
of the Beauty which exists before all worlds. In the actual world the
soul lives but in anguish, an exile from her true home; but in the
presence of her friend, who reveals the Divine, she is loosed from her
suffering and comes to her haven of rest.

  “And wherever she [the soul] thinks that she will behold the
  beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs. And when she has
  seen him, and bathed herself with the waters of desire, her
  constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more
  pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at
  the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never
  forsake his beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has
  forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he thinks
  nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the rules and
  proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now
  despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is
  allowed, as near as he can to his beautiful one, who is not only
  the object of his worship, but the only physician who can heal
  him in his extreme agony.” _Ibid._

[Sidenote: _The Banquet of Xenophon_]

At another time, in the Banquet of Xenophon, Socrates is again made to
speak at length on the subject of Love—though not in so inspired a strain
as in Plato:—

  “Truly, to speak for one, I never remember the time when I
  was not in love; I know too that Charmides has had a great
  many lovers, and being much beloved has loved again. As for
  Critobulus, he is still of an age to love, and to be beloved;
  and Nicerates too, who loves so passionately his wife, at least
  as report goes, is equally beloved by her.... And as for you,
  Callias, you love, as well as the rest of us; for who is it that
  is ignorant of your love for Autolycus? It is the town-talk;
  and foreigners, as well as our citizens, are acquainted with
  it. The reason for your loving him, I believe to be that you
  are both born of illustrious families; and at the same time are
  both possessed of personal qualities that render you yet more
  illustrious. For me, I always admired the sweetness and evenness
  of your temper; but much more when I consider that your passion
  for Autolycus is placed on a person who has nothing luxurious or
  affected in him; but in all things shows a vigour and temperance
  worthy of a virtuous soul; which is a proof at the same time that
  if he is infinitely beloved, he deserves to be so. I confess
  indeed I am not firmly persuaded whether there be but one Venus
  or two, the celestial and the vulgar; and it may be with this
  goddess, as with Jupiter, who has many different names though
  there is still but one Jupiter. But I know very well that both
  the Venuses have quite different altars, temples and sacrifices.
  The vulgar Venus is worshipped after a common negligent manner;
  whereas the celestial one is adored in purity and sanctity of
  life. The vulgar inspires mankind with the love of the body only,
  but the celestial fires the mind with the love of the soul, with
  friendship, and a generous thirst after noble actions.... Nor is
  it hard to prove, Callias, that gods and heroes have always had
  more passion and esteem for the charms of the soul, than those
  of the body: at least this seems to have been the opinion of our
  ancient authors. For we may observe in the fables of antiquity
  that Jupiter, who loved several mortals on account of their
  personal beauty only, never conferred upon them immortality.
  Whereas it was otherwise with Hercules, Castor, Pollux, and
  several others; for having admired and applauded the greatness
  of their courage and the beauty of their minds, he enrolled them
  in the number of the gods.... You are then infinitely obliged to
  the gods, Callias, who have inspired you with love and friendship
  for Autolycus, as they have inspired Critobulus with the same
  for Amandra; for real and pure friendship knows no difference in
  sexes.” _Banquet of Xenophon_ § viii. (_Bohn_).

[Sidenote: _Plutarch Philosophises_]

Plutarch, who wrote in the first century A.D. (nearly 500 years after
Plato), carried on the tradition of his master, though with an admixture
of later influences; and philosophised about friendship, on the basis of
true love being a reminiscence.

  “The rainbow is I suppose a reflection caused by the sun’s
  rays falling on a moist cloud, making us think the appearance
  is in the cloud. Similarly erotic fancy in the case of noble
  souls causes a reflection of the memory from things which here
  appear and are called beautiful to what is really divine and
  lovely and felicitous and wonderful. But most lovers pursuing
  and groping after the semblance of beauty in youths and women,
  as in mirrors,[4] can derive nothing more certain than pleasure
  mixed with pain. And this seems the love-delirium of Ixion, who
  instead of the joy he desired embraced only a cloud, as children
  who desire to take the rainbow into their hands, clutching at
  whatever they see. But different is the behaviour of the noble
  and chaste lover: for he reflects on the divine beauty that can
  only be felt, while he uses the beauty of the visible body only
  as an organ of the memory, though he embraces it and loves it,
  and associating with it is still more inflamed in mind. And so
  neither in the body do they sit ever gazing at and desiring
  _this_ light, nor after death do they return to this world
  again, and skulk and loiter about the doors and bedchambers of
  newly-married people, disagreeable ghosts of pleasure-loving and
  sensual men and women, who do not rightly deserve the name of
  lovers. For the true lover, when he has got into the other world
  and associated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings and
  is initiated and passes his time above in the presence of his
  Deity, dancing and waiting upon him, until he goes back to the
  meadows of the Moon and Aphrodite, and sleeping there commences
  a new existence. But this is a subject too high for the present
  occasion.” _Plutarch’s Eroticus_ § xx. _trans. Bohn’s Classics_.




III.

_Poetry of Friendship among Greeks & Romans_




_Poetry of Friendship among Greeks & Romans_


The fact, already mentioned, that the _romance_ of love among the Greeks
was chiefly felt towards male friends, naturally led to their poetry
being largely inspired by friendship; and Greek literature contains such
a great number of poems of this sort, that I have thought it worth while
to dedicate the main portion of the following section to quotations from
them. No translations of course can do justice to the beauty of the
originals, but the few specimens given may help to illustrate the depth
and tenderness as well as the temperance and sobriety which on the whole
characterised Greek feeling on this subject, at any rate during the best
period of Hellenic culture. The remainder of the section is devoted to
Roman poetry of the time of the Cæsars.

[Sidenote: _Motive of Homer’s Iliad_]

It is not always realised that the Iliad of Homer turns upon the motive
of friendship, but the extracts immediately following will perhaps make
this clear. E. F. M. Benecke in his _Position of Women in Greek Poetry_
(p. 76) says of the Iliad:—

  “It is a story of which the main motive is the love of Achilles
  for Patroclus. This solution is astoundingly simple, and yet
  it took me so long to bring myself to accept it that I am
  quite ready to forgive anyone who feels a similar hesitation.
  But those who do accept it cannot fail to observe, on further
  consideration, how thoroughly suitable a motive of this kind
  would be in a national Greek epic. For this is the motive running
  through the whole of Greek life, till that life was transmuted
  by the influence of Macedonia. The lover-warriors Achilles and
  Patroclus are the direct spiritual ancestors of the sacred Band
  of Thebans, who died to a man on the field of Chæronæa.”

[Sidenote: _J. A. Symonds on the same_]

The following two quotations are from _The Greek Poets_ by J. A. Symonds,
ch. iii. p. 80 _et seq._:—

  “The _Iliad_ therefore has for its whole subject the passion of
  Achilles—that ardent energy or μῆνις of the hero which displayed
  itself first as anger against Agamemnon, and afterwards as love
  for the lost Patroclus. The truth of this was perceived by one of
  the greatest poets and profoundest, critics of the modern world,
  Dante. When Dante, in the _Inferno_, wished to describe Achilles,
  he wrote, with characteristic brevity:—

                          “Achille
    Che per amore al fine combatteo.”

                          (“Achilles
    Who at the last was brought to fight by love.”)

  “In this pregnant sentence Dante sounded the whole depth of the
  _Iliad_. The wrath of Achilles for Agamemnon, which prevented him
  at first from fighting; the love of Achilles, passing the love of
  women, for Patroclus, which induced him to forego his anger and
  to fight at last; these are the two poles on which the _Iliad_
  turns.”

[Sidenote: _Achilles and Patroclus_]

After his quarrel with Agamemnon, not even all the losses of the Greeks
and the entreaties of Agamemnon himself will induce Achilles to fight—not
till Patroclus is slain by Hector—Patroclus, his dear friend “whom above
all my comrades I honoured, even as myself.” Then he rises up, dons his
armour, and driving the Trojans before him revenges himself on the body
of Hector. But Patroclus lies yet unburied; and when the fighting is
over, to Achilles comes the ghost of his dead friend:—

  “The son of Peleus, by the shore of the roaring sea lay, heavily
  groaning, surrounded by his Myrmidons; on a fair space of sand
  he lay, where the waves lapped the beach. Then slumber took him,
  loosing the cares of his heart, and mantling softly around him,
  for sorely wearied were his radiant limbs with driving Hector on
  by windy Troy. There to him came the soul of poor Patroclus, in
  all things like himself, in stature, and in the beauty of his
  eyes and voice, and on the form was raiment like his own. He
  stood above the hero’s head, and spake to him:—

  “‘Sleepest thou, and me hast thou forgotten, Achilles? Not in my
  life wert thou neglectful of me, but in death. Bury me soon, that
  I may pass the gates of Hades. Far off the souls, the shadows of
  the dead, repel me, nor suffer me to join them on the river bank;
  but, as it is, thus I roam around the wide-doored house of Hades.
  But stretch to me thy hand I entreat; for never again shall I
  return from Hades when once ye shall have given me the meed of
  funeral fire. Nay, never shall we sit in life apart from our dear
  comrades and take counsel together. But me hath hateful fate
  enveloped—fate that was mine at the moment of my birth. And for
  thyself, divine Achilles, it is doomed to die beneath the noble
  Trojan’s wall. Another thing I say to thee, and bid thee do it if
  thou wilt obey me:—lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles,
  but lay them together; for we were brought up together in your
  house, when Menœtius brought me, a child, from Opus to your
  house, because of woeful bloodshed on the day in which I slew the
  son of Amphidamas, myself a child, not willing it but in anger at
  our games. Then did the horseman, Peleus, take me, and rear me
  in his house, and cause me to be called thy squire. So then let
  one grave also hide the bones of both of us, the golden urn thy
  goddess-mother gave to thee.’

  “Him answered swift-footed Achilles:—

  ‘Why, dearest and most honoured, hast thou hither come, to lay
  on me this thy behest? All things most certainly will I perform,
  and bow to what thou biddest. But stand thou near: even for one
  moment let us throw our arms upon each other’s neck, and take our
  fill of sorrowful wailing.’

  “So spake he, and with his outstretched hands he clasped, but
  could not seize. The spirit, earthward, like smoke, vanished with
  a shriek. Then all astonished arose Achilles, and beat his palms
  together, and spake a piteous word:—

  ‘Heavens! is there then, among the dead, soul and the shade of
  life, but thought is theirs no more at all? For through the
  night the soul of poor Patroclus stood above my head, wailing
  and sorrowing loud, and bade me do his will; it was the very
  semblance of himself.’

  “So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire
  of lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them
  appeared rose-fingered dawn about the piteous corpse.” _Iliad_,
  xxiii. 59 _et seq._

[Sidenote: _Plato on the above_]

Plato in the _Symposium_ dwells tenderly on this relation between
Achilles and Patroclus:—

  [And great] “was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards
  his lover Patroclus—his lover and not his love (the notion that
  Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which
  Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the
  two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs
  us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the
  gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the
  part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and
  rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine and
  worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware, for he had been
  told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return home,
  and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector.
  Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared
  to die, not only on his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore
  the gods honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the
  Islands of the Blest.” _Symposium, speech of Phædrus_, _trans. by
  B. Jowett_.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of Plato’s View_]

And on this passage Symonds has the following note:—

  “Plato, discussing the _Myrmidones_ of Æschylus, remarks in the
  _Symposium_ that the tragic poet was wrong to make Achilles
  the lover of Patroclus, seeing that Patroclus was the elder of
  the two, and that Achilles was the youngest and most beautiful
  of all the Greeks. The fact however is that Homer raises no
  question in our minds about the relation of lover and beloved.
  Achilles and Patroclus are comrades. Their friendship is equal.
  It was only the reflective activity of the Greek mind, working
  upon the Homeric legend by the light of subsequent custom, which
  introduced these distinctions.” _The Greek Poets_, ch. iii. p.
  103.

[Sidenote: _Athenæus_]

From the time of Homer onwards, Greek literature was full of songs
celebrating friendship:—

  “And in fact there was such emulation about composing poems of
  this sort, and so far was any one from thinking lightly of the
  amatory poets, that Æschylus, who was a very great poet, and
  Sophocles too introduced the subject of the loves of men on the
  stage in their tragedies: the one describing the love of Achilles
  for Patroclus, and the other, in his Niobe, the mutual love of
  her sons (on which account some have given an ill name to that
  tragedy); and all such passages as those are very agreeable to
  the spectators.” _Athenæus_, bk. xiii. ch. 75.

[Sidenote: _From Theognis_]

One of the earlier Greek poets was Theognis (B.C. 550) whose Gnomæ or
Maxims were a series of verses mostly addressed to his young friend
Kurnus, whom by this means he sought to guide and instruct out of the
stores of his own riper experience. The verses are reserved and didactic
for the most part, but now and then, as in the following passage, show
deep underlying feeling:—

  “Lo, I have given thee wings wherewith to fly
    Over the boundless ocean and the earth;
  Yea, on the lips of many shalt thou lie
    The comrade of their banquet and their mirth.
  Youths in their loveliness shall make thee sound
    Upon the silver flute’s melodious breath;
  And when thou goest darkling underground
    Down to the lamentable house of death,
  Oh yet not then from honour shalt thou cease,
    But wander, an imperishable name,
  Kurnus, about the seas and shores of Greece,
    Crossing from isle to isle the barren main.
  Horses thou shalt not need, but lightly ride
    Sped by the Muses of the violet crown,
  And men to come, while earth and sun abide,
    Who cherish song shall cherish thy renown.
  Yea, I have given thee wings! and in return
    Thou givest me the scorn with which I burn.”

              _Theognis Gnomai_, lines 237-254,
              _trans. by G. Lowes Dickinson_.

[Sidenote: _Sappho_]

As Theognis had his well-loved disciples, so had the poetess Sappho
(600 B.C.) Her devotion to her girl-friends and companions is indeed
proverbial.

  “What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phædrus were to Socrates,
  Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian.” _Max
  Tyrius_, _quoted in H. T. Wharton’s Sappho_, p. 23.

[Sidenote: _To Lesbia_]

Perhaps the few lines of Sappho, translated or paraphrased by Catullus
under the title _To Lesbia_, form the most celebrated fragment of her
extant work. They may be roughly rendered thus:—

  “Peer of all the gods unto me appeareth
  He of men who sitting beside thee heareth
  Close at hand thy syllabled words sweet spoken,
          Or loving laughter—

  That sweet laugh which flutters my heart and bosom.
  For, at sight of thee, in an instant fail me
  Voice and speech, and under my skin there courses
          Swiftly a thin flame;

  Darkness is on my eyes, in my ears a drumming,
  Drenched in sweat my frame, my body trembling;
  Paler ev’n than grass—’tis, I doubt, but little
          From death divides me.”

[Sidenote: _Anacreon to Bathyllus_]

Several of the odes of Anacreon (B.C. 520) are addressed to his young
friend Bathyllus. The following short one has been preserved to us by
Athenæus (bk. xiii. § 17):—

  “O boy, with virgin-glancing eye,
    I call thee, but thou dost not hear;
  Thou know’st not how my soul doth cry
    For thee, its charioteer.”

[Sidenote: _Epigram on Lovers_]

Anacreon had not the passion and depth of Sappho, but there is a mark of
genuine feeling in some of his poems, as in this simple little epigram:—

  “On their hindquarters horses
    Are branded oft with fire,
  And anyone knows a Parthian
    Because he wears a tiar;
  And I at sight of lovers
    Their nature can declare,
  For in their hearts they too
    Some subtle flame-mark bear.”

[Sidenote: _Pindar to Theoxenos_]

The following fragment is from Pindar’s Ode to his young friend
Theoxenos—in whose arms Pindar is said to have died (B.C. 442):—

  “O soul, ’tis thine in season meet,
  To pluck of love the blossom sweet,
    When hearts are young:
  But he who sees the blazing beams,
  The light that from _that_ forehead streams,
    And is not stung;—
  Who is not storm-tossed with desire,—
  Lo! he, I ween, with frozen fire,
  Of adamant or stubborn steel
  Is forged in his cold heart that cannot feel.”

               _Trans. by J. Addington Symonds_,
               _The Greek Poets_, vol. 1, p. 286.

[Sidenote: _Epigrams of Plato_]

Plato’s epigrams on Aster and Agathon are well known. The two
first-quoted make a play of course on the name Aster (star).

  _To Aster_:

  “Thou wert the morning star among the living,
    Ere thy fair light had fled;
  Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
    New splendour to the dead.”

                                       (_Shelley._)

  _To the same_:

  “Thou at the stars dost gaze, who art _my_ star—O would that I were
  Heaven, to gaze on thee, ever with thousands of eyes.”

  _To Agathon_:

  “Thee as I kist, behold! on my lips my own soul was trembling;
  For, bold one, she had come, meaning to find her way through.”

[Sidenote: _Meleager_]

There are many other epigrams and songs on the same subject from the
Greek writers. The following is by Meleager (a native of Gadara in
Palestine) about 60 B.C., and one of the sweetest and most human of the
lyric poets:—

  “O mortals crossed in love! the Southwind, see!
    That blows so fair for sailor folk, hath ta’en
  Half of my soul, Andragathos, from me.
    Thrice happy ships, thrice blesséd billowy main,
  And four times favored wind that bears the youth,
  O would I were a Dolphin! so, in truth,
  High on my shoulders ferried he should come
  To Rhodes, sweet haunt of boys, his island-home.”

              _From the Greek Anthology_, ii. 402.

[Sidenote: _Epigram_]

Also from the Greek Anthology:—

  “O say, and again repeat, fair, fair—and still I will say it—
    How fair, my friend, and good to see, thou art;
  On pine or oak or wall thy name I do not blazon—
    Love has too deeply graved it in my heart.”

[Sidenote: _Epitaph Anonymous_]

  “Perhaps the most beautiful [says J. A. Symonds] of the
  sepulchral epigrams is one by an unknown writer, of which I here
  give a free paraphrase. _Anth. Pal._, vii. 346:—

  ‘Of our great love, Parthenophil,
  This little stone abideth still
    Sole sign and token:
  I seek thee yet, and yet shall seek,
  Tho’ faint mine eyes, my spirit weak
    With prayers unspoken.

  Meanwhile best friend of friends, do thou,
  If this the cruel fates allow,
    By death’s dark river,
  Among those shadowy people, drink
  No drop for me on Lethe’s brink:
    Forget me never!’”

          _The Greek Poets_, vol. 2, p. 298.

Theocritus, though coming late in the Greek age (about 300 B.C.) when
Athens had yielded place to Alexandria, still carried on the Greek
tradition in a remarkable way. A native of Syracuse, he caught and
echoed in a finer form the life and songs of the country folk of that
region—themselves descendants of Dorian settlers. Songs and ballads
full of similar notes linger among the Greek peasants, shepherds and
fisher-folk, even down to the present day.

[Sidenote: _Theocritus Idyl XII._]

The following poem (trans. by M. J. Chapman, 1836) is one of the best
known and most beautiful of his Idyls:—

  IDYL XII.

