Edward Carpenter: 
IOLÄUS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRIENDSHIP (1908)




"and as to the loves of Hercules it is difficult to record them because
of their number. But some who think that Ioläus was one of them, do to 
this day worship and honour him; and make their
loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb." 
(Plutarch)

[Introduction: Edward Carpenter's Ioläus is an attempt to provide a historical 
context for male friendship. One should not be misled, however. Carpenter, one 
of the earliest English homosexual activists, is writing about homosexual 
relationships and trying to provide a historical grounding for them. As such his 
work is of interest not only for its references, but also as evidence of the 
strategies of the early gay movement .]


Contents 
  Preface to First Edition 
  I: Friendship-Customs in the Pagan and Early World 
  II: The Place of Friendship in Greek Life and Thought 
  III: Poetry of Friendship Among Greeks and Romans 
  IV: Friendship in Early Christian and Mediaeval Times 
  V: The Renaissance and Modern Times




PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

[iv] THE degree to which Friendship, in the early history of the world, has been 
recognized as an institution, and the dignity ascribed to it, are things hardly 
realized to-day. Yet a very slight examination of the subject shows the 
important part it has played. In making the following collection I have been 
much struck by the remarkable manner in which the customs of various races and 
times illustrate each other, and the way in which they point to a solid and 
enduring body of human sentiment on the subject. By arranging the extracts in a 
kind of rough chronological and evolutionary order from those dealing with 
primitive races onwards, the continuity of these customs comes out all the more 
clearly, as well as their slow modification in course of time. But it must be 
confessed that the present collection is only incomplete, and a small 
contribution, at best, towards a large subject. 
In the matter of quotation and translation, my [v] best thanks are due to 
various authors and holders of literary copyrights for their assistance and 
authority. In cases where no reference is given the translations are by the 
Editor. 
E.. C.




I: FRIENDSHIP-CUSTOMS IN THF. PAGAN AND EARLY WORLD

[3] FRIENDSHIP-CUSTOMS, of a very marked and definite character, have apparently 
prevailed among a great many primitive peoples; but the information that we have 
about them is seldom thoroughly satisfactory. Travellers have been content to 
note external ceremonies, like theexchange of names between comrades, or the 
mutual tasting of each other's blood, but-either from want of perception or want 
of opportunity - have not been able to tell us anything about the inner meaning 
of these formalities, or the sentiments which may have inspired them. Still, we 
have material enough to indicate that comrade-attachment has been recognized as 
an important institution, and held in high esteem, among quite savage tribes; 
and some of the following quotations will show this. When we come to the higher 
culture of the Greek age the material fortunately is abundant-not only for the 
customs, but (in Greek philosophy and [4] poetry) for the inner sentiments which 
inspired these customs. Consequently it will be found that the major part of 
this and the following two chapters deals with matter from Greek sources. The 
later chapters carry on the subject in loosely historical sequence through the 
Christian centuries down to modern times.

THE Balonda are an African tribe inhabiting Londa land, among the Southern 
tributaries of the Congo River. They were visited by Livingstone, and the 
following account of their customs is derived from him: 
  " The Balonda have a most remarkable custom of cementing friendship. When two 
  men agree to be special friends they go through a singular ceremony. The men 
  sit opposite each other holding hands, and by the side of each is a vessel of 
  beer. Slight cuts are then made on the clasped hands, on the pit of the 
  stomach, on the right cheek, and on the forehead. The point of a grass-blade 
  is pressed against each of these cuts, so as to take up a little of the blood, 
  and each man washes the grass-blade in his own beer vessel. The vessels are 
  then exchanged and the contents drunk, so that each imbibes the blood of the 
  other. The two are thenceforth considered as blood-relations, and are bound to 
  assist each [5] other in every possible manner. While the beer is being drunk, 
  the friends of each of the men beat on the ground with clubs, and bawl out 
  certain sentences as ratification of the treaty. It is thought correct for all 
  the friends of each party to the contract to drink a little of the beer. The 
  ceremony is called 'Kasendi'. After it has been completed, gifts are 
  exchanged! and both parties always give their most precious possessions."
  Natural History of Man. Rev. J. G. Food. Vol: Africa, p. 419.

Among the Manganjas and other tribes of the Zambesi region, Livingstone found 
the custom of changing names prevalent. 
  "Sininyane (a headman) had exchanged names with a Zulu at Shupanga, and on 
  being called the next morning made no answer; to a second and third summons he 
  paid no attention; but at length one of his men replied, 'He is not Sininyane 
  now, he is Moshoshoma '; and to this name he an swered promptly. The custom of 
  exchanging names with men of other tribes is not uncommon; and the exchangers 
  regard themselves as close comrades, owing special duties to each other ever 
  after. Should one by chance visit his comrade's town, he expects to receive 
  food, lodging, and other friendly offices from him."
  Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi. By David and Charles Livingstone. 
  Murray, 1865, p. 148.

[6] IN the story of David and Jonathan, which follows, we have an example, from 
much the same stage of primitive tribal life, of a compact between two 
friends-one the son of the chief, the other a shepherd youth-only in this case, 
in the song of David (" I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan, thy love 
to me was wonderful") we are fortunate in having the inner feeling preserved for 
us. It should be noted that Jonathan gives to David his "most precious 
possessions."

  "And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine (Goliath), he said 
  unto Abner, the captain of the host, ' Abner, whose son is this youth? ' And 
  Abner said, ' As thy soul liveth, O King, I cannot tell.' And the King said, ' 
  Inquire thou whose son the stripling is.' And as David returned from the 
  slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with 
  the head of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him, ' Whose son art 
  thou, young man?' And David answered, '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. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to 
  his father's house. Then Jonathan and David [7] made a covenant, because he 
  loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that wds 
  upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to 
  his bow, and to his girdle." 
  I Sam. ch. xvii. 55

With regard to the exchange of names, a slightly different custom prevails among 
the Bengali coolies. Two youths, or two girls, will exchange two flowers (of the 
same kind) with each other, in token of perpetual alliance. After that, one 
speaks of the other as " my flower," but never alludes to the other by name 
again-only by some roundabout phrase.

HERMAN MELVILLE, who voyaged among the Pacific Islands in 1841-1845, gives some 
interesting and reliable accounts of Polynesian customs of that period. He says: 

  " The really curious way in which all the Polynesians are in the habit of 
  making bosom friends at the shortest possible notice is deserving of remark. 
  Although, among a people like the Tahitians, vitiated as they are by 
  sophisticating influences, this custom has in most cases degenerated into a 
  mere mercenary relation, it nevertheless had its origin in a fine, and in some 
  instances heroic, sentiment formerly entertained by their fathers. [8] 
  " In the annals of the island (Tahiti) are examples of extravagant 
  friendships, unsurpassed by the story of Damon and Pythias, in truth, much 
  more wonderful; for notwithstanding the devotion-even of life in some cases-to 
  which they led, they were frequently entertained at first sight for some 
  stranger from another island." 
  Omoo, Herman Melville, ch. 39, p. 154. 
"Though little inclined to jealousy in (ordinary) love-matters, the Tahitian 
will hear of no rivals in his friendship." 
Ibid, ch. 40.

Melville spent some months on one of the Marquesas Islands, in a valley occupied 
by a tribe called Typees; one day there turned up a stranger belonging to a 
hostile tribe who occupied another part of the island: 
  " The stranger could not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and was 
  a little above the ordinary height; had he been a single hair's breadth 
  taller, the matchless symmetry of his form would have been destroyed. His 
  unclad limbs were beautifully formed; whilst the elegant outline of his 
  figure, together with his beardless cheeks, might have entitled him to the 
  distinction of standing for the statue of the Polynesian Apollo; and indeed 
  the oval of his countenance and the regularity of every feature reminded me of 
  an antique bust. But the marble repose of art was supplied by a warmth and 
  liveliness of [9] expression only to be seen in the South Sea Islander under 
  the most favorable developments of nature.
  . . . When I expressed my surprise (at his venturing among the Typees) he 
  looked at me for a moment as if enjoying my perplexity, and then with his 
  strange vivacity exclaimed-' Ah ! me taboo-me go Nukuheva-me go Tior-me go 
  Typee-me go everywhere-nobody harm me, me taboo.' 
  " This explanation would have been altogether unintelligible to me, had it not 
  recalled to my mind something I had previously heard concerning a singular 
  custom among these islanders. Though the country is possessed by various 
  tribes, whose mutual hostilities almost wholly preclude any intercourse 
  between them; yet there are instances where a person having ratified friendly 
  relations with some individual belonging to the valley, whose inmates are at 
  war with his own, may under particular restrictions venture with impunity into 
  the country of his friend, where under other circumstances he would have been 
  treated as an enemy. In this light are personal friendships regarded among 
  them, and the individual so protected is said to be ' taboo,' and his person 
  to a certain extent is held as sacred. Thus the stranger informed me he had 
  access to all the valleys in the island." 
  Typee, Herman Melville, ch. xviii.

[10] IN almost all primitive nations, warfare has given rise to institutions of 
military comradeship-including, for instance, institutions of instruction for 
young warriors, of personal devotion to their leaders, or of personal attachment 
to each other. In Greece these customs were specially defined, as later 
quotations will show. 
Tacitus, speaking of the arrangement among the Germans by which each military 
chief was surrounded by younger companions in arms, says: 
  " There is great emulation among the companions, which shall possess the 
  highest place in the favor of their chief; and among the chiefs, which shall 
  excel in the number and valor of his companions. It is their dignity, their 
  strength, to be always surrounded with a large body of select youth, an 
  ornament in peace, a bulwark in war.
  . . In the field of battle, it is disgraceful for the chief to be surpassed in 
  valor; it is disgraceful for the companions not to equal their chief; but it 
  is reproach and infamy durlng the whole succeeding life to retreat from the 
  field surviving him. To aid, to protect him; to place their own gallant 
  actions to the account of his glory is their first and most sacred 
  engagement." 
  Tacitus, Germania, 13, 14, Bohn Serses.

[11] AMONG the Arab tribes very much the same thing may be found, every Sheikh 
having his bodyguard of young men, whom he instructs and educates, while they 
render to him their military and personal devotion. In the late expedition of 
the British to Khartoum (Nov., 1899), when Colonel Wingate and his troops mowed 
down the Khalifa and his followers with their Maxims, the death of the Khalifa 
was thus described by a correspondent of the daily papers: 
  "In the centre of what was evidently the main attack on our right we came 
  across a very large number of bodies all huddled together in a very small 
  place; their horses lay dead behind them, the Khalifa lay dead on his furma, 
  or sheepskin, the typical end of the Arab Sheikh who disdains surrender; on 
  his right was the Khalifa Aly Wad Hila, and on his left Ahmed Fedil, his great 
  fighting leader, whilst all around him lay his faithful emirs, all content to 
  meet their death when he had chosen to meet his. His black Mulamirin, or 
  bodyguard, all lay dead in a straight line about 40 yards in front of their 
  master's body, with their faces to the foe and faithful to the last. It was 
  truly a touching sight, and one could not help but feel that ... their end was 
  truly grand....Amongst the dead were found two men tied together by the arms, 
  who had charged towards the guns and had got nearer than any others. On [12] 
  inquiring of the prisoners Colonel Wingate was told these two were great 
  friends, and on seeing the Egyptian guns come up had tied themselves by the 
  arms with a cord, swearing to reach the guns or die together."

Compare also the following quotation from Ammianus Marcellinus (xvi. 13), who 
says that when Chonodomarus, " King of the Alamanni," was taken prisoner by the 
Romans, 
  " His companions, two hundred in number, and three friends peculiarly attached 
  to him, thinking it infamous to survive their prince, or not to die for him, 
  surrendered themselves to be put in bonds"

The following passage from Livingstone shows the existence among the African 
tribes of his time of a system, which Wood rightly says " has a singular 
resemblance to the instruction of pages in the days of chivalry ": 
  " Monina (one of the confederate chiefs of the Banyai) had a great number of 
  young men about him, from twelve to fifteen years of age. These were all sons 
  of free men, and bands of young lads like them in the different districts 
  leave their parents about the age of puberty and live with such men as Monina 
  for the sake of instruction. When I asked the nature of the instruction I was 
  [13] told ' Bonyai,' which I suppose may be understood as indicating manhood, 
  for it sounds as if we should say, ' to teach an American Americanism,' or, ' 
  an Englishman to be English.' While here they are kept in subjection to rather 
  stringent regulations.... They remain unmarried until a fresh set of youths is 
  ready to occupy their place under the same instruction." 
  Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. By David Livingstone, 1857, 
  p. 618.

M. Foley ( Bulln. Soc. d'Anthr. de Paris, 1879) speaks of fraternity in arms 
among the natives of New Caledonia as forming a close tie- closer even than 
consanguinity.

GREECE 
WITH regard to Greece, J. Addington Symonds has some interesting remarks, which 
are well worthy of consideration; he says: 
  " Nearly all the historians of Greece have failed to insist upon the fact that 
  fraternity in arms played for the Greek race the same part as the idealization 
  of women for the knighthood of feudal Europe. Greek mythology and history are 
  full of tales of friendship, which can only be paralleled by the story of 
  David and Jonathan in the Bible. The legends of Herakles and Hylas, of Theseus 
  and Peirithous, of Apollo and Hyacinth, [14]of Orestes and Pylades, occur 
  immediately to the mind. Among the noblest patriots, tyrannicides, lawgivers, 
  and self-devoted heroes in the early times of Greece, we always find the names 
  of friends and comrades received with peculiar honor Harmodius and 
  Aristogeiton, who slew the despot Hipparchus at Athens; Diocles and Philolaus, 
  who gave laws to Thebes; Chariton and Melanippus, who resisted the sway of 
  Phalaris in Sicily; Cratinus and Aristodemus, who devoted their lives to 
  propitiate offended deities when a plague had fallen on Athens; these 
  comrades, staunch to each other in their love, and elevated by friendship to 
  the pitch of noblest enthusiasm, were among the favorite saints of Greek 
  legend and history. In a word, the chivalry of Hellas found its motive force 
  in friendship rather than in the love of women; and the motive force of all 
  chivalry is a generous, soul-exalting, unselfish passion. The fruit which 
  friendship bore among the Greeks was courage in the face of danger, 
  indifference to life when honor was at stake, patriotic ardor, the love of 
  liberty, and lion-hearted rivalry in battle. Tyrants,' said Plato, ' stand in 
  awe of friends."' 
  Studies of the Greek Poets. By J. S. Symonds, Vol. I, p. 97. 
[15] THE customs connected with this fraternity in arms, in Sparta and in Crete, 
are described with care and at considerable length in the following extract from 
Muller's History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, book iv., ch. 4, par. 6: 
  " At Sparta the party loving was called eispnelas and his affection was termed 
  a breathing in, or inspiring (eispnein); which expresses the pure and mental 
  connection between the two persons, and corresponds with the name of the 
  other, viz.: aitas i.e., listener or hearer. Now it appears to have been the 
  practice for every youth of good character to have his lover; and on the other 
  hand every well-educated man was bound by custom to be the lover of some 
  youth. Instances of this connection are furnished by several of the royal 
  family of Sparta; thus, Agesilaus, while he still belonged to the herd (agele) 
  of youths, was the hearer (aitas) of Lysander, and himself had in his turn 
  also a hearer; his son Archidamus was the lover of the son of Sphodrias, the 
  noble Cleonymus; Cleomenes III was when a young man the hearer of Xenares, and 
  later in life the lover of the brave Panteus. The connection usually 
  originated from the proposal of the lover; yet it was necessary that the 
  listener should accept him with real affection, as a regard to the riches of 
  the proposer was consid ered very disgraceful; sometimes, however, it [16] 
  happened that the proposal originated from the other party. The connection 
  appears to have been very intimate and faithful; and was recognized by the 
  State. If his relations were absent. the youth might be represented in the 
  public assembly by his lover; in battle too they stood near one another, where 
  their fidelity and affection were often shown till death; while at home the 
  youth was constantly under the eyes of his lover, who was to him as it were a 
  model and pattern of life; which explains why, for many faults, particularly 
  want of ambition, the lover could be punished instead of the listener." 
  "This ancient national custom prevailed with still greater force in Crete; 
  which island was hence by many persons considered as the original seat of the 
  connection in question. Here too it was disgraceful for a well-educated youth 
  to be without a lover; and hence the party loved was termed Kleinos, the 
  praised; the lover being simply called philotor. It appears that the youth was 
  always carried away by force, the intention of the ravisher being previously 
  communicated to the relations, who, however, took no measures of precaution 
  and only made a feigned resistance; except when the ravisher appeared, either 
  in family or talent, unworthy of the youth. The lover then led him away to his 
  apartment (andreion), and afterwards, with any chance companions, either to 
  the mountains or to his estate. Here they remained two months (the period 
  prescribed by custom), which [17] were passed chiefiy in hunting together. 
  After this time had expired, the lover dismissed the youth, and at his 
  departure gave him, according to custom, an ox, a military dress, and brazen 
  cup, with other things; and frequently these gifts were increased by the 
  friends of the ravisher. The youth then sacrificed the ox to Jupiter, with 
  which he gave a feast to his companions: and now he stated how he had been 
  pleased with his lover; and he had complete liberty by law to punish any 
  insult or disgraceful treatment. It depended now on the choice of the youth 
  whether the connection should be broken off or not. If it was kept up, the 
  companion in arms (parastates), as the youth was then called, wore the 
  military dress which had been given him, and fought in battle next his lover, 
  inspired with double valor by the gods of war and love, according to the 
  notions of the Cretans; and even in man's age he was distinguished by the 
  first place and rank in the course, and certain insignia worn about the body. 
  " Institutions, so systematic and regular as these, did not exist in any Doric 
  State except Crete and Sparta; but the feelings on which they were founded 
  seem to have been common to all the Dorians. The loves of Philolaus, a 
  Corinthian of the family of the Bacchiadae, and the lawgiver of Thebes, and of 
  Diocles the Olympic conqueror, lasted until death; and even their graves were 
  turned towards one another in token of their affection; and another person of 
  the same name was [18] honored in Megara, as a noble instance of self-devotion 
  for the object of his love." 
  Ibid.

For an account of Philolaus and Diocles, Aristotle (Pol. ii. 9) may be referred 
to. The second Diocles was an Athenian who died in battle for the youth he 
loved.

  " His tomb was honored with the enagismata of heroes, and a yearly contest for 
  skill in kissing formed part of his memorial celebration." 
  J. A Symonds" A Problem in Greek Ethies, privately printed, 1883; see also 
  Theocritus, Idyll xii. infra. 

HAHN, in his Albanesische Studien, says that the Dorian customs of comradeship 
still flourish in Albania " just as described by the ancients," and are closely 
entwined with the whole life of the people-though he says nothing of any 
military signification. It appears to be a quite recognized institution for a 
young man to take to himself a youth or boy as his special comrade. He 
instructs, and when necessary reproves, the younger; protects him, and makes him 
presents of various kinds. The relation generally, though not always ends with 
the marriage of the elder. The following is reported by Hahn as in the actual 
words of his informant (an Albanian): 
  [19] "Love of this kind is occasioned by the sight of a beautiful youth; who 
  thus kindles in the lover a feeling of wonder and causes his heart to open to 
  the sweet sense which springs from the contemplation of beauty. By degrees 
  love steals in and takes possession of the lover, and to such a degree that 
  all his thoughts and feelings are absorbed in it. When near the beloved he 
  loses himself in the sight of him; when absent he thinks of him only." These 
  loves, he continued, " are with a few exceptions as pure as sunshine, and the 
  highest and noblest affections that the human heart can entertain." 
  Hahn, vol. I, p. 166.

