ight of a friend, as a thing nearer our heart, and to be
delivered with it. Nothing easier than to create acquaintance, the mere
being in company once does it; whereas friendship, like children, is
ingendered by a more inward mixture, and coupling together; when we are
acquainted not with their virtues only, but their faults, their passions,
their fears, their shame,--and are bold on both sides to make their
discovery. And as it is in the love of the body, which is then at the
height and full when it has power and admittance into the hidden and
worst parts of it; so it is in friendship with the mind, when those
_verenda_ of the soul, and those things which we dare not shew the world,
are bare and detected one to another. Some men are familiar with all, and
those commonly friends to none; for friendship is a sullener thing, is a
contractor and taker up of our affections to some few, and suffers them
not loosely to be scattered on all men. The poorest tie of acquaintance is
that of place and country, which are shifted as the place, and missed but
while the fancy of that continues. These are only then gladdest of other,
when they meet in some foreign region, where the encompassing of strangers
unites them closer, till at last they get new, and throw off one another.
Men of parts and eminency, as their acquaintance is more sought for, so
they are generally more staunch of it, not out of pride only, but fear to
let too many in too near them: for it is with men as with pictures, the
best show better afar off and at distance, and the closer you come to them
the coarser they are. The best judgment of a man is taken from his
acquaintance, for friends and enemies are both partial; whereas these see
him truest because calmest, and are no way so engaged to lie for him. And
men that grow strange after acquaintance, seldom piece together again, as
those that have tasted meat and dislike it, out of a mutual experience
disrelishing one another.

LXII.

A MEER COMPLIMENTAL MAN

Is one to be held off still at the same distance you are now; for you
shall have him but thus, and if you enter on him farther you lose him.
Methinks Virgil well expresses him in those well-behaved ghosts that AEneas
met with, that were friends to talk with, and men to look on, but if he
grasped them, but air.[84] He is one that lies kindly to you, and for good
fashion's sake, and tis discourtesy in you to believe him. His words are
so many fine phrases