  “Art come, dear youth? two days and nights away!
  (Who burn with love, grow aged in a day.)
  As much as apples sweet the damson crude
  Excel; the blooming spring the winter rude;
  In fleece the sheep her lamb; the maid in sweetness
  The thrice-wed dame; the fawn the calf in fleetness;
  The nightingale in song all feathered kind—
  So much thy longed-for presence cheers my mind.
  To thee I hasten, as to shady beech,
  The traveller, when from the heaven’s reach
  The sun fierce blazes. May our love be strong,
  To all hereafter times the theme of song!
  ‘Two men each other loved to that degree,
  That either friend did in the other see
  A dearer than himself. They lived of old
  Both golden natures in an age of gold.’

  O father Zeus! ageless immortals all!
  Two hundred ages hence may one recall,
  Down-coming to the irremeable river,
  This to my mind, and this good news deliver:
  ‘E’en now from east to west, from north to south,
  Your mutual friendship lives in every mouth.’
  This, as they please, th’ Olympians will decide:
  Of thee, by blooming virtue beautified,
  My glowing song shall only truth disclose;
  With falsehood’s pustules I’ll not shame my nose.
  If thou dost sometime grieve me, sweet the pleasure
  Of reconcilement, joy in double measure
  To find thou never didst intend the pain,
  And feel myself from all doubt free again.

  And ye Megarians, at Nisæa dwelling,
  Expert at rowing, mariners excelling,
  Be happy ever! for with honours due
  Th’ Athenian Diocles, to friendship true
  Ye celebrate. With the first blush of spring
  The youth surround his tomb: there who shall bring
  The sweetest kiss, whose lip is purest found,
  Back to his mother goes with garlands crowned.
  Nice touch the arbiter must have indeed,
  And must, methinks, the blue-eyed Ganymede
  Invoke with many prayers—a mouth to own
  True to the touch of lips, as Lydian stone
  To proof of gold—which test will instant show
  The pure or base, as money changers know.”

[Sidenote: _Idyl XXIX._]

The following Idyl, of which I append a rendering, is attributed to
Theocritus:—

  IDYL XXIX.

  “They say, dear boy, that wine and truth agree;
  And, being in wine, I’ll tell the truth to thee—
  Yes, all that works in secret in my soul.
  ’Tis this: thou dost not love me with thy whole
  Untampered heart. I know; for half my time
  Is spent in gazing on thy beauty’s prime;
  The other half is nought. When thou art good,
  My days are like the gods’; but when the mood
  Tormenting takes thee, ’tis my night of woe.
  How were it right to vex a lover so?
  Take my advice, my lad, thine elder friend,
  ’Twill make thee glad and grateful in the end:
  In one tree build one nest, so no grim snake
  May creep upon thee. For to-day thou’lt make
  Thy home on one branch, and to-morrow changing
  Wilt seek another, to what’s new still ranging;
  And should a stranger praise your handsome face,
  Him more than three-year-proven friend you’ll grace,
  While him who loved you first you’ll treat as cold
  As some acquaintanceship of three days old.
  Thou fliest high, methinks, in love and pride;
  But I would say: keep ever at thy side
  A mate that is thine equal; doing so,
  The townsfolk shall speak well of thee alway,
  And love shall never visit thee with woe—
  Love that so easily men’s hearts can flay,
  And mine has conquered that was erst of steel.
  Nay, by thy gracious lips I make appeal:
  Remember thou wert younger a year agone
  And we grow grey and wrinkled, all, or e’er
  We can escape our doom; of mortals none
  His youth retakes again, for azure wings
  Are on her shoulders, and we sons of care
  Are all too slow to catch such flying things.

  Mindful of this, be gentle, is my prayer,
  And love me, guileless, ev’n as I love thee;
  So when thou hast a beard, such friends as were
  Achilles and Patroclus we may be.”

[Sidenote: _Bion_]

Bion was a poet of about the same period as Theocritus, but of whom
little is known. The following is a fragment translated by A. Lang:—

  “Happy are they that love, when with equal love they are
  rewarded. Happy was Theseus, when Pirithöus was by his side, yea
  tho’ he went down to the house of implacable Hades. Happy among
  hard men and inhospitable was Orestes, for that Pylades chose to
  share his wanderings. And _he_ was happy, Achilles Æacides, while
  his darling lived,—happy was he in his death, because he avenged
  the dread fate of Patroclus.” _Theocritus_, _Bion and Moschus_,
  _Golden Treasury series_, p. 182.

[Sidenote: _Lament for Bion by Moschus_]

The beautiful _Lament for Bion_ by Moschus is interesting in this
connection, and should be compared with Shelley’s lament for Keats in
_Adonais_—for which latter poem indeed it supplied some suggestions:—

  “Ye mountain valleys, pitifully groan!
  Rivers and Dorian springs for Bion weep!
  Ye plants drop tears! ye groves lamenting moan!
  Exhale your life, wan flowers; your blushes deep
  In grief, anemonies and roses, steep!
  In softest murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong
  The sad, sad woe thy lettered petals keep;
  Our minstrel sings no more his friends among
  Sicilian muses! now begin the doleful song.”

                         _M. J. Chapman trans. in the
                         Greek Pastoral Poets, 1836._

[Sidenote: _Story of Hyacinthus_]

The allusion to Hyacinth is thus explained by Chapman:—

  “Hyacinthus, a Spartan youth, the son of Clio, was in great
  favour with Apollo. Zephyrus, being enraged that he preferred
  Apollo to him, blew the discus when flung by Apollo, on a day
  that Hyacinthus was playing at discus-throwing with that god,
  against the head of the youth, and so killed him. Apollo, being
  unable to save his life, changed him into the flower which was
  named after him, and on whose petals the Greeks fancied they
  could trace the notes of a grief, ἂι, ἂι.[5] A festival called
  the Hyacinthia was celebrated for three days in each year at
  Sparta, in honour of the god and his unhappy favorite.” _Note to
  Moschus_, Idyl iii.

[Sidenote: _Told by Ovid_]

The story of Apollo and Hyacinth is gracefully told by Ovid, in the tenth
book of his Metamorphoses:—

  “Midway betwixt the past and coming night
  Stood Titan[6] when the pair, their limbs unrobed,
  And glist’ning with the olive’s unctuous juice,
  In friendly contest with the discus vied.”

[The younger one is struck by the discus; and like a fading flower]

  “To its own weight unequal drooped the head
  Of Hyacinth; and o’er him wailed the god:—
  Liest thou so, Œbalia’s child, of youth
  Untimely robbed, and wounded by my fault—
  At once my grief and guilt?—This hand hath dealt
  Thy death! ’Tis I who send thee to the grave!
  And yet scarce guilty, unless guilt it were
  To sport, or guilt to love thee! Would this life
  Might thine redeem, or be with thine resigned!
  But thou—since Fate denies a god to die—
  Be present with me ever! Let thy name
  Dwell ever in my heart and on my lips,
  Theme of my lyre and burden of my song;
  And ever bear the echo of my wail
  Writ on thy new-born flower! The time shall come
  When, with thyself associate, to its name
  The mightiest of the Greeks shall link his own.
    Prophetic as Apollo mourned, the blood
  That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf
  Was blood no more: and sudden sprang to life
  A flower.”

                     _Ovid’s Metamorphoses_ _trans.
                     H. King_, _London_, 1871.

[Sidenote: _Virgil Eclogue II._]

In Roman literature, generally, as might be expected, with its more
materialistic spirit, the romance of a friendship is little dwelt upon;
though the grosser side of the passion, in such writers as Catullus
and Martial, is much in evidence. Still we find in Virgil a notable
instance. His 2nd Eclogue bears the marks of genuine feeling; and,
according to some critics, he there under the guise of Shepherd Corydon’s
love for Alexis celebrates his own attachment to the youthful Alexander:—

  “Corydon, keeper of cattle, once loved the fair lad Alexis;
  But he, the delight of his master, permitted no hope to the shepherd.
  Corydon, lovesick swain, went into the forest of beeches,
  And there to the mountains and woods—the one relief of his passion—
  With useless effort outpoured the following artless complainings:—
  Alexis, barbarous youth, say, do not my mournful lays move thee?
  Showing me no compassion, thou’lt surely compel me to perish.
  Even the cattle now seek after places both cool and shady;
  Even the lizards green conceal themselves in the thorn-bush.
  Thestylis, taking sweet herbs, such as garlic and thyme, for the reapers
  Faint with the scorching noon, doth mash them and bray in a mortar.
  Alone in the heat of the day am I left with the screaming cicalas,
  While patient in tracking thy path, I ever pursue thee, Belovéd.”

                                          _Trans. by J. W. Baylis._

[Sidenote: _Corydon and Alexis_]

There is a translation of this same 2nd Eclogue, by Abraham Fraunce
(1591) which is interesting not only on account of its felicity of
phrase, but because, as in the case of some other Elizabethan hexameters,
the metre is ruled by _quantity_, _i.e._, length of syllables, instead
of by _accent_. The following are the first five lines of Fraunce’s
translation:—

  “Silly shepherd Corydon lov’d hartyly fayre lad Alexis,
  His master’s dearling, but saw noe matter of hoping;
  Only amydst darck groves thickset with broade-shadoe beech-trees
  Dayly resort did he make, thus alone to the woods, to the mountayns,
  With broken speeches fond thoughts there vainly revealing.”

[Sidenote: _Catullus to Quintius_]

Catullus also (b. B.C. 87) has some verses of real feeling:—

  “Quintius, if ’tis thy wish and will
    That I should owe my eyes to thee,
  Or anything that’s dearer still,
    If aught that’s dearer there can be;

  Then rob me not of that I prize,
    Of the dear form that is to me,
  Oh! far far dearer than my eyes,
    Or aught, if dearer aught there be.”

               _Catullus_, _trans. Hon.
               J. Lamb_, 1821.

[Sidenote: _To Juventius_]

  “If all complying, thou would’st grant
    Thy lovely eyes to kiss, my fair,
  Long as I pleased; oh! I would plant
    Three hundred thousand kisses there.

  Nor could I even then refrain,
    Nor satiate leave that fount of blisses,
  Tho’ thicker than autumnal grain
    Should be our growing crop of kisses.”

                                  (_Ibid._)

[Sidenote: _To Licinius_]

  “Long at our leisure yesterday
  Idling, Licinius, we wrote
  Upon my tablets verses gay,
  Or took our turns, as fancy smote,
  At rhymes and dice and wine.

  But when I left, Licinius mine,
  Your grace and your facetious mood
  Had fired me so, that neither food
  Would stay my misery, nor sleep
  My roving eyes in quiet keep.
  But still consumed, without respite,
  I tossed about my couch in vain
  And longed for day—if speak I might,
  Or be with you again.

  But when my limbs with all the strain
  Worn out, half dead lay on my bed,
  Sweet friend to thee this verse I penned,
  That so thou mayest condescend
  To understand my pain.

  So now, Licinius, beware!
  And be not rash, but to my prayer
  A gracious hearing tender;
  Lest on thy head pounce Nemesis:
  A goddess sudden and swift she is—
  Beware lest thou offend her!”

[Sidenote: _Martial to Diadumenos_]

The following little poem is taken from Martial:

  “As a vineyard breathes, whose boughs with grapes are bending,
    Or garden where are hived Sicanian bees;
  As upturned clods when summer rain’s descending
    Or orchards rich with blossom-laden trees;
  So, cruel youth, thy kisses breathe—so sweet—
    Would’st thou but grant me all their grace, complete!”




IV.

_Friendship in Early Christian & Mediæval Times_




_Friendship in Early Christian & Mediæval Times_


The quotations we have given from Plato and others show the very high
ideal of friendship which obtained in the old world, and the respect
accorded to it. With the incoming of the Christian centuries, and the
growth of Alexandrian and Germanic influences, a change began to take
place. Woman rose to greater freedom and dignity and influence than
before. The romance of love began to centre round her.[7] The days of
chivalry brought a new devotion into the world, and the Church exalted
the Virgin Mother to the highest place in heaven. Friendship between
men ceased to be regarded in the old light—_i.e._, as a thing of deep
feeling, and an important social institution. It was even, here and
there, looked on with disfavour—and lapses from the purity or chastity of
its standard were readily suspected and violently reprobated. Certainly
it survived in the monastic life for a long period; but though inspiring
this to a great extent, its influence was not generally acknowledged.
The Family, in the modern and more limited sense of the word (as opposed
to the clan), became the recognised unit of social life, and the ideal
centre of all good influences (as illustrated in the worship of the Holy
Family). At the same time, by this very shrinkage of the Family, as well
as by other influences, the solidarity of society became to some extent
weakened, and gradually the more communistic forms of the early world
gave place to the individualism of the commercial period.

The special sentiment of comrade-love or attachment (being a thing
inherent in human nature) remained of course through the Christian
centuries, as before, and unaltered—except that being no longer
recognised it became a private and personal affair, running often
powerfully enough beneath the surface of society, but openly
unacknowledged, and so far deprived of some of its dignity and influence.
Owing to this fact there is nothing, for this period, to be quoted in
the way of general ideal or public opinion on the subject of friendship,
and the following sections therefore become limited to the expression
of individual sentiments and experiences, in prose and poetry. These we
find, during the mediæval period, largely colored by religion; while
at the Renaissance and afterwards they are evidently affected by Greek
associations.

[Sidenote: _Saint Augustine_]

Following are some passages from S. Augustine:—

  “In those years when I first began to teach in my native town,
  I had made a friend, one who through having the same interests
  was very dear to me, one of my own age, and like me in the first
  flower of youth. We had grown up together, and went together to
  school, and used to play together. But he was not yet so great
  a friend as afterwards, nor even then was our friendship true;
  for friendship is not true unless Thou cementest it between
  those who are united to Thee by that ‘love which is shed abroad
  in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’ Yet
  our friendship was but too sweet, and fermented by the pursuit
  of kindred studies. For I had turned him aside from the true
  faith (of which as a youth he had but an imperfect grasp) to
  pernicious and superstitious fables, for which my mother grieved
  over me. And now in mind he erred with me, and my soul could not
  endure to be separated from him. But lo, Thou didst follow close
  behind Thy fugitives, Thou—both God of vengeance and fountain of
  mercies—didst convert us by wonderful ways; behold, Thou didst
  take him out of this life, when scarcely a year had our close
  intimacy lasted—sweet to me beyond the sweetness of my whole
  life....

  “No ray of light pierced the gloom with which my heart was
  enveloped by this grief, and wherever I looked I beheld death.
  My native place was a torment to me, and my father’s house
  strangely joyless; and whatever I had shared with him, without
  him was now turned into a huge torture. My longing eyes sought
  him everywhere, and found him not; and I hated the very places,
  because he was not in them, neither could they say to me ‘he is
  coming,’ as they used to do when he was alive and was absent.
  And I became a great puzzle to myself, and I asked my soul why
  it was so sad, and why so disquieted within me; and it knew not
  what to answer. And if I said ‘Trust thou in God,’ it rightly
  did not obey; for that dearest one whom it had lost was both
  truer and better than that phantasm in which it was bidden to
  trust. Weeping was the only thing which was sweet to me, and
  it succeeded my friend in the dearest place in my heart.” _S.
  Augustine, Confessions_, bk. 4, ch. iv. _Trans. by Rev. W. H.
  Hutchings, M.A._

  “I was miserable, and miserable is every soul which is fettered
  by the love of perishable things; he is torn to pieces when
  he loses them, and then he perceives how miserable he was in
  reality while he possessed them. And so was I then, and I wept
  most bitterly, and in that bitterness I found rest. Thus was I
  miserable, and that miserable life I held dearer than my friend.
  For though I would fain have changed it, yet to it I clung even
  more than to him; and I cannot say whether I would have parted
  with it for his sake, as it is related, if true, that Orestes
  and Pylades were willing to do, for they would gladly have
  died for each other, or together, for they preferred death to
  separation from each other. But in me a feeling which I cannot
  explain, and one of a contradictory nature had arisen; for I
  had at once an unbearable weariness of living, and a fear of
  dying. For I believe the more I loved him, the more I hated and
  dreaded death which had taken him from me, and regarded it as
  a most cruel enemy; and I felt as if it would soon devour all
  men, now that its power had reached him.... For I marvelled that
  other mortals lived, because he whom I had loved, without thought
  of his ever dying, was dead; and that I still lived—I who was
  another self—when he was gone, was a greater marvel still. Well
  said a certain one of his friend, ‘Thou half of my soul;’ for I
  felt that his soul and mine were ‘one soul in two bodies’: and
  therefore life was to me horrible, because I hated to live as
  half of a life; and therefore perhaps I feared to die, lest he
  should wholly die whom I had loved so greatly.” _Ibid_, ch. vi.

[Sidenote: _Montalembert on the Monks_]

It is interesting to see, in these extracts from S. Augustine, and
in those which follow from Montalembert, the points of likeness and
difference between the Christian ideal of love and that of Plato. Both
are highly transcendental, both seem to contemplate an inner union of
souls, beyond the reach of space and time; but in Plato the union is in
contemplation of the Eternal Beauty, while in the Christian teachers it
is in devotion to a personal God.

  “If inanimate nature was to them an abundant source of pleasure
  they had a life still more lively and elevated in the life of the
  heart, in the double love which burned in them—the love of their
  brethren inspired and consecrated by the love of God.” _Monks of
  the West_, introdn., ch. v.

  “Everything invited and encouraged them to choose one or several
  souls as the intimate companions of their life.... And to prove
  how little the divine love, thus understood and practised, tends
  to exclude or chill the love of man for man, never was human
  eloquence more touching or more sincere than in that immortal
  elegy by which S. Bernard laments a lost brother snatched by
  death from the cloister:—‘Flow, flow my tears, so eager to flow!
  he who prevented your flowing is here no more! It is not he who
  is dead, it is I who now live only to die. Why, O why have we
  loved, and why have we lost each other.’” _Ibid._

  “The mutual affection which reigned among the monks flowed as a
  mighty stream through the annals of the cloister. It has left
  its trace even in the ‘formulas,’ collected with care by modern
  erudition.... The correspondence of the most illustrious, of
  Geoffrey de Vendôme, of Pierre le Vénérable, and of S. Bernard,
  give proofs of it at every page.” _Ibid._

[Sidenote: _Saint Anselm_]

Saint Anselm’s letters to brother monks are full of expressions of the
same ardent affection. Montalembert gives several examples:—

  “Souls well-beloved of my soul,” he wrote to two near relatives
  whom he wished to draw to Bec, “my eyes ardently desire to behold
  you; my arms expand to embrace you; my lips sigh for your kisses;
  all the life that remains to me is consumed with waiting for
  you. I hope in praying, and I pray in hoping—come and taste how
  gracious the Lord is—you cannot fully know it while you find
  sweetness in the world.”

[Sidenote: _To his Friend Lanfranc_]

  “‘Far from the eyes, far from the heart’ say the vulgar. Believe
  nothing of it; if it was so, the farther you were distant from
  me the cooler my love for you would be; whilst on the contrary,
  the less I can enjoy your presence, the more the desire of that
  pleasure burns in the soul of your friend.”