Hahn also mentions that troops of youths, like the Cretan and Spartan agelae, 
are formed in Albania, of twenty-five or thirty members each. The comradeship 
usually begins during adolescence, each member paying a fixed sum into a common 
fund, and the interest being spent on two or three annual feasts, generally held 
out of doors. 
THE Sacred Band of Thebes, or Theban Band, was a battalion composed entirely of 
friends and lovers; and forms a remarkable example of military comradeship. The 
references to it in later Greek literature are very numerous, and there seems no 
reason to doubt the general truth of the traditions concerning its formation and 
its [20]complete annihilation by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea 
(B.C. 338). Thebes was the last stronghold of Hellenic independence, and with 
the Theban Band Greek freedom perished. But the mere existence of this phalanx, 
and the fact of its renown, show to what an extent comradeship was recognized 
and prized as an institution among these peoples. The following account is taken 
from Plutarch's Life of Pelopidas, Clough's translation: 
  " Gorgidas, according to some, first formed the Sacred Band of 300 chosen men, 
  to whom as being a guard for the citadel the State allowed provision, and all 
  things necessary for exercise; and hence they were called the city band, as 
  citadels of old were usually called cities. Others say that it was composed of 
  young men attached to each other by personal affection, and a pleasant saying 
  of Pammenes is current, that Homer's Nestor was not well skilled in ordering 
  an army, when he advised the Greeks to rank tribe and tribe, and family and 
  family, together, that so 'tribe might tribe, and kinsmen kinsmen aid,' but 
  that he should have joined lovers and their beloved. For men of the same tribe 
  or family little value one another when dangers press; but a band cemented 
  together by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken, and 
  invincible: since [21] the lovers, ashamed to be base in sight of their 
  beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, willingly rush into danger for 
  the relief of one another. Nor can that be wondered at since they have more 
  regard for their absent lovers than for others present; as in the instance of 
  the man who, when his enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested him to 
  run him through the breast, that his lover might not blush to see him wounded 
  in the back. It is a tradition likewise that Ioläus, who assisted Hercules in 
  his labors and fought at his side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes 
  that even in his time lovers plighted their faith at Ioläus' tomb. It is 
  likely, therefore, that this band was called sacred on this account; as Plato 
  calls a lover a divine friend. It is stated that it was never beaten till the 
  battle at Chaeronea; and when Philip after the fight took a view of the slain, 
  and came to the place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead 
  together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he 
  shed tears and said, ' Perish any man who suspects that these men either did 
  or suffered anything that was base.' 
  " It was not the disaster of Laius, as the poets imagine, that first gave rise 
  to this form of attachment among the Thebans, but their law-givers, designing 
  to soften whilst they were young their natural fickleness, brought for example 
  the pipe into great esteem, both in serious and sportive [22] occasions, and 
  gave great encouragement to these friendships in the Palaestra, to temper the 
  manner and character of the youth. With a view to this, they did well again to 
  make Harmony, the daughter of Mars and Venus, their tutelar deity; since where 
  force and courage is joined with gracefulness and winning behavior, a harmony 
  ensues that combines all the elements of society in perfect consonance and 
  order. 
  " Gorgidas distributed this sacred Band all through the front ranks of the 
  infantry, and thus made their gallantry less conspicuous; not being united in 
  one body, but mingled with many others of inferior resolution, they had no 
  fair opportunity of showing what they could do. But Pelopidas, having 
  sufficiently tried their bravery at Tegyrae, where they had fought alone, and 
  around his own person, never afterwards divided them, but keeping them entire, 
  and as one man, gave them the first duty in the greatest battles. For as 
  horses run brisker in a chariot than single, not that their joint force 
  divides the air with greater ease, but because being matched one against 
  another circulation kindles and enflames their courage; thus, he thought, 
  brave men, provoking one another to noble actions, would prove most 
  serviceable and most resolute where all were united together."

[23] STORIES of romantic friendship form a staple subject of Greek literature, 
and were everywhere accepted and prized. The following quotations from Athenaeus 
and Plutarch contain allusions to the Theban Band, and other examples: 
  " And the Lacedaemonians offer sacrifices to Love before they go to battle, 
  thinking that safety and victory depend on the friendship of those who stand 
  side by side in the battle array.... And the regiment among the Thebans, which 
  is called the Sacred Band, is wholly composed of mutual lovers, indicating the 
  majesty of the God, as these men prefer a glorious death to a shameful and 
  discreditable life." 
  Athenaeus, bk. xiii., ch. 12.

Ioläus, above-mentioned, is said to have been the charioteer of Hercules, and 
his faithful companion. As the comrade of Hercules he was worshipped beside him 
in Thebes, where the gymnasium was named after him. Plutarch alludes to this 
friendship again in his treatise on Love (Eroticus, par. 17) 
  " And as to the loves of Hercules, it is difficult to record them because of 
  their number; but those who think that Ioläus was one of them do to this day 
  worship and honor him, and make their loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb."

[24]And in the same treatise: 
  " Consider also how love (Eros) excels in warlike feats, and is by no means 
  idle, as Euripides called him, nor a carpet knight, nor ' sleeping on soft 
  maidens' cheeks.' For a man inspired by Love needs not Ares to help him when 
  he goes out as a warrior against the enemy, but at the bidding of his own god 
  is ' ready ' for his friend ' to go through fire and water and whirlwinds.' 
  And in Sophocles' play, when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and dying, 
  one of them calls out for no helper or assister but his lover. 
  " And you know of course how it was that Cleomachus, the Pharsalian, fell in 
  battle.... When the war between the Eretrians and Chalcidians was at its 
  height, Cleomachus had come to aid the latter with a Thessalian force; and the 
  Chalcidian infantry seemed strong enough, but they had great difficulty in 
  repelling the enemy's cavalry. So they begged that high-souled hero, 
  Cleomachus, to charge the Eretrian cavalry first. And he asked the youth he 
  loved, who was by, if he would be a spectator of the fight, and he saying he 
  would, and affectionately kissing him and putting his helmet on his head, 
  Cleomachus, wlth a proud joy, put himself at the head of the bravest of the 
  Thessalians, and charged the enemy's cavalry with such impetuosity that he 
  threw them into disorder and routed them; and the Eretrian infantry also 
  fleeing in consequence, the Chalcidians won a splendid [25] victory. However, 
  Cleomachus got killed, and they show his tomb in the market place at Chalcis, 
  over which a huge pillar stands to this day." 
  Eroticus, par. 17, trans. Bohn's Classics.

And further on in the same: 
  " And among you Thebans, Pemptides, is it not usual for the lover to give his 
  boylove a complete suit of armor when he is enrolled among the men ? And did 
  not the erotic Pammenes change the disposition of the heavy-armed infantry, 
  censuring Homer as knowing nothing about love, because he drew up the Achaeans 
  in order of battle in tribes and clans, and did not put lover and love 
  together, that so ' spear should be next to spear and helmet to helmet' 
  (lliad, xiii. 131), seeing that love is the only invincible general. For men 
  in battle will leave in the lurch clansmen and friends, aye, and parents and 
  sons, but what warrior ever broke through or charged through lover and love, 
  seeing that when there is no necessity lovers frequently display their bravery 
  and contempt of life."

THE following is from the Deipnosophists of Athenaus (bk. xiii., ch. 78):- 
  " But Hieronymus the peripatetic says that the loves of youths used to be much 
  encouraged, for this reason, that the vigor of the young and their close 
  agreement in comradeship have led to the overthrow of many a tyranny. For in 
  the [26] presence of his favorite a lover would rather endure anything than 
  earn the name of coward; a thing which was proved in practice by the Sacred 
  Band, established at Thebes under Epaminondas; as well as by the death of the 
  Pisistratid, which was brought about by Harmodius and Aristogeiton. 
  "And at Agrigentum in Sicily the same was shown by the mutual love of Chariton 
  and Melanippus-of whom Melanippus was the younger beloved, as Heraclides of 
  Pontus tells in his Treatise on Love. For these two having been accused of 
  plotting against Phalaris, and being put to torture in order to force them to 
  betray their accomplices, not only did not tell, but even compelled Phalaris 
  to such pity of their tortures that he released them with many words of 
  praise. Whereupon Apollo, pleased at his conduct, granted to Phalaris a 
  respite from death; and declared the same to the men who inquired of the 
  Pythian priestess how they might best attack him. He also gave an oracular 
  saying concerning Chariton. 
  ' Blessed indeed was Chariton and Melanippus, Pioneers of Godhead, and of 
  mortals the one most beloved (*)"' 
  *This curious oracle seems purposely to confuse the singular and plural.

Epaminondas, the great Theban general and statesman, so we are told by the same 
author, had [27] for his young comrades Asopichus and Cephisodorus, " the latter 
of whom fell with him at Mantineia, and is buried near him."

THESE are mainly instances of what might be called "military comradeship," but 
as may be supposed, friendship in the early world did not rest on this alone. 
With the growth of culture other interests came in; and among the Greeks 
especially association in the pursuit of art or politics or philosophy became a 
common ground. Parmenides, the philosopher, whose life was held peculiarly holy, 
loved his pupil Zeno (see Plato Parm, 127A):- 
  " Parmenides and Zeno came to Athens, he said, at the great Panathenaean 
  festival; the former was, at the time of his visit, about 65 years old, very 
  white with age, but well-favored. Zeno was nearly 40 years of age, of a noble 
  figure and fair aspect; and in the days of his youth he was reported to have 
  been beloved of Parmenides." 

Pheidias, the sculptor, loved Pantarkes, a youth of Elis, and carved his 
portrait at the foot of the Olympian Zeus (Pausanias v. II)~ and politicians and 
orators like Demosthenes and Aischines were proud to avow their attachment. It 
was in a [28] house of ill-fame, according to Diogenes Laertius (ii. 105) that 
Socrates first met Phaedo: 
  " This unfortunate youth was a native of Elis. Taken prisoner in war, he was 
  sold in the public market to a slave dealer, who then acquired the right by 
  Attic law to engross his earnings for his own pocket. A friend of Socrates, 
  perhaps Cebes, bought him from hls master, and he became one of the chief 
  members of the Socratic circle. His name is given to the Platonic dialogue on 
  immortality, and he lived to found what is called the Eleo-Socratic School. No 
  reader of Plato forgets how the sage on the eve of his death stroked the 
  beautiful long hair of Phaedo, and prophesied that he would soon have to cut 
  it short in mourning for his teacher." 
  J. A. Symonds, A Problem in Greek Ethics, p. 58.

The relation of friendship to the pursuit of philosophy is a favourite subject 
with Plato, and is illustrated by some later quotations (see infra ch. 2).

I CONCLUDE the present section by the insertion of three stories taken from 
classical sources. Though of a legendary character, it is probable that they 
enshrine some memory or tradition of actual facts. The story of Harmodius [29] 
and Aristogeiton at any rate is treated by Herodotus and Thucydides as a matter 
of serious history. The names of these two friends were ever on the lips of the 
Athenians as the founders of the city's freedom, and to be born of their blood 
was esteemed among the highest of honors. But whether historical or not, these 
stories have much he same value for us, in so far as they indicate he ideals on 
which the Greek mind dwelt, and which it considered possible of realization. 
Harmodius and Aristogeiton 
  " Now the attempt of Aristogeiton and Harmodius arose out of a love affair, 
  which I will narrate at length; and the narrative will show that he Athenians 
  themselves give quite an inaccurate account of their own tyrants, and of the 
  incident in question, and know no more than other Hellenes. Pisistratus died 
  at an advanced age in possession of the tyranny, and then, not as is the 
  common opinion Hipparchus, but Hippias (who was the eldest of his sons) 
  succeeded to his power. 
  " Harmodius was in the flower of his youth, and Aristogeiton, a citizen of the 
  middle class, became his lover. Hipparchus made an attempt to gain the 
  affections of Harmodius, but he would not listen to him, and told 
  Aristogeiton. The latter was naturally tormented at the idea, and fearing that 
  Hipparchus, who was powerful, would resort to violence, at once formed such a 
  plot as a man in his station might for the overthrow of the [30] tyranny. 
  Meanwhile Hipparchus made another attempt; he had no better success, and 
  thereupon he determined, not indeed to take any violent step, but to insult 
  Harmodius in some underhand manner, so that his motive could not be suspected. 
  [Digression in praise of the political administration of the Pisistratids.]. 
  " When Hipparchus found his advances repelled by Harmodius he carried out his 
  intention of insultmg him. There was a young sister of his whom Hipparchus and 
  his friends first invited to come and carry a sacred basket in a procession, 
  and then rejected her, declaring that she had never been invited by them at 
  all because she was unworthy. At this Harmodius was very angry, and 
  Aristogeiton for his sake more angry still. They and the other conspirators 
  had already laid their preparations, but were waiting for the festival of the 
  great Panathenasa, when the citizens who took part in the procession assembled 
  in arms; for to wear arms on any other day would have aroused suspicion. 
  Harmodius and Aristogeiton were to begin the attack, and the rest were 
  immediately to join in, and engage with the guards. The plot had been 
  communicated to a few only, the better to avoid detection; but they hoped 
  that, however few struck the blow, the crowd who would be armed, although not 
  in the secret, would at once rise and assist in the recovery of their own 
  liberties. 
  " The day of the festival arrived, and Hippias went out of the city to the 
  place called the [31] Ceramicus, where he was occupied with his guards in 
  marshalling the procession. Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were ready with 
  their daggers, stepped forward to do the deed. But seeing one of ,he 
  conspirators in familiar conversation with Hippias, who was readily accessible 
  to all, they took alarm and imagined that they had been betrayed, and were on 
  the point of being seized. Whereupon they determined to take their revenge 
  first on the man who had outraged them and was the cause of their desperate 
  attempt. So they rushed, just as they were, within the gates. They found 
  Hipparchus near the Leocorium, as it was called, and then and there falling 
  upon him with all the blind fury, one of an injured lover, the other of a man 
  smarting under an insult, they smote and slew him. The crowd ran together, and 
  so Aristogeiton for the present escaped the guards; but he was afterwards 
  taken, and not very gently handled ( i.e., tortured ) . Harmodius perished on 
  the spot."
  Thuc: vi. 54-56, trans. by B. Fowett.

Orestes and Pylades 
  " Phocis preserves from early times the memory of the union between Orestes 
  and Pylades, who taking a god as witness of the passion between them, sailed 
  through life together as though in one boat. Both together put to death 
  Klytemnestra, as though both were sons of Agamemnon; and Egisthus was slain by 
  both. Pylades suffered more than his friend by the punishment which pursued 
  Orestes. He stood by him when condemned, nor did they limit their tender 
  friendship by the [32] bounds of Greece, but sailed to the furthest boundaries 
  of the Scythians-the one sick, the other ministering to him. When they had 
  come into the Tauric land straightway they were met by the matricidal fury; 
  and while the barbarians were standing round In a circle Orestes fell down and 
  lay on the ground, seized by his usual mania, while Pylades 'wiped away the 
  foam, tended his body, and covered him with his well-woven cloak '-acting not 
  only like a lover but like a father. 
  " When it was determined that one should remain to be put to death, and the 
  other should go to Mycenae to convey a letter, each wishes to remain for the 
  sake of the other, thinking that if he saves the life of his friend he saves 
  his own life. Orestes refused to take the letter, saying that Pylades was more 
  worthy to carry it, acting more like the lover than the beloved. ' For,' he 
  said, ' the slaying of this man would be a great grief to me, as I am the 
  cause of these misfortunes.' And he added, ' Give the tablet to him, for 
  (turning to Pylades) I will send thee to Argos, in order that it may be well 
  with thee; as for me, let any one kill me who desires it.' 
  " Such love is always like that; for when from boyhood a serious love has 
  grown up and it becomes adult at the age of reason, the long-loved object 
  returns reciprocal affection, and it is hard to determine which is the lover 
  of which, for - as from a mirrr0r-the affertion of the lrover is [33] 
  reflected from the beloved." 
  Trans. from Lucian's Amores, by W. J. Baylis.

Damon and Pythias 
  " Damon and Phintias, initiates in the Pythagorean mysteries, contracted so 
  faithful a friendship towards each other, that when Dionysius of Syracuse 
  intended to execute one of them, and he had obtained permission from the 
  tyrant to return home and arrange his affairs before his death, the other did 
  not hesitate to give himself up as a pledge of his friend's return.[For the 
  two men lived together, and had their possessions in common., Iamblichus. de 
  Vita Pythgore, bk. i. ch. 33] He whose neck had been in danger was now free; 
  and he who might have lived in safety was now in danger of death. So 
  everybody, and especially Dionysius, were wondering what would be the upshot 
  of this novel and dubious affair. At last, when the day fixed was close at 
  hand, and he had not returned, every one condemned the one who stood security, 
  for his stupidity and rashness. But he insisted that he had nothing to fear in 
  the matter of his friend's constancy. And indeed at the same moment and the 
  hour fixed by Dionysius, he who had received leave, returned. The tyrant, 
  admiring the courage of both, remitted the sentence which had so tried their 
  loyalty, and asked them besides to receive him in the bonds of their 
  friendship, saying that he would make his third place in their affection 
  agreeable by his utmost goodwill and effort. Such indeed are the powers of 
  friendship: to breed contempt of death, to overcome the sweet [34] desire of 
  life, to humanize cruelty, to turn hate into love, to compensate punishment by 
  largess; to which powers almost as much veneration is due as to the cult of 
  the immortal gods. For if with these rests the public safety, on those does 
  private happiness deDend; and as the temples are the sacred domiciles of 
  these, so of those are the loyal hearts of men as it were the shrines 
  consecrated by some holy spirit." 
  Valerius Maximus, bk. iv. ch. 7. De Amicitiae Vinculo. 




II THE PLACE OF FRIENDSHIP IN GREEK LIFE AND THOUGHT

[37] THE extent to which the idea of friendship (in a quite romantic sense) 
penetrated the Greek mind is a thing very difficult for us to realize; and some 
modern critics entirely miss this point. They laud the Greek culture to the 
skies, extolling the warlike bravery of the people, their enthusiastic political 
and social sentiment, their wonderful artistic sense, and so forth; and at the 
same time speak of the stress they laid on friendship as a little peculiarity of 
no particular importance-not seeing that the latter was the chief source of 
their bravery and independence, one of the main motives of their art, and so far 
an organic part of their whole polity that it is difficult to imagine the one 
without the other. The Greeks themselves never made this mistake; and their 
literature abounds with references to the romantic attachment as the great 
inspiration of political and individual life. Plato, himself, may almost be said 
to have founded his philosophy on this sentiment. 
Nothing is more surprising to the modern than [38] to find Plato speaking, page 
after page, of Love, as the safeguard of states and the tutoress of philosophy, 
and then to discover that what we call love, i.e., the love between man and 
woman, is not meant at all-scarcely comes within his consideration-but only the 
love between men what we should call romantic friendship. His ideal of this 
latter love is ascetic; it is an absorbing passion, but it is held in strong 
control. The other love-the love of women-is for him a mere sensuality. In this, 
to some extent, lies the explanation of his philosophical position. 
But it is evident that in this fact-in the fact that among the Greeks the love 
of women was considered for the most part sensual, while the romance of love 
went to the account of friendship, we have the strength and the weakness of the 
Greek civilization. Strength, because by the recognition everywhere of romantic 
comradeship, public and private life was filled by a kind of divine fire; 
weakness, because by the non-recognition of woman's equal part in such 
comradeship, her saving, healing, and redeeming influence was lost, and the 
Greek culture doomed to be to that extent one-sided. It will, we may hope, be 
the great triumph of the modern love (when it becomes more [39] of a true 
comradeship between man and woman than it yet is) to give both to society and to 
the individual the grandest inspirations, and perhaps in conjunction with the 
other attachment, to lift the modern nations to a higher level of political and 
artistic advancement than even the Greeks attained. 

BISHOP THIRLWALL, that excellent thinker and scholar, in his History of Greece 
(vol. I, p. 176) says: 
  " One of the noblest and most amiable sides of the Greek character is the 
  readiness with which it lent itself to construct intimate and durable 
  friendships; and this is a feature no less prominent in the earliest than in 
  the latest times. It was indeed connected with the comparatively low 
  estimation in which female society was held; but the devotedness and constancy 
  with which these attachments were maintained was not the less admirable and 
  engaging. The heroic companions whom we find celebrated, partly by Homer and 
  partly in traditions, which if not of equal antiquity were grounded on the 
  same feeling, seem to have but one heart and soul, with scarcely a wish or 
  object apart, and only to live, as they are always ready to die, for one 
  another. It is true that the relation between them is not always one of 
  perfect equality: but this is a circumstance which, while it [40] often adds a 
  peculiar charm to the poetical description, detracts little from the dignity 
  of the idea which it presents. Such were the friendships of Hercules and 
  Ioläus, of Theseus and Pirithöus, of Orestes and Pylades: and though these may 
  owe the greater part of their fame to the later epic or even dramatic poetry, 
  the moral groundwork undoubtedly subsisted in the period to which the 
  tradition referred. The argument of the Iliad mainly turns on the affection of 
  Achilles for Patroclus-whose love for the greater hero is only tempered by 
  reverence for his higher birth and his unequalled prowess. But the mutual 
  regard which united Idomeneus and Meriones, Diomedes and Sthenelus - though, 
  as the persons themselves are less important, it is kept more in the 
  background - is manifestly viewed by the poet in the same light. The idea of a 
  Greek hero seems not to have been thought complete, without such a brother in 
  arms by his side."

