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