[Sidenote: _To Gondulph_]

  “To Gondulf, Anselm——I put no other or longer salutations at the
  head of my letter, because I can say nothing more to him whom I
  love. All who know Gondulph and Anselm know well what this means,
  and how much love is understood in these two names.” ... “How
  could I forget thee? Can a man forget one who is placed like a
  seal upon his heart? In thy silence I know that thou lovest me;
  and thou also, when I say nothing, thou knowest that I love thee.
  Not only have I no doubt of thee, but I answer for thee that thou
  art sure of me. What can my letter tell thee that thou knowest
  not already, thou who art my second soul? Go into the secret
  place of thy heart, look there at thy love for me, and thou shalt
  see mine for thee.” ... “Thou knewest how much I love thee, but
  I knew it not. He who has separated us has alone instructed me
  how dear to me thou wert. No, I knew not before the experience
  of thy absence how sweet it was to have thee, how bitter to have
  thee not. Thou hast another friend whom thou hast loved as much
  or more than me to console thee, but I have no longer thee!—thee!
  thee! thou understandest? and nothing to replace thee. Those who
  rejoice in the possession of thee may perhaps be offended by what
  I say. Ah! let them content themselves with their joy, and permit
  me to weep for him whom I ever love.”

[Sidenote: _The Story of Amis and Amile_]

The story of Amis and Amile, a mediæval legend, translated by William
Morris (as well as by Walter Pater) from the _Bibliotheca Elzeviriana_,
is very quaint and engaging in its old-world extravagance and
supernaturalism:—

  Amis and Amile were devoted friends, twins in resemblance and
  life. On one occasion, having strayed apart, they ceased not to
  seek each other for two whole years. And when at last they met
  “they lighted down from their horses, and embraced and kissed
  each other, and gave thanks to God that they were found. And they
  swore fealty and friendship and fellowship perpetual, the one to
  the other, on the sword of Amile, wherein were relics.” Thence
  they went together to the court of “Charles, king of France.”

  Here soon after, Amis took Amile’s place in a tournament, saved
  his life from a traitor, and won for him the King’s daughter
  to wife. But so it happened that, not long after, he himself
  was stricken with leprosy and brought to Amile’s door. And
  when Amile and his royal bride knew who it was they were sore
  grieved, and they brought him in and placed him on a fair bed,
  and put all that they had at his service. And it came to pass
  one night “whenas Amis and Amile lay in one chamber without other
  company, that God sent to Amis Raphael his angel, who said to
  him: ‘Sleepest thou, Amis?’ And he, who deemed that Amile had
  called to him, answered: ‘I sleep not, fair sweet fellow.’ Then
  the angel said to him: ‘Thou hast answered well, for thou art the
  fellow of the citizens of heaven, and thou hast followed after
  Job, and Thoby in patience. Now I am Raphael, an angel of our
  Lord, and am come to tell thee of a medicine for thine healing,
  whereas he hath heard thy prayers. Thou shalt tell to Amile thy
  fellow, that he slay his two children and wash thee in their
  blood, and thence thou shalt get the healing of thy body.’”

  Amis was shocked when he heard these words, and at first refused
  to tell Amile; but the latter had also heard the angel’s voice,
  and pressed him to tell. Then, when he knew, he too was sorely
  grieved. But at last he determined in his mind not even to spare
  his children for the sake of his friend, and going secretly to
  their chamber he slew them, and bringing some of their blood
  washed Amis—who immediately was healed. He then arrayed Amis in
  his best clothes and, after going to the church to give thanks,
  they met Amile’s wife who (not knowing all) rejoiced greatly
  too. But Amile, going apart again to the children’s chamber to
  weep over them, found them at play in bed, with only a thread of
  crimson round their throats to mark what had been done!

  The two knights fell afterwards and were killed in the same
  battle; “for even as God had joined them together by good accord
  in their life-days, so in their death they were not sundered.”
  And a miracle was added, for even when they were buried apart
  from each other the two coffins leapt together in the night and
  were found side by side in the morning.

Of this story Mr. Jacobs, in his introduction to William Morris’
translation, says: “Amis and Amile were the David and Jonathan, the
Orestes and Pylades, of the mediæval world.” There were some thirty other
versions of the legend “in almost all the tongues of Western and Northern
Europe”—their “peerless friendship” having given them a place among the
mediæval saints. (See _Old French Romances_ trans. by William Morris,
London, 1896.)

[Sidenote: _Eastern Poets_]

It may not be out of place here, and before passing on to the times of
the Renaissance and Modern Europe, to give one or two extracts relating
to Eastern countries. The honour paid to friendship in Persia, Arabia,
Syria and other Oriental lands has always been great, and the tradition
of this attachment there should be especially interesting to us, as
having arisen independently of classic or Christian ideals. The poets of
Persia, Saadi and Jalal-ud-din Rumi (13th cent.), Hafiz (14th cent.),
Jami (15th cent.), and others, have drawn much of their inspiration from
this source; but unfortunately for those who cannot read the originals,
their work has been scantily translated, and the translations themselves
are not always very reliable. The extraordinary way in which, following
the method of the Sufis, and of Plato, they identify the mortal and the
divine love, and see in their beloved an image or revelation of God
himself, makes their poems difficult of comprehension to the Western
mind. Apostrophes to Love, Wine, and Beauty often, with them, bear a
frankly twofold sense, material and spiritual. To these poets of the
mid-region of the earth, the bitter antagonism between matter and spirit,
which like an evil dream has haunted so long both the extreme Western and
the extreme Eastern mind, scarcely exists; and even the body “which is a
portion of the dust-pit” has become perfect and divine.

[Sidenote: _Jalal-ud-din Rumi_]

  “Every form you see has its archetype in the placeless world....
  From the moment you came into the world of being
  A ladder was placed before you that you might escape (ascend).
  First you were mineral, later you turned to plant,
  Then you became an animal: how should this be a secret to you?
  Afterwards you were made man, with knowledge, reason, faith;
  Behold the body, which is a portion of the dust-pit, how perfect it has
      grown!
  When you have travelled on from man, you will doubtless become an angel;
  After that you are done with earth: your station is in heaven.
  Pass again even from angelhood: enter that ocean,
  That your drop may become a sea which is a hundred seas of ‘Oman.’”

                           _From the Divani Shamsi Tabriz of Jalal-ud-din
                           Rumi, trans. by R. A. Nicholson._

  “’Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment
  Had not been: its being is but shame.
  Be drunken in love, for love is all that exists....
  Dismiss cares and be utterly clear of heart,
  Like the face of a mirror, without image or picture.
  When it becomes clear of images, all images are contained in it.”

                                                            _Ibid._

  “Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, thou and I,
  With two forms and with two figures, but with one soul, thou and I.”

                                                            _Ibid._

  “Once a man came and knocked at the door of his friend.
  His friend said, ‘Who art thou, O faithful one?’
  He said, ‘’Tis I.’ He answered, ‘There is no admittance.
  There is no room for the raw at my well-cooked feast.
  Naught but fire of separation and absence
  Can cook the raw one and free him from hypocrisy!
  Since thy _self_ has not yet left thee,
  Thou must be burned in fiery flames.’
  The poor man went away, and for one whole year
  Journeyed burning with grief for his friend’s absence.
  His heart burned till it was cooked; then he went again
  And drew near to the house of his friend.
  He knocked at the door in fear and trepidation
  Lest some careless word should fall from his lips.
  His friend shouted, ‘Who is that at the door?’
  He answered, ‘’Tis thou who art at the door, O beloved!’
  The friend said, ‘Since ’tis I, let me come in,
  There is not room for two I’s in one house.’”

                   _From the Masnavi of Jalal-ud-din Rumi,
                   trans, by E. H. Whinfield._

[Sidenote: _Hafiz and Saadi_]

Some short quotations here following are taken from _Flowers culled from
Persian Gardens_ (Manchester, 1872):

  “Everyone, whether he be abstemious or self-indulgent is
  searching after the Friend. Every place may be the abode of love,
  whether it be a mosque or a synagogue.... On thy last day, though
  the cup be in thy hand, thou may’st be borne away to Paradise
  even from the corner of the tavern.” _Hafiz_.

  “I have heard a sweet word which was spoken by the old man of
  Canaan (Jacob)—‘No tongue can express what means the separation
  of friends.’” _Hafiz_.

  “Neither of my own free will cast I myself into the fire; for
  the chain of affection was laid upon my neck. I was still at a
  distance when the fire began to glow, nor is this the moment
  that it was lighted up within me. Who shall impute it to me as
  a fault, that I am enchanted by my friend, that I am content in
  casting myself at his feet?” _Saadi_.

Hahn in his _Albanesische Studien_, already quoted (p. 20), gives some
of the verses of Neçin or Nesim Bey, a Turco-Albanian poet, of which the
following is an example:—

  “Whate’er, my friend, or false or true,
    The world may tell thee, give no ear,
    For to separate us, dear,
  The world will say that one is two.
  Who should seek to separate us
    May he never cease to weep.
  The rain at times may cease; but he
    In Summer’s warmth or Winter’s sleep
    May he never cease to weep.”

Besides literature there is no doubt a vast amount of material embedded
in the customs and traditions of these countries and awaiting adequate
recognition and interpretation. The following quotations may afford some
glimpses of interest.

[Sidenote: _Suleyman and Ibrahim_]

Suleyman the Magnificent.—The story of Suleyman’s attachment to his Vezir
Ibrahim is told as follows by Stanley Lane-Poole:—

  “Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with a second
  mind, to which his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand
  Vezir Ibrahim was the counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman.
  He was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by
  corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at
  Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince
  Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary
  talents and address brought him promotion.... From being Grand
  Falconer on the accession of Suleyman, he rose to be first
  minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523.

  “He was the object of the Sultan’s tender regard: an emperor
  knows better than most men how solitary is life without
  friendship and love, and Suleyman loved this man more than a
  brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining
  and instructive companion. He read Persian, Greek and Italian;
  he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan’s mind, and
  Suleyman drank in his Vezir’s wisdom with assiduity. They lived
  together: their meals were shared in common; even their beds were
  in the same room. The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the
  sailor’s son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power.” _Turkey,
  Story of Nations series_, p. 174.

[Sidenote: _Story of a Bagdad Dervish_]

J. S. Buckingham, in his _Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia_, speaking
of his guide whom he had engaged at Bagdad, and who was supposed to have
left his heart behind him in that city, says:—

  “Amidst all this I was at a loss to conceive how the Dervish
  could find much enjoyment [in the expedition] while laboring
  under the strong passion which I supposed he must then be
  feeling for the object of his affections at Bagdad, whom he had
  quitted with so much reluctance. What was my surprise however on
  seeking an explanation of this seeming inconsistency, to find
  it was the son, and not the daughter, of his friend Elias who
  held so powerful a hold on his heart. I shrank back from the
  confession as a man would recoil from a serpent on which he had
  unexpectedly trodden ... but in answer to enquiries naturally
  suggested by the subject he declared he would rather suffer death
  than do the slightest harm to so pure, so innocent, so heavenly a
  creature as this....

  “I took the greatest pains to ascertain by a severe and
  minute investigation, how far it might be possible to doubt
  of the purity of the passion by which this Affgan Dervish was
  possessed, and whether it deserved to be classed with that
  described as prevailing among the ancient Greeks; and the result
  fully satisfied me that both were the same. Ismael was however
  surprised beyond measure when I assured him that such a feeling
  was not known at all among the peoples of Europe.” _Travels,
  &c._, 2nd edition, vol. 1, p. 159.

[Sidenote: _Another Story_]

  “The Dervish added a striking instance of the force of these
  attachments, and the sympathy which was felt in the sorrows to
  which they led, by the following fact from his own history. The
  place of his residence, and of his usual labour, was near the
  bridge of the Tigris, at the gate of the Mosque of the Vizier.
  While he sat here, about five or six years since, surrounded by
  several of his friends who came often to enjoy his conversation
  and beguile the tedium of his work, he observed, passing among
  the crowd, a young and beautiful Turkish boy, whose eyes met his,
  as if by destiny, and they remained fixedly gazing on each other
  for some time. The boy, after ‘blushing like the first hue of a
  summer morning,’ passed on, frequently turning back to look on
  the person who had regarded him so ardently. The Dervish felt
  his heart ‘revolve within him,’ for such was his expression, and
  a cold sweat came across his brow. He hung his head upon his
  graving-tool in dejection, and excused himself to those about
  him by saying he felt suddenly ill. Shortly afterwards the boy
  returned, and after walking to and fro several times, drawing
  nearer and nearer, as if under the influence of some attracting
  charm, he came up to his observer and said, ‘Is it really true,
  then, that you love me?’ ‘This,’ said Ismael, ‘was a dagger in my
  heart; I could make no reply.’ The friends who were near him, and
  now saw all explained, asked him if there had been any previous
  acquaintance existing between them. He assured them that they had
  never seen each other before. ‘Then,’ they replied, ‘such an
  event must be from God.’

  “The boy continued to remain for a while with this party, told
  with great frankness the name and rank of his parents, as well
  as the place of his residence, and promised to repeat his visit
  on the following day. He did this regularly for several months
  in succession, sitting for hours by the Dervish, and either
  singing to him or asking him interesting questions, to beguile
  his labours, until as Ismael expressed himself, ‘though they were
  still two bodies they became one soul.’ The youth at length fell
  sick, and was confined to his bed, during which time his lover,
  Ismael, discontinued entirely his usual occupations and abandoned
  himself completely to the care of his beloved. He watched the
  changes of his disease with more than the anxiety of a parent,
  and never quitted his bedside, night or day. Death at length
  separated them; but even when the stroke came the Dervish could
  not be prevailed on to quit the corpse. He constantly visited the
  grave that contained the remains of all he held dear on earth,
  and planting myrtles and flowers there after the manner of the
  East, bedewed them daily with his tears. His friends sympathised
  powerfully in his distress, which he said ‘continued to feed his
  grief’ until he pined away to absolute illness, and was near
  following the fate of him whom he deplored.” _Ibid_, p. 160.

[Sidenote: _Explanation_]

  “From all this, added to many other examples of a similar kind,
  related as happening between persons who had often been pointed
  out to me in Arabia and Persia, I could no longer doubt the
  existence in the East of an affection for male youths, of as pure
  and honorable a kind as that which is felt in Europe for those
  of the other sex ... and it would be as unjust to suppose that
  this necessarily implied impurity of desire as to contend that
  no one could admire a lovely countenance and a beautiful form in
  the other sex, and still be inspired with sentiments of the most
  pure and honorable nature towards the object of his admiration.”
  _Ibid_, p. 163.

  “One powerful reason why this passion may exist in the East,
  while it is quite unknown in the West, is probably the seclusion
  of women in the former, and the freedom of access to them in the
  latter.... Had they [the Asiatics] the unrestrained intercourse
  which we enjoy with such superior beings as the virtuous and
  accomplished females of our own country they would find nothing
  in nature so deserving of their love as these.” _Ibid_, p. 165.




V.

_The Renaissance and Modern Times_




_The Renaissance and Modern Times_


[Sidenote: _Montaigne and Stephen de la Boëtie_]

With the Renaissance, and the impetus it gave at that time to the study
of Greek and Roman models, the exclusive domination of Christianity and
the Church was broken. A literature of friendship along classic lines
began to spring up. Montaigne (b. 1533) was saturated with classic
learning. His essays were doubtless largely formed upon the model of
Plutarch. His friendship with Stephen de la Boëtie was evidently of a
romantic and absorbing character. It is referred to in the following
passage by William Hazlitt; and the description of it occupies a large
part of Montaigne’s Essay on Friendship.

  “The most important event of his counsellor’s life at Bordeaux
  was the friendship which he there formed with Stephen de la
  Boëtie, an affection which makes a streak of light in modern
  biography almost as beautiful as that left us by Lord Brook and
  Sir Philip Sydney. Our essayist and his friend esteemed, before
  they saw, each other. La Boëtie had written a little work[8] in
  which Montaigne recognised sentiments congenial with his own,
  and which indeed bespeak a soul formed in the mould of classic
  times. Of Montaigne, la Boëtie had also heard accounts, which
  made him eager to behold him, and at length they met at a large
  entertainment given by one of the magistrates of Bordeaux. They
  saw and loved, and were thenceforward all in all to each other.
  The picture that Montaigne in his essays draws of this friendship
  is in the highest degree beautiful and touching; nor does la
  Boëtie’s idea of what is due to this sacred bond betwixt soul
  and soul fall far short of the grand perception which filled the
  exalted mind of his friend.... Montaigne married at the age of
  33, but, as he informs us, not of his own wish or choice. ‘Might
  I have had my wish,’ says he, ‘I would not have married Wisdom
  herself if she would have had me.’” _Life of Montaigne_, _by Wm.
  Hazlitt_.

[Sidenote: _Montaigne on Friendship_]

The following is from Montaigne’s Essay, bk. 1, ch. xxvii:—

  “As to marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the _making_
  of which is only free, but the continuance in it forced and
  compelled, having another dependence than that of our own free
  will, and a bargain moreover commonly contracted to other
  ends, there happen a thousand intricacies in it to unravel,
  enough to break the thread, and to divert the current, of a
  lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business
  or traffic with anything but itself.... For the rest, what
  we commonly call friends and friendships are nothing but an
  acquaintance and connection, contracted either by accident or
  upon some design, by means of which there happens some little
  intercourse betwixt our souls: but, in the friendship I speak
  of, they mingle and melt into one piece, with so universal a
  mixture that there is left no more sign of the seam by which they
  were first conjoined. If any one should importune me to give a
  reason why I loved him [Stephen de la Boëtie] I feel it could no
  otherwise be expressed than by making answer, ‘Because it was
  he; because it was I.’ There is, beyond what I am able to say,
  I know not what inexplicable and inevitable power that brought
  on this union. We sought one another long before we met, and
  from the characters we heard of one another, which wrought more
  upon our affections than in reason mere reports should do, and,
  as I think, by some secret appointment of heaven; we embraced
  each other in our names; and at our first meeting, which was
  accidentally at a great city entertainment, we found ourselves
  so mutually pleased with one another—we became at once mutually
  so endeared—that thenceforward nothing was so near to us as one
  another....

  “Common friendships will admit of division, one may love the
  beauty of this, the good humour of that person, the liberality
  of a third, the paternal affection of a fourth, the fraternal
  love of a fifth, and so on. But this friendship that possesses
  the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute
  sovereignty, can admit of no rival.... In good earnest, if I
  compare all the rest of my life with the four years I had the
  happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, ’tis
  nothing but smoke, but an obscure and tedious night. From the day
  that I lost him I have only led a sorrowful and 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.”