The following is from Ludwig Frey (Der Eros und die Kunst, p. 33 ):- 
  " Let it then be repeated: love for a youth was for the Greeks something 
  sacred, and can only be compared with our German homage to womensay the 
  chivalric love of mediaeval times."

[41] GLOWES DICKINSON, in his Greek View of Life, noting the absence of romance 
in the relations between men and women of that civilization, says: 
  "Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude, from these conditions, that 
  the element of romance was absent from Greek life. The fact is simply that 
  with them it took a different form, that of passionate friendship between men. 
  Such friendships, of course, occur in all nations and at all times, but among 
  the Greeks they were, we might say, an institution. Their ideal was the 
  development and education of the younger by the older man, and in this view 
  they were recognized and approved by custom and law as an important factor in 
  the state." 
  Greek View of Life, p. 167.

  " So much indeed were the Greeks impressed with the manliness of this passion, 
  with its power to prompt to high thought and heroic action, that some of the 
  best of them set the love of man for man far above that of man for woman. The 
  one, they maintained, was primarily of the spirit, the other primarily of the 
  flesh; the one bent upon shaping to the type of all manly excellence both the 
  body and the soul of the beloved, the other upon a passing pleasure of the 
  senses."
  Ibid, p.172.

The following are some remarks of J. A. Symonds on the same subject:- 

  [42] "Partly owing to the social habits of their cities, and partly to the 
  peculiar notions which they entertained regarding the seclusion of free women 
  in the home, all the higher elements of spiritual and mental activity, and the 
  conditions under which a generous passion was conceivable, had become the 
  exclusive privileges of men. It was not that women occupied a semi-servile 
  station, as some students have imagined, or that within the sphere of the 
  household they were not the respected and trusted helpmates of men. But 
  circumstances rendered it impossible for them to excite romantic and 
  enthusiastic passion. The exaltation of the emotions was reserved for the male 
  sex." 
  A Problem in Greek Ethics, p. 68.

And he continues: 
  "Socrates therefore sought to direct and moralize a force already existing. In 
  the Phaedrus he describes the passion of love between man and boy as a ' 
  mania,' not different in quality from that which inspires poets; and after 
  painting that fervid picture of the lover, he declares that the true object of 
  a noble life can onlv be attained by passionate friends, bound together in the 
  chains of close yet temperate comradeship, seeking always to advance in 
  knowledge, self-restraint, and intellectual illumination. The doctrine of the 
  Symposium is not different, except that Socrates here takes a higher flight. 
  The same love is treated as the method whereby the soul may begin her mystic 
  [43] journey to the region of essential beauty, truth, and goodness. It has 
  frequently been remarked that Plato's dialogues have to be read as poems even 
  more than as philosophical treatises; and if this be true at all, it is 
  particularly true of both the Phaedrus and the Symposium. The lesson which 
  both essays seem intended to inculcate, is this: love, like poetry and 
  prophecy, is a divine gift, which diverts men from the common current of their 
  lives; but in the right use of this gift lies the secret of all human 
  excellence. The passion which grovels in the filth of sensual grossness may be 
  transformed into a glorious enthusiasm, a winged splendor, capable of soaring 
  to the contemplation of eternal verities." 

The Symposium 
IN the Symposium or Banquet of Plato (B.C. 428-B.C. 347), a supper party is 
supposed, at which a discussion on love and friendship takes place. The friends 
present speak in turn-the enthusiastic Phaedrus, the clear-headed Pausanias, the 
grave doctor Eryximachus, the comic and acute Aristophanes, the young poet 
Agathon; Socrates, tantalizing, suggestive, and quoting the profound sayings of 
the prophetess Diotima; and Alcibiades, drunk, and quite ready to drink 
more;-each in his turn, out of the fulness of his heart, speaks; and thus in 
this most dramatic dialogue we have love discussed from every point of view. and 
with [44] insight, acumen, romance and humor unrivalled. 
Phaedrus and Pausanias, in the two following quotations, take the line which 
perhaps most thoroughly represents the public opinion of the day as to the value 
of friendship in nurturing a spirit of honor and freedom, especially in matters 
military and political: 
Speech of Phaedrus 
  "Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge love to be the eldest of the 
  gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also the source of the greatest 
  benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing to a young man beginning 
  life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the 
  principle which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live-that 
  principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honor, nor wealth, nor any other motive 
  is able to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking? of the sense of 
  honor and dishonor, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any 
  good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any 
  dishonorable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonor is done to 
  him bv another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at 
  being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The 
  beloved, too, when he is seen in any disgraceful situation, has the same 
  feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way of contriving that a 
  [45] state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would 
  be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, 
  and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at one another's side, 
  although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would 
  not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when 
  abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a 
  thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved, or 
  fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired 
  hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time- love would inspire him. That 
  courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soul of heroes, love 
  of his own nature infuses into the lover." 
  Symposium of Plato, trans. B. Fowett. 
Speech of Pausanais 
  " In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which are subject to 
  the barbarians, the custom is held to be dishonorable; loves of youths share 
  the evil repute of philosophy and gymnastics, because they are inimical to 
  tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be 
  poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or 
  society among them, which love above all other motives is likely to inspire, 
  as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience." 
  Ibid.

[46] ARISTOPHANES goes more deeply into the nature of this love of which they 
are speaking. He says it is a profound reality-a deep and intimate union, 
abiding after death, and making of the lovers "one departed soul instead of 
two." But in order to explain his allusion to " the other half " it must be 
premised that in the earlier part of his speech he has in a serio-comic vein 
pretended that human beings were originally constructed double, with four legs, 
four arms, etc.; but that as a punishment for their sins Zeus divided them 
perpendicularly, " as folk cut eggs before they salt them," the males into two 
parts, the females into two, and the hermaphrodites likewise into two-since 
when, these divided people have ever pursued their lost halves, and " thrown 
their arms around and embraced each other, seeking to grow together again." And 
so, speaking of those who were originally males, he says: 
Speech of Aristophanes 
  " And these when they grow up are our statesmen, and these only, which is a 
  great proof of the truth of what I am saying. And when they reach manhood they 
  are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget 
  children, which they do, if at all, only in obedience to the law, but they are 
  satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded; and such a 
  [47]nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing that 
  which is akin to him. And when one of them finds his other half, whether he be 
  a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement 
  of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's 
  sight, as I may say, even for a moment: they will pass their whole lives 
  together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the 
  intense yearning that each of them has towards the other does not appear to be 
  the desire of lovers' intercourse, but of something else which the soul of 
  either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she only has a dark and 
  doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to 
  the pair who are lying side by side and say to them, ' What do you people want 
  of one another?' they would be unable to explain. And suppose further that 
  when he saw their perplexity he said: ' Do you desire to be wholly one; always 
  day and night to be in one another's company? for if this is what vou desire, 
  I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two 
  you shall become one, and while you live, live a common life as if you were a 
  single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul 
  instead of two-I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you 
  are satisfied to attain this?'-there is not a man of them who when he heard 
  the proposal would deny or would not [48] acknowledge that this meeting and 
  melting in one another's arms, this becoming one instead of two, was the very 
  expression of his ancient need."
  Ibid.

SOCRATES, in his speech, and especially in the later portion of it where he 
quotes his supposed tutoress Diotima, carries the argument up to its highest 
issue. After contending for the essentially creative, generative nature of love, 
not only in the Body but in the Soul, he proceeds to say that it is not so much 
the seeking of a lost half which causes the creative impulse in lovers, as the 
fact that in our mortal friends we are contemplating (though unconsciously) an 
image of the Essential and Divine Beauty; it is this that affects us with that 
wonderful " mania," and lifts us into the region where we become creators. And 
he follows on to the conclusion that it is by wisely and truly loving our 
visible friends that at last, after long, long experience, there dawns upon us 
the vision of that Absolute Beauty which by mortal eyes must ever remain unseen: 

Speech of Socrates 
  " He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has 
  learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes 
  towards the end will suddenly perceive a [49] nature of wondrous beauty . . . 
  beauty absolute, separate, simple and everlasting, which without diminution 
  and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the evergrowing and 
  perishing beauties of all other things. He who, from these ascending under the 
  influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the 
  end." 
  Ibid.

This is indeed the culmination, for Plato, of all existence-the ascent into the 
presence of that endless Beauty of which all fair mortal things are but the 
mirrors. But to condense this great speech of Socrates is impossible; only to 
persistent and careful reading (if even then) will it yield up all its 
treasures.

The Phaedrus 
IN the dialogue named Phaedrus the same idea is worked out, only to some extent 
in reverse order. As in the Symposium the lover by rightly loving at last rises 
to the vision of the Supreme Beauty; so in the Phzdrus it is explained that in 
reality every soul has at some time seen that Vision (at the time, namely, of 
its true initiation, when it was indeed winged)-but has forgotten it; and that 
it is the dim reminiscence of that Vision, constantly working within us, which 
guides us to our earthlv loves and renders their effect [50] upon us so 
transporting. Long ago, in some other condition of being, we saw Beauty herself: 

  "But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining in company with 
  the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in 
  clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the keenest of 
  our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would 
  have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the same 
  is true of the loveliness of the other ideas as well. But this is the 
  privilege of beauty, that she is the loveliest and also the most palpable to 
  sight. Now he who is not newly initiated, or who has become corrupted, does 
  not easily rise out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other; he 
  looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed at the sight of 
  her, like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy and beget; he consorts with 
  wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of 
  nature. But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of 
  many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a 
  god-like face or form, which is the expression of Divine Beauty; and at first 
  a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then 
  looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he 
  were not afraid ot being [51] thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice 
  to his beloved as to the image of a god." 
  The Phaedrus of Plato, trans. B. Fowett. 
And again: 
  "And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal service 
  from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also himself of a nature 
  friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion 
  and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others 
  slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the 
  appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For fate which 
  has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also 
  ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good And when he has 
  received him into communion and intimacy, then the beloved is amazed at the 
  goodwill of the lover; he recognizes that the inspired friend is worth all 
  other friendships or kinships, which have nothing of friendship in them in 
  comparison. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and 
  embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then does 
  the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede 
  named desire, overflow upon the lover, and some enters into his soul and some 
  when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from 
  the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the [52] stream of 
  beauty, passing the eyes which are the natural doors and windows of the soul, 
  return again to the beautiful one; there arriving and quickening the passages 
  of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the snul 
  of the beloved also with love." 
  Ibid.

For Plato the real power which ever moves the soul is this reminiscence of the 
Beauty which exists before all worlds. In the actual world the soul lives but in 
anguish, an exile from her true home; but in the presence of her friend, who 
reveals the Divine, she is loosed from her suffering and comes to her haven of 
rest. 
  "And wherever she [the soul] thinks that she will behold the beautiful one, 
  thither in her desire she runs. And when she has seen him, and bathed herself 
  with the waters of desire, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, 
  and has no more pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at 
  the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his 
  beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and brethren 
  and companions, and he thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; 
  the rules and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now 
  despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is allowed, as 
  near as he can to his beautiful one, who [53] is not only the object of his 
  worship, but the only physician who can heal him in his extreme agony." 

The Symposium of Xenophon 
AT another time, in the Banquet of Xenophon, Socrates is again made to speak at 
length on the subject of Love-though not in so inspired a strain as in Plato: 
  "Truly, to speak for one, I never remember the time when I was not in love; I 
  know too that Charmides has had a great many lovers, and being much beloved 
  has loved again. As for Critobulus, he is still of an age to love, and to be 
  beloved; and Nicerates too, who loves so passionately his wife, at least as 
  report goes, is equally beloved by her.... And as for you, Callias, you love, 
  as well as the rest of us; for who is it that is ignorant of your love for 
  Autolycus? It is the town-talk; and foreigners, as well as our citizens, are 
  acquainted with it. The reason for your loving him, I believe to be that you 
  are both born of illustrious families; and at the same time are both possessed 
  of personal qualities that render you yet more illustrious. For me, I always 
  admired the sweetness and evenness of your temper; but much more when I 
  consider that your passion for Autolycus is placed on a person who has nothing 
  luxurious or affected in him; but in all things shows a vigor and temperance 
  wo:chy of a virtuous soul; which is a proof at the same time [54] that if he 
  is infinitely beloved, he deserves to be so. I confess indeed I am not firmly 
  persuaded whether there be but one Venus or two, the celestial and the vulgar; 
  and it may be with this goddess, as with Jupiter, who has many different names 
  though there is still but one Jupiter. But I know very well that both the 
  Venuses have quite different altars, temples and sacrifices. The vulgar Venus 
  is worshipped after a common negligent manner; whereas the celestial one is 
  adored in purity and sanctity of life. The vulgar inspires mankind with the 
  love of the body only, but the celestial fires the mind with the love of the 
  soul, with friendship, and a generous thirst after noble actions.... Nor is it 
  hard to prove, Callias, that gods and heroes have always had more passion and 
  esteem for the charms of the soul, than those of the body: at least this seems 
  to have been the opinion of our ancient authors. For we may observe in the 
  fables of antiquity that Jupiter, who loved several mortals on account of 
  their personal beauty only, never conferred upon them immortality. Whereas it 
  was otherwise with Hercules, Castor, Pollux, and several others; for having 
  admired and applauded the greatness of their courage and the beauty of their 
  minds, he enrolled them in the number of the gods.... You are then infinitely 
  obliged to the gods, Callias, who have inspired you with love and friendship 
  for Autolycus, as they have inspired Critobulus with the same for Amandra; for 
  real and pure [55] friendship knows no difference in sexes." 
  Banquet of Xenophon # viii. (Bohn).

PLUTARCH, who wrote in the first century A.D. (nearly 500 years after Plato), 
carried on the tradition of his master, though with an admixture of later 
influences; and philosophized about friendship, on the basis of true love being 
a reminiscence. 
  " The rainbow is I suppose a reflection caused by the sun's rays falling on a 
  moist cloud, making us think the appearance is in the cloud. Similarly erotic 
  fancy in the case of noble souls causes a reflection of the memory from things 
  which here appear and are called beautiful to what is really dlvine and lovely 
  and felicitous and wonderfut But most lovers pursuing and groping after the 
  semblance of beauty in youths and women, as in mirrors, [cf. "For now we see 
  by means of a mirror darkly (lit. enigmatically); but then face to face; now I 
  know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I Cor. xiii. 
  12.] can derive nothing more certain than pleasure mixed with pain. And this 
  seems the love-delirium of Ixion, who instead of the joy he desired embraced 
  only a cloud, as children who desire to take the rainbow into their hands, 
  clutching at whatever they see. But different is the behavior of the noble and 
  chaste lover: for he reflects on the divine beauty that can only be felt, 
  while he uses the beauty of the visible body only [56] as an organ of the 
  memory, though he embraces it and loves it, and associating with it is still 
  more infiamed in mind. And so neither in the body do they sit ever gazing at 
  and desiring this light, nor after death do they return to this world again, 
  and skulk and loiter about the doors and bedchambers of newly-married people, 
  disagreeable ghosts of pleasure-loving and sensual men and women, who do not 
  rightly deserve the name of lovers. For the true lover, when he has got into 
  the other world and associated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings 
  and is initiated and passes his time above in the presence of his Deity, 
  dancing and waiting upon him, until he goes back to the meadows of the Moon 
  and Aphrodite, and sleeping there commences a new existence. But this is a 
  subject too high for the present occasion."
  Plutach: Eroticus # XX. trans. Bohn's Classics.

ARISTOTLE (Ethics, bk.viii.) says: 
"Friendship is a thing most necessary to life, since without friends no one 
would choose to live, though possessed of all other advantages." . . . " Since 
then his own life is, to a good man, a thing naturally sweet and ultimately 
desirable, for a similar reason is the life of his friend agreeable to him, and 
delightful merely on its own account, and without reference to any object beyond 
it; and to live without friends is to be destitute of a good, unconditioned, 
absolute, and in itself desirable; [57] and therefore to be deprived of one of 
the most solid and most substantial of all enjoyments." 
" Being asked ' What is Friendship ? ' Aristotle replied, 'One soul in two 
bodies."' 
Diog. Laertius

EPAMINONDAS and Pelopidas, the Theban statesmen and generals, were celebrated 
for their devotion to each other. In a battle (B. C. 385) against the Arcadians, 
Epaminondas is said to have saved his friend's life. Plutarch in his Life of 
Pelopidas relates of them: 
  "Epaminondas and he were both born with the same dispositions to all kinds of 
  virtues, but Pelopidas took more pleasure in the exercises of the body, and 
  Epaminondas in the improvements of the mind; so that they spent all their 
  leisure time, the one in hunting, and the pelestra, the other in learned 
  conversation, and the study of philosophy. But of all the famous actions for 
  which they are so much celebrated, the judicious part of mankind reckon none 
  so great and glorious as that strict friendship which they inviolably 
  preserved through the whole course of their lives, in all the high posts they 
  held, both military and civil.... For being both in that battle, near one 
  another in the infantry, and fighting against the Arcadians, that wing of the 
  Lacedaemonians in which they were, gave way and was broken; which Pelopidas 
  and Epaminondas perceiving, [58] they joined their shields, and keeping close 
  together, bravely repulsed all that attacked them, till at last Pelopidas, 
  after receiving seven large wounds, fell upon a heap of friends and enemies 
  that lay dead together. Epaminondas, though he believed him slain, advanced 
  before him to defend his body and arms, and for a long time maintained his 
  ground against great numbers of the Arcadians, being resolved to die rather 
  than desert his companion and leave him in the enemy's power; but being 
  wounded in his breast by a spear, and in his arm by a sword, he was quite 
  disabled and ready to fall, when Agesipolis, king of the Spartans, came from 
  the other wing to his relief, and beyond all expectation saved both their 
  lives."

POLEMON and Krates were followers of Plato in philosophy, and in their time 
(about 300 B. C.) leaders of the Platonic School. They were, according to 
Hesychius, devoted friends: 

  " Krates and Polemon loved each other so well that they not only were occupied 
  in life with the same work, but they almost drew breath simultaneously; and in 
  death they shared the same grave. On account of which, Archesilaus, who 
  visited them in company with Theophrastus (a pupil of Aristotle), spoke of 
  them as gods, or survivors from the Golden Age."
  Hesychius xl.

[59] ALEXANDER, the great World-Conqueror, was born B.C. 356, and was King of 
Macedonia B. C. 336-323. His great favorite was Hephaestion, who had been 
brought up and educated with him. 
  "When Hephaestion died at Ecbatana (in 324) Alexander placed his weapons upon 
  the funeral pyre, wlth gold and silver for the dead man, and a robe-which 
  last, among the Persians is a symbol of great honor. He shore off his own 
  hair, as in Homeric grief, and behaved like the Achilles of Homer. Indeed he 
  acted more violently and passionately than the latter, for he caused the 
  towers and strongholds of Ecbatana to be demolished all round. As long as he 
  only dedicated his own hair, he was behaving, I think, like a Greek; but when 
  he laid hands on the very walls, Alexander was already showing his grief in 
  foreign fashion. Even in his clothing he departed from ordinary custom, and 
  gave himself up to his mood, his love, and his tears."
  Aelian's Varia Historia, vii, 8.





III: POETRY OF FRIENDSHIP AMONG GREEKS AND ROMANS

[63] THE fact, already mentioned, that the romance of love among the Greeks was 
chiefly felt towards male friends, naturally led to their poetry being largely 
inspired by friendship; and Greek literature contains such a great number of 
poems of this sort, that I have thought it worth while to dedicate the main 
portion of the following section to quotations from them. No translations of 
course can do justice to the beauty of the originals, but the few specimens 
given may help to illustrate the depth and tenderness as well as the temperance 
and sobriety which on the whole characterized Greek feeling on this subject, at 
any rate during the best period of Hellenic culture. The remainder of the 
section is devoted to Roman poetry of the time of the Caesars. 
The Iliad 
It is not always realized that the Iliad of Homer turns upon the motive of 
friendship, but the extracts immediately following will perhaps make this clear. 
E. F. M. Benecke in his Position of Women in Greek Poetry ( p. 76 ) says of the 
Iliad: 
  [63] " It is a story of which the main motive is the love of Achilles for 
  Patroclus. This solution is astoundingly simple, and yet it took me so long to 
  bring myself to accept it that I am quite ready to forgive any one who feels a 
  similar hesitation. But those who do accept it cannot fail to observe, on 
  further consideration, how thoroughly suitable a motive of this kind would be 
  in a national Greek epic. For this is the motive running through the whole of 
  Greek life, till that life was transmuted by the influence of Macedonia. The 
  lover-warriors Achilles and Patroclus are the direct spiritual ancestors of 
  the sacred Band of Thebans, who died to a man on the field of Chaeronaea"

The following two quotations are from The Greek Poets by J. A. Symonds, ch. 
iii., p. 80 et seq.: 
  " The Iliad therefore has for its whole subject the passion of Acnilles-that 
  ardent energy or menis of the hero which displayed itself first as anger 
  against Agamemnon, and afterwards as love for the lost Patroclus. The truth of 
  this was perceived by one of the greatest poets and profoundest critics of the 
  modern world, Dante. When Dante, in the Inferno, wished to describe Achilles, 
  he wrote, with characteristic brevity:
  "Achille/ Che per amore al fine combatteo."
  [65]("Achilles/ Who at the last was brought to fight by love.") 
  " In this pregnant sentence Dante sounded the whole depth of the Iliad. The 
  wrath of Achilles for Agamemnon, which prevented him at first from fighting; 
  the love of Achilles, passing the love of women, for Patroclus, which induced 
  him to forego his anger and to fight at last; these are the two poles on which 
  the Iliad turns."

