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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 sometimes
amiable and sometimes odious: and as most men are at some times in
admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the
greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and
never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our
character.
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