[Sidenote: _Sidney, Greville and Dyer_]

Philip Sidney, born 1554, was remarkable for his strong personal
attachments. Chief among his allies were his school-mate and distant
relative, Fulke Greville (born in the same year as himself), and his
college friend Edward Dyer (also about his own age). He wrote youthful
verses to both of them. The following, according to the fashion of the
age, are in the form of an invocation to the pastoral god Pan:—

  “Only for my two loves’ sake,
  In whose love I pleasure take;
  Only two do me delight
  With their ever-pleasing sight;
  Of all men to thee retaining
  Grant me with these two remaining.”

[Sidenote: _Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet_]

An interesting friendship existed also between Sidney and the well-known
French Protestant, Hubert Languet—many years his senior—whose
conversation and correspondence helped much in the formation of Sidney’s
character. These two had shared together the perils of the massacre of
S. Bartholomew, and had both escaped from France across the Rhine to
Germany, where they lived in close intimacy at Frankfort for a length of
time; and after this a warm friendship and steady correspondence—varied
by occasional meetings—continued between the two until Languet’s death.
Languet had been Professor of Civil Law at Padua, and from 1550 forwards
was recognised as one of the leading political agents of the Protestant
Powers.

  “The elder man immediately discerned in Sidney a youth of no
  common quality, and the attachment he conceived for him savoured
  of romance. We possess a long series of Latin letters from
  Languet to his friend, which breathe the tenderest spirit of
  affection, mingled with wise counsel and ever watchful thought
  for the young man’s higher interests.... There must have been
  something inexplicably attractive in his [Sidney’s] person and
  his genius at this time; for the tone of Languet’s correspondence
  can only be matched by that of Shakespeare in the sonnets written
  for his unknown friend.” _Sir Philip Sidney_, _English Men of
  Letters Series_, pp. 27, 28.

Of this relation Fox Bourne says:—

  “No love-oppressed youth can write with more earnest passion and
  more fond solicitude, or can be troubled with more frequent fears
  and more causeless jealousies, than Languet, at this time 55
  years old, shows in his letters to Sidney, now 19.”

[Sidenote: _Giordano Bruno_]

It may be appropriate here to introduce two or three sonnets from Michel
Angelo (b. 1475). Michel Angelo, one of the greatest, perhaps the
greatest, artist of the Italian Renaissance, was deeply imbued with the
Greek spirit. His conception of Love was close along the line of Plato’s.
For him the body was the symbol, the expression, the dwelling place of
some divine beauty. The body may be loved, but it should only be loved
_as_ a symbol, not for itself. Diotima in the _Symposium_ had said that
in our mortal loves we first come to recognise (dimly) the divine form of
beauty which is Eternal. Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. xxvi. 8) commenting on
this, confirms it, saying that nowhere else but in the human form, “the
loveliest and most intelligent of bodily creatures,” does the light of
divine beauty shine so clear. Michel Angelo carried on the conception,
gave it noble expression, and held to it firmly in the midst of a society
which was certainly willing enough to love the body (or try to love it)
merely for its own sake. And Giordano Bruno (b. 1550) at a later date
wrote as follows:—

  “All the loves—if they be heroic and not purely animal, or what
  is called natural, and slaves to generation as instruments in
  some way of nature—have for object the divinity, and tend towards
  divine beauty, which first is communicated to, and shines in,
  souls, and from them or rather through them is communicated to
  bodies; whence it is that well-ordered affection loves the body
  or corporeal beauty, insomuch as it is an indication of beauty
  of spirit.” _Gli Eroici Furori_ (dial. iii. 13), _trans. L.
  Williams_.

[Sidenote: _Michel Angelo’s Sonnets_]

The labours of Von Scheffler and others have now pretty conclusively
established that the love-poems of Michel Angelo were for the most part
written to male friends—though this fact was disguised by the pious
frauds of his nephew, who edited them in the first instance. Following
are three of his sonnets, translated by J. A. Symonds. It will be seen
that the last line of the first contains a play on the name of his
friend:—

  _To Tommaso de’ Cavalieri:_

  A CHE PIU DEBB’IO.

  “Why should I seek to ease intense desire
    With still more tears and windy words of grief,
    When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
    To souls whom love hath robed around with fire.

  Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
    When all must die? Nay death beyond belief
    Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
    Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!

  Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
    I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
    Gliding between her gladness and her woe?
  If only chains and bands can make me blest,
    No marvel if alone and bare I go
    An armèd Knight’s captive and slave confessed.”

  NON VIDER GLI OCCHI MIEI.

  “No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
    When perfect peace in thy fair face I found;
    But far within, where all is holy ground,
    My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
  For she was born with God in Paradise;
    Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
    This fair false world her wings to earth have bound;
    Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.

  Nay, things that suffer death quench not the fire
    Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
    Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
  Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
    That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
    Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.”

  VEGGIO NEL TUO BEL VISO.

  “From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
    That which no mortal tongue can rightly say;
    The soul imprisoned in her house of clay,
    Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
  And tho’ the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
    Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
    Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
    This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford.
  Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
    Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
    That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
  Nor have we first fruits or remembrances
    Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
    I rise to God and make death sweet by thee.”

[Sidenote: _Richard Barnfield_]

Richard Barnfield, one of the Elizabethan singers (b. 1574) wrote a
long poem, dedicated to “The Ladie Penelope Rich” and entitled “The
Affectionate Shepheard,” which he describes as “an imitation of Virgil in
the 2nd Eclogue, of Alexis.” I quote the first two stanzas:—

  I.

  “Scarce had the morning starre hid from the light
  Heaven’s crimson Canopie with stars bespangled,
  But I began to rue th’ unhappy sight
  Of that fair boy that had my heart intangled;
    Cursing the Time, the Place, the sense, the sin;
    I came, I saw, I view’d, I slippèd in.

  II.

  If it be sin to love a sweet-fac’d Boy,
  (Whose amber locks trust up in golden tramels
  Dangle adown his lovely cheekes with joye
  When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels)
    If it be sin to love a lovely Lad,
    Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad.”

[Sidenote: _Barnfield’s Sonnets_]

These stanzas, and the following three sonnets (also by Barnfield) from a
series addressed to a youth, give a fair sample of a considerable class
of Elizabethan verses, in which classic conceits were mingled with a
certain amount of real feeling:—

  SONNET IV.

  “Two stars there are in one fair firmament
    (Of some intitled Ganymede’s sweet face)
    Which other stars in brightness do disgrace,
  As much as Po in cleanness passeth Trent.
  Nor are they common-natur’d stars; for why,
    These stars when other shine vaile their pure light,
    And when all other vanish out of sight
  They add a glory to the world’s great eie:
  By these two stars my life is only led,
    In them I place my joy, in them my pleasure,
    Love’s piercing darts and Nature’s precious treasure,
  With their sweet food my fainting soul is fed:
    Then when my sunne is absent from my sight
    How can it chuse (with me) but be darke night?”

  SONNET XVIII.

  “Not Megabetes, nor Cleonymus
    (Of whom great Plutarch makes such mention,
    Praysing their faire with rare invention),
  As Ganymede were halfe so beauteous.
  They onely pleased the eies of two great kings,
    But all the world at my love stands amazed,
    Nor one that on his angel’s face hath gazed,
  But (ravisht with delight) him presents bring:

  Some weaning lambs, and some a suckling kyd,
    Some nuts, and fil-beards, others peares and plums;
    Another with a milk-white heyfar comes;
  As lately Ægon’s man (Damœtas) did;
    But neither he nor all the Nymphs beside,
    Can win my Ganymede with them t’ abide.”

  SONNET XIX.

  “Ah no; nor I my selfe: tho’ my pure love
    (Sweete Ganymede) to thee hath still been pure,
    And ev’n till my last gaspe shall aie endure,
  Could ever thy obdurate beuty move:
  Then cease, oh goddesse sonne (for sure thou art
    A Goddesse sonne that can resist desire),
    Cease thy hard heart, and entertain love’s fire
  Within thy sacred breast: by Nature’s art.

  And as I love thee more than any Creature
    (Love thee, because thy beautie is divine,
    Love thee, because my selfe, my soule, is thine:
  Wholie devoted to thy lovely feature),
    Even so of all the vowels, I and U
    Are dearest unto me, as doth ensue.”

[Sidenote: _Francis Bacon on Friendship_]

Francis Bacon’s essay _Of friendship_ is known to everybody.
Notwithstanding the somewhat cold and pragmatic style and genius of the
author, the subject seems to inspire him with a certain enthusiasm; and
some good things are said.

  “But we may go farther 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 scene 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 the fulness 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, flower 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....

  “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 worketh two contrary
  effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs;
  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.” Essay 27, _Of friendship_.

[Sidenote: _Shakespeare’s Sonnets_]

Shakespeare’s sonnets have been much discussed, and surprise and even
doubt have been expressed as to their having been addressed (the first
126 of them) to a man friend; but no one who reads them with open mind
can well doubt this conclusion; nor be surprised at it, who knows
anything of Elizabethan life and literature. “Were it not for the fact,”
says F. T. Furnivall, “that many critics really deserving the name of
Shakespeare students, and not Shakespeare fools, have held the Sonnets to
be merely dramatic, I could not have conceived that poems so intensely
and evidently autobiographic and self-revealing, poems so one with the
spirit and inner meaning of Shakespeare’s growth and life, could ever
have been conceived to be other than what they are—the records of his own
loves and fears.”

  SONNET XVIII.

  “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
  Some time too hot the eye of heaven shines,
  And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
  And every fair from fair sometime declines,
  By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
  Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
  Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
  When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

  SONNET XX.

  “A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted,
  Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
  A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
  With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
  An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
  Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
  A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
  Which steals men’s eyes, and women’s souls amazeth;
  And for a woman wert thou first created;
  Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
  And by addition me of thee defeated,
  By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
    But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
    Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.”

  SONNET CIV.

  “To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
  For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
  Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
  Have from the forest shook three summers’ pride;
  Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
  In process of the seasons I have seen;
  Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
  Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

  Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
  Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
  So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
  Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived;
    For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,
    Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.”

  SONNET CVIII.

  “What’s in the brain that ink may character,
  Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?
  What’s new to speak, what new to register,
  That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
  Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
  I must each day say o’er the very same,
  Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
  Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.

  So that eternal love, in love’s fresh case,
  Weighs not the dust and injury of age;
  Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
  But makes antiquity for aye his page;
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
    Where time and outward form would show it dead.”

[Sidenote: _Merchant of Venice_]

That Shakespeare, when the drama needed it, could fully and warmly enter
into the devotion which one man may feel for another, as well as into
the tragedy which such devotion may entail, is shown in his _Merchant
of Venice_ by the figure of Antonio, over whom from the first line of
the play (“In sooth I know not why I am so sad”) there hangs a shadow of
destiny. The following lines are from Act iv. sc. 1:—

  _Antonio_: “Commend me to your honorable wife;
  Tell her the process of Antonio’s end;
  Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death;
  And when the tale is told, bid her be judge,
  Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
  Repent not you that you shall lose your friend,
  And he repents not that he pays your debt;
  For, if the Jew do cut but deep enough,
  I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.

  _Bassanio_: Antonio, I am married to a wife,
  Who is as dear to me as life itself;
  But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
  Are not with me esteem’d above thy life:
  I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all,
  Here to this devil, to deliver you.”

[Sidenote: _Henry the Fifth_]

We may also, in this connection, quote his _Henry the Fifth_ (act iv.
scene 6) for the deaths of the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk at
the battle of Agincourt. Exeter, addressing Henry, says:—

  “Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,
  Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep’d,
  And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes,
  That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
  He cries aloud,—‘Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk!
  My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
  Tarry, sweet soul, for mine; then fly abreast,
  As in this glorious and well-foughten field
  We kept together in our chivalry!’
  Upon these words I came and cheered him up:
  He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,
  And, with a feeble gripe, says, ‘Dear my Lord,
  Commend my service to my sovereign.’
  So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck
  He threw his wounded arm, and kissed his lips;
  And so, espoused to death, with blood he seal’d
  A testament of noble-ending love.”

[Sidenote: _Sir Thomas Browne_]

Shakespeare, with his generous many-sided nature was, as the Sonnets
seem to show, and as we should expect, capable of friendship, passionate
friendship, towards both men and women. Perhaps this marks the highest
reach of temperament. That there are cases in which devotion to a
man-friend altogether replaces the love of the opposite sex is curiously
shown by the following extract from Sir Thomas Browne:—

  “I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved
  my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God.... I love my friend
  before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough: some
  few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I
  have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I
  be with him; when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would
  be still nearer him.... This noble affection falls not on vulgar
  and common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue:
  he that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will in a
  competent degree affect all.” _Sir Thomas Browne_, _Religio
  Medici_, 1642.

[Sidenote: _William Penn_]

William Penn (b. 1644) the founder of Pennsylvania, and of Philadelphia,
“The city of brotherly love” was a great believer in friendship. He says
in his _Fruits of Solitude_:—

  “A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily,
  adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and
  continues a friend unchangeably.... In short, choose a friend as
  thou dost a wife, till death separate you.... Death cannot kill
  what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and
  live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their
  friendship.... This is the comfort of friends, that though they
  may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the
  best sense, ever present, because immortal.”

[Sidenote: _William of Orange_]

It may be worth while here to insert two passages from Macaulay’s History
of England. The first deals with the remarkable intimacy between the
Young Prince William of Orange and “a gentleman of his household” named
Bentinck. William’s escape from a malignant attack of small-pox

  “was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly
  to the intrepid and indefatigable, friendship of Bentinck. From
  the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine—by
  Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down
  in it. ‘Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill,’ said
  William to Temple with great tenderness, ‘I know not. But this I
  know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called
  for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.’ Before
  the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he had
  himself caught the contagion.” (But he recovered.) _History of
  England_, ch. vii.

[Sidenote: _Princess Anne and Lady Churchill_]

The second passage describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter
of James II. and afterwards Queen Anne) to Lady Churchill—a devotion
which had considerable influence on the political situation.

  “It is a common observation that differences of taste,
  understanding, and disposition are no impediments to friendship,
  and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds, each
  of which supplies what is wanting in the other. Lady Churchill
  was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not
  live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married,
  and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince
  George, a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his
  dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable
  to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself
  up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and
  commanding spirit by which his wife was governed.” _History of
  England_, ch. vii.

[Sidenote: _Archbishop Potter_]

That the tradition of Greek thought was not quite obliterated in England
by the Puritan movement is shown by the writings of Archbishop Potter,
who speaks with approval of friendship as followed among the Greeks, “not
only in private, but by the public allowance and encouragement of their
laws; for they thought there could be no means more effectual to excite
their youth to noble undertakings, nor any greater security to their
commonwealths, than this generous passion.” He then quotes Athenæus,
saying that “free commonwealths and all those states that consulted
the advancement of their own honour, seem to have been unanimous
in establishing laws to encourage and reward it.” _John Potter_,
_Antiquities of Greece_, 1698.

[Sidenote: _Winckelmann’s Letters_]

The 18th century however in England, with its leaning towards formalism,
was perhaps not favorable to the understanding of the Greek spirit.
At any rate there is not much to show in that direction. In Germany
the classical tradition in art was revived by Raphael Mengs, while
Winckelmann, the art critic, showed himself one of the best interpreters
of the Hellenic world that has ever lived. His letters too, to his
personal friends, breathe a spirit of the tenderest and most passionate
devotion: “Friendship,” he says, “without love is mere acquaintanceship.”
Winckelmann met, in 1762, in Rome, a young nobleman, Reinhold von Berg,
to whom he became deeply attached:—

  “Almost at first sight there sprang up, on Winckelmann’s side,
  an attachment as romantic, emotional and passionate as love.
  In a letter to his friend he said, ‘From the first moment an
  indescribable attraction towards you, excited by something more
  than form and feature, caused me to catch an echo of that harmony
  which passes human understanding and which is the music of the
  everlasting concord of things.... I was aware of the deep consent
  of our spirits, the instant I saw you.’ And in a later letter:
  ‘No name by which I might call you would be sweet enough or
  sufficient for my love; all that I could say would be far too
  feeble to give utterance to my heart and soul. Truly friendship
  came from heaven and was not created by mere human impulses....
  My one friend, I love you more than any living thing, and time
  nor chance nor age can ever lessen this love.” _Ludwig Frey_,
  _Der Eros und die Kunst_, _Leipzig_, 1898, p. 211.

[Sidenote: _Goethe on Winckelmann_]

Goethe, that universal genius, has some excellent thoughts on this
subject; speaking of Winckelmann he says:—

  “The affinities of human beings in Antiquity give evidence of
  an important distinction between ancient and modern times. The
  relation to women, which among us has become so tender and full
  of meaning, hardly aspired in those days beyond the limits of
  vulgar necessity. The relation of parents to their children seems
  in some respects to have been tenderer. More to them than all
  other feelings was the friendship between persons of the male
  sex (though female friends too, like Chloris and Thyia, were
  inseparable, even in Hades). In these cases of union between two
  youths, the passionate fulfilment of loving duties, the joys of
  inseparableness, the devotion of one for the other, the unavoided
  companionship in death, fill us with astonishment; indeed one
  feels oneself ashamed when poets, historians, philosophers and
  orators overwhelm us with legends, anecdotes, sentiments and
  ideas, containing such meaning and feeling. Winckelmann felt
  himself _born_ for a friendship of this kind—not only as capable
  of it, but in the highest degree in need of it; he became
  conscious of his true self only under the form of friendship.”
  _Goethe on Winckelmann_.

[Sidenote: _Poem by Goethe_]

Some of Goethe’s poems further illustrate this subject. In the Saki Nameh
of his West-Oestlichen Divan he has followed the style of a certain class
of Persian love-songs. The following poem is from a Cupbearer to his
Master:—

  “In the market-place appearing
    None thy Poet-fame dispute;
  I too gladly hear thy singing,
    I too hearken when thou’rt mute.

  Yet I love thee, when thou printest
    Kisses not to be forgot,
  Best of all, for words may perish,
    But a kiss lives on in thought.

  Rhymes on rhymes fair meaning carry,
    Thoughts to think bring deeper joy;
  Sing to other folk, but tarry
    Silent with thy serving-boy.”

[Sidenote: _August von Platen_]

Count August von Platen (born at Ansbach in Bavaria, 1796) was in respect
of style one of the most finished and perfect of German poets. His nature
(which was refined and self-controlled) led him from the first to form
the most romantic attachments with men. He freely and openly expressed
his feelings in his verses; of which a great number are practically
love-poems addressed to his friends. They include a series of twenty-six
sonnets to one of his friends, Karl Theodor German. Of these Raffalovich
says (_Uranisme_, Lyons, 1896, p. 351):—

  “These sonnets to Karl Theodor German are among the most
  beautiful in German literature. Platen in the sonnet surpasses
  all the German poets, including even Goethe. In them perfection
  of form, and poignancy or wealth of emotion are illustrated to
  perfection. The sentiment is similar to that of the sonnets of
  Shakespeare (with their personal note), and the form that of the
  Italian or French sonnet.”