After his quarrel with Agamemnon, not even ail the losses of the Greeks and the 
entreaties of Agamemnon himself will induce Achilles to fight -not till 
Patroclus is slain by Hector-Patroclus, his dear friend " whom above all my 
comrades I honored, even as myself."Then he rises up, dons his armor, and 
driving the Trojans before him revenges himself on the body of Hector. But 
Patroclus lies yet unburied; and when the fighting is over, to Achilles comes 
the ghost of his dead friend: 
  " The son of Peleus, by the shore of the roaring sea lay, heavily groaning, 
  surrounded by his Myrmidons; on a fair space of sand he lay, where the waves 
  lapped the beach. Then slumber took him, loosing the cares of his heart, and 
  mantling softly around him, for sorelv wearied were his radiant limbs with 
  driving Hector on by windy [66] Troy. There to him came the soul of poor 
  Patroclus, in all things like himself, in stature, and in the beauty of his 
  eyes and voice, and on the form was raiment like his own. He stood above the 
  hero's head, and spake to him: 
  " Sleepest thou, and me hast thou forgotten, Achilles? Not in my life wert 
  thou neglectful of me, but in death. Bury me soon, that I may pass the gates 
  of Hades. Far off the souls, the shadows of the dead, repel me, nor suffer me 
  to join them on the river bank; but, as it is, thus I roam around the 
  wide-doored house of Hades. But stretch to me thy hand I entreat; for never 
  again shall I return from Hades when once ye shall have given me the meed of 
  funeral fire. Nay, never shall we sit in life apart from our dear comrades and 
  take counsel together. But me hath hateful fate enveloped-fate that was mine 
  at the moment of my birth. And for thyself, divine Achilles, it is doomed to 
  die beneath the noble Trojan's wall. Another thing I say to thee, and bid thee 
  do it if thou wilt obey me:-lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles, but 
  lay them together; for we were brought up together in your house, when 
  Menetius brought me, a child, from Opus to your house, because of woeful 
  bloodshed on the day in which I slew the son of Amphidamas, myself a child, 
  not willing it but in anger at our games. Then did the horseman, Peleus, take 
  me, and rear me in his house, and cause me to be called thy squire. So then 
  let one grave also hide [67] the bones of both of us, the golden urn thy 
  goddess-mother gave to thee.' 
  " Him answered swift-footed Achilles: 
  'Why, dearest and most honored, hast thou hither come, to lay on me this thy 
  behest? All things most certainly will I perform, and bow to what thou 
  biddest. But stand thou near: even for one moment let us throw our arms upon 
  each other's neck, and take our fill of sorrowful wailing.' 
  " So spake he, and with his outstretched hands he clasped, but could not 
  seize. The spirit, earthward, like smoke, vanished with a shriek. Then all 
  astonished arose Achilles, and beat his palms together, and spake a piteous 
  word: 
  " ' Heavens ! is there then, among the dead, soul and the shade of life, but 
  thought is theirs no more at all? For through the night the soul of poor 
  Patroclus stood above my head, wailing and sorrowing loud, and bade me do his 
  will; it was the very semblance of himself.' 
  " So spake he, and in the hearts of all of them he raised desire of 
  lamentation; and while they were yet mourning, to them appeared rose-fingered 
  dawn about the piteous corpse." 
  Iliad, xxiii. 59 et seq.

PLATO in the Symposium dwells tenderly on this relation between Achilles and 
Patroclus:- 
  [67] [And great] " was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his 
  lover Patroclus-his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the 
  beloved one is a foolish error into which AEschylus has fallen, for Achilles 
  was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, 
  as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as 
  the gods honor the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the 
  beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the 
  lover has a nature more divine and worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite 
  aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and 
  return home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector. 
  Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not 
  only on his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore the gods honored him even 
  above Alcestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest." 
  Symposium, speech of Phedrus, trans. by B. Fowett.

And on this passage Symonds has the following note:- 
  " Plato, discussing the Myrmidones of AEschylus, remarks in the Symposium that 
  the tragic poet was wrong to make Achilles the lover of Patroclus, seeing that 
  Patroclus was the elder of the two, and that Achilles was the youngest and 
  [69] most beautiful of all the Greeks. The fact however is that Homer raises 
  no question in our minds about the relation of lover and beloved. Achilles and 
  Patroclus are comrades. Their friendship is equal. It was only the reflective 
  activity of the Greek mind, working upon the Homeric legend by the light of 
  subsequent custom, which introduced these distinctions." 
  The Greek Poets, ch. iii. p. 103

From the time of Homer onwards, Greek literature was full of songs celebrating 
friendship: 
  " And in fact there was such emulation about composing poems of this sort, and 
  so far was any one from thinking lightly of the amatory poets, that AEschylus, 
  who was a very great poet, and Sophocles too introduced the subject of the 
  loves of men on the stage in their tragedies: the one describing the love of 
  Achilles for Patroclus, and the other, in his Niobe, the mutual love of her 
  sons (on which account some have given an ill name to that tragedy); and all 
  such passages as those are very agreeable to the spectators."
  Athenaeus, bk. xiii. ch. 75.

ONE of the earlier Greek poets was Theognis (B.C. 550) whose Gnoma or Maxims 
were a series of verses mostly addressed to his young friend Kurnus, whom by 
this means he sought to [70] guide and instruct out of the stores of his own 
riper experience. The verses are reserved and didactic for the most part, but 
now and then, as in the following passage, show deep underlying feeling: 

  "Lo, I have given thee wings wherewith to fly
  Over the boundless ocean and the earth;
  Yea, on the lips of many shalt thou lie
  The comrade of their banquet and their mirth.
  Youths in their loveliness shall make thee sound
  Upon the silver flute's melodious breath;
  And when thou goest darkling underground
  Down to the lamentable house of death,
  Oh yet not then from honor shalt thou cease,
  But wander, an imperishable name,
  Kurnus, about the seas and shores of Greece,
  Crossing from isle to isle the barren main.
  Horses thou shalt not need, but lightly ride
  Sped by the Muses of the violet crown,
  And men to come, while earth and sun abide,
  Who cherish song shall cherish thy renown.
  Yea, I have given thee wings! and in return
  Thou givest me the scorn with which I burn."
  Theognis Gnomai, lines 237-254,
  trans. by G. Lowes Dickinson.

AS Theognis had his well-loved disciples, so had the poetess Sappho (600 B. C.). 
Her devotion to her girl-friends and companions is indeed proverbial. 

[71] 
  "What Alcibiades and Charmides and PhCedrus were to Socrates, Gyrinna and 
  Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian." 
  Max Tyrius,quoted in H. T. Wharton's Sappho, p. 23.

Perhaps the few lines of Sappho, translated or paraphrased by Catullus under the 
title To Lesbia, form the most celebrated fragment of her extant work. They may 
be roughly rendered thus: 

  " Peer of all the gods unto me appeareth
  He of men who sitting beside thee heareth
  Close at hand thy syllabled words sweet spoken,
  Or loving laughter " 
  That sweet laugh which flutters my heart and bosom. 
  For, at sight of thee, in an instant fail me
  Voice and speech, and under my skin there courses
  Swiftly a thin flame;

  " Darkness is on my eyes, in my ears a drumming,
  Drenched in sweat my frame, my body trembling;
  Paler ev'n than grass-'tis, I doubt, but little
  From death divides me."

[72]

SEVERAL of the odes of Anacreon (B.C. 5 20) are addressed to his young friend 
Bathyllus. The following short one has been preserved to us by Athenaeus (bk. 
Xiii. #17) 
  "O boy, with virgin-glancing eye,
  I call thee, but thou dost not hear;
  Thou know'st not how my soul doth cry
  For thee, its charioteer."

Anacreon had not the passion and depth of Sappho, but there is a mark of genuine 
feeling in some of his poems, as in this simple little epigram: 
  " On their hindquarters horses
  Are branded oft with fire,
  And any one knows a Parthian
  Because he wears a tiar;
  And I at sight of lovers
  Their nature can declare,
  For in their hearts they too
  Some subtle flame-mark bear" 

The following fragment is from Pindar's Ode to his young friend Theoxenos-in 
whose arms Pindar is said to have died (B. C. 442): 
  " O soul, 'tis thine in season meet,
  O pluck of love the blossom sweet,
  When hearts are young:
  [73] But he who sees the blazing beams,
  The light that from that forehead streams,
  And is not stung; 
  Who is not storm-tossed with desire,
  Lo! he, I ween, with frozen fire,
  Of adamant or stubborn steel
  Is forged in his cold heart that cannot feel."
  Trans. by J. Addington Symonds, The Greek Poets, vol. I, p. 286.

PLATO'S epigrams on Aster and Agathon are r well known. The two first-quoted 
make a play of course on the name Aster (star). 


To Aster:
  "Thou wert the morning star among the living,
  Ere thy fair light had fled;
  Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
  New splendor to the dead."
  (Shelley.) 
To the same:
  "Thou at the stars dost gaze, who art my star
  -O would that I were
  Heaven, to gaze on thee, ever with thousands of eyes."

To Agathon:
  "Thee as I kist, behold ! on my lips my own soul
  was trembling;
  For, bold one, she had come, meaning to find
  her way through."

[74] There are many other epigrams and songs on the same subject from the Greek 
writers. The following is by Meleager (a native of Gadara in Palestine) about 60 
B. C., and one of the sweetest and most human of the lyric poets:

  "O mortals crossed in love I the Southwind, see I
  That blows so fair for sailor folk, hath ta'en
  Half of my soul, Andragathos, from me.
  Thrice happy ships, thrice blessed billowy main,
  And four times favored wind that bears the youth,
  O would I were a Dolphin! so, in truth,
  High on my shoulders ferried he should come
  To Rhodes, sweet haunt of boys, his island- home."
  From the Greek Anthology, ii. 402.

Also from the Greek Anthology: 
  O say, and again repeat, fair, fair-and still I will say it 
  How fair, my friend, and good to see, thou art;
  On pine or oak or wall thy name I do not blazon 
  Love has too deeply graved it in my heart."

" Perhaps the most beautiful [says J. A. Symonds of the sepulchral epigrams Is 
one by an [75] unknown writer, of which I here give a free paraphrase. Anth. 
Pal., vii. 346:

  "' Of our great love, Parthenophil,
  This little stone abideth still
  Sole sign and token:
  I seek thee yet, and yet shall seek,
  Tho' faint mine eyes, my spirit weak
  With prayers unspoken.

  "Meanwhile best friend or friends, do thou,
  If this the cruel fates allow,
  By death's dark river,
  Among those shadowy people, drink
  No drop for me on Lethe's brink:
  Forget me never I "'
  The Greek Poets, vol 2, p. 298.

THEOCRITUS, though coming late in the Greek age (about 300 B. C.) when Athens 
had yielded place to Alexandria, still carried on the Greek tradition in a 
remarkable way. A native of Syracuse, he caught and echoed in a finer form the 
life and songs of the country folk of that region-themselves descendants of 
Dorian settlers. Songs and ballads full of similar notes linger among the Greek 
peasants, shepherds and fisher-folk, even down to the present day. 
The following poem (trans. by M. J. [76] Chapman, 1836) is one of the best known 
and most beautiful of his Idyls:

  IDYL XII 
  "Art come, dear youth? two days and nights away I
  (Who burn with love, grow aged in a day.)
  As much as apples sweet the damson crude
  Excel; the blooming spring the winter rude;
  In fleece the sheep her lamb; the maiden in sweetness
  The thrice-wed dame; the fawn the calf in fleetness;
  The nightingale in song all feathered kind
  So much thy longed-for presence cheers my mind.
  To thee I hasten, as to shady beech,
  The traveller, when from the heaven's reach
  The sun fierce blazes. May our love be strong,
  To all hereafter times the theme of song!
  ' Two men each other loved to that degree,
  That either friend did in the other see
  A dearer than himself. They lived of old
  Both golden natures in an age of old.'

  " O father Zeus I ageless immortals all !
  Two hundred ages hence may one recall,
  Down-coming to the irremeable river,
  This to my mind, and this good news deliver:
  'E'en now from east to west, from north to south,
  Your mutual friendship lives in every mouth.'
  This, as they please, th' Olympians will decide:
  [77] Of thee, by blooming virtue beautified,
  My glowing song shall only truth disclose;
  With falsehood's pustules I'll not shame my nose.
  If thou dost sometime grieve me, sweet the pleasure
  Of reconcilement, joy in double measure
  To find thou never didst intend the pain,
  And feel myself from all doubt free again.

  " And ye Megarians, at Nisaae dwelling,
  Expert at rowing, mariners excelling,
  Be happy everl for with honors due
  Th' Athenian Diocles, to friendship true
  Ye celebrate. With the first blush of spring
  The youth surround his tomb: there who shall bring
  The sweetest kiss, whose lip is purest found,
  Back to his mother goes with garlands crowned.
  Nice touch the arbiter must have indeed,
  And must, methinks, the blue-eyed Ganymede
  Invoke with many prayers-a mouth to own
  True to the touch of lips, as Lydian stone
  To proof of gold-which test will instant show
  The pure or base, as money changers know."

The following Idyl, of which I append a rendering, is attributed to Theocritus:

  IDYL XXIX

  " They say, dear boy, that wine and truth agree;
  And, being in wine, I'll tell the truth to thee
  [78].es, all that works in secret in my soul.
  'Tis this: thou dost not love me with thy whole
  Untampered heart. I know; for half my time
  Is spent in gazing on thy beauty's prime;
  The other half is nought. When thou art good,
  My days are like the gods'; but when the mood
  Tormenting takes thee, 'tis my night of woe.
  How were it right to vex a lover so?
  Take my advice, my lad, thine elder friend,
  'Twill make thee glad and grateful in the end:
  In one tree build one nest, so no grim snake
  May creep upon thee. For to-day thou'lt make
  Thy home on one branch, and to-morrow changing
  Wilt seek another, to what's new still ranging;
  And should a stranger praise your handsome face,
  Him more than three-year-proven friend you'llgrace,
  While him who loved you first you'll treat as cold
  As some acquaintanceship of three days old.
  Thou fliest high, methinks, in love and pride;
  But I would say: keep ever at thy side
  A mate that is thine equal; doing so,
  The townsfolk shall speak well of thee alway,
  And love shall never visit thee with woe-
  Love that so easily men's hearts can flay,
  And mine has conquered that was erst of steel.
  Nay, by thy gracious lips I make appeal:
  Remember thou wert younger a year agone
  [79] And we grow grey and wrinkled, all, or e'er
  We can escape our doom; of mortals none
  His youth retakes again, for azure wings
  Are on her shoulders, and we sons of care
  Are all too slow to catch such flying things.

  Mindful of this, be gentle, is my prayer,
  And love me, guileless, ev'n as I love thee;
  So when thou hast a beard, such friends as were
  Achilles and Patroclus we may be."

BION was a poet of about the same period as Theocritus, but of whom little is 
known. 
The following is a fragment translated by A. Lang: 
  "Happy are they that love, when with equal love they are rewarded. Happy was 
  Theseus, when Pirithous was by his side, yea tho' he went down to the house of 
  implacable Hades. Happy among hard men and inhospitable was Orestes, for that 
  Pylades chose to share his wanderings. And he was happy, Achilles AEacides, 
  while his darling lived,-happy was he in his death, because he avenged the 
  dread fate of Patroclus." 
  Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Golden Treasury series, p. 182.

The beautiful Lament for Bion by Moschus is interesting in this connection, and 
should be [80 compared with Shelley's lament for Keats in Adonais -for which 
latter poem indeed it supplied some suggestions:

  "Ye mountain valleys, pitifully groan!
  Rivers and Dorian springs for Bion weep!
  Ye plants drop tears I ye groves lamenting moan !
  Exhale your life, wan flowers; your blushes deep
  In grief, anemonies and roses, steep!
  In softest murmurs, Hyacinth I prolong
  The sad, sad woe thy lettered petals keep;
  Our minstrel sings no more his friends among
  Sicilian muses now begin the doleful song."
  M. F. Chapman trans. in the Greek Pastoral Poets, 1836. 

The allusion to Hyacinth is thus explained by Chapman: 
  "Hyacinthus, a Spartan youth, the son of Clio, was in great favor with Apollo. 
  Zephyrus, being enraged that he preferred Apollo to him, blew the discus when 
  flung by Apollo, on a day that Hyacinthus was playing at discus-throwing with 
  that god, against the head of the youth, and so killed him. Apollo, being 
  unable to save his life, changed him into the flower which was named after 
  him, and on whose petals the Greeks fancied they could trace the notes of 
  grief. [Seen within the flower we call Larkspur'].A festival called the 
  Hyacinthia was celebrated for three [81] days in each year at Sparta, in honor 
  of the godand his unhappy favorite." 
  Note to Moschus, Idyl ii:.

The story of Apollo and Hyacinth is gracefully told by Ovid, in the tenth book 
of his Metamorphoses: 
  " Midway betwixt the past and coming night
  Stood Titan [the Sun] when the pair, their limbs unrobed,
  And glist'ning with the olive's unctuous juice,
  In friendly contest with the discus vied."

  [The younger one is struck by the discus; and like a fading flower] 

  " To its own weight unequal drooped the head
  Of Hyacinth; and o'er him wailed the god:-
  Liest thou so, OEbalia's child, of youth
  Untimely robbed, and wounded by my fault-
  At once my grief and guilt?-This hand hath dealt
  Thy death I 'Tis I who send thee to the grave!
  And yet scarce guilty, unless guilt it were
  To sport, or guilt to love theel Would this life
  Might thine redeem, or be with thine resigned!
  But thou-since Fate denies a god to die-
  Be present with me everl Let thy name
  [82]Dwell ever in my heart and on my lips,
  Theme of my lyre and burden of my song;
  And ever bear the echo of my wail
  Writ on thy new-born flowerl The time shall come
  When, with thyself associate, to its nameThe mightiest of the Greeks shall 
  link his own.
  Prophetic as Apollo mourned, the blood
  That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf
  Was blood no more: and sudden sprang to life
  A flower." 
  Ovid's Metamorphoses trans. H. King, London, 1871


ROME 
IN Roman literature, generally, as might be expected, with its more 
materialistic spirit, the romance of friendship is little dwelt upon; though the 
grosser side of the passion, in such writers as Catullus and Martial, is much in 
evidence. Still we find in Virgil a notable instance. His 2nd Eclogue bears the 
marks of genuine feeling; and, according to some critics, he there under the 
guise of Shepherd Corydon's love for Alexis celebrates his own attachment to the 
youthful Alexander: 
  " Corydon, keeper of cattle, once loved the fair lad Alexis; 
  But he, the delight of his master, permitted no hope to the shepherd. 
  [83]Corydon, lovesick swain, went into the forest of beeches, 
  And there to the mountains and woods-the one relief of his passion 
  With useless effort outpoured the following art less complainings: 
  Alexis, barbarous youth, say, do not my mourn ful lays move thee ? 
  Showing me no compassion, thou'lt surely compel me to perish. 
  Even the cattle now seek after places both cool and shady;
  Even the lizards green conceal themselves in the thorn-bush.Thestylis, taking 
  sweet herbs, such as garlic and thyme, for the reapers 
  Faint with the scorching noon, doth mash them and bray in a mortar. 
  Alone in the heat of the day am I left with the screaming cicalas, 
  While patients in tracking thy path, I ever pur sue thee, Beloved." 
  Trans. by J. W. Baylis.

