look when they are
turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more
by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by
Themistocles to the King of Persia, "That speech was like cloth of
Arras, opened and put abroad; whereby the imagery doth appear in figure:
whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs." Neither is this second
fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to
such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are best);
but even without that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own
thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which
itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue
or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other
point which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation;
which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of
his enigmas, "Dry light is ever the best;" and certain it is, that the
light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer
than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment; which is
ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is
as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a
man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a
flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there
is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a
friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other
concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the
mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a
man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing and
corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead;
observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case: but
the best receipt (best I say to work and best to take) is the admonition
of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors and
extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit for
want of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their
fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men "that look
sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor."
As for business, a man may think, if he