[Sidenote: _Platen’s Sonnets_]

Platen, however, was unfortunate in his affairs of the heart, and there
is a refrain of suffering in his poems which comes out characteristically
in the following sonnet:—

  “Since pain is life and life is only pain,
    Why he can feel what I have felt before,
    Who seeing joy sees it again no more
  The instant he attempts his joy to gain;
  Who, caught as in a labyrinth unaware,
    The outlet from it never more can find;
    Whom love seems only for this end to bind—
  In order to hand over to Despair;

  Who prays each dizzy lightning-flash to end him,
    Each star to reel his thread of life away
  With all the torments which his heart are rending;
    And envies even the dead their pillow of clay,
  Where Love no more their foolish brains can steal.
  He who knows this, knows me, and what I feel.”

[Sidenote: _On the Death of Pindar_]

One of Platen’s sonnets deals with an incident, referred to in an earlier
page, namely, the death of the poet Pindar in the theatre, in the arms
of his young friend Theoxenos:—

  “Oh! when I die, would I might fade away
    Like the pale stars, swiftly and silently,
    Would that death’s messenger might come to me,
  As once it came to Pindar—so they say.
  Not that I would in Life, or in my Verse,
    With him, the great Incomparable, compare;
    Only his Death, my friend, I ask to share:
  But let me now the gracious tale rehearse.

  Long at the play, hearing sweet Harmony,
    He sat; and wearied out at last, had lain
  His cheek upon his dear one’s comely knee;
    Then when it died away—the choral strain—
  He who thus cushioned him said: Wake and come!
    But to the Gods above he had gone home.”

[Sidenote: _Wagner and Ludwig II._]

The correspondence of Richard Wagner discloses the existence of a very
warm friendship between him and Ludwig II., the young king of Bavaria.
Ludwig as a young man appears to have been a very charming personality,
good looking, engaging and sympathetic; everyone was fond of him.
Yet his tastes led him away from “society,” into retirement, and the
companionship of Nature and a few chosen friends—often of humble birth.
Already at the age of fifteen he had heard Lohengrin, and silently
vowed to know the composer. One of his first acts when he came to the
throne was to send for Wagner; and from the moment of their meeting a
personal intimacy sprang up between them, which in due course led to
the establishment of the theatre at Bayreuth, and to the liberation of
Wagner’s genius to the world. Though the young king at a later time lost
his reason—probably owing to his over-sensitive emotional nature—this
does not detract from the service that he rendered to Music by his
generous attachment. How Wagner viewed the matter may be gathered from
Wagner’s letters.

  “He, the king, loves me, and with the deep feeling and glow
  of a first love; he perceives and knows everything about me,
  and understands me as my own soul. He wants me to stay with
  him always.... I am to be free and my own master, not his
  music-conductor—only my very self and his friend.” _Letters to
  Mme. Eliza Wille_, 4th May, 1864.

  “It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me.
  You cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the
  dreams of my youth. I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive:
  that I really saw and spoke to him: I can never forget the
  impression that dream made on me. Then I would have wished to see
  Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same kind
  must pass in the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says
  he can hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read
  without astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes
  to me.” _Ibid_, 9th Sept., 1864.

  “I hope now for a long period to gain strength again by quiet
  work. This is made possible for me by the love of an unimaginably
  beautiful and thoughtful being: it seems that it _had_ to
  be even so greatly gifted a man and one so destined for me,
  as this young King of Bavaria. What he is to me no one can
  imagine. My guardian! In his love I completely rest and fortify
  myself towards the completion of my task.” _Letter to his
  brother-in-law_, 10th Sept., 1865.

[For letters from Ludwig to Wagner see Additions, infra p. 183.]

[Sidenote: _Wagner on Greek Comradeship_]

In these letters we see chiefly of course the passionate sentiments
of which Ludwig was capable; but that Wagner fully understood the
feeling and appreciated it may be gathered from various passages in his
published writings—such as the following, in which he seeks to show how
the devotion of comradeship became the chief formative influence of the
Spartan State:—

  “This beauteous naked man is the kernel of all Spartanhood; from
  genuine delight in the beauty of the most perfect human body—that
  of the male—arose that spirit of comradeship which pervades and
  shapes the whole economy of the Spartan State. This love of man
  to man, in its primitive purity, proclaims itself as the noblest
  and least selfish utterance of man’s sense of beauty, for it
  teaches man to sink and merge his entire self in the object of
  his affection;” and again:—“The higher element of that love of
  man to man consisted even in this: that it excluded the motive of
  egoistic physicalism. Nevertheless it not only included a purely
  spiritual bond of friendship, but this spiritual friendship
  was the blossom and the crown of the physical friendship. The
  latter sprang directly from delight in the beauty, aye in the
  material bodily beauty of the beloved comrade; yet this delight
  was no egoistic yearning, but a thorough stepping out of self
  into unreserved sympathy with the comrade’s joy in himself;
  involuntarily betrayed by his life-glad beauty-prompted bearing.
  This love, which had its basis in the noblest pleasures of
  both eye and soul—not like our modern postal correspondence of
  sober friendship, half business-like, half sentimental—was the
  Spartan’s only tutoress of youth, the never-ageing instructress
  alike of boy and man, the ordainer of common feasts and valiant
  enterprises; nay the inspiring helpmeet on the battlefield. For
  this it was that knit the fellowship of love into battalions
  of war, and fore-wrote the tactics of death-daring, in rescue
  of the imperilled or vengeance for the slaughtered comrade, by
  the infrangible law of the soul’s most natural necessity.” _The
  Art-work of the Future_, _trans. by W. A. Ellis_.

[Sidenote: _K. H. Ulrichs_]

We may close this record of celebrated Germans with the name of K. H.
Ulrichs, a Hanoverian by birth who occupied for a long time an official
position in the revenue department at Vienna, and who became well known
about 1866 through his writings on the subject of friendship. He gives,
in his pamphlet _Memnon_, an account of the “story of his heart” in early
years. In an apparently quite natural way, and independently of outer
influences, his thoughts had from the very first been of friends of his
own sex. At the age of 14, the picture of a Greek hero or god, a statue,
seen in a book, woke in him the tenderest longings.

  “This picture (he says), put away from me, as it was, a hundred
  times, came again a hundred times before the eyes of my soul.
  But of course for the origin of my special temperament it is in
  no way responsible. It only woke up what was already slumbering
  there—a thing which might have been done equally well by
  something else.”

From that time forward the boy worshipped with a kind of romantic
devotion elder friends, young men in the prime of early manhood;
and later still his writings threw a flood of light on the “urning”
temperament—as he called it—of which he was himself so marked an example.

[Sidenote: _Ulrichs’ Verses_]

Some of Ulrichs’ verses are scattered among his prose writings:—

  _To his friend Eberhard._

  “And so farewell! perchance on Earth
    God’s finger—as ’twixt thee and me—
  Will never make that wonder clear
    Why thus It drew me unto thee.”

     _Memnon_, _Leipzig_, 1898, p. 104.

And this:—

  “It was the day of our first meeting—
    That happy day, in Davern’s grove—
  I felt the Spring wind’s tender greeting,
    And April touched my heart to love.
  Thy hand in mine lay kindly mated;
  Thy gaze held mine quite fascinated—
    So gracious wast, and fair!
  Thy glance my life-thread almost severed;
  My heart for joy and gladness quivered,
    Nigh more than it could bear.

  There in the grove at evening’s hour
    The breeze thro’ budding twigs hath ranged,
  And lips have learned to meet each other,
    And kisses mute exchanged.”

                               _Memnon_, p. 23.

[Sidenote: _Byron’s Letters_]

To return to England. With the beginning of the 19th century we find two
great poets, Byron and Shelley, both interested in and even writing in a
romantic strain on the subject in question.

Byron’s attachment, when at Cambridge, to Eddleston the chorister, a
youth two years younger than himself, is well known. In a youthful letter
to Miss Pigot he, Byron, speaks of it in enthusiastic terms:

                             “Trin. Coll., Camb., _July_ 5th, 1807.

  “I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé; he has
  been my _almost constant_ associate since October, 1805, when
  I entered Trinity College. His _voice_ first attracted my
  attention, his _countenance_ fixed it, and his _manners_ attached
  me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in town in
  October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my
  minority, when I shall leave to his decision either entering as
  a partner through my interest or residing with me altogether. Of
  course he would in his present frame of mind prefer the latter,
  but he may alter his opinion previous to that period; however he
  shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human
  being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect
  on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short we shall
  put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and
  Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe
  like Nisus and Euryalus to give Jonathan and David the ‘go by.’
  He certainly is more attached to _me_ than even I am in return.
  During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day,
  summer and winter, without passing _one_ tiresome moment, and
  separated each time with increasing reluctance.”

[Sidenote: _The Adieu_]

Eddleston gave Byron a cornelian (brooch-pin) which Byron prized much,
and is said to have kept all his life. He probably refers to it, and to
the inequality of condition between him and Eddleston, in the following
stanza from his poem, _The Adieu_, written about this time:—

  “And thou, my friend, whose gentle love
    Yet thrills my bosom’s chords,
  How much thy friendship was above
    Description’s power of words!
  Still near my breast thy gift I wear
  Which sparkled once with Feeling’s tear,
    Of Love, the pure, the sacred gem;
  Our souls were equal, and our lot
  In that dear moment quite forgot;
    Let pride alone condemn.”

The Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby mentioned in the above
letter were at that time living at Llangollen, in Wales, and were known
as the “Ladies of Llangollen,” their romantic attachment to each other
having already become proverbial. When Miss Ponsonby was seventeen, and
Lady E. Butler some twenty years older, they had run away from their
respective and respectable homes in Ireland, and taking a cottage at
Llangollen lived there, inseparable companions, for the rest of their
lives. Letters and diaries of contemporary celebrities mention their
romantic devotion. (The Duke of Wellington was among their visitors.)
Lady Eleanor died in 1829, at the age of ninety; and Miss Ponsonby only
survived her “beloved one” (as she always called her) by two years.

[Sidenote: _Byron’s Nisus and Euryalus_]

As to the allusion to Nisus and Euryalus, Byron’s paraphrase of the
episode (from the 9th book of Virgil’s Æneid) serves to show his interest
in it:—

  “Nisus, the guardian of the portal, stood,
  Eager to gild his arms with hostile blood;
  Well-skilled in fight the quivering lance to wield,
  Or pour his arrows thro’ the embattled field:
  From Ida torn, he left his Sylvan cave,
  And sought a foreign home, a distant grave.
    To watch the movements of the Daunian host,
  With him Euryalus sustains the post;
  No lovelier mien adorn’d the ranks of Troy,
  And beardless bloom yet graced the gallant boy;
  Tho’ few the seasons of his youthful life,
  As yet a novice in the martial strife,
  ’Twas his, with beauty, valour’s gifts to share—
  A soul heroic, as his form was fair.
    These burn with one pure flame of generous love;
  In peace, in war, united still they move;
  Friendship and glory form their joint reward;
  And now combined they hold their nightly guard.”

  [The two then carry out a daring raid on the enemy, in which
  Euryalus is slain. Nisus, coming to his rescue is—after
  performing prodigies of valor—slain too.]

  “Thus Nisus all his fond affection proved—
  Dying, revenged the fate of him he loved;
  Then on his bosom sought his wonted place,
  And death was heavenly in his friend’s embrace!
    Celestial pair! if aught my verse can claim,
  Wafted on Time’s broad pinion, yours is fame!
  Ages on ages shall your fate admire,
  No future day shall see your names expire,
  While stands the Capitol, immortal dome!
  And vanquished millions hail their empress, Rome!”

[Sidenote: _T. Moore on Byron_]

Byron’s friendships, in fact, with young men were so marked that Moore in
his _Life and Letters of Lord Byron_ seems to have felt it necessary to
mention and, to some extent, to explain them:—

  “During his stay in Greece (in 1810) we find him forming one
  of those extraordinary friendships—if attachment to persons so
  inferior to himself can be called by that name—of which I have
  already mentioned two or three instances in his younger days,
  and in which the pride of being a protector and the pleasure
  of exciting gratitude seem to have contributed to his mind the
  chief, pervading charm. The person whom he now adopted in this
  manner, and from similar feelings to those which had inspired his
  early attachments to the cottage boy near Newstead and the young
  chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek youth, named Nicolo Giraud,
  the son, I believe, of a widow lady in whose house the artist
  Lusieri lodged. In this young man he seems to have taken the most
  lively and even brotherly interest.”

[Sidenote: _Shelley on Friendship_]

Shelley, in his fragmentary _Essay on Friendship_—stated by his friend
Hogg to have been written “not long before his death”—says:—

  “I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I
  cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this took
  place; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or
  twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own
  age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle, and
  the elements of human feeling seemed to have been, from his
  birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy
  and a simplicity in his manners, inexpressibly attractive. It
  has never been my fortune to meet with him since my schoolboy
  days; but either I confound my present recollections with the
  delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and
  utility to everyone around him. The tones of his voice were so
  soft and winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and
  their pathos was so deep that in listening to him the tears have
  involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I
  first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship.”

It may be noted that Hogg takes the reference as to himself!

[Sidenote: _Leigh Hunt on School-life_]

With this passage we may compare the following from Leigh Hunt:—

  “If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ Hospital, the
  school would be ever dear to me from the recollection of the
  friendships I formed in it, and of the first heavenly taste it
  gave me of that most spiritual of the affections.... If ever
  I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those
  friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of
  any maturer feeling. I shall never forget the impression it made
  on me. I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candour, his
  truth, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier
  manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any
  particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking
  whatsoever. I should say, in one word, it was his goodness. I
  doubt whether he ever had a conception of a tithe of the regard
  and respect I entertained for him; and I smile to think of the
  perplexity (though he never showed it) which he probably felt
  sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a
  kind of angel. It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the
  unspiritual part of it—the genius and the knowledge—and there is
  no height of conceit indulged in by the most romantic character
  in Shakespeare, which surpassed what I felt towards the merits
  I ascribed to him, and the delight which I took in his society.
  With the other boys I played antics, and rioted in fantastic
  jests; but in his society, or whenever I thought of him, I fell
  into a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I am sure I could have
  died for him.

  “I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive
  schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into
  the world and forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in
  more than one instance became rivalled by a new set of emotions,
  especially in regard to the last, for I fell in love with his
  sister—at least, I thought so. But on the occurrence of her
  death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume
  an air of greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to
  be relieved by the sight of the first pretty face that turned
  towards me.... My friend, who died himself not long after his
  quitting the University, was of a German family in the service of
  the court, very refined and musical.” _Autobiography of Leigh
  Hunt_, _Smith and Elder_, 1870, p. 75.

[Sidenote: _Lord Beaconsfield’s “Coningsby”_]

On this subject of boy-friendships and their intensity Lord Beaconsfield
has, in _Coningsby_, a quite romantic passage, which notwithstanding
its sentimental setting may be worth quoting; because, after all, it
signalises an often-forgotten or unconsidered aspect of school-life:—

  “At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being;
  it tears the soul. All loves of after-life can never bring its
  rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of
  jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! What tenderness and
  what devotion; what illimitable confidence, infinite revelations
  of inmost thoughts; what ecstatic present and romantic future;
  what bitter estrangements and what melting reconciliations;
  what scenes of wild recrimination, agitating explanations,
  passionate correspondence; what insane sensitiveness, and what
  frantic sensibility; what earthquakes of the heart and whirlwinds
  of the soul are confined in that simple phrase, a schoolboy’s
  friendship!”

[Sidenote: _Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”_]

Alfred Tennyson, in his great poem _In Memoriam_, published about the
middle of the 19th century, gives superb expression to his love for his
lost friend, Arthur Hallam. Reserved, dignified, in sustained meditation
and tender sentiment, yet half revealing here and there a more passionate
feeling; expressing in simplest words the most difficult and elusive
thoughts (_e.g._, Cantos 128 and 129), as well as the most intimate and
sacred moods of the soul; it is indeed a great work of art. Naturally,
being such, it was roundly abused by the critics on its first appearance.
The _Times_ solemnly rebuked its language as unfitted for any but amatory
tenderness, and because young Hallam was a barrister spent much wit upon
the poet’s “Amaryllis of the Chancery bar.” Tennyson himself, speaking of
_In Memoriam_, mentioned (see _Memoir_ by his son, p. 800) “the number of
shameful letters of abuse he had received about it!”

  CANTO XIII.

  “Tears of the widower, when he sees,
    A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
    And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
  Her place is empty, fall like these;

  Which weep a loss for ever new,
    A void where heart on heart reposed;
    And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
  Silence, till I be silent too.

  Which weep the comrade of my choice,
    An awful thought, a life removed,
    The human-hearted man I loved,
  A spirit, not a breathing voice.

  Come Time, and teach me, many years,
    I do not suffer in a dream;
    For now so strange do these things seem,
  Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

  My fancies time to rise on wing,
    And glance about the approaching sails,
    As tho’ they brought but merchant’s bales,
  And not the burden that they bring.”

  CANTO XVIII.

  “’Tis well, ’tis something, we may stand
      Where he in English earth is laid,
    And from his ashes may be made
  The violet of his native land.

  ’Tis little; but it looks in truth
    As if the quiet bones were blest
    Among familiar names to rest
  And in the places of his youth.

  Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
    That sleeps, or wears the mask of sleep,
    And come, whatever loves to weep,
  And hear the ritual of the dead.

  Ah yet, ev’n yet, if this might be,
    I, falling on his faithful heart,
    Would breathing thro’ his lips impart
  The life that almost dies in me:

  That dies not, but endures with pain,
    And slowly forms the firmer mind,
    Treasuring the look it cannot find,
  The words that are not heard again.”

  CANTO LIX.

  “If, in thy second state sublime,
      Thy ransom’d reason change replies
    With all the circle of the wise,
  The perfect flower of human time;

  And if thou cast thine eyes below,
    How dimly character’d and slight,
    How dwarf’d a growth of cold and night,
  How blanch’d with darkness must I grow!

  Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
    Where thy first form was made a man;
    I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
  The soul of Shakspeare love thee more.”

  CANTO CXXVII.

  “Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
      So far, so near, in woe or weal;
    O loved the most when most I feel
  There is a lower and a higher;

  Known and unknown, human, divine!
    Sweet human hand and lips and eye,
    Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
  Mine, mine, for ever, ever, mine!

  Strange friend, past, present and to be;
    Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
    Behold I dream a dream of good
  And mingle all the world with thee.”

  CANTO CXXVIII.

  “Thy voice is on the rolling air;
    I hear thee where the waters run;
    Thou standest in the rising sun,
  And in the setting thou art fair.

  What art thou then? I cannot guess;
    But tho’ I seem in star and flower
    To feel thee some diffusive power,
  I do not therefore love thee less:

  My love involves the love before;
    My love is vaster passion now;
    Tho’ mixed with God and Nature thou,
  I seem to love thee more and more.

  Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
    I have thee still, and I rejoice;
    I prosper, circled with thy voice;
  I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.”

[Sidenote: _Browning’s “May and Death”_]

Following is a little poem by Robert Browning entitled _May and Death_,
which may well be placed near the stanzas of _In Memoriam_:—

  “I wish that when you died last May,
    Charles, there had died along with you
  Three parts of Spring’s delightful things;
    Ay, and for me the fourth part too.