There is a translation of this same 2nd Eclogue, by Abraham Fraunce (1591), 
which is interesting not only on account of its felicity of phrase, but because, 
as in the case of some other Elizabethan hexameters, the metre is ruled by 
quantity, i.e., length of syllables, instead of by accent. The [84] following 
are the first five lines of Fraunce's translation: 
  "Silly shepherd Corydon lov'd hartyly fayre lad Alexis,
  His master's dearling, but saw noe matter of hoping;
  Only amydst darck groves thickset with broade-shadoe beech-trees 
  Dayly resort did he make, thus alone to the woods, to the mountayns, 
  With broken speeches fond thoughts there vaynly revealing.

CATULLUS also (b. B.C. 87) has some verses of real feeling: 

  "Quintius, if 'tis thy wish and will
  That I should owe my eyes to thee,
  Or anything that's dearer still,
  If aught that's dearer there can be;

  " Then rob me not of that I prize,
  Of the dear form that is to me,
  Oh I far far dearer than my eyes,
  Or aught, if dearer aught there be."
  Catullus, trans. Hon. F. Lamb, 1821.

  " If all complying, thou would'st grant
  Thy lovely eyes to kiss, my fair,
  Long as I pleased; ohl I would plant
  Three hundred thousand kisses there.

  [85]"Nor could I even then refrain,
  Nor satiate leave that fount of blisses,
  Tho' thicker than autumnal grain
  Should be our growing crop of kisses." 
  (Ibid.)

  " Long at our leisure yesterday
  Idling, Licinius, we wrote
  Upon my tablets verses gay,
  Or took our turns, as fancy smote,
  At rhymes and dice and wine.

  " But when I left, Licinius mine,
  Your grace and your facetious mood
  Had fired me so, that neither food
  Would stay my misery, nor sleep
  My roving eyes in quiet keep.
  But still consumed, without respite,
  I tossed about my couch in vain
  And longed for day-if speak I might,
  Or be with you again.

  " But when my limbs with all the strain
  Worn out, half dead lay on my bed,
  Sweet friend to thee this verse I penned,
  That so thou mayest condescend
  To understand my pain.

  " So now, Licinius, beware!
  And be not rash, but to my prayer
  A gracious hearing tender;
  [96] Lest on thy head pounce Nemesis:
  A goddess sudden and swift she is-
  Beware lest thou offend her."

The following little poem is taken from Martial:

  TO DIADUMENOS

  "As a vineyard breathes, whose boughs with grapes are bending, 
  Or garden where are hived Sicanian bees;
  As upturned clods when summer rain's descending
  Or orchards rich with blossom-laden trees;
  So, cruel youth, thy kisses breathe -so sweet -
  Would'st thou but grant me all their grace, complete ! " 




IV: FRIENDSHIP IN EARLY CHRISTIAN AND MEDIAEVAL TIMES

[89] THE quotations we have given from Plato and others show the very high ideal 
of friendship which obtained in the old world, and the respect accorded to it. 
With the incoming of the Christian centuries, and the growth of Alexandrian and 
Germanic influences, a change began to take place. Woman rose to greater freedom 
and dignity and influence than before. The romance of love began to centre round 
her.[Benecke, Woman in Greek Poetry, traces a germ of this romance even in Greek 
days] The days of chivalry brought a new devotion into the world, and the Church 
exalted the Virgin Mother to the highest place in heaven. Friendship between men 
ceased to be regarded in the old light -i.e., as a thing of deep feeling, and an 
important social institution. It was even, here and there, looked on with 
disfavor-and lapses from the purity or chastity of its standard were readily 
suspected and violently reprobated. Certainly it survived in the monastic life 
for a lone period: [90] but though inspiring this to a great extent, its 
influence was not generally acknowledged. The Family, in the modern and more 
limited sense of the word (as opposed to the clan), became the recognized unit 
of social life, and the ideal centre of all good influences (as illustrated in 
the worship of the Holy Family). At the same time, by this very shrinkage of the 
Family, as well as by other influences, the solidarity of society became to some 
extent weakened, and gradually the more communistic forms of the early world 
gave place to the individualism of the commercial period. 
The special sentiment of comrade-love or attachment (being a thing inherent in 
human nature) remained of course through the Christian centuries, as before, and 
unaltered-except that being no longer recognized it became a private and 
personal affair, running often powerfully enough beneath the surface of society, 
but openly unacknowledged, and so far deprived of some of its dignity and 
influence. Owing to this fact there is nothing, for this period, to be quoted in 
the way of general ideal or public opinion on the subject of friendship, and the 
following sections therefore become limited to the expression of individual 
sentiments and experiences, in prose and poetry. 
[91] These we find, during the mediaeval period, largely colored by religion; 
while at the Renaissance and afterwards they are evidently affected by Greek 
associations. 
FOLLOWING are some passages from S. Augustine: 
  " In those years when I first began to teach in my native town, I had made a 
  friend, one who through having the same interests was very dear to me, one of 
  my own age, and like me in the first flower of youth. We had grown up 
  together, and went together to school, and used to play together. But he was 
  not yet so great a friend as afterwards, nor even then was our friendship 
  true; for friendship is not true unless Thou cementest it between those who 
  are united to Thee by that ' love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the 
  Holy Ghost which is given unto us.' Yet our friendship was but too sweet, and 
  fermented by the pursuit of kindred studies. For I had turned him aside from 
  the true faith (of which as a youth he had but an imperfect grasp) to 
  pernicious and superstitious fables, for which my mother grieved over me. And 
  now in mind he erred with me, and my soul could not endure to be separated 
  from him. But lo, Thou didst follow close behind Thy fugitives, Thou-both God 
  of vengeance and fountain of mercie -- [92] didst convert us by wonderful 
  ways; behold, Thou didst take him out of this life, when scarcely a year had 
  our close intimacy lasted-sweet to me beyond the sweetness of my whole 
  life.... 
  " No ray of light pierced the gloom with which my heart was enveloped by this 
  grief, and wherever I looked I beheld death. My native place was a torment to 
  me, and my father's house strangely joyless; and whatever I had shared with 
  him, without him was now turned into a huge torture. My longing eyes sought 
  him everywhere, and found him not; and I hated the very places, because he was 
  not in them, neither could they say to me ' he is coming,' as they used to do 
  when he was alive and was absent. And I became a great puzzle to myself, and I 
  asked my soul why it was so sad, and why so disquieted within me; and it knew 
  not what to answer. And if I said ' Trust thou in God,' it rightly did not 
  obey; for that dearest one whom it had lost was both truer and better than 
  that phantasm in which it was bidden to trust. Weeping was the only thing 
  which was sweet to me, and it succeeded my friend in the dearest place in my 
  heart."
  S. Augustine, Confessions, bk. 4, ch. iv. Trans. by Rev. W. H. Hutchings, M.A.

  "I was miserable, and miserable is every soul which is fettered by the love of 
  perishable things; he is torn to pieces when he loses them, and then he 
  perceives how miserable he was in reality while he possessed them. And so was 
  I then, [93] and I wept most bitterly, and in that bitterness I found rest. 
  Thus was I miserable, and that miserable life I held dearer than my friend. 
  For though I would fain have changed it, yet to it I clung even more than to 
  him; and I cannot say whether I would have parted with it for his sake, as it 
  is related, if true, that Orestes and Pylades were willing to do, for they 
  would gladly have died for each other, or together, for they preferred death 
  to separation from each other. But in me a feeling which I cannot explain, and 
  one of a contradictory nature had arisen; for I had at once an unbearable 
  weariness of living, and a fear of dying. For I believe the more I loved him, 
  the more I hated and dreaded death which had taken him from me, and regarded 
  it as a most cruel enemy; and I felt as if it would soon devour all men, now 
  that its power had reached him.... For I marvelled that other mortals lived, 
  because he whom I had loved, without thought of his ever dying, was dead; and 
  that I still lived-I who was another self-when he was gone, was a greater 
  marvel still. Well said a certain one of his friend, ' Thou half of my soul; ' 
  for I felt that his soul and mine were ' one soul in two bodies: ' and 
  therefore life was to me horrible, because I hated to live as half of a life; 
  and therefore perhaps I feared to die, lest he should wholly die whom I had 
  loved so greatly." 
  Ibid, ch. vi.

[94] IT is interesting to see, in these extracts from S. Augustine, and in those 
which follow from Montalembert, the points of likeness and difference between 
the Christian ideal of love and that of Plato. Both are highly transcendental, 
both seem to contemplate an inner union of souls, beyond the reach of space and 
time; but in Plato the union is in contemplation of the Eternal Beauty, while in 
the Christian teachers it is in devotion to a personal God. 
  " If inanimate nature was to them an abundant source of pleasure they had a 
  life still more lively and elevated in the life of the heart, in the double 
  love which burned in them-the love of their brethren inspired and consecrated 
  by the love of God." 
  Monks of the West, introdn., ch. v.

  " Everything invited and encouraged them to choose one or several souls as the 
  intimate companions of their life.... And to prove how little the divine love, 
  thus understood and practised, tends to exclude or chill the love of man for 
  man, never was human eloquence more touching or more sincere than in that 
  immortal elegy by which S. Bernard laments a lost brother snatched by death 
  from the cloister:-' Flow, flow my tears, so eager to flowl he who prevented 
  your flowing is here no more I It is not he who is dead, it is I who now live 
  only to die. Why, O why have we loved, and why have we lost each other."' 
  Ibid.

  [95] " The mutual affection which reigned among the monks flowed as a mighty 
  stream through the annals of the cloister. It has left its trace even in the ' 
  formulas,' collected with care by modern eruditions.... The correspondence of 
  the most illustrious, of Geoffrey de Vendome, of Pierre le Venerable, and of 
  S. Bernard, give proofs of it at every page." 
  Ibid.

SAINT ANSELM'S letters to brother monks are full of expressions of the same 
ardent affection. Montalembert gives several examples: 
  "Souls well-beloved of my soul," he wrote to two near relatives whom he wished 
  to draw to Bec, " my eyes ardently desire to behold you; my arms expand to 
  embrace you; my lips sigh for your kisses; all the life that remains to me ts 
  consumed with waiting for you. I hope in praying, and I pray in hoping-come 
  and taste how gracious the Lord is-you cannot fully know it while you find 
  sweetness in the world." 
  " ' Far from the eyes, far from the heart,' say the vulgar. Believe nothing of 
  it; if it was so, 
  the farther you were distant from me the cooler my love for you would be; 
  whilst on the contrary, the less I can enjoy your presence, the more the 
  desire of that pleasure burns in the soul of your friend." 
[96] 
  " To Gondulf, Anselm-I put no other or longer salutations at the head of my 
  letter, because I can say nothing more to him whom I love. All who know 
  Gondulph and Anselm know well what this means, and how much love is understood 
  in these two names." . . . " How could I forget thee ? Can a man forget one 
  who is placed like a seal upon his heart? In thy silence I know that thou 
  lovest me; and thou also, when I say nothing, thou knowest that I love thee. 
  Not only have I no doubt of thee, but I answer for thee that thou art sure of 
  me. What can my letter tell thee that thou knowest not already, thou who art 
  my second soul? Go into the secret place of thy heart, look there at thy love 
  for me, and thou shalt see mine for thee." . . . "Thou knewest how much I love 
  thee, but I knew it not. He who has separated us has alone instructed me how 
  dear to me thou wert. No, I knew not before the experience of thy absence how 
  sweet it was to have thee, how bitter to have thee not. Thou hast another 
  friend whom thou hast loved as much or more than me to console thee, but I 
  have no longer thee l-theel thee l thou understandest? and nothing to replace 
  thee. Those who rejoice in the possession of thee may perhaps be offended by 
  what I say. Ah I let them content thernselves with their joy, and p.ermit me 
  to weep for him whom I ever love." 


[97] THE story of Amis and Amile, a mediaeval legend, translated by William 
Morris (as well as by Walter Pater) from the Bibliotheca Elzeviriana, is very 
quaint and engaging in its old-world extravagance and supernaturalism: 
  Amis and Amile were devoted friends, twins in resemblance and life. On one 
  occasion, having strayed apart, they ceased not to seek each other for two 
  whole years. And when at last they met "they lighted down from their horses, 
  and embraced and kissed each other, and gave thanks to God that they were 
  found. And they swore fealty and friendship and fellowship perpetual, the one 
  to the other, on the sword of Amile, wherein were relics." Thence they went 
  together to the court of " Charles, king of France." Here soon after, Amis 
  took Amile's place in a tournament, saved his life from a traitor, and won for 
  him the King's daughter to wife. But so it happened that, not long after, he 
  himself was stricken with leprosy and brought to Amile's door. And when Amile 
  and his royal bride knew who it was they were sore grieved, and they brought 
  him in and placed him on a fair bed, and put all that they had at his service. 
  And it came to pass one night " when as Amis and Amile lay in one chamber 
  without other company, that God sent to Amis Raphael his angel, who said to 
  him: 'Sleepest thou, Amis?' And he, [98] who deemed that Amile had called to 
  him, answered: ' I sleep not, fair sweet fellow.' Then the angel said to him: 
  ' Thou hast answered well, for thou art the fellow of the citizens of heaven, 
  and thou hast followed after Job, and Thoby in patience. Now I am Raphael, an 
  angel of our Lord, and am come to tell thee of a medicine for thine healing, 
  whereas he hath heard thy prayers. Thou shalt tell to Amile thy fellow, that 
  he slay his two children and wash thee in their blood, and thence thou shalt 
  get the healing of thy body."' 
  Amis was shocked when he heard these words, and at first refused to tell 
  Amile; but the latter had also heard the angel's voice, and pressed him to 
  tell. Then, when he knew, he too was sorely grieved. But at last he determined 
  in his mind not even to spare his children for the sake of his friend, and 
  going secretly to their chamber he slew them, and bringing some of their blood 
  washed Amis-who immediately was healed. He then arrayed Amis in his best 
  clothes and, after going to the church to give thanks, they met Amile's wife 
  who (not knowing all) rejoiced greatly too. But Amile, going apart again to 
  the children's chamber to weep over them, found them at play in bed, with only 
  a thread of crimson round their throats to mark what had been done! 
  The two knights fell afterwards and were killed in the same battle; " for even 
  as God had joined them together by good accord in their life [99] days, so in 
  their death they were not sundered." And a miracle was added, for even when 
  they were buried apart from each other the two coffins leapt together in the 
  night and were found side by side in the morning.

Of this story Mr. Jacobs, in his introduction to William Morris' translation, 
says: "Amis and Amil were the David and Jonathan, the Orestes and Pylades, of 
the medieval world." There were some thirty other versions of the legend " in 
almost all the tongues of Western and Northern Europe "-their " peerless 
friendship " having given them a place among the mediaeval saints.
(See Old French Romances, trans. by William Morris, London, 1896.)

ISLAMIC WORLD 
IT may not be out of place here, and before passing on to the times of the 
Renaissance and Modern Europe, to give one or two extracts relating to Eastern 
countries. The honor paid to friendship in Persia, Arabia, Syria and other 
Oriental lands has always been great, and the tradition of this attachment there 
should be especially interesting to us, as having arisen independently of 
classic or Christian ideals. The poets of Persia, Saadi and Jalalu-ddin Rumi 
[100] (13th cent.), Hafiz (14th cent.), Jami (15th cent.), and others, have 
drawn much of their inspiration from this source; but unfortunately for those 
who cannot read the originals, their work has been scantily translated, and the 
translations themselves are not always very reliable. The extraordinary way in 
which, following the method of the Sufis, and of Plato, they identify the mortal 
and the divine love, and see in their beloved an image or revelation of God 
himself, makes their poems diflicult of comprehension to the Western mind. 
Apostrophes to Love, Wine, and Beauty often, with them, bear a frankly twofold 
sense, material and spiritual. To these poets of the mid-region of the earth, 
the bitter antagonism between matter and spirit, which like an evil dream has 
haunted so long both the extreme Western and the extreme Eastern mind, scarcely 
exists; and even the body " which is a portion of the dustpit " has become 
perfect and divine.

Jalalu-ddin Rumi 
  " Every form you see has its archetype in the placeless world.... 
  From the moment you came into the world of being
  A ladder was placed before you that you might escape ( ascend ) .
  First you were mineral, later you turned to plant,
  [101]Then you became an animal: how should this be a secret to you ?
  Afterwards you were made man, with knowledge, reason, faith;
  Behold the body, which is a portion of the dustpit, how perfect it has grownig
  When you have travelled on from man, you will doubtless become an angel;
  After that you are done with earth: your station is in heaven. 
  Pass again even from angelhood: enter thatocean,
  That your drop may become a sea which is a hundred seas of ' Oman.' "
  From the Divani Shamsi Tabriz of Jalalu-ddin Rumi, trans. by R. H. Nicholson.

  'Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment 
  Had not been: its being is but shame.
  Be drunken in love, for love is all that exists.
  Dismiss cares and be utterly clear of heart,
  Like the face of a mirror, without image or picture.
  When it becomes clear of images, all images are contained in it." 
  Ibid.


  Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, thou and I, 
  With two forms and with two figures, but with one soul, thou and I." 
  Ibid.

[102] 
  "Once a man came and knocked at the door of his friend.
  His friend said, ' Who art thou, O faithfulone ? '
  He said, "Tis I.' He answered, ' There is no admittance. 
  There is no room for the raw at my well-cooked feast.
  Naught but fire of separation and absence
  Can cook the raw one and free him from hypocrisy I 
  Since thy self has not yet left thee,
  Thou must be burned in fiery flames.'
  The poor man went away, and for one whole year 
  Journeyed burning with grief for his friend's absence.
  His heart burned till it was cooked; then he went again 
  And drew near to the house of his friend.
  He knocked at the door in fear and trepidation
  Lest some careless word should fall from his lips. 
  His friend shouted, ' Who is that at the door? '
  He answered, ' 'Tis thou who art at the door, O beloved I '
  The friend said, ' Since 'tis I, let me come in,
  There is not room for two I's in one house."'
  From the Masnavi of Jalalu-ddin Rumi, trans. by E. H. Whinfield. 

[103] 
HAFIZ and SAADI 
SOME short quotations here following are taken from Flowers culled from Persian 
Gardens (Manchester, 1872):

  "Everyone, whether he be abstemious or self indulgent is searching after the 
  Friend. Every place may be the abode of love, whether it be a mosque or a 
  synagogue.... On thy last day, though the cup be in thy hand, thou may'st be 
  borne away to Paradise even from the corner of the tavern." 
  Hafiz.

  "I have heard a sweet word which was spoken by the old man of Canaan (Jacob)-' 
  No tongue can express what means the separation of friends."
  Hafiz.

  "Neither of my own free will cast I myself into the fire; for the chain of 
  affection was laid upon my neck. I was still at a distance when the fire began 
  to glow, nor is this the moment that it was lighted up within me. Who shall 
  impute it to me as a fault, that I am enchanted by my friend, that I am 
  content in casting myself at his feet? " 
  Saadi

VON KUPFFER, in his Anthology, Lieblingminne und Freundes liebe in der 
Weltliteratur, gives the following three poems from Saadi and Hafiz:

SAADI'S ROSE GARDEN

  "A youth there was of golden heart and nature,
  Who loved a friend, his like in every feature;
  [102] Once, as upon the ocean sailed the pair,
  They chanced into a whirlpool unaware.
  A fisherman made haste the first to save,
  Ere his young life should meet a watery grave;
  But crying from the raging surf, he said:
  ' Leave me, and seize my comrade's hand instead.'
  E'en as he spoke the mortal swoon o'ertook him,
  With that last utterance life and sense forsook him.

  Learn not love's temper from that shallow pate
  Who in the hour of fear forsakes his mate
  True friends will ever act like him above
  (Trust one who is experienced in love);
  For Sadi knows full well the lover's part,
  And Bagdad understands the Arab heart.
  More than all else thy loved one shalt thou prize,
  Else is the whole world hidden from thine eyes."
  Lov'st thou a being formed of dust like thee
  Peace and contentment from thy heart shall flee -
  Waking, fair limbs and features shall torment thee;
  Sleeping, thy love in dreams shall hold and haunt thee.
  Under his feet thy head is bowed to earth;
  Compared with him the world's a paltry crust;
  If to thy loved one gold is nothing worth,
  Why, then to thee is gold no more than dust
  [105] Hardly a word for others canst thou find,
  For no room's left for others in thy mind." 
  " Dear Friend, since thou hast passed the whole
  Of one sweet night, till dawn, with me,
  I were scarce mortal, could I spend
  Another hour apart from thee.
  The fear of death, for all of time
  Hath left me since my soul partook
  The water of true Life, that wells
  In sweet abundance from thy brook."

