except for upbraiding, or pride, or
disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous wound; for, for these things
every friend will depart." We may observe in this, and several other
precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and
illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings of Horace
and Epictetus. There are very beautiful instances of this nature in the
following passages, which are likewise written upon the same subject:
"Whose discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a
friend to his mind. Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if
thou bewrayeth his secrets, follow no more after him: for as a man hath
destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one
that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go,
and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far
off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As for a wound it may be
bound up, and after reviling there may be reconciliation; but he that
bewrayeth secrets, is without hope."

Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very
justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal: to these,
others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and
fortune, and, as Cicero calls it, _Morum comitas_, "a pleasantness of
temper." If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I
should join to these other qualifications a certain equability or
evenness of behaviour. A man often contracts a friendship with one whom
perhaps he does not find out till after a year's conversation; when on a
sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never
discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him.
There are several persons who in some certain periods of their lives are
inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable. Martial
has given us a very pretty picture of one of this species, in the
following epigram:

_Difficilis_, _facilis_, _jucundus_, _acerbus es idem_,
_Nec tecum possum vivere_, _nec sine te_.

_Ep._ xii. 47.

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one
who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is so