  A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!
    There must be many a pair of friends
  Who arm-in-arm deserve the warm
    Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

  So, for their sake, be May still May!
    Let their new time, as mine of old,
  Do all it did for me; I bid
    Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

  Only one little sight, one plant
    Woods have in May, that starts up green
  Save a sole streak which, so to speak,
    Is Spring’s blood, spilt its leaves between—

  That, they might spare; a certain wood
    Might miss the plant; their loss were small;
  But I—whene’er the leaf grows there—
    It’s drop comes from my heart, that’s all.”

[Sidenote: _Ralph Waldo Emerson_]

Between Browning and Whitman we may insert a few lines from R. W.
Emerson:—

  “The only way to have a friend is to be one.... In the last
  analysis love is only the reflection of a man’s own worthiness
  from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their
  friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved
  his own soul.

  “The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less
  easy to establish it with flesh and blood.... Friends, such as we
  desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the
  faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal
  power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love
  us, and which we can love.” _Essay on Friendship._

[Sidenote: _Henry D. Thoreau_]

These also from Henry D. Thoreau:—

  “No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and
  indeed no thought is more familiar to their aspirations. All men
  are dreaming of it, and its drama, which is always a tragedy, is
  enacted daily. It is the secret of the universe. You may thread
  the town, you may wander the country, and none shall ever speak
  of it, yet thought is everywhere busy about it, and the idea of
  what is possible in this respect affects our behaviour towards
  all new men and women, and a great many old ones. Nevertheless
  I can remember only two or three essays on this subject in all
  literature.... To say that a man is your friend, means commonly
  no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate
  only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of
  friendship, as that the friend can assist in time of need, by his
  substance, or his influence, or his counsel; but he who foresees
  such advantages in this relation proves himself blind to its
  real advantage, or indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation
  itself.... What is commonly called Friendship is only a little
  more honour among rogues. But sometimes we are said to _love_
  another, that is, to stand in a true relation to him, so that we
  give the best to, and receive the best from, him. Between whom
  there is hearty truth there is love; and in proportion to our
  truthfulness and confidence in one another our lives are divine
  and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages of
  affection in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such as
  no prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our earthly
  life, and anticipate heaven for us.” _From On the Concord River._

[Sidenote: _Walt Whitman_]

I conclude this collection with a few quotations from Whitman, for whom
“the love of comrades” perhaps stands as the most intimate part of his
message to the world—“Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest
lasting.” Whitman, by his great power, originality and initiative,
as well as by his deep insight and wide vision, is in many ways the
inaugurator of a new era to mankind; and it is especially interesting to
find that this idea of comradeship, and of its establishment as a _social
institution_, plays so important a part with him. We have seen that in
the Greek age, and more or less generally in the ancient and pagan world,
comradeship was an institution; we have seen that in Christian and modern
times, though existent, it was socially denied and ignored, and indeed
to a great extent fell under a kind of ban; and now Whitman’s attitude
towards it suggests to us that it really is destined to pass into its
third stage, to arise again, and become a recognised factor of modern
life, and even in a more extended and perfect form than at first.[9]

  “It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence
  of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivaling
  the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if
  not going beyond it), that I look for the counterbalance and
  offset of our materialistic and vulgar American Democracy, and
  for the spiritualisation thereof. Many will say it is a dream,
  and will not follow my inferences; but I confidently expect
  a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp
  through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests
  of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure
  and sweet, strong and lifelong, carried to degrees hitherto
  unknown—not only giving tone to individual character, and making
  it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but
  having deepest relations to general politics. I say Democracy
  infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or
  counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and
  incapable of perpetuating itself.” _Democratic Vistas, note._

[Sidenote: _“Leaves of Grass”_]

The three following poems are taken from _Leaves of Grass_:—

  “Recorders ages hence,
  Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will
      tell you what to say of me,
  Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
  The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was
      fondest,
  Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love
      within him, and freely pour’d it forth,
  Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his
      lovers,
  Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and dissatisfied
      at night,
  Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d might
      secretly be indifferent to him,
  Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills,
      he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other
      men,
  Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder
      of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.”

                            _Leaves of Grass_, 1891-2 edn., p. 102.

  “When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with
      plaudits in the capital, still it was not a happy night for me that
      follow’d,
  And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I
      was not happy,
  But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
      refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
  When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the
      morning light,
  When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing
      with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
  And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming,
      O then I was happy,
  O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d
      me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
  And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my
      friend,
  And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly
      continuously up the shores,
  I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me
      whispering to congratulate me,
  For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the
      cool night,
  In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
  And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I was happy.”

                                                    _Ibid_, p. 103.

  “I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
  But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
  (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of
      them?)
  Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States
      inland and seaboard,
  And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that
      dents the water,
  Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
  The institution of the dear love of comrades.”

                                                    _Ibid_, p. 107.




_Additions_

[1906]


_Greek Times_

[Sidenote: _Aristotle_]

Aristotle (Ethics bk. viii.) says:

  “Friendship is a thing most necessary to life, since without
  friends no one would choose to live, though possessed of all
  other advantages.”... “Since then his own life is, to a good man,
  a thing naturally sweet and ultimately desirable, for a similar
  reason is the life of his friend agreeable to him, and delightful
  merely on its own account, and without reference to any object
  beyond it; and to live without friends is to be destitute of
  a good, unconditioned, absolute, and in itself desirable; and
  therefore to be deprived of one of the most solid and most
  substantial of all enjoyments.”

  “Being asked ‘What is Friendship?’ Aristotle replied ‘One soul in
  two bodies.’” _Diog. Laertius._

[Sidenote: _Epaminondas and Pelopidas_]

Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the Theban statesmen and generals, were
celebrated for their devotion to each other. In a battle (B.C. 385)
against the Arcadians, Epaminondas is said to have saved his friend’s
life. Plutarch in his Life of Pelopidas relates of them:—

  “Epaminondas and he were both born with the same dispositions to
  all kinds of virtues, but Pelopidas took more pleasure in the
  exercises of the body, and Epaminondas in the improvements of
  the mind; so that they spent all their leisure time, the one in
  hunting, and the palestra, the other in learned conversation, and
  the study of philosophy. But of all the famous actions for which
  they are so much celebrated, the judicious part of mankind reckon
  none so great and glorious as that strict friendship which they
  inviolably preserved through the whole course of their lives, in
  all the high posts they held, both military and civil.... For
  being both in that battle, near one another in the infantry, and
  fighting against the Arcadians, that wing of the Lacedæmonians
  in which they were, gave way and was broken; which Pelopidas and
  Epaminondas perceiving, they joined their shields, and keeping
  close together, bravely repulsed all that attacked them, till at
  last Pelopidas, after receiving seven large wounds, fell upon a
  heap of friends and enemies that lay dead together. Epaminondas,
  though he believed him slain, advanced before him to defend his
  body and arms, and for a long time maintained his ground against
  great numbers of the Arcadians, being resolved to die rather
  than desert his companion and leave him in the enemy’s power;
  but being wounded in his breast by a spear, and in his arm by a
  sword, he was quite disabled and ready to fall, when Agesipolis,
  king of the Spartans, came from the other wing to his relief, and
  beyond all expectation saved both their lives.”

[Sidenote: _Polemon and Krates_]

Polemon and Krates were followers of Plato in philosophy, and in their
time (about 300 B.C.) leaders of the Platonic School. They were,
according to Hesychius, devoted friends:

  “Krates and Polemon loved each other so well that they not only
  were occupied in life with the same work, but they almost drew
  breath simultaneously; and in death they shared the same grave.
  On account of which, Archesilaus, who visited them in company
  with Theophrastus (a pupil of Aristotle), spoke of them as gods,
  or survivors from the Golden Age.”

                                                    _Hesychius_ xl.

[Sidenote: _Alexander and Hephæstion_]

Alexander, the great World-Conqueror, was born B.C. 356, and was King of
Macedonia B.C. 336-323. His great favorite was Hephæstion, who had been
brought up and educated with him.

  “When Hephæstion died at Ecbatana (in 324) Alexander placed his
  weapons upon the funeral pyre, with gold and silver for the dead
  man, and a robe—which last, among the Persians is a symbol of
  great honour. He shore off his own hair, as in Homeric grief,
  and behaved like the Achilles of Homer. Indeed he acted more
  violently and passionately than the latter, for he caused the
  towers and strongholds of Ecbatana to be demolished all round. As
  long as he only dedicated his own hair, he was behaving, I think,
  like a Greek; but when he laid hands on the very walls, Alexander
  was already showing his grief in foreign fashion. Even in his
  clothing he departed from ordinary custom, and gave himself up to
  his mood, his love, and his tears.”

                                 _Aelian’s Varia Historia_, vii, 8.


_Persian Poetry_

[Sidenote: _From Sadi’s Rose-Garden_]

Von Kupffer, in his Anthology, _Lieblingminne und Freundes liebe in der
Weltliteratur_, gives the following three poems from Sadi and Hafiz:—

  “A youth there was of golden heart and nature,
  Who loved a friend, his like in every feature;
  Once, as upon the ocean sailed the pair,
  They chanced into a whirlpool unaware.
  A fisherman made haste the first to save,
  Ere his young life should meet a watery grave;
  But crying from the raging surf, he said:
  ‘Leave me, and seize my comrade’s hand instead.’
  E’en as he spoke the mortal swoon o’ertook him,
  With that last utterance life and sense forsook him.

  Learn not love’s temper from that shallow pate
  Who in the hour of fear forsakes his mate;
  True friends will ever act like him above
  (Trust one who is experienced in love);
  For Sadi knows full well the lover’s part,
  And Bagdad understands the Arab heart.
  More than all else thy loved one shalt thou prize,
  Else is the whole world hidden from thine eyes.”

[Sidenote: _From Sadi’s Pleasure Garden_]

  “Lov’st thou a being formed of dust like thee—
  Peace and contentment from thy heart shall flee;
  Waking, fair limbs and features shall torment thee;
  Sleeping, thy love in dreams shall hold and haunt thee.
  Under his feet thy head is bowed to earth;
  Compared with him the world’s a paltry crust;
  If to thy loved one gold is nothing worth,
  Why, then to thee is gold no more than dust.
    Hardly a word for others canst thou find,
  For no room’s left for others in thy mind.”

[Sidenote: _Hafiz to his Friend_]

  “Dear Friend, since thou hast passed the whole
  Of one sweet night, till dawn, with me,
  I were scarce mortal, could I spend
  Another hour apart from thee.
  The fear of death, for all of time
  Hath left me since my soul partook
  The water of true Life, that wells
  In sweet abundance from thy brook.”


_Renaissance_

[Sidenote: _Beaumont and Fletcher_]

Beaumont and Fletcher are two names which time and immortal friendship
have sealed in one. Francis Beaumont was son of a judge, and John
Fletcher, who was some four or five years the elder of the two, son of
a bishop. The one went to Oxford, the other to Cambridge. Both took to
writing at an early age; they probably met at the Mermaid Tavern, about
the year 1604, and a friendship sprang up between them of the closest
character. “The intimacy which now commenced was one of singular warmth
even for that romantic age.” (Chambers’ Biog. Dict.) For many years they
lived in the same house as bachelors, writing plays together, and sharing
everything in common. Then in 1613 Beaumont married, but died in 1616.
Fletcher lived on unmarried, till 1625, when he died of the plague.

J. St. L. Strachey, in his introduction to the works of Beaumont and
Fletcher in the Mermaid Series, says:—

  “In the whole range of English literature, search it from
  Chaucer till to-day, there is no figure more fascinating or more
  worthy of attention than ‘the mysterious double personallity’ of
  Beaumont and Fletcher. Whether we bow to the sentiment of the
  first Editor, who, though he knew the secret of the poets, yet
  since never parted while they lived’ conceived it not equitable
  to ‘separate their ashes,’ and so refuse to think of them apart;
  whether we adopt the legendary union of the comrade-poets who
  dwelt on the Bank-side, who lived and worked together, their
  thoughts no less in common than the cloak and bed o’er which
  tradition has grown fond; whether we think of them as two minds
  so married that to divorce or disunite them were a sacrilegious
  deed; or whether we yield to the subtler influences of the
  critical fancy, and delight to discover and explore each from its
  source, the twin fountains of inspiration that feed the majestic
  stream of song that flows through ‘The Lost Aspatia’s’ tragedy,
  etc. ... whether we treat the poets as a mystery to which love
  and sympathy are the initiation, or as a problem for the tests
  and reagents of critical analysis to solve, the double name of
  Beaumont and Fletcher will ever strike the fancy and excite the
  imagination as does no other name in the annals of English song.”

George Varley, in his Introduction to the works of B. and F. (London, E.
Moxon, 1839) says:—

  “The story of their common life, which scandalises some
  biographers, contains much that is agreeable to me, as offering a
  picture of perfect union whose heartiness excuses its homeliness
  ... but when critics would explain away the community of cloak
  and clothes by accident or slander, methinks their fastidiousness
  exceeds their good feeling.”

[Sidenote: _Sweet Fletcher’s Brain_]

Beaumont was a man of great personal beauty and charm. Ben Jonson was
much attracted to him. Fletcher delighted to do him honour and to put his
name first on their title page; though it is probable that Beaumont’s
share in the plays was the lesser one. See following verses by Sir Aston
Cokaine in the 1st Collection of their works, published 1647:—

  “In the large book of playes you late did print,
  In Beaumont and in Fletcher’s name, why in’t
  Did you not justice? Give to each his due?
  For Beaumont of those many writ in few,
  And Massinger in other few; the main
  Being sole issues of sweet Fletcher’s brain.
  But how came I, you ask, so much to know?
  Fletcher’s chief bosome-friend inform’d me so.”

[Sidenote: _Fletcher’s lament for his Friend_]

The following lines were written by Fletcher on the death of Beaumont:—

  “Come, sorrow, come! bring all thy cries,
  All thy laments, and all thy weeping eyes!
  Burn out, you living monuments of woe!
  Sad, sullen griefs, now rise and overflow!
          Virtue is dead;
          Oh! cruel fate!
          All youth is fled;
          All our laments too late.
  Oh, noble youth, to thy ne’er dying name,
  Oh, happy youth, to thy still growing fame,
  To thy long peace in earth, this sacred knell
  Our last loves ring—farewell, farewell, farewell!
  Go, happy soul, to thy eternal birth!
  And press his body lightly, gentle Earth.”

[Sidenote: _An Epitaph_]

And among the poems attributed to Francis Beaumont is one generally
supposed to be addressed to Fletcher, and speaking of an alliance hidden
from the world—of which the last five lines run:—

  “If when I die, physicians doubt
  What caused my death, and these to view
  Of all their judgments, which was true,
  Rip up my heart; O, then I fear
  The world will see thy picture there.”

—though it is perhaps more probable that it was addressed to Beaumont by
Fletcher, and has accidentally found place among the former’s writings.

In the _Maids Tragedy_ by B. and F., (Act I. Scene i.) we have Melantius
speaking about his companion Amintor, a young nobleman:—

  “All joys upon him! for he is my friend.
  Wonder not that I call a man so young my friend:
  His worth is great; radiant he is, and temperate;
  And one that never thinks his life his own,
  If his friend need it.”

[Sidenote: _Vauvenargues on De Seytres_]

The devotion of Vauvenargues to his friend De Seytres is immortalized by
the _éloge_ he wrote on the occasion of the latter’s death. V., a youth
of noble family, born in S. France in 1715, entered military service and
the regiment of the King at an early age. He seems to have been a gentle,
wise character, much beloved by his comrades. During the French invasion
of Bohemia, in 1741, when he was about 26, he met Hippolyte de Seytres,
who belonged to the same regiment, and who was only 18 years of age. A
warm friendship sprang up between the two, but lasted for a brief time
only. De Seytres died during the privations of the terrible Siege of
Prague in 1742. Vauvenargues escaped, but with the loss of his health, as
well as of his friend. He took to literature, and wrote some philosophic
works, and became correspondent and friend of Voltaire, but died in
1747 at the early age of 32. In his _éloge_ he speaks of his friend as
follows:—

  “By nature full of grace, his movements natural, his manners
  frank, his features noble and grave, his expression sweet and
  penetrating; one could not look upon him with indifference. From
  the first his loveable exterior won all hearts in his favour, and
  whoever was in the position to know his character could not but
  admire the beauty of his disposition. Never did he despise or
  envy or hate anyone. He understood all the passions and opinions,
  even the most singular, that the world blames. They did not
  surprise him; he penetrated their cause, and found in his own
  reflexions the means of explaining them.”

  “And so Hippolyte,” he continues, “I was destined to be the
  survivor in our friendship—just when I was hoping that it would
  mitigate all the sufferings and ennui of my life even to my
  latest breath. At the moment when my heart, full of security,
  placed blind confidence in thy strength and youth, and abandoned
  itself to gladness—O Misery! in that moment a mighty hand was
  extinguishing the sources of life in thy blood. Death was
  creeping into thy heart, and harbouring in thy bosom!... O pardon
  me once more; for never canst thou have doubted the depth of my
  attachment. I loved thee before I was able to know thee. I have
  never loved but thee ... I was ignorant of thy very name and
  life, but my heart adored thee, spoke with thee, saw thee and
  sought thee in solitude. Thou knewest me but for a moment; and
  when we did become acquainted, already a thousand times had I
  paid homage in secret to thy virtues.... Shade worthy of heaven,
  whither hast thou fled! Do my sighs reach thee? I tremble—O abyss
  profound, O woe, O death, O grave! Dark veil and viewless night,
  and mystery of Eternity!”

(It is said that Vauvenargues thought more of this memorial inscription
to his friend than of any other of his works, and constantly worked at
and perfected it.)

[Sidenote: _From Schiller’s Don Karlos_]

Schiller, the great German poet, had an enthusiastic appreciation of
friendship-love, as can be seen from his poems “Freundschaft” and “Die
Burgschaft,” and others of his writings. His tragedy Don Karlos turns
upon the death of one friend for the sake of another. The young Infanta
of Spain, Don Karlos, alienated by the severities of his father, Phillip
II., enters into plots and intrigues, from the consequences of which he
is only saved by his devoted companion, the Marquis of Posa, who, by
making himself out the guilty party, dies in the Prince’s stead. Early in
the play (Act I., Scene ii.) the attachment between the two is outlined:—

[Sidenote: _Karlos and Roderick_]

  _Karlos._        Oh, if indeed ’tis true—
  What my heart says—that out of millions, thou
  Hast been decreed at last to understand me;
  If it be true that Nature all-creative
  In moulding Karlos copied Roderick,
  And strung the tender chords of our two souls
  Harmonious in the morning of our lives;
  If even a tear that eases thus my sorrow
  Is dearer to thee than my father’s favour—

  _Marquis of Posa._ Oh, dearer than the world!