Hahn in his Albanesische Studien, already quoted (p. 20), gives some of the 
verses of Necin or Nesim Bey, a Turco-Albanian poet, of which the following is 
an example: 
  "Whate'er, my friend, or false or true,
  The world may tell thee, give no ear,
  For to separate us, dear,
  The world will say that one is two.
  Who should seek to separate us
  May he never cease to weep.
  The rain at times may cease; but he
  In Summer's warmth or Winter's sleep
  May he never cease to weep."

BESIDES literature there is no doubt a vast amount of material embedded in the 
customs and traditions of these countries and awaiting adequate recognition and 
interpretation. [106] The following quotations may afford some glimpses of 
interest.

Suleyman the Magnificent.-The Story of Suleyman's attachment to his Vezir 
Ibrahim is told as follows by Stanley Lane-Poole: 
  " Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with a second mind, to which 
  his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand Vezir Ibrahim was the 
  counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman. He was the son of a sailor at 
  Parga, and had been captured by corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave 
  of a widow at Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince 
  Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary talents and 
  address brought him promotion.... From being Grand Falconer on the accession 
  of Suleyman, he rose to be first minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523. 
  " He was the object of the Sultan's tender regard: an emperor knows better 
  than most men how solitary is life without friendship and love, and Suleyman 
  loved this man more than a brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an 
  entertaining and instructive companion. He read Persian, Greek and Italian; he 
  knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan's mind, and Sulevman drank in 
  his Vezir's wisdom with assiduity. They lived together: their meals were 
  shared in common; even their beds were in the same room. The Sultan gave his 
  sister in marriage to the sailor's [107] son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of 
  power." 
  Turkey, Story of Nations series, p. 174.

T. S. BUCKINGHAM, in his "Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia," speaking of his 
guide whom he had engaged at Bagdad, and who was supposed to have left his heart 
behind him in that city, says: 
  " Amidst all this I was at a loss to conceive how the Dervish could find much 
  enjoyment [in the expedition] while laboring under the strong passion which I 
  supposed he must then be feeling for the object of his affections at Bagdad, 
  whom he had quitted with so much reluctance. What was my surprise, however, on 
  seeking an explanation of this seeming inconsistency, to find it was the son, 
  and not the daughter, of his friend Elias who held so powerful a hold on his 
  heart. I shrank back from the confession as a man would recoil from a serpent 
  on which he had unexpectedly trodden . . . but in answer to enquiries 
  naturally suggested by the subject he declared he would rather suffer death 
  than do the slightest harm to so pure, so innocent, so heavenly a creature as 
  this.... 
  " I took the greatest pains to ascertain by a severe and minute investigation, 
  how far it might be possible to doubt of the purity of the passion by which 
  this Affgan Dervish was possessed, and whether it deserved ta be classed with 
  that [108] described as prevailing among the ancient Greeks; and the result 
  fully satisfied me that both were the same. Ismael was, however, surprised 
  beyond measure when I assured him that such a feeling was not known at all 
  among the peoples of Europe." 
  Travels, Etc., 2nd edition, vol. I, p 159.

  " The Dervish added a striking instance of the force of these attachments, and 
  the sympathy which was felt in the sorrows to which they led, by the following 
  fact from his own history. The place of his residence, and of his usual labor, 
  was near the bridge of the Tigris, at the gate of the Mosque of the Vizier. 
  While he sat here, about five or six years since, surrounded by several of his 
  friends who came often to enjoy his conversation and beguile the tedium of his 
  work, he observed, passing among the crowd, a young and beautiful Turkish boy, 
  whose eyes met his, as if by destiny, and they remained fixedly gazing on each 
  other for some time. The boy, after ' blushing like the first hue of a summer 
  morning,' passed on, frequently turning back to look on the person who had 
  regarded him so ardently. The Dervish felt his heart ' revolve within him,' 
  for such was his expression, and a cold sweat came across his brow. He hung 
  his head upon his graving-tool in dejection, and excused himself to those 
  about him by saying he felt suddenly ill. Shortly afterwards the boy returned, 
  and after walking to and fro several times, drawing nearer and nearer, as if 
  [109] under the influence of some attracting charm, he came up to his observer 
  and said, ' Is it really true, then, that you love me? ' ' This,' said Ismael, 
  ' was a dagger in my heart; I could make no reply.' The friends who were near 
  him, and now saw all explained, asked him if there had been any previous 
  acquaintance existing between them. He assured them that they had never seen 
  each other before. ' Then,' they replied, ' such an event must be from God.' 
  " The boy continued to remain for a while with this party, told with great 
  frankness the name and rank of his parents, as well as the place of his 
  residence, and promised to repeat his visit on the following day. He did this 
  regularly for several months in succession, sitting for hours by the Dervish, 
  and either singing to him or asking him interesting questions, to beguile his 
  labors, until as Ismael expressed himself, ' though they were still two bodies 
  they became one soul.' The youth at length fell sick, and was confined to his 
  bed, during which time his lover, Ismael, discontinued entirely his usual 
  occupations and abandoned himself completely to the care of his beloved. He 
  watched the changes of his disease with more than the anxiety of a parent, and 
  never quitted his bedside, night or day. Death at length separated them; but 
  even when the stroke came the Dervish could not be prevailed on to quit the 
  corpse. He constantly visited the grave that contained the remains of all he 
  held dear on [110] earth, and planting myrtles and flowers there after the 
  manner of the East, bedewed them daily with his tears. His friends sympathized 
  powerfully in his distress, which he said ' continued to feed his grief ' 
  until he pined away to absolute illness, and was near following the fate of 
  him whom he deplored." 
  Ibid, p. 160.

  "From all this, added to many other examples of a similar kind, related as 
  happening between persons who had often been pointed out to me in Arabia and 
  Persia, I could no longer doubt the existence in the East of an affection for 
  male youths, of as pure and honorable a kind as that which is felt in Europe 
  for those of the other sex . . . and it would be as unjust to suppose that 
  this necessarily implied impurity of desire as to contend that no one could 
  admire a lovely countenance and a beautiful form in the other sex, and still 
  be inspired with sentiments of the most Dure and honorable nature towards the 
  object of his admiration." 
  Ibid, p. 163.

  "One powerful reason why this passion may exist in the East, while it is quite 
  unknown in the West, is probably the seclusion of women in the former, and the 
  freedom of access to them in the latter.... Had they [the Asiatics] the 
  unrestrained intercourse which we enjoy with such superior beings as the 
  virtuous and accomplished females of our own country they would find nothing 
  in nature so deserving of their love as these." 
  Ibid, p. 165.




V: THE RENAISSANCE AND MODERN TIMES 

[113] WITH the Renaissance, and the impetus it gave at that time to the study of 
Greek and Roman models, the exclusive domination of Christianity and the Church 
was broken. A literature of friendship along classic lines began to spring up. 
Montaigne (b. 1533) was saturated with classic learning. His essays were 
doubtless largely formed upon the model of Plutarch. His friendship with Stephen 
de la Boetie was evidently of a romantic and absorbing character. It is referred 
to in the following passage by William Hazlitt; and the description of it 
occupies a large part of Montaigne's Essay on Friendship. 
  " The most important event of his counsellor's life at Bordeaux was the 
  friendship which he there formed with Stephen de la Boetie, an affection which 
  makes a streak of light in modern biography almost as beautiful as that left 
  us by Lord Brook and Sir Philip Sydney. Our essayist and his friend esteemed, 
  before they saw, each other. La Boetie had written a little work [" De la 
  Servitude Volontaire."] in which Montaigne recognized sentiments congenial 
  with his own, and which indeed bespeak a soul formed in the mould of classic 
  times. Of Montaigne, le Boetie had also heard accounts, which made him eager 
  to behold him, and at length they met at a large entertainment given by one of 
  the magistrates of Bordeaux. They saw and loved, and were thenceforward all in 
  all to each other. The picture that Montaigne in his essays draws of this 
  friendship is in the highest degree beautiful and touching; nor does la 
  Boetie's idea of what is due to this sacred bond betwixt soul and soul fall 
  far short of the grand perception which filled the exalted mind of his 
  friend.... Montaigne married at the age of 33, but as he informs us, not of 
  his own wish or choice. ' Might I have had my wish,' says he, ' I would not 
  have married Wisdom herself if she would have had me." 
  Life of Montaigne, by Wm. Hazlitt.

The following is from Montaigne's Essay, bk. I, ch. XXVII 
  " As to marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the making of which is only 
  free, but the continuance in it forced and compelled, having another 
  dependence than that of our own free will, and a bargain moreover commonly 
  contracted to other ends, there happen a thousand intricacies in it to 
  unravel, enough to break the thread, and to divert the current, of a lively 
  affection: whereas [115] friendship has no manner of business or traffic with 
  anything but itself.... For the rest, what we commonly call friends and 
  friendships are nothing but an acquaintance and connection, contracted either 
  by accident or upon some design, by means of which there happens some little 
  intercourse betwixt our souls: but, in the friendship I speak of, they mingle 
  and melt into one piece, with so universal a mixture that there is left no 
  more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined. If any one should 
  importune me to give a reason why I loved him [Stephen de la Boetie] I feel it 
  could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, 'Because it was he; 
  because it was I.' There is, beyond what I am able to say, I know not what 
  inexplicable and inevitable power that brought on this union. We sought one 
  another long before we met, and from the characters we heard of one another, 
  which wrought more upon our affections than in reason mere reports should do, 
  and, as I think, by some secret appointment of heaven; we embraced each other 
  in our names, and at our first meeting, which was accidentally at a great city 
  entertainment, we found ourselves so mutually pleased with one another-we 
  became at once mutually so endeared-that thenceforward nothing was so near to 
  us as one another. " Common friendships will admit of division, one may love 
  the beauty of this, the good humorof that person, the liberality of a third, 
  the [116] paternal affection of a fourth, the fraternal love of a fifth, and 
  so on. But this friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and 
  sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.... In good earnest, 
  if I compare all the rest of my life with the four years I had the happiness 
  to enjoy the sweet soclety of this excellent man, 'tis nothing but smoke, but 
  an obscure and tedious night. From the day that I lost him I have only led a 
  sorrowful and languishing life; and the very pleasures that present themselves 
  to me, instead of administering anything of consolation, double my affliction 
  for his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree that, methinks, by 
  outliving him I defraud him of his part."


PHILIP SIDNEY, born 1554, was remarkable for his strong personal attachments. 
Chief among his allies were his school-mate and distant relative, Fulke Greville 
(born in the same 
year as himself), and his college friend Edward Dyer (also about his own age). 
He wrote youthful verses to both of them. The following, according to the 
fashion of the age, are in the form of an invocation to the pastoral god Pan- 
  " Only for my two loves' sake,
  In whose love I pleasure take;
  Only two do me delight
  With their ever-pleasing sight;
  [117] Of all men to thee retaining
  Grant me with these two remaining."

An interesting friendship existed also between Sidney and the well-known French 
Protestant, Hubert Languet-many years his senior-whose conversation and 
correspondence helped much in the formation of Sidney's character. These two had 
shared together the perils of the massacre of S. Bartholomew, and had both 
escaped from France across the Rhine to Germany, where they lived in close 
intimacy at Frankfort for a length of time; and after this a warm friendship and 
steady correspondence-varied by occasional meetings -continued between the two 
until Languet's death. Languet had been Professor of Civil Law at Padua, and 
from 1550 forwards was recognized as one of the leading political agents of the 
Protestant Powers. 

  "The elder man immediately discerned in Sidney a youth of no common quality, 
  and the attachment he conceived for him savored of romance. We possess a long 
  series of Latin letters from Languet to his friend, which breathe the 
  tenderest spirit of affection, mingled with wise counsel and ever watchful 
  thought for the young man's higher interests.... There must have been 
  something inexplicably attractive in his [Sidney's] [118] person and his 
  genius at this time; for the tone of Languet's correspondence can only be 
  matched by that of Shakespeare in the sonnets written for his unknown friend." 

  Sir Philip Sidney, English Men of Letters Series, pp. 27, 28.

Of this relation Fox Bourne says: 
  " No love-oppressed youth can write with more earnest passion and more fond 
  solicitude, or can be troubled with more frequent fears and more causeless 
  jealousies, than Languet, at this time 55 years old, shows in his letters to 
  Sidney, now 19."

IT may be appropriate here to introduce two or three sonnets from Michel Angelo 
(b. 1475). Michel Angelo, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, artist of 
the Italian Renaissance, was deeply imbued with the Greek spirit. His conception 
of Love was close along the line of Plato's. For him the body was the symbol, 
the expression, the dwelling place of some divine beauty. The body may be loved, 
but it should only be loved as a symbol, not for itself. Diotima in the 
Symposium has said that in our mortal loves we first come to recognize (dimly) 
the divine form of beauty which is Eternal. Maximus Tyrius ( Dissert. xxvi. 8) 
commenting on this, confirms it, saying that nowhere else but in the human form, 
" the [119] loveliest and most intelligent of body creatures," does the light of 
divine beauty shine so clear. Michel Angelo carried on the conception, gave it 
noble expression, and held to it firmly in the midst of a society which was 
certainly willing enough to love the body (or try to love it) merely for its own 
sake. And Giordano Bruno (b. 1550) as a later date wrote as follows: 

  " All the loves-if they be heroic and not purely animal, or what is called 
  natural, and slaves to generation as instruments in some way of nature-have 
  for object the divinity, and tend towards divine beauty, which first is 
  communicated to, and shines in, souls, and from them or rather through them is 
  communicated to bodies; whence it is that well-ordered affection loves the 
  body or corporeal beauty, insomuch as it is an indication of beauty of 
  spirit." 
  Gli Eroici Furori (dial. iii. It), trans. L. Williams. 

THE labors of Von Scheffler and others have now pretty conclusively established 
that the love-poems of Michel Angelo were for the most part written to male 
friends-though this fact was disguised by the pious frauds of his nephew, who 
edited them in the first instance. Following are three of his sonnets, 
translated by J. A. [120] Symonds. It will be seen that the last line of the 
first contains a play on the name of his friend:

  To Tommaso de' Cavalieri:

  A CHE PIU DEBB'IO

  "Why should I seek to ease intense desire
  With still more tears and windy words of grief,
  When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
  To souls whom love hath robed around with fire. 
  Why need my aching heart to death aspire
  When all must die? Nay death beyond belief
  Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
  Since in my sum of woes all joys expire !
  Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
  I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
  Gliding between her gladness and her woe ?
  If only chains and bands can make me blest,
  No marvel if alone and bare I go
  An armed Knight's captive and slave confessed."

  NON VIDER GLI OCCHI MIEI

  " No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
  When perfect peace in thy fair face I found
  But far within, where all is holy ground
  My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
  For she was born with God in Paradise;
  Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
  [121] This fair false world her wings to earth have bound;
  Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flier
  Nay, things that suffer death quench not the fire
  Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
  Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
  Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
  That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
  Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high."

  VEGGIO NEL TUO BEL VISO

  " From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
  That which no mortal tongue can rightly say;
  The soul imprisoned in her house of clay,
  Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
  And tho' the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
  Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
  Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
  This love, this faith. pure iovs for us afford.
  Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
  Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
  That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
  Nor have we first fruits or remembrances
  Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
  I rise to God and make death sweet bythee."

[122]

RICHARD BARNFIELD, one of the Elizabethan singers (b. 1574) wrote a long poem, 
dedicated to "The Ladie Penelope Rich " and entitled " The Affectionate 
Shepheard," which he describes as an imitation of Virgil in the 2nd Eclogue, of 
Alexis." I quote the first two Stanzas:

  I 
  " Scarce had the morning starre hid from the light
  Heaven's crimson Canopie with stars bespangled,
  But I began to rue th' unhappy sight
  Of that fair boy that had my heart intangled;
  Cursing the Time, the Place, the sense, the sin;
  I came, I saw, I view d, I slipped in.

  II 
  If it be sin to love a sweet-fac'd Boy,
  (Whose amber locks trust up in golden tramels
  Dangle adown his lovely cheeks with joye
  When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels)
  If it be sin to love a lovely Lad,
  Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad "

These stanzas, and the following three sonnets (also by Barnfield) from a series 
addressed to a youth, give a fair sample of a considerable class of Elizabethan 
verses, in which classic conceits were mingled with a certain amount of real 
feeling:

[123]

  SONNET IV 
  " Two stars there are in one fair firmament
  (Of some intitled Ganymede's sweet face)
  Which other stars in brightness do disgrace,
  As much as Po in cleanness passeth Trent.
  Nor are they common-natur'd stars; for why,
  These stars when other shine vaile their pure light,
  And when all other vanish out of sight
  They add a glory to the world's great eie:
  By these two stars my life is only led,
  In them I place my joy, in them my pleasure!
  Love's piercing darts and Nature s precious treasure,
  With their sweet food my fainting soul is fed:
  Then when my sunne is absent from my sight
  How can it chuse (with me) but be darke night? "


  SONNET XVIII 
  " Not Megabetes, nor Cleonymus
  (Of whom great Plutarch makes such mention,
  Praysing their faire with rare invention),
  As Ganymede were halfe so beauteous.
  They onely pleased the eies of two great kings,
  But all the world at my love stands amazed,
  Nor one that on his angel's face hath gazed,
  But (ravisht with delight) him presents bring:
  [124] Some weaning lambs, and some a suckling kyd
  Some nuts, and fil-beards, others peares and plums;
  Another with a milk-white heyfar comes;
  As lately AEgon's man (Damcetas) did
  But neither he nor all the Nymphs beside,
  Can win my Ganymede with them t' abide."

  SONNET XIX 
  "Ah no; nor I my selfe: tho' my pure love
  (Sweete Ganymede) to thee hath still been pure,
  And ev n tlll my last gaspe shall aie endure,
  Could ever thy obdurate beuty move:
  Then cease, oh goddesse sonne ( for sure thou art
  A Goddesse sonne that can resist desire),
  Cease thy hard heart, and entertain love's fire
  Within thy sacred breast: by Nature's art. 
  And as I love thee more than any Creature
  (Love thee, because thy beautie is divine,
  Love thee, because my selfe, my soule, is thine:
  Wholie devoted to thy lovely feature),
  Even so of all the vowels, I and U
  Are dearest unto me, as doth ensue."


FRANCIS BACON'S essay Of Friendship is known to everybody. Notwithstanding the 
somewhat cold and pragmatic style and genius of the author, the subject seems to 
inspire him with a certain enthusiasm; and some good things are said. 

[125]

  " But we may go farther and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable 
  solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; 
  and even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature 
  and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not 
  from humanity. A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of 
  the fulness of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We 
  know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the 
  body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the 
  liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum 
  for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you 
  may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever 
  lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or 
  confession.... 
  " Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to 
  open themselves unto, are cannibals of their own hearts; but one thing is most 
  admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship) which is, 
  that this communicating of a man's self to his friend worketh two contrary 
  effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs; for there is no 
  man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more, and no man 
  that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less." 
  Essay 27, Of Friendship.

[126] 

SHAKESPEARE'S sonnets have been much discussed, and surprise and even doubt have 
been expressed as to their having been addressed (the first 126 of them) to a 
man friend; but no one who reads them with open mind can well doubt this 
conclusion; nor be surprised at it, who knows anything of Elizabethan life and 
literature. " Were it not for the fact," says F. T. Furnivall, " that many 
critics really deserving the name of Shakespeare students, and not Shakespeare 
fools, have held the Sonnets to be merely dramatic, I could not have conceived 
that poems so intensely and evidently autobiographic and self-revealing, poems 
so one with the spirit and inner meaning of Shakespeare's growth and life, could 
ever have been conceived to be other than what they arethe records of his own 
loves and fears."

  SONNET XVIII 
  "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
  And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
  Some time too hot the eye of heaven shines,
  And often is his gold complexion dimmed
  And every fair from fair sometime declines,
  By chance, or nature's changing course, un trimmed;
  [127] But they eternal summer shall not fade,
  Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
  Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
  When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

  SONNET XX 
  " A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted,
  Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
  A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
  With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
  An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
  Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
  A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
  Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth;
  And for a woman wert thou first created;
  Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
  And by addition me of thee defeated,
  By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
  But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
  Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure

  [128]

  SONNET CIV 
  To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
  For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
  Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
  Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
  Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd
  In process of the seasons have I seen,
  Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
  Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
  Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
  Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;
  So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
  Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
  For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
  Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

  SONNET CVIII 
  What's in the brain that ink may character
  Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
  What's new to speak, what new to register,
  That may express my love or thy dear merit?
  Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
  I must, each day say o'er the very same,
  Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
  Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
  So that eternal love in love's fresh case
  Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
  Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, 
  [129] But makes antiquity for aye his page,
  Finding the first conceit of love there bred
  Where time and outward form would show it dead.

That Shakespeare, when the drama needed it, could fully and warmly enter into 
the devotion which one man may feel for another, as well as into tragedy which 
such devotion may entail, is shown in his Merchant of Venice by the figure of 
Antonio, over whom from the first line of the play ("In sooth I know not why I 
am so sad") there hangs a shadow of destiny.. The following lines are from Act 
IV. Sc. 1

  Antonio: Commend me to your honourable wife:
  Tell her the process of Antonio's end;
  Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death;
  And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge
  Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
  Repent but you that you shall lose your friend,
  And he repents not that he pays your debt;
  For if the Jew do cut but deep enough,
  I'll pay it presently with all my heart.

  Bassanio: Antonio, I am married to a wife
  Which is as dear to me as life itself;
  But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
  Are not with me esteem'd above thy life:
  [130] I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
  Here to this devil, to deliver you."

We may also, in this connection, quote his Henry the Fifth (act iv. scene 6) for 
the deaths of the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk at the battle of 
Agincourt. Exeter, addressing Henry, says:

  " Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,
  Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep'd,
  And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes
  That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
  He cries aloud,-' Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk!
  My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
  Tarry, sweet soul, for mine; then fly abreast,
  As in this glorious and well-foughten field
  We kept together in our chivalry I '
  Upon these words I came and cheered him up:
  He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,
  And, with a feeble gripe, says, ' Dear my Lord,
  Commend my service to my sovereign.'
  So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck
  He threw his wounded arm, and kissed his lips;
  And so, espoused to death, with blood he seal'd
  A testament of noble-ending love."

Shakespeare, with his generous many-sided nature was, as the Sonnets seem to 
show, and as we should expect, capable of friendship, passionate friendship, 
towards both men and women. Perhaps this marks the highest reach of temperament. 
That there are cases in which devotion to a manfriend altogether replaces the 
love of the opposite sex is curiously shown by the following extract from Sir 
Thomas Browne:

  " I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend as 
  I do virtue, my soul, my God.... I love my friend before myself, and yet 
  methinks I do not love him enough: some few months hence my multiplied 
  affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from 
  him, I am dead till I be with him; when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but 
  would be still nearer him.... This noble affection falls not on vulgar and 
  common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue: he that can love 
  his friend with this noble ardor, will in a competent degree affect all." 
  Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1642.

BEAUMONT and Fletcher are two names which time and immortal friendship have 
sealed in one. Francis Beaumont was son of a judge, and John Fletcher, who was 
some four or five years the elder of the two, son of a bishop. The one went to 
Oxford, the other to Cambridge. Both took to writing at an early age; they [132] 
probably met at the Mermaid Tavern, about the year 1604, and a friendship sprang 
up between them of the closest character. " The intimacy which now commenced was 
one of singular warmth even for that romantic age." (Chambers' Biog. Dict.) For 
many years they lived in the same house as bachelors, writing plays together, 
and sharing everything in common. Then in 16I3 Beaumont married, but died in 
16I6. Fletcher lived on unmarried, till 1625, when he died of the plague.

J. St. L. Strachey, in his introduction to the works of Beaumont and Fletcher in 
the Mermaid Series, says:

  " In the whole range of English literature, search it from Chaucer till 
  to-day, there is no figure more fascinating or more worthy of attention than ' 
  the mysterious double personality ' of Beaumont and Fletcher. Whether we bow 
  to the sentiment of the first Editor, who, though he knew the secret of the 
  poets, yet since never parted while they lived ' conceived it not equitable to 
  ' separate their ashes,' and so refuse to think of them apart; whether we 
  adopt the legendary union of the comrade-poets who dwelt on the Bankside, who 
  lived and worked together, their thoughts no less in common than the cloak and 
  bed o'er which tradition has grown fond; whether [133] we think of them as two 
  minds so married that to divorce or disunite them were a sacrilegious deed; or 
  whether we yield to the subtler influences of the critical fancy, and delight 
  to discover and explore each from its source, the twin fountains of 
  inspiration that feed the majestic stream of song that flows through ' The 
  Lost Aspatia's ' tragedy, etc.... whether we treat the poets as a mystery to 
  which love and sympathy are the initiation, or as a problem for the tests and 
  reagents of critical analysis to solve, the double name of Beaumont and 
  Fletcher will ever strike the fancy and excite the imagination as does no 
  other name in the annals of English song."

George Varley, in his Introduction to the works of B. and F. (London, E. Moxon, 
I839), says: 
  " The story of their common life, which scandalizes some biographers, contains 
  much that is agreeable to me, as offering a picture of perfect union whose 
  heartiness excuses its homeliness . . . but when critics would explain away 
  the community of cloak and clothes by accident or slander, methinks their 
  fastidiousness exceeds their good feeling."

Beaumont was a man of great personal beauty and charm. Ben Jonson was much 
attracted to him. Fletcher delighted to do him honor and to put his name first 
on their title page; though it is [134] probable that Beaumont's share in the 
plays was the lesser one. See following verses by Sir Aston Cokaine in the 1st 
Collection of their works, published in 1647: 
  " In the large book of playes you late did print,
  In Beaumont and in Fletcher's name, why in't
  Did you not justice? Give to each his due?
  For Beaumont of those many writ in few,
  And Massinger in other few- the main
  Being sole issues of sweet Fletcher's brain
  But how came I, you ask, so much to know?
  Fletcher's chief bosome-friend inform'd me so." 
The following lines were written by Fletcher on the death of Beaumont: 
  " Come, sorrow, come I bring all thy cries,
  All thy laments, and all thy weeping eyes I
  Burn out, you living monuments of woe I
  Sad, sullen griefs, now rise and overflowl 
  Virtue is dead;
  Oh! cruel fatel
  All youth is fled
  All our laments too late 
  Oh, noble youth, to thy ne'er dying name
  Oh, happy youth, to thy still growing fame,
  To thy long peace in earth, this sacred knell
  Our last loves ring-farewell, farewell, farewell !
  Go, happy soul, to thy eternal birthl
  And press his body lightly, gentle Earth."

[135]

And among the poems attributed to Francis Beaumont is one generally supposed to 
be addressed to Fletcher, and speaking of an alliance hidden from the world-of 
which the last five lines run: 
  " If when I die, physicians doubt
  What caused my death, and these to view
  Of all their judgments, which was true,
  Rip up my heart; O, then I fear
  The world will see thy picture there." 
-though it is perhaps more probable that it was addressed to Beaumont by 
Fletcher, and has accidentally found place among the former's writings.

In the Maid's Tragedy by B. and F. (Act I. Scene i.), we have Melantius speaking 
about his companion Amintor, a young nobleman: 

  "All joys upon him I for he is my friend.
  Wonder not that I call a man so young my friend:
  His worth is great; radiant he is, and temperate;
  And one that never thinks his life his own,
  If his friend need it."

THE devotion of Vauvenargues to his friend De Seytres is immortalized by the 
eloge he wrote on the occasion of the latter's death. V., a youth of noble 
family, born in S. France in 1715, entered military service and the regiment of 
the King at an early age. He seems to have been a gentle, wise character, much 
beloved by his comrades. During the French invasion of Bohemia, in 174I, when he 
was about 26, he met Hippolyte de Seytres, who belonged to the same regiment, 
and who was only 18 years of age. A warm friendship sprang up between the two, 
but lasted for a brief time only. DeSeytres died during the privations of the 
terrible Siege of Prague in 1742. Vauvenargues escaped, but with the loss of his 
health, as well as of his friend. He took to literature, and wrote some 
philosophic works, and became correspondent and friend of Voltaire, but died in 
1747 at the early age of 32. In his eloge he speaks of his friend as follows- 
  " By nature full of grace, his movements natural, his manners frank, his 
  features noble and grave, his expression sweet and penetrating- one could not 
  look upon him with indifference. From the first his loveable exterior won all 
  hearts in his favor, and whoever was in the position to know his character 
  could not but admire the beauty of his disposition. Never did he despise or 
  envy or hate any one. He understood all the passions and opinions, even the 
  most singular, that the world blames. They did not surprise him: he [137] 
  penetrated their cause, and found in his own reflexions the means of 
  explaining them." 
  " And so Hippolyte," he continues, i' I was destined to be the survivor in our 
  friendship-just when I was hoping that it would mitigate all the sufferings 
  and ennui of my life even to my latest breath. At the moment when my heart, 
  full of security, placed blind confidence in thy strength and youth, and 
  abandoned itself to gladnessO Miseryl in that moment a mighty hand was 
  extinguishing the sources of life in thy blood. Death was creeping into thy 
  heart, and harboring in thy bosom I . . . O pardon me once more; for never 
  canst thou have doubted the depth of my attachment. I loved thee before I was 
  able to know thee. I have never loved but thee . . . I was ignorant of thy 
  very name and life, but my heart adored thee, spoke with thee, saw thee and 
  sought thee in solitude. Thou knewest me but for a moment; and when we did 
  become acquainted, already a thousand times had I paid homage in secret to thy 
  virtues.... Shade worthy of heaven, whither hast thou fled! Do my sighs reach 
  thee? I tremble-O abyss profound, O woe, O death, O grave I Dark veil and 
  viewless night, and mystery of Eternityl "

(It is said that Vauvenargues thought more of this memorial inscription to his 
friend than of any other of his works, and constantly worked at and perfected 
it.)

[138]

WILLIAM PENN ( b. 1644 ) the founder of Pennsylvania, and of Philadelphia, "The 
city of brotherly love " was a great believer in friendship. He says in his 
Fruits of Solitude: - 
  " A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures 
  boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend 
  unchangeably.... In short, choose a friend as thou dost a wife, till death 
  separate you. . . . Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be 
  divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record 
  of their friendship.... This is the comfort of friends, that though they may 
  be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever 
  present, because immortal."

IT may be worth while here to insert two passages from Macaulay's History of 
England. The first deals with the remarkable intimacy between the Young Prince 
William of Orange and " a gentleman of his household " named Bentinck. William's 
escape from a malignant attack of small-pox 
  " was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the 
  intrepid and indefatigable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of [139] 
  Bentinck alone William took food and medicineby Bentinck alone William was 
  lifted from his bed and laid down in it. ' Whether Bentinck slept or not while 
  I was ill,' said William to Temple with great tenderness, ' I know not. But 
  this I know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called for 
  anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.' Before the faithful 
  servant had entirely performed this task, he had himself caught the 
  contagion." ( But he recovered. ) 
  History of England, ch. vii.

The second passage describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter of 
James II and afterwards Queen Anne) to Lady Churchill-a devotion which had 
considerable influence on the political situation. 
  " It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding, and 
  disposition are no impediments to friendship, and that the closest intimacies 
  often exist between minds, each of which supplies what is wanting in the 
  other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess 
  could not live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married, 
  and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince George, a dull 
  man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his dinner and his bottle, 
  acquired over her no intluence comparable to that exercised by her female 
  friend, and soon gave him [140] self up with stupid patience to the dominion 
  of that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife was governed." 
  History of England, ch vii

THAT the tradition of Greek thought was not quite obliterated in England by the 
Puritan movement is shown by the writings of Archbishop Potter, who speaks with 
approval of friendship as followed among the Greeks, " not only in private, but 
by the public allowance and encouragement of their laws; for they thought there 
could be no means more effectual to excite their youth to noble undertakings, 
nor any greater security to their commonwealths, than this generous passion." He 
then quotes Athenaeus, saying that " free commonwealths and all those states 
that consulted the advancement of their own honor, seem to have been unanimous 
in establishing laws to encourage and reward it." John Potter, Antiquities of 
Greece, 1698.

GERMANY 
The eighteenth century however in England, with its leaning towards formalism, 
was perhaps not favorable to the understanding of the Greek spirit. At any rate 
there is not much to show in that direction. In Germany the classical tradition 
in art was revived by Raphael Mengs, while [141] Winckelmann, the art critic, 
showed himself one of the best interpreters of the Hellenic world that has ever 
lived. His letters, too, to his personal friends, breathe a spirit of the 
tenderest and most passionate devotion: " Friendship," he says, "without love is 
mere acquaintanceship." Winckelmann met, in 1762, in Rome, a young nobleman, 
Reinhold von Berg, to whom he became deeply attached: 
  " Almost as first there sprang up, on Winckelmann's side, an attachment as 
  romantic, emotional and passionate as love. In a letter to his friend he said, 
  ' From the first moment an indescribable attraction towards you, excited by 
  something more than form and feature, caused me to catch an echo of that 
  harmony which passes human understanding and which is the music of the 
  everlasting concord of things.... I was aware of the deep consent of our 
  spirits, the instant I saw you.' And in a later letter: ' No name by which I 
  might call you would be sweet enough or sufficient for my love; all that I 
  could say would be far too feeble to give utterance to my heart and soul. 
  Truly friendship came from heaven and was not created by mere human 
  impulses.... My one friend, I love you more than any living thing, and time 
  nor chance nor age can ever lessen this love." 
  Ludwig Frey, Der Eros und die Kunst, Leipzig, 1898, p 211 

[142] GOETHE, that universal genius, has some excellent thoughts on this 
subject; speaking of Winckelmann he says: 
  "The affinities of human beings in Antiquity give evidence of an important 
  distinction between ancient and modern times. The relation to women, which 
  among us has become so tender and full of meaning, hardly aspired in those 
  days beyond the limits of vulgar necessity. The relation of parents to their 
  children seems in some respects to have been tenderer. More to them than all 
  other feelings was the friendship between persons of the male sex (though 
  female friends, too, like Chloris and Thyia, were inseparable, even in Hades). 
  In these cases of union between two youths, the passionate fulfilment of 
  loving duties, the joys of inseparableness, the devotion of one for the other, 
  the unavoided companionship in death, fill us with astonishment; indeed one 
  feels oneself ashamed when poets, historians, philosophers and orators 
  overwhelm us with Legends, anecdotes, sentiments and ideas, containing such 
  meaning and feeling. Winckelmann felt himself born for a friendship of this 
  kind-not only as capable of it, but in the highest degree in need of it; he 
  became conscious of his true self only under the form of friendship."
  Goethe on Winckelmann.

[143] Some of Goethe's poems further illustrate this subject. In the Saki Nameh 
of his West-Oestlichen Divan he has followed the style of a certain class of 
Persian love-songs. The following poem is from a Cupbearer to his Master:

  " In the market-place appearing
  None thy Poet-fame dispute;
  I too gladly hear thy singing,
  I too hearken when thou'rt mute. 
  Yet I love thee, when thou printest
  Kisses not to be forgot,
  Best of all, for words may perish,
  But a kiss lives on in thought. 
  Rhymes on rhymes fair meaning carry,
  Thoughts to think bring deeper joy;
  Sing to other folk, but tarry
  Silent with thy serving-boy."

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER (1744-1803 ) as theologian, philosopher, friend of 
Goethe, Court preacher at Weimar, and author of Ideas on the Philosophy of 
History, has had a great and enduring reputation. The following extract is from 
the just-mentioned book : 

  HERDER ON GREEK FRIENDSHIP 
  " Never has a branch born finer fruit than that little branch of Olive, Ivy, 
  and Pine, which was the victor's crown among the Greeks. It gave to the young 
  men good looks, good health, and good spirits; it made their limbs nimble, 
  graceful and well-formed; in their souls it lighted the first sparks of the 
  desire for good name, the love of fame even, and stamped on them the 
  inviolable temper of men who live for their city and their country. Finally, 
  what was most precious, it laid the foundation in their characters of that 
  predilection for male society and friendship which so markedly dlstinguishes 
  the Greeks. In Greece, woman was not the one prize of life for which the young 
  man fought and strove; the loveliest Helen could only mould the spirit of one 
  Paris, even though her beauty might be the coveted obect of ali manly valor. 
  The feminine sex, despite the splendid examples of every virtue that it 
  exhibited in Greece, as elsewhere, remained there only a secondary object of 
  the manly life. The thoughts of aspirlng youths reached towards something 
  higher. The bond of friendship which they knitted among themselves or with 
  grown men, compelled them into a school which Aspasia herself could hardly 
  have introduced them to; so that in many of the states of Greece manly love 
  became surrounded and accompanied by those intelligent and educational 
  influences, that permanence of character and devotion, whose sentiment [145] 
  and meaning we read of in Plato almost as if in a romance from some far 
planet.

SCHILLER, the great German poet, had an enthusiastic appreciation of 
friendship-love, as can be seen from his poems, " Freundschaft " and " Die 
Burgschaft," and others of his writings. His tragedy Don Karlos turns upon the 
death of one friend for the sake of another. The young Infanta of Spain, Don 
Karlos, alienated by the severities of his father, Phillip II, enters into plots 
and intrigues, from the consequences of which he is only saved by his devoted 
companion, the Marquis of Posa, who, by making himself out the guilty party, 
dies in the Prince's stead. Early in the play (Act I., Scene ii.) the attachment 
between the two is outlined: 
  Karlos. 
  Oh, if indeed 'tis true -
  What my heart says-that out of millions, thou
  Hast been decreed at last to understand me;
  If it be true that Nature all-creative
  In moulding Karlos copied Roderick,
  And strung the tender chords of our two souls
  Harmonious in the morning of our lives;
  If even a tear that eases thus my sorrow
  Is dearer to thee than my father's favor

  [146]

  Marquis of Posa. 
  Oh, dearer than the world !

  Karlos. 
  So low, so low
  Have I now fallen, have become so needy,
  That of our early childish years together
  I must remind thee-must indeed entreat
  Thy payment of those long-forgotten debts
  Which thou, while yet in sailor garb, contractedst;
  When thou and I, two boys of venturous habit,
  Grew up, and side by side, in brotherhood.
  No grief oppressed me then-save that thy spirit
  Seemed so eclipsing mine-until at length
  I boldly dared to love thee without limit,
  Since to be like thee was beyond my dreams.
  Then I began, with myriad tenderness
  And brother-love most loyal, to torment thee;
  And thou, proud heart, returned it all so coldly.
  Oft would I stand there-and thou saw'st it not !
  And hot and heavy tear-drops from my eyes
  Hung, when perchance, thou, Roderick, hastening past me,
  Would'st throw thy arms about some lesser playmate.
  " Why only these? " I cried, and wept aloud
  Am I not also worthy of thy heart? "
  But thou [147] So cold and serious before me kneeling,
  " Homage " thou said'st, " to the King's son is due."

  Marquis. 
  A truce, O Prince, to all these tales of childhood,
  Thy make my cheeks red even now with shame !

  Karlos. 
  And this from thee indeed I did not merit.
  Contemn thou could'st, and even rend my heart,
  But ne'er estrange. Three times thou did'st repulse
  The young Prince from thee; thrice again he came
  As suppliant to thee-to entreat thy love,
  And urgently to press his love upon thee.
  But that which Karlos could not, chance effected. 
  (The story is then related of how as a boy he took on himself the blame for a 
  misdemeanor of Roderick's, and was severely punished by his royal father) 
  Under the pitiless strokes my blood flowed red;
  I looked on thee and wept not. But the King
  Was angered by my boyish heroism,
  And for twelve terrible hours emprisoned me
  [148]In a dark dungeon, to repent thereof.
  So proud and fierce v~as my determination
  By Roderick to be beloved. Thou cam'st,
  And loudly weeping at my feet did'st fall,
  Yes, yes," did'st cry, " my pride is overcome.
  One day; when thou art king, I will repay thee."

  Marquis (giving his hand.) 
  I will so, Karl. My boyish affidavit
  As man I now renew; I will repay;
  My hour will also strike, Perchane. 
  (The hour comes, when Roderick takes on himself the blame for an intrigue of 
  Don Karlos with the Queen and William of Orange. He writes a letter to the 
  latter, and allows it purposely to fall into the King's hands. He is 
  assassinated by order of the King; and the following speech over his body (Act 
  V., Scene iv.) is made to the King by Don Karlos, who thenceforth abjures all 
  love except for the memory of his friend.)

  Karlos (to the King.) 
  The dead man was my friend. And would you know
  Wherefore he died? He perished for my sake.
  Yes, Sire, for we were brothers I brothers by
  [149] A nobler chain than Nature ever forges.
  Love was his glorious life-career. And love
  For me, his great, his glorious death. Mine was he.
  What time his lowly bearing puffed you up,
  What time his gay persuasive eloquence
  Made easy sport of your proud giant-spirit.
  You thought to dominate him quite-and were
  The obedient creature of his deeper plans.
  That I am prisoner, is the schemed result
  Of his great friendship. To achieve my safety
  He wrote that letter to the Prince of Orange -
  O God! the first, last falsehood of his life.
  To rescue me he went to meet the Fate
  Which he has suffered. With your gracious favors
  You loaded him. He died for me. On him
  You Pressed the favors of your heart and friendship.
  Your sceptre was the plaything of his hands;
  He threw it from him. and for me he died.