  _Karlos._        So low, so low
  Have I now fallen, have become so needy,
  That of our early childish years together
  I must remind thee—must indeed entreat
  Thy payment of those long-forgotten debts
  Which thou, while yet in sailor garb, contractedst;
  When thou and I, two boys of venturous habit,
  Grew up, and side by side, in brotherhood.
  No grief oppressed me then—save that thy spirit
  Seemed so eclipsing mine—until at length
  I boldly dared to _love_ thee without limit,
  Since to be _like_ thee was beyond my dreams.
  Then I began, with myriad tenderness
  And brother-love most loyal, to torment thee;
  And thou, proud heart, returned it all so coldly.
  Oft would I stand there—and thou saw’st it not!
  And hot and heavy tear-drops from my eyes
  Hung, when perchance, thou, Roderick, hastening past me,
  Would’st throw thy arms about some lesser playmate.
  “Why only these?” I cried, and wept aloud
  “Am I not also worthy of thy heart?”
  But thou—
  So cold and serious before me kneeling,
  “Homage” thou said’st, “to the King’s son is due.”

  _Marquis_. A truce, O Prince, to all these tales of childhood,
  They make my cheeks red even now with shame!

  _Karlos_. And this from thee indeed I did not merit.
  Contemn thou could’st, and even rend my heart,
  But ne’er estrange. Three times thou did’st repulse
  The young Prince from thee; thrice again he came
  As suppliant to thee—to entreat thy love,
  And urgently to press his love upon thee.
  But that which Karlos could not, chance effected.

(The story is then related of how as a boy he took on himself the blame
for a misdemeanour of Roderick’s, and was severely punished by his royal
father)—

  Under the pitiless strokes my blood flowed red;
  I looked on thee and wept not. But the King
  Was angered by my boyish heroism,
  And for twelve terrible hours emprisoned me
  In a dark dungeon, to repent thereof.
  So proud and fierce was my determination
  By Roderick to be beloved. Thou cam’st,
  And loudly weeping at my feet did’st fall,
  “Yes, yes,” did’st cry, “my pride is overcome,
  One day, when thou art king, I will repay thee.”

  _Marquis_ (_giving his hand_.)
  I will so, Karl. My boyish affidavit
  As man I now renew; I will repay;
  My hour will also strike, perchance.

[Sidenote: _The devotion of Roderick_]

(The hour comes, when Roderick takes on himself the blame for an intrigue
of Don Karlos with the Queen and William of Orange. He writes a letter to
the latter, and allows it purposely to fall into the King’s hands. He is
assassinated by order of the King; and the following speech over his body
(Act V., Scene iv.) is made to the King by Don Karlos, who thenceforth
abjures all love except for the memory of his friend.)

  _Karlos_ (to the King.)
  The dead man was my friend. And would you know
  Wherefore he died? He perished for my sake.
  Yes, Sire, for we were brothers! brothers by
  A nobler chain than Nature ever forges.
  Love was his glorious life-career. And love
  For me, his great, his glorious death. Mine was he.
  What time his lowly bearing puffed you up,
  What time his gay persuasive eloquence
  Made easy sport of your proud giant-spirit.
  You thought to dominate him quite—and were
  The obedient creature of his deeper plans.
  That I am prisoner, is the schemed result
  Of his great friendship. To achieve my safety
  He wrote that letter to the Prince of Orange—
  O God! the first, last falsehood of his life.
  To rescue me he went to meet the Fate
  Which he has suffered. With your gracious favours
  You loaded him. He died for me. On him
  You pressed the favours of your heart and friendship.
  Your sceptre was the plaything of his hands;
  He threw it from him, and for me he died.

[Sidenote: _Fritz of Prussia and Von Katte_]

There is little, I believe, in the historical facts relating to Don
Karlos to justify this tale of friendship; but there seems great
probability that the incidents were transferred by Schiller from the
history of Frederick the Great, of Prussia, when a youth at his father’s
court. The devotion that existed between the young Frederick and Lieut.
Von Katte, the anger and severities of the royal parent, the supposed
conspiracy, the emprisonment of Frederick, and the execution of Von
Katte, are all reproduced in Schiller’s play.

[Sidenote: _Death of Von Katte_]

Von Katte was a young man of good family and strange but charming
personality, who, as soon as he came to Court, being three or four years
older than Frederick, exercised a strong attraction upon the latter. The
two were always together, and finally, enraged by the harshness of the
royal father, they plotted flight to England. They were arrested, and
Katte, accused of treason to the throne, was condemned to death. That
this sentence was pronounced, not so much for political reasons, as in
order to do despite to the affection between him and the Crown Prince,
is strongly suggested by the circumstances. Von Katte was sent from a
distance in order to be executed at Cüstrin, in the fortress where the
Prince was confined, and with instructions that the latter should witness
his execution. Carlyle, in his life of Frederick II., says:—

  “Katte wore, by order, a brown dress exactly like the Prince’s;
  the Prince is already brought down into a lower room to see
  Katte as he passes, (to see Katte die has been the royal order,
  but they smuggled that into abeyance) and Katte knows he shall
  see him.” [Besserer, the chaplain of the Garrison, quoted by
  Carlyle, describing the scene as they approached the Castle,
  says:—‘Here, after long wistful looking about, he did get sight
  of his beloved Jonathan at a window in the Castle, from whom, he,
  with politest and most tender expression, speaking in French,
  took leave, with no little emotion of sorrow.] “_Pardonnez moi,
  mon cher Katte_” cried Friedrich. “_La mort est douce pour un si
  aimable Prince_,” said Katte, and fared on; round some angle of
  the Fortress it appears; not in sight of Friedrich, who sank in a
  faint, and had seen his last glimpse of Katte in this world.’

                           _Life of Frederick II._, vol. 2, p. 489.

[Sidenote: _Frederick the Great_]

Frederick’s grief and despair were extreme for a time. Then his royal
father found him a wife, in the Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, whom he
obediently married, but in whom he showed little interest—their meetings
growing rarer and rarer till at last they became merely formal. Later,
and after his accession, he spent most of his leisure time when away
from the cares of war and political re-organisation, at his retreat at
Sans-Souci, afar from feminine society (a fact which provoked Voltaire’s
sarcasms), and in the society of his philosophic and military friends, to
many of whom he was much attached. Von Kupffer has unearthed from his
poems printed at Sans-Souci in 1750 the following, addressed to Count Von
Kaiserlinck, a favorite companion, on whom he bestowed the by-name of
Cesarion:—

  “Cesarion, let us keep unspoiled
  Our faith, and be true friends,
  And pair our lives like noble Greeks,
      And to like noble ends!
  That friend from friend may never hide
  A fault through weakness or thro’ pride,
      Or sentiment that cloys.
  Thus gold in fire the brighter glows,
  And far more rare and precious grows,
      Refined from all alloys.”

[Sidenote: _Frederick to Cesarion_]

There is also in the same collection a long and beautiful ode “To the
shades of Cesarion,” of which the following are a few lines:—

  “O God! how hard the word of Fate!
  Cesarion dead! His happy days
  Death to the grave has consecrate.
      His charm I mourn and gentle grace.
  He’s dead—my tender, faithful mate!
  A thousand daggers pierce my heart;
  It trembles, torn with grief and pain.
      He’s gone! the dawn comes not again!
  Thy grave’s the goal of my heart’s strife;
      Holy shall thy remembrance be;
  To thee I poured out love in life;
      And love in death I vow to thee.”

[Sidenote: _Herder on Greek Friendship_]

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) as theologian, philosopher,
friend of Goethe, Court preacher at Weimar, and author of _Ideas on the
Philosophy of History_ has had a great and enduring reputation. The
following extract is from the just-mentioned book:—

  “Never has a branch born finer fruit than that little branch
  of Olive, Ivy, and Pine, which was the victor’s crown among
  the Greeks. It gave to the young men good looks, good health,
  and good spirits; it made their limbs nimble, graceful and
  well-formed; in their souls it lighted the first sparks of the
  desire for good name, the love of fame even, and stamped on
  them the inviolable temper of men who live for their city and
  their country. Finally, what was most precious, it laid the
  foundation in their characters of that predilection for male
  society and friendship which so markedly distinguishes the
  Greeks. In Greece, woman was not the one prize of life for which
  the young man fought and strove; the loveliest Helen could only
  mould the spirit of one Paris, even though her beauty might be
  the coveted object of all manly valour. The feminine sex, despite
  the splendid examples of every virtue that it exhibited in
  Greece, as elsewhere, remained there only a secondary object of
  the manly life. The thoughts of aspiring youths reached towards
  something higher. The bond of friendship which they knitted among
  themselves or with grown men, compelled them into a school which
  Aspasia herself could hardly have introduced them to; so that in
  many of the states of Greece manly love became surrounded and
  accompanied by those intelligent and educational influences, that
  permanence of character and devotion, whose sentiment and meaning
  we read of in Plato almost as if in a romance from some far
  planet.”

[Sidenote: _Von Kupffer on Ethics and Politics_]

Elisar von Kupffer, in the introduction to his Anthology, from which I
have already quoted a few extracts, speaks at some length on the great
ethical and political significance of a loving comradeship. He says:—

  “In open linkage and attachment to each other ought youth to
  rejoice in youth. In attachment to another, one loses the habit
  of thinking only of self. In the love and tender care and
  instruction that the youth receives from his lover he learns from
  boyhood up to recognise the good of self-sacrifice and devotion;
  and in the love which he shows, whether in the smaller or the
  greater offerings of an intimate friendship, he accustoms himself
  to self-sacrifice for another. In this way the young man is early
  nurtured into a member of the Community—to a useful member and
  not one who has self and only self in mind. And how much closer
  thus does unit grow to unit, till indeed the whole comes to feel
  itself a whole!...

  “The close relationship between two men has this further
  result—that folk instinctively and not without reason judge
  of one from the other; so that should the one be worthy and
  honorable, he naturally will be anxious that the other should
  not bring a slur upon him. Thus there arises a bond of moral
  responsibility with regard to character. And what can be of more
  advantage to the community than that the individual members
  should feel responsible for each other? Surely it is just that
  which constitutes national sentiment, and the strength of a
  people, namely, that it should form a complete whole in itself,
  where each unit feels locked and linked with the others. Such
  unions may be of the greatest social value, as in the case of
  the family. And it is especially in the hour of danger that the
  effect of this unity of feeling shows itself; for where one man
  stands or falls with another, where glad self-sacrifice, learnt
  in boyhood, becomes so to speak, a warm-hearted instinct, there
  is developed a power of incalculable import, a power that folly
  alone can hold cheap. Indeed, the unconquerable force of these
  unions has already been practically shown, as in the Sacred
  Band of the Thebans who fought to its bitter end the battle of
  Leuctra; and, psychologically speaking, the explanation is most
  natural; for where one person feels himself united, body and
  soul to another, is it not natural that he should put forth all
  his powers in order to help the other, in order to manifest his
  love for him in every way? If any one cannot or will not perceive
  this we may indeed well doubt either the intelligence of his head
  or the morality of his heart.”

[Sidenote: _Friedrich Rückert to his Friend_]

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866), Professor of Oriental Literature in
Berlin, wrote verses in memory of his friend Joseph Kopp:—

  “How shall I know myself without thee,
  Who knew myself as part of thee?
  I only know one half is vanished,
  And half alone is left, of me.
  Never again my proper mind
  I’ll know; for thee I’ll never find.

  Never again, out there in space,
  I’ll find thee; but here, deep within.
  I see, tho’ not in dreams, thy face;
  My waking eyes thy presence win,
  And all my thought and poesy
  Are but my offering to thee.

  ...

  My Jonathan, now hast thou fled,
  And I to weep thy loss remain;
  If David’s harp might grace my hands
  O might it help to ease my pain!
  My friend, my Joseph, true of faith,
  In life so loved—so loved in death.”

[Sidenote: _Rough Weather Friends_]

And the following are by Joseph Kitir, an Austrian poet:—

  “Not where breathing roses bless
  The night, or summer airs caress;
  Not in Nature’s sacred grove;
  No, but at a tap-room table,
  Sitting in the window-gable
  Did we plight our troth of love.

  No fair lime tree’s roofing shade
  By the spring wind gently swayed
  Formed for us a bower of bliss;
  No, stormbound, but love-intent,
  There against the damp wall bent
  We two bartered kiss for kiss.

  Therefore shalt thou, Love so rare
  (Child of storms and wintry air),
  Not like Spring’s sweet fragrance fade.
  Even in sorrow thou shalt flourish,
  Frost shall not make thee afraid,
  And in storms thou shalt not perish.”

[Sidenote: _Ludwig II. to Richard Wagner_]

On p. 154, 155 above are given some letters of Richard Wagner relative to
Ludwig II.’s deep attachment to him. Below are some of the actual letters
of Ludwig to Wagner. (See Prof. C. Beyer’s book, _Ludwig II., König von
Bayern_.)

  “Dear Friend, O I see clearly that your sufferings are
  deep-rooted! You tell me, beloved friend, that you have looked
  deep into the hearts of men, and seen there the villainy and
  corruption that dwells within. Yes, I believe you, and I can
  well understand that moments come to you of disgust with the
  human race; yet always will we remember (will we not, beloved?)
  that there are yet many noble and good people, for whom it is a
  real pleasure to live and work. And yet you say you are no use
  for this world!—I pray you, do not despair, your true friend
  conjures you; have Courage: ‘Love helps us to bear and suffer all
  things, love brings at last the victor’s crown!’ Love recognises,
  even in the most corrupt, the germ of good; she alone overcomes
  all!—Live on, darling of my soul. I recall your own words to you.
  To learn to forget is a noble work!—Let us be careful to hide
  the faults of others; it was for all men indeed that the Saviour
  died and suffered. And now, what a pity that ‘Tristan’ can not be
  presented to-day; will it perhaps to-morrow? Is there any chance?

                 Unto death your faithful friend,

                                                           LUDWIG.”

  _15th May, 1865._

                                   “_Purschling_, _4th Aug., 1865_.

  “My one, my much-loved Friend,—You express to me your sorrow
  that, as it seems to you, each one of our last meetings has only
  brought pain and anxiety to me.—Must I then remind my loved
  one of Brynhilda’s words?—Not only in gladness and enjoyment,
  but in suffering also Love makes man blest.... When does my
  friend think of coming to the ‘Hill-Top,’ to the woodland’s
  aromatic breezes?—Should a stay in that particular spot not
  altogether suit, why, I beg my dear one to choose any of my other
  mountain-cabins for his residence.—What is mine is his! Perhaps
  we may meet on the way between the Wood and the World, as my
  friend expressed it!... To thee I am wholly devoted; for thee,
  for thee only to live!

                Unto death your own, your faithful

                                                           LUDWIG.”

  “_Hohenschwangau_, _2nd Nov., 1865_.

  “My one Friend, my ardently beloved! This afternoon, at 3.30,
  I returned from a glorious tour in Switzerland! How this land
  delighted me!—There I found your dear letter; deepest warmest
  thanks for the same. With new and burning enthusiasm has it
  filled me; I see that the beloved marches boldly and confidently
  forward, towards our great and eternal goal.

  “All hindrances I will victoriously like a hero overcome. I am
  entirely at thy disposal; let me now dutifully prove it.—Yes, we
  must meet and speak together. I will banish all evil clouds; Love
  has strength for all. You are the star that shines upon my life,
  and the sight of you ever wonderfully strengthens me.—Ardently
  I long for you, O my presiding Saint, to whom I pray! I should
  be immensely pleased to see my friend here in about a week; oh,
  we have plenty to say! If only I could quite banish from me the
  curse of which you speak, and send it back to the deeps of night
  from whence it sprang!—How I love, how I love you, my one, my
  highest good!...

  “My enthusiasm and love for you are boundless. Once more I swear
  you faith till death!

                      Ever, ever your devoted

                                                           LUDWIG.”

[Sidenote: _Byron’s Calmar and Orla_]

Byron’s “Death of Calmar and Orla: an Imitation of Ossian,” is, like his
“Nisus and Euryalus” (see above, p. 163), a story of two hero-friends
who, refusing to be separated, die together in battle:—

  “In Morven dwelt the chief; a beam of war to Fingal. His steps
  in the field were marked in blood. Lochlin’s sons had fled
  before his angry spear; but mild was the eye of Calmar; soft was
  the flow of his yellow locks: they streamed like the meteor of
  the night. No maid was the sigh of his soul: his thoughts were
  given to friendship—to dark-haired Orla, destroyer of heroes!
  Equal were their swords in battle; but fierce was the pride of
  Orla—gentle alone to Calmar. Together they dwelt in the cave of
  Oithona.” [Orla is sent by the King on a mission of danger amid
  the hosts of the enemy. Calmar insists on accompanying him, in
  spite of all entreaties to the contrary. They are discovered. A
  fight ensues, and they are slain.] “Morn glimmers on the hills:
  no living foe is seen; but the sleepers are many; grim they lie
  on Erin. The breeze of ocean lifts their locks; yet they do not
  awake. The hawks scream above their prey.

  “Whose yellow locks wave o’er the breast of a chief? Bright as
  the gold of the stranger they mingle with the dark hair of his
  friend. ’Tis Calmar: he lies on the bosom of Orla. Theirs is one
  stream of blood. Fierce is the look of gloomy Orla. He breathes
  not, but his eye is still aflame. It glares in death unclosed.
  His hand is grasped in Calmar’s; but Calmar lives! He lives,
  though low. ‘Rise,’ said the King, ‘Rise, son of Mora: ’tis mine
  to heal the wounds of heroes. Calmar may yet bound on the hills
  of Morven.’

  “‘Never more shall Calmar chase the deer of Morven with Orla,’
  said the hero. ‘What were the chase to me alone? Who should share
  the spoils of battle with Calmar? Orla is at rest. Rough was
  thy soul, Orla! Yet soft to me as the dew of morn. It glared on
  others in lightning: to me a silver beam of night. Bear my sword
  to blue-eyed Mora; let it hang in my empty hall. It is not pure
  from blood: but it could not save Orla. Lay me with my friend.
  Raise the song when I am dead.’” [So they are laid by the stream
  of Lubar, and four gray stones mark the dwelling of Orla and
  Calmar.]

[Sidenote: _Hæckel’s Visit to Ceylon_]

Ernst Hæckel, in his “Visit to Ceylon” describes the devotion entertained
for him by his Rodiya serving-boy at Belligam, near Galle. The keeper of
the rest-house at Belligam was an old and philosophically-minded man,
whom Hæckel, from his likeness to a well known head, could not help
calling by the name of Socrates. And he continues:—

[Sidenote: _His Rodiya Boy_]

  “It really seemed as though I should be pursued by the familiar
  aspects of classical antiquity from the first moment of my
  arrival at my idyllic home. For, as Socrates led me up the steps
  of the open central hall of the rest-house, I saw before me, with
  uplifted arms in an attitude of prayer, a beautiful naked brown
  figure, which could be nothing else than the famous statue of the
  ‘Youth adoring.’ How surprised I was when the graceful bronze
  statue suddenly came to life, and dropping his arms fell on his
  knees, and, after raising his black eyes imploringly to mine,
  bowed his handsome face so low at my feet that his long black
  hair fell on the floor! Socrates informed me that this boy was a
  Pariah, a member of the lowest caste, the Rodiyas, who had lost
  his parents at an early age, so he had taken pity on him. He was
  told off to my exclusive service, had nothing to do the livelong
  day but obey my wishes, and was a good boy, sure to do his duty
  punctually. In answer to the question what I was to call my new
  body-servant, the old man informed me that his name was Gamameda.
  Of course I immediately thought of Ganymede, for the favorite of
  Jove himself could not have been more finely made, or have had
  limbs more beautifully proportioned and moulded. As Gamameda also
  displayed a peculiar talent as butler, and never allowed anyone
  else to open me a cocoa-nut or offer me a glass of palm wine, it
  was no more than right that I should dub him Ganymede.

  “Among the many beautiful figures which move in the foreground
  of my memories of the paradise of Ceylon, Ganymede remains one
  of my dearest favorites. Not only did he fulfil his duties with
  the greatest attention and conscientiousness, but he developed a
  personal attachment and devotion to me which touched me deeply.
  The poor boy, as a miserable outcast of the Rodiya caste, had
  been from his birth the object of the deepest contempt of his
  fellow-men, and subjected to every sort of brutality and
  ill-treatment. With the single exception of old Socrates, who
  was not too gentle with him either, no one perhaps had ever
  cared for him in any way. He was evidently as much surprised as
  delighted to find me willing to be kind to him from the first....
  I owe many beautiful and valuable contributions to my museum
  to Ganymede’s unfailing zeal and dexterity. With the keen eye,
  the neat hand, and the supple agility of the Cinghalese youth,
  he could catch a fluttering moth or a gliding fish with equal
  promptitude; and his nimbleness was really amazing, when, out
  hunting, he climbed the tall trees like a cat, or scrambled
  through the densest jungle to recover the prize I had killed.”
  _My Visit to Ceylon_, _by Ernst Hæckel_, p. 200. (Kegan Paul,
  Trench & Co., 1883).

Hæckel stayed some weeks in and around Belligam; and continues, (p. 272):—

  “On my return to Belligam I had to face one of the hardest duties
  of my whole stay in Ceylon: to tear myself away from this lovely
  spot of earth, where I had spent six of the happiest and most
  interesting weeks in my life.... But hardest of all was the
  parting from my faithful Ganymede; the poor lad wept bitterly,
  and implored me to take him with me to Europe. In vain had I
  assured him that it was impossible, and told him of our chill
  climate and dull skies. He clung to my knees and declared that
  he would follow me unhesitatingly wherever I would take him. I
  was at last almost obliged to use force to free myself from his
  embrace. I got into the carriage which was waiting, and as I
  waved a last farewell to my good brown friends, I almost felt as
  if I had been expelled from Paradise.”

[Sidenote: _Edward Fitzgerald’s friendships_]

Edward Fitzgerald, the interpreter and translator of _Omar Khayyam_, was
a man of the deepest feeling and sensibility, with a special gift for
friendship. Men like Tennyson and Thackeray declared that they loved him
best of all their friends. He himself said in one of his letters “My
friendships are more like loves.” A. C. Benson, his biographer, writes of
him:—

  “He was always taking fancies, and once under the spell he could
  see no faults in his friend. His friendship for Browne arose out
  of one of these romantic impulses. So too his affection for Posh,
  the boatman; for Cowell, and for Alfred Smith, the farmer of
  Farlingay and Boulge, who had been his protégé as a boy. He seems
  to have been one of those whose best friendships are reserved for
  men; for though he had beloved women friends like Mrs. Cowell
  and Mrs. Kemble, yet these are the exceptions rather than the
  rule. The truth is, there was a strong admixture of the feminine
  in Fitzgerald’s character.” _Fitzgerald, English Men of Letters
  Series_, ch. viii.

[Sidenote: _Fitzgerald and Posh_]

The friendship with Posh, the fisherman, at Lowestoft and at Woodbridge,
lasted over many years. Fitzgerald had a herring-lugger built for him,
which he called the _Meum and Tuum_, and in which they had many a sail
together. Benson, speaking of their first meeting, says:—

  “In the same year [1864] came another great friendship. He made
  the acquaintance of a stalwart sailor named Joseph Fletcher,
  commonly called Posh. It was at Lowestoft that he was found,
  where Fitzgerald used, as he wrote in 1850, ‘to wander about
  the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost me who
  might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my
  heart.’ Posh had seen the melancholy figure wandering about,
  and years after, when Fitz used to ask him why he had not been
  merciful enough to speak to him, Posh would reply that he had
  not thought it becoming. Posh was, in Fitzgerald’s own words, ‘a
  man of the finest Saxon type, with a complexion, _vif, mâle et
  flamboyant_, blue eyes, a nose less than Roman, more than Greek,
  and strictly auburn hair that woman might sigh to possess.’
  He was too, according to Fitz, ‘a man of simplicity of soul,
  justice of thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of Nature’s
  grandest type.’ Fitz became deeply devoted to this big-handed,
  soft-hearted, grave fellow, then 24 years of age.”

                                                   _Ibid_, ch. iii.




FOOTNOTES


[1] This curious oracle seems purposely to confuse the singular and
plural.

[2] Digression in praise of the political administration of the
Pisistratidæ.

[3] “For the two men lived together, and had their possessions in
common.” _Iamblichus, de Vita Pythagoræ_ bk. i. ch. 33.

[4] “For now we see by means of a mirror darkly (lit.
enigmatically); but then face to face; now I know in part; but then
shall I know even as also I am known.” _1 Cor._ xiii. 12.

[5] Seen within the flower we call Larkspur.

[6] The Sun.

[7] Benecke, _Woman in Greek Poetry_, traces a germ of this romance
even in Greek days.

[8] “De la Servitude Volontaire”.

[9] As Whitman in this connection (like Tennyson in connection with
_In Memoriam_) is sure to be accused of morbidity, it may be worth
while to insert the following note from _In re Walt Whitman_, p.
115, “Dr. Drinkard in 1870, when Whitman broke down from rupture of
a small blood-vessel in the brain, wrote to a Philadelphia doctor
detailing Whitman’s case, and stating that he was a man ‘with the
most natural habits, bases, and organisation he had ever seen.’”




Index




INDEX


  _Achilles and Patroclus_, 45, 68 _et seq._, 74, 85

  _Æschylus, on Achilles_, 72, 73

  _African Customs_, 4, 5, 6, 14

  _Agathon, epigram to, by Plato_, 79

  _Agesilaus and Lysander_, 17

  _Albania, Customs_, 20, 21

  _Alexander the Great and Hephæstion_, 188

  _Amis and Amile, story of_, 106

  _Anacreon, epigram_, 77;
    _to Bathyllus_, 77

  _Anne, Princess, and Lady Churchill_, 146

  _Anselm’s letters to brother Monks_, 104;
    _to Lanfranc_, 104;
    _to Gondulph_, 105

  _Apollo and Hyacinth_, 88

  _Arabia, customs_, 12, 109, 119

  _Archidamus and Cleonymus_, 17

  _Aristophanes, speech of_, 51 _et seq._

  _Aristotle quoted_, 185

  _Aster, epigrams to, by Plato_, 78

  _Athenæus quoted_, 25, 28, 74, 147

  _Augustine, Saint, his friend_, 99 _et seq._


  _Bacon, Francis, quoted_, 137

  _Bagdad Dervish, story of_, 116;
    _another story_, 177

  _Balonda, ceremonies among_, 4

  _Banyai, customs among the_, 14

  _Barnfield, Richard, “The Affectionate Shepheard,”_ 133;
    _Sonnets_, 134 _et seq._

  _Baylis, J. W., quoted_, 36, 90

  _Beaconsfield, Lord, on boy-friendships_, 168

  _Beaumont and Fletcher_, 191 _et seq._

  _Bengali coolies_, 7

  _Benecke, E. F. M., quoted_, 68, 97

  _Bernard, Saint_, 103

  _Bion quoted_, 86

  _Blood, mutual tasting of_, 5

  _Browne, Sir Thomas, “Religio Medici” quoted_, 144

  _Browning, Robert, poem by_, 174

  _Bruno, Giordano, quoted_, 130

  _Buckingham, J. S., Travels in Assyria, &c._, 115 _et seq._

  _Butler, Lady E., and Miss Ponsonby_, 161, 162

  _Byron, letter to Miss Pigot_, 160;
    _friendship with Eddleston_, 161;
    _paraphrase of story of Nisus and Euryalus_, 163;
    _comments by T. Moore_, 164;
    _story of Calmar and Orla_, 217


  _Callias and Autolycus_, 59

  _Calmar and Orla_, 217

  _Carlyle, T., on Fritz of Prussia and von Katte_, 205

  _Catullus_, 89;
    _to Quintius_, 92;
    _to Juventius_, 92;
    _to Licinius_, 93

  _Chæronæa, battle of_, 22, 23, 68

  _Chariton and Melanippus_, 15;
    _story of_, 29

  _Chivalry, customs of, in Arabia and Africa_, 11, 12, 14

  _Chivalry, mediæval, compared with Greek friendship_, 15, 45, 47

  _Christian influences_, 97 _et seq._

  _Christian and Greek Ideals compared_, 98

  _Cleomachus, story of_, 27

  _Comrade-attachment, institution in the early world_, 1 _et seq._,
        41, 46, 177, &c.;
    _essential part of Greek civilisation_, 41, 42 _et seq._, 208, 209;
    _romance of_, 42, 46, 47, 52, 53, 56-60, 68 _et seq._;
    _heroic quality_, 11, 12, 13, 16, 21-25, 28, 31-37, 50, 51, &c.;
    _Educational value_, 16-21, 46, 49, 74, 210, 211;
    _relation to chivalry_, 11-16, 45, 47, 97;
    _relation to Politics_, 42, 46, 49, 50, 99, 147, 211, 212;
    _relation to Philosophy_, 30, 47-63;
    _relation to the Divine Love_, 48, 54-59, 63, 130, 132, 133, 145

  _Cratinus and Aristodemus_, 15

  _Crete, customs_, 17


  _Damon and Pythias_, 8;
    _story of_, 36

  _Dante quoted_, 69

  _David and Jonathan_, 6, 7, 15, 108

  _Democratic Vistas quoted_, 178

  _Dickinson, G. L., quoted_, 45, 75

  _Diocles, tomb honoured by lovers_, 20, 82

  _Diocles and Philolaus_, 15, 19

  _Diomedes and Sthenelus_, 45

  _Diotima the prophetess_, 53, 129

  _Don Karlos and the Marquis of Posa_, 199 _et seq._

  _Dorian customs_, 16 _et seq._


  _Eastern countries and poets_, 109

  _Eighteenth Century, influence of_, 147

  _Emerson, R. W., essay on friendship_, 175

  _Epaminondas_, 28, 29;
    _and Pelopidas_, 185

  _Epigrams, Greek Anthology_, 80;
    _of Plato_, 78, 79

  _Epitaph, Greek Anthology_, 80

  _Exchange of gifts_, 5, 6, 7, 18, 36;
    _of names_, 5, 6;
    _of flowers_, 7


  _Fitzgerald, Edward, friendship for Tennyson, Thackeray and others_,
        222;
    _devotion to Fletcher, or ‘Posh,’ the sailor_, 223, 224

  _Fletcher, John, lament for Francis Beaumont_, 194

  _Flower Friends_, 7

  _Fraunce, Abraham, translation of Virgil_, 91

  _Frederick the Great, his friendship with von Katte_, 204 _et seq._;
    _poems by_, 207

  _Frey, Ludwig, quoted_, 45, 149


  _Gamameda or Ganymede_, 220

  _Ganymede_, 57, 82

  _Germans, primitive_, 11, 13

  _Germany, modern_, 147 _et seq._

  _Goethe, on Winckelmann and Greek friendships_, 149;
    _poem by_, 150

  _Greek friendship compared with mediæval chivalry_, 15, 45, 47


  _Hæckel, Ernst, and his Rodiya boy in Ceylon_, 219 _et seq._

  _Hafiz quoted_, 113, 190

  _Hallam, Arthur, and Tennyson_, 169 _et seq._

  _Harmodius and Aristogeiton_, 15, 28;
    _story of_, 32

  _Hazlitt, Wm., Life of Montaigne quoted_, 124

  _Hephæstion, favorite of Alexander the Great_, 188

  _Hercules and Ioläus_, 23, 25, 44

  _Herder on Greek friendship_, 208, 209

  _Hermaphrodites_, 52

  _Homer’s Iliad, motive of_, 68-72

  _Hyacinth, favorite of Apollo_, 87;
    _story of_, 88


  _Idomeneus and Meriones_, 45

  _“In Memoriam,” Tennyson’s, reviled by the “Times,”_ 169;
    _quoted_, 170 _et seq._

  _Ioläus_, 23, 25, 44


  _Jalal-ud-din Rumi_, 109, 110, 111

  _Jealousy in friendship_, 9


  _Kasendi, an African ceremony_, 5

  _Khalifa at Khartoum_, 12

  _Kitir, Joseph, verses by_, 213


  _Lacedæmonians, customs among_, 25

  _Ladies, the, of Llangollen_, 161, 162

  _“Leaves of Grass” quoted_, 179-181

  _Leigh Hunt on school-friendships_, 166, 167

  _Lover answerable for his friend_, 18;
    _disgraceful for a youth not to have a lover_, _ibid_

  _Lovers invincible in battle_, 11, 12, 13, 23, 24, 28

  _Lucian quoted_, 35

  _Ludwig of Bavaria and R. Wagner_, 153 _et seq._;
    _letters to Wagner_, 214 _et seq._


  _Macaulay’s History of England quoted_, 145, 146

  _Maid’s Tragedy quoted_, 195

  _Manganjas, ceremonies among_, 5

  _Mania, divine_, 54

  _Marquesas Islands_, 9

  _Martial’s epigrams quoted_, 94

  _Maximus Tyrius quoted_, 129

  _“May and Death,” poem by Browning_, 174

  _Melantius and Amintor_, 195

  _Meleager, verses by_, 79

  _Melville, Herman, quoted_, 8 _et seq._

  _Michel Angelo, Sonnets_, 129;
    _quoted_, 131 _et seq._

  _Military Comradeship_, 11 _et seq._

  _Monastic life, friendship in_, 97, 103 _et seq._

  _Montaigne and Stephen de la Boëtie_, 123 _et seq._;
    _on marriage_, 125

  _Montalembert quoted_, 103 _et seq._

  _Moore, T., on Byron’s friendships_, 164

  _Moschus, lament for Bion_, 86

  _Mulamirin, or bodyguard of Khalifa_, 13

  _Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race_, 16 _et seq._


  _Niobe, the sons of_, 26, 27


  _Orestes and Pylades_, 15, 44;
    _story of_, 35


  _Parmenides and Zeno_, 30

  _Patroclus and Achilles_, 45, 68, 74, 85

  _Penn, William, quoted_, 145

  _Persia, customs_, 109, 119

  _Persian Poetry_, 110 _et seq._, 189, 190

  _Phædo, story of_, 31

  _Phædrus of Plato_, 47, 49, 55

  _Pheidias and Pantarkes_, 30

  _Philip of Macedon and the Theban Band_, 23

  _Pindar to Theoxenos_, 78;
    _see also_ 153

  _Platen, Count August von_, 151;
    _sonnets to his friend Karl Theodor German_, 151, 152;
    _sonnet on death of Pindar_, 153

  _Plato quoted_, 16, 48 _et seq._, 72, 73;
    _epigrams_, 78

  _Plutarch quoted_, 22, 26, 27, 61 _et seq._;
    _referred to_, 123

  _Polemon and Krates_, 187

  _Polynesian Apollo_, 9

  _Polynesian customs_, 8 _et seq._

  _‘Posh’ and Edward Fitzgerald_, 223, 224

  _Potter, Archbishop, quoted_, 147


  _Raffalovich quoted_, 151

  _Reminiscence, true love a_, 55-59

  _Renaissance, influence of_, 99, 123

  _Rückert, verses to his friend, Joseph Kopp_, 21


  _Saadi quoted_, 113, 189, 190

  _Sacred Band, see Theban Band_

  _Sacredness of friendship in the early world_, 10, 37, 45

  _Sappho_, 75;
    _to Lesbia_, 76

  _Schiller quoted_, 198 _et seq._

  _School-friendships_, 165 _et seq._

  _Sentiment of Comradeship, influenced by Christianity_, 97 _et seq._;
    _by the Renaissance_, 99, 123;
    _its place in the monastic life_, 97, 103 _et seq._;
    _in modern Democracy_, 178, 211

  _Shakespeare_, 128, 138, 152;
    _sonnets quoted_, 139 _et seq._;
    _Merchant of Venice_, 142;
    _Henry V._, 143

  _Shelley, Adonais_, 86;
    _essay on friendship_, 165

  _Sidney, Philip, friendship with Fulke Greville_, 127;
    _with Hubert Languet_, 127, 128

  _Sininyane and Moshoshoma_, 5, 6

  _Socrates, his views_, 47;
    _quoted_, 53 _et seq._, 58, 59, 75

  _Socrates and Phædo_, 31

  _Sophocles, his tragedy of Niobe_, 74

  _Sparta, customs_, 16

  _Suleyman the Magnificent and Ibrahim_, 114

  _Symonds, J. A., quoted_, 15, 20, 31, 47, 68, 79

  _Symposium of Plato_, 48 _et seq._;
    _speech of Phædrus_, 49;
    _of Pausanias_, 51;
    _of Aristophanes_, 52;
    _of Socrates_, 53, 54;
    _also_ 72

  _Symposium of Xenophon_, 59-61


  _Tacitus, Germania_, 11

  _Tahiti, customs in_, 8

  _Tennyson, Alfred, and his friend Hallam_, 169;
    _“In Memoriam” quoted_, 170 _et seq._

  _Theban Band, account of_, 21 _et seq._;
    _also_ 28, 68, 211

  _Theocritus, Idyll xii._, 80 _et seq._;
    _Idyll xxix._, 83

  _Theognis and Kurnus_, 74, 75

  _Theseus and Pirithöus_, 15, 44, 85

  _Thirlwall, Bishop, quoted_, 44

  _Thoreau, H. D., quoted_, 175-6

  _Thucydides quoted_, 32


  _Ulrichs, K. H._, 157;
    _verses quoted_, 159

  _Valerius Maximus quoted_, 37

  _Vauvenargues and De Seytres_, 196, 197

  _Virgil, 2nd Eclogue_, 90;
    _imitated_, 133

  _Vision, the divine_, 55, 56, 58

  _Von Katte, his execution_, 205

  _Von Kupffer, Anthology quoted_, 189, 190, 210, 211


  _Wagner, Richard, friendship with Ludwig II._, 153;
    _letters_, 154, 155;
    _on Greek comradeship_, 156

  _Whitman, Walt, his “love of comrades,”_ 177;
    _Democratic Vistas quoted_, 178;
    _Leaves of Grass quoted_, 179-181

  _William of Orange and Bentinck_, 145

  _Winckelmann_, 148;
    _his letters_, 148;
    _Goethe on_, 149


THE END.

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