THERE is little, I believe, in the historical facts relating to Don Karlos to 
justify this tale of friendship; but there seems great probability that the 
incidents were transferred by [150] Schiller from the history of Frederick the 
Great, of Prussia, when a youth at his father's court. The devotion that existed 
between the young Frederick and Lieut. Von Katte, the anger and severities of 
the royal parent, the supposed conspiracy, the imprisonment of Frederick, and 
the execution of Von Katte, are all reproduced in Schiller's play. 
Von Katte was a young man of good family and strange but charming personality, 
who, as soon as he came to Court, being three or four years older than 
Frederick, exercised a strong attraction upon the latter. The two were always 
together, and finally, enraged by the harshness of the royal father, they 
plotted flight to England. They were arrested, and Katte, accused of treason to 
the throne, was condemned to death. That this sentence was pronounced, not so 
much for political reasons, as in order to do despite to the affection between 
him and the Crown Prince, is strongly suggested by the circumstances. Von Katte 
was sent from a distance in order to be executed at Custrin, in the fortress 
where the Prince was confined, and with instructions that the latter should 
witness his execution. Carlyle, in his life of Frederick II, says: 
[151] 
  " Katte wore, by order, a brown dress exactly like the Prince's; the Prince is 
  already brought down into a lower room to see Katte as he passes (to see Katte 
  die has been the royal order, but they smuggled that into abeyance), and Katte 
  knows he shall see him." [Besserer, the chaplain of the Garrison, quoted by 
  Carlyle, describing the scene as they approached the Castle, says: ' Here, 
  after long wistful looking about, he did get sight of his beloved Jonathan at 
  a window in the Castle, from whom, he, with politest and most tender 
  expression, speaking in French, took leave, with no little emotion of sorrow.] 
  " Pardonnez moi, mon cher Katte," cried Friedrich. " La mort est douce pour un 
  si aimable Prince," said Katte, and fared on; round some angle of the Fortress 
  it appears; not in sight of Friedrich, who sank in a faint, and had seen his 
  last glimpse of Katte in this world."
  Life of Frederick II, vol. 2, p. 489.

Frederick's grief and despair were extreme for a time. Then his royal father 
found him a wife, in the Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, whom he obediently 
married, but in whom he showed little interest-their meetings growing rarer and 
rarer till at last they became merely formal. Later, and after his accession, he 
spent most of his leisure time when away from the cares of war and political 
reorganization, at his retreat at Sans-Souci, afar [152] from feminine society 
(a fact which provoked Voltaire's sarcasms), and in the society of his 
philosophic and military friends, to many of whom he was much attached. Von 
Kupffer has unearthed from his poems printed at Sans-Souci in 1750 the 
following, addressed to Count Von Kaiserlinck, a favorite companion, on whom he 
bestowed the by-name of Cesarion: 

  " Cesarion, let us keep unspoiled
  Our faith, and be true friends,
  And pair our lives like noble Greeks,
  And to like noble ends !
  That friend from friend may never hide
  A fault through weakness or thro' pride,
  Or sentiment that cloys
  Thus gold in fire the brighter glows,
  And far more rare and precious grows,
  Refined from all alloys." 
There is also in the same collection a long and beautiful ode " To the shades of 
Cesarion," of which the following are a few lines: 
  " O God I how hard the word of Fate!
  Cesarion dead I His happy days
  Death to the grave has consecrate.
  His charm I mourn and gentle grace.
  He's dead-my tender, faithful mate !
  A thousand daggers pierce my beart:
  [153] It trembles, torn with grief and pain.
  He's gone! the dawn comes not again!
  Thy grave's the goal of my heart's strife;
  Holy shall thy remembrance be;
  To thee I poured out love in life;
  And love in death I vow to thee."

ELISAR VON KUPFFER, in the introduction to his Anthology, from which I have 
already quoted a few extracts, speaks at some length on the great ethical and 
political significance of a loving comradeship. He says: 
  " In open linkage and attachment to each other ought youth to rejoice in 
  youth. In attachment to another, one loses the habit of thinking only of self. 
  In the love and tender care and instruction that the youth receives from his 
  lover he learns from boyhood up to recognize the good of self-sacrifice and 
  devotion; and in the love which he shows, whether in the smaller or the 
  greater offerings of an intimate friendship, he accustoms himself to 
  self-sacrifice for another. In this way the young man is early nurtured into a 
  member of the Community-to a useful member and not one who has self and only 
  self in mind. And how much closer thus does unit grow to unit, till indeed the 
  whole comes to feel itself a whole I . . . 
  " The close relationship between two men has this further result-that folk 
  instinctively and [154] not without reason judge of one from the other; so 
  that should the one be worthy and honorable, he naturally will be anxious that 
  the other should not bring a slur upon him. Thus there arises a bond of moral 
  responsibility with regard to character. And what can be of more advantage to 
  the community than that the individual members should feel responsible for 
  each other ? Surely it is just that which constitutes national sentiment, and 
  the strength of a people, namely, that it should form a complete whole in 
  itself, where each unit feels locked and linked with the others. Such unions 
  may be of the greatest social value, as in the case of the family. And it is 
  especially in the hour of danger that the effect of this unity of feeling 
  shows itself; for where one man stands or falls with another, where glad 
  self-sacrifice, learnt in boyhood, becomes so to speak, a warm-hearted 
  instinct, there is developed a power of incalculable import, a power that 
  folly alone can hold cheap. Indeed, the unconquerable force of these unions 
  has already been practically shown, as in the Sacred Band of the Thebans who 
  fought to its bitter end the battle of Leuctra; and, psychologically speaking, 
  the explanation is most natural; for where one Derson feels himself united, 
  body and soul to another, is it not natural that he should put forth all his 
  powers in order to help the other, in order to manifest his love for him in 
  every way? If any one cannot or will not perceive this we may indeed well 
  doubt either [155] the intelligence of his head or the morality of his heart." 



FRIEDRICH RUCKERT (1788 1866), Professor of Oriental Literature in Berlin, wrote 
verses in memory of his friend Joseph Kopp:

  " How shall I know myself without thee,
  Who knew myself as part of thee?
  I only know one half is vanished,
  And half alone is left, of me.
  Never again my proper mind
  I'll know; for thee I'll never find.

  " Never again, out there in space,
  I'll find thee; but here, deep within.
  I see, tho' not in dreams, thy face;
  My waking eyes thy presence win,
  And all my thought and poesy
  Are but my offering to thee. 
  ****** 
  " My Jonathan, now hast thou fled,
  And I to weep thy loss remain;
  If David's harp might grace my hands
  O might it help to ease my pain !
  My friend, my Joseph, true of faith,
  Tn life so loved-so loved in death."

And the following are by Joseph Kitir, an Austrian poet:- 
[156] 
  ROUGH WEATHER FRIENDS

  " Not where breathing roses bless
  The night, or summer airs caress;
  Not in Nature's sacred grove;
  No, but at a tap-room table,
  Sitting in the window-gable
  Did we plight our troth of love.

  " No fair lime tree's roofing shade
  By the spring wind gently swayed
  Formed for us a bower of bliss;
  No, stormbound, but love-intent,
  There against the damp wall bent
  We two bartered kiss tor kiss.

  "Therefore shalt thou, Love so rare
  (Child of storms and wintry air)
  Not like Spring's sweet fragrance fade.
  Even in sorrow thou shalt flourish,
  Frost shall not make thee afraid,
  And in storms thou shalt not perish."


COUNT AUGUST VON PLATEN (born at Ansbach in Bavaria, 1796) was in respect of 
style one of the most finished and perfect of German poets. His nature (which 
was refined and self-controlled) led him from the first to form the most 
romantic attachments with men. He freely and openly expressed his feelings in 
his verses; of which a great number are practically [157] love-poems addressed 
to his friends. They include a series of twenty-six sonnets to one of his 
friends, Karl Theodor German. Of these Raffalovich says (Uranisme, Lyons, 1 896, 
p. 35 I ):

  " These sonnets to Karl Theodor German are among the most beautiful in German 
  literature. Platen in the sonnet surpasses all the German poets, including 
  even Goethe. In them perfection of form, and poignancy or wealth of emotion 
  are illustrated to perfection. The sentiment is similar to that of the sonnets 
  of Shakespeare (with their personal note), and the form that of the Italian or 
  French sonnet."

Platen, however, was unfortunate in his affairs of the heart, and there is a 
refrain of suffering in his poems which comes out characteristically in the 
following sonnet:

  "Since pain is life and life is only pain,
  Why he can feel what I have felt before,
  Who seeing joy sees it again no more
  The instant he attempts his joy to gain;
  Who, caught as in a labyrinth unaware,
  The outlet from it never more can find;
  Whom love seems only for this end to bind-
  In order to hand over to Despair;

  Who prays each dizzy lightning-flash to end him,
  Each star to reel his thread of life away
  [158] With all the torments which his heart are rending;
  And envies even the dead their pillow of clay,
  Where Love no more their foolish brains can steal.
  He who knows this, knows me, and what I feel."

One of Platen's sonnets deals with an incident, referred to in an earlier page, 
namely, the death of the poet Pindar in the theatre, in the arms of his young 
friend Theoxenos:

  "Oh ! when I die, would I might fade away
  Like the pale stars, swiftly and silently,
  Would that death's messenger might come to
  As once it came to Pindar-so they say
  Not that I would in Life, or in my Verse
  With him, the great Incomparable, compare;
  Only his Death, my friend, I ask to share:
  But let me now the gracious tale rehearse.

  Long at the play, hearing sweet Harmony,
  He sat; and wearied out at last, had lain
  His cheek upon his dear one's comely knee;
  Then when it died away-the choral strain-
  He who thus cushioned him said: Wake and come 
  But to the Gods above he had gone home."

WAGNER and LUDWIG 
THE correspondence of Richard Wagner discloses the existence of a very warm 
friendship between him and Ludwig II, the young king of Bavaria. Ludwig as a 
young man appears [159] to have been a very charming personality, good looking, 
engaging and sympathetic; every one was fond of him. Yet his tastes led him away 
from "society," into retirement, and the companionship of Nature and a few 
chosen friends-often of humble birth. Already at the age of fifteen he had heard 
Lohengrin, and silently vowed to know the composer. One of his first acts when 
he came to the throne was to send for Wagner; and from the moment of their 
meeting a personal intimacy sprang up between them, which in due course led to 
the establishment of the theatre at Bayreuth, and to the liberation of Wagner's 
genius to the world. Though the young king at a later time lost his 
reason-probably owing to his over-sensitive emotional nature-this does not 
detract from the service that he rendered to Music by his generous attachment. 
How Wagner viewed the matter may be gathered from Wagner's letters.

  "He, the king, loves me, and with the deep feeling and glow of a first love; 
  he perceives and knows everything about me, and understands me as my own soul. 
  He wants me to stay with him always.... I am to be free and my own master, not 
  his music-conductor-only my very self and his friend." 
  Letters to Mme. Eliza Wille, 4th, May, 1864.

  [160] " It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me. You 
  cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the dreams of my youth. 
  I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive: that I really saw and spoke to him: 
  I can never forget the impression that dream made on me. Then I would have 
  wished to see Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same 
  kind must pass m the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says he can 
  hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read without 
  astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes to me." 
  Ibid, 9th Sept., 1864.

  "I hope now for a long period to gain strength again by quiet work. This is 
  made possible for me by the love of an unimaginably beautiful and thoughtful 
  being: it seems that it had to be even so greatly gifted a man and one so 
  destined for me, as this young King of Bavaria. What he is to me no one can 
  imagine. My guardian! In his love I completely rest and fortify myself towards 
  the completion of my task." 
  Letter to his brother-in-law, 10th Sept., 1865.

BELOW are some of the actual letters of Ludwig to Wagner. (See Prof. C. Beyer's 
book, Ludwig II, Konig von Bayern.)

  " Dear Friend, O I see clearly that your sufferings are deep-rootedl You tell 
  me, beloved friend, that you have looked deep into the hearts [161] of men, 
  and seen there the villainy and corruption that dwells within. Yes, I believe 
  you, and I can well understand that moments come to you of disgust with the 
  human race; yet always will we remember (will we not, beloved?) that there are 
  yet many noble and good people, for whom it is a real pleasure to live and 
  work. And yet you say you are no use for this world I-I pray you, do not 
  despair, your true friend conjures you; have Courage: ' Love helps us to bear 
  and suffer all things, love brings at last the victor's crownl ' Love 
  recognizes, even in the most corrupt, the germ of good; she alone overcomes 
  all -Live on, darling of my soul. I recall your own words to you. To learn to 
  forget is a noble workl-Let us be careful to hide the faults of others; it was 
  for all men indeed that the Saviour died and suffered. And now, what a pity 
  that ' Tristan ' can not be presented to-day; will it perhaps to-morrow? Is 
  there any chance?
  Unto death, your faithful friend,
  15th May, 1865. LUDWIG." 
  " Purschling, 4th Aug., 1865.
  " My one, my much-loved Friend,-You express to me your sorrow that, as it 
  seems to you, each one of our last meetings has only brought pain and anxiety 
  to me.-Must I then remind my loved one of Brynhilda's words?-Not only in 
  gladness and enjoyment, but in suffering also Love makes man blest.... When 
  does my [162] friend think of coming to the ' Hill-Top,' to the woodland's 
  aromatic breezes?-Should a stay in that particular spot not altogether suit, 
  why, I beg my dear one to choose any of my other mountain-cabins for his 
  residence.-What is mine is hisl Perhaps we may meet on the way between the 
  Wood and the World, as my friend expressed itl . . . To thee I am wholly 
  devoted; for thee, for thee only to live I 
  Unto death your own, your faithful
  " LUDWIG." 
  "Hohenschwangau, 2nd Nov., 1865.
  " My one Friend, my ardently beloved! This afternoon, at 3.30, I returned from 
  a glorious tour in Switzerlandl How this land delighted me I-There I found 
  your dear letter; - deepest warmest thanks for the same. With new and burning 
  enthusiasm has it filled me; I see that the beloved marches boldly and 
  confidently forward, towards our great and eternal goal. " All hindrances I 
  will victoriously like a hero overcome. I am entirely at thy disposal; let me 
  now dutifully prove it.-Yes, we must meet and speak together. I will banish 
  all evil clouds; Love has strength for all. You are the star that shines upon 
  my life, and the sight of you ever wonderfully strengthens me.-Ardently I long 
  for you, O my presiding Saint, to whom I prayl I should be immensely pleased 
  to see my friend here in about a week; oh, we have plenty to say! [163] If 
  only I could quite banish from me the curse of which you speak, and send it 
  back to the deeps of night from whence it sprangl-How I love, how I love you, 
  my one, my highest goodl . . ." My enthusiasm and love for you are boundless. 
  Once more I swear you faith till death! Ever, ever your devoted
  "LUDWIG." 
IN these letters we see chiefly, of course, the passionate sentiments of which 
Ludwig was capable; but that Wagner fully understood the feeling and appreciated 
it may be gathered from various passages in his published writings-such as the 
following, in which he seeks to show how the devotion of comradeship became the 
chief formative influence of the Spartan State:

  " This beauteous naked man is the kernel of all Spartanhood; from genuine 
  delight in the beauty of the most perfect human body-that of the male-arose 
  that spirit of comradeship which pervades and shapes the whole economy of the 
  Spartan State. This love of man to man, in its primitive purity, proclaims 
  itself as the noblest and least selfish utterance of man's sense of beauty, 
  for it teaches man to sink and merge his entire self in the object of his 
  affection "; and again:" The higher element of that love of man to man 
  consisted even in this: that it excluded the motive [164] of egoistic 
  physicalism. Nevertheless it not only included a purely spiritual bond of 
  friendship, but this spiritual friendship was the blossom and the crown of the 
  physical friendship. The latter sprang directly from delight in the beauty, 
  aye in the material bodily beauty of the beloved comrade; yet this delight was 
  no egoistic yearning, but a thorough stepping out of self into unreserved 
  sympathy with the comrade's joy in himself; involuntarily betrayed by his 
  life-glad beautyprompted bearing. This love, which had its basis in the 
  noblest pleasures of both eye and soul -not like our modern postal 
  correspondence of sober friendship, half business-like, half sentimental-was 
  the Spartan's only tutoress of youth, the never-ageing instructress alike of 
  boy and man, the ordainer of common feasts and valiant enterprises; nay the 
  inspiring helpmeet on the battlefield. For this it was that knit the 
  fellowship of love into battalions of war, and fore-wrote the tactics of 
  death-daring, in rescue of the imperilled or vengeance for the slaughtered 
  comrade, by the infrangible law of the soul's most natural necessity." 
  The Art-work of the Future, trans. by W A Ellis


ERNST HAECKEL, in his " Visit to Ceylon," describes the devotion entertained for 
him by his Rodiya serving-boy at Belligam, near Galle. The keeper of the 
rest-house at Belligam was [165] an old and philosophically-minded man, whom 
Haeckel, from his likeness to a well known head, could not help calling by the 
name of Socrates. And he continues: 
  " It really seemed as though I should be pursued by the familiar aspects of 
  classical antiquity from the first moment of my arrival at my idyllic home. 
  For, as Socrates led me up the steps of the open central hall of the 
  rest-house, I saw before me, with uplifted arms in an attitude of prayer, a 
  beautiful naked brown figure, which could be nothing else than the famous 
  statue of the ' Youth adoring.' How surprised I was when the graceful bronze 
  statue suddenly came to life, and dropping his arms fell on his knees, and, 
  after raising his black eyes imploringly to mine, bowed his handsome face so 
  low at my feet that his long black hair fell on the floorl Socrates informed 
  me that this boy was a Pariah, a member of the lowest caste, the Rodiyas, who 
  had lost his parents at an early age, so he had taken pity on him. He was told 
  off to my exclusive service, had nothing to do the livelong day but obey my 
  wishes, and was a good boy, sure to do his duty punctually. In answer to the 
  question what I was to call my new body-servant, the old man informed me that 
  his name was Gamameda. Of course I immediately thought of Ganymede, for the 
  favorite of Jove himself could not have been more finely made, or have had 
  limbs more beautifully [166] proportioned and moulded. As Gamameda also 
  displayed a peculiar talent as butler, and never allowed any one else to open 
  me a cocoa-nut or offer me a glass of palm wine, it was no more than right 
  that I should dub him Ganymede. 
  " Among the many beautiful figures which move in the foreground of my memories 
  of the paradise of Ceylon, Ganymede remains one of my dearest favorites. Not 
  only did he fulfil his duties with the greatest attention and 
  conscientiousness, but he developed a personal attachment and devotion to me 
  which touched me deeply. The poor boy, as a miserable outcast of the Rodiva 
  caste, had been from his birth the object of the deepest contempt of his 
  fellow-men, and subjected to every sort of brutality and ill-treatment. With 
  the single exception of old Socrates, who was not too gentle with him either, 
  no one perhaps had ever cared for him in any way. He was evidently as much 
  surprised as delighted to find me willing to be kind to him from the first.... 
  I owe many beautiful and valuable contributions to my museum to Ganymede's 
  unfailing zeal and dexterity. With the keen eye, the neat hand, and the supple 
  agility of the Cinghalese youth, he could catch a fluttering moth or a gliding 
  fish with equal promptitude; and his nimbleness was really amazing, when, out 
  hunting, he climbed the tall trees like a cat, or scrambled through the 
  densest jungle to recover the prize I had killed." [167]
  My Visit to Ceylon, by Ernst Haekel, (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., I883). 

Haeckel stayed some weeks in and arround Belligam ; and continues (p. 272 ):- 
  " On my return to Belgium I had to face one of the hardest duties of my whole 
  stay in Ceylon, to tear myself away from this lovely spot of earth where I had 
  spent six of the happiest and most interesting weeks in my life.... but 
  hardest of all was the parting from my faithful Ganymede: the poor lad wept 
  bitterly, and implored me totake him with me to Europe. In vain has I assured 
  him that it was impossible, and told him of our chill climate and dull skies. 
  He clung ti my knees and declared that he would follow me unhesitatingly 
  wherever I would take him. I was at last almost obliged to use force to free 
  myself from his embrace. I got into the carriage which was waiting, and as I 
  waved a last farewell to my good brown friends, I almost felt as if I had been 
  expelled from Paradise."

WE may close this record of celebrated Germans mans with the name of K. H. 
Ulrichs, a Hanoverian by birth, who occupied for a long time an official 
position in the revenue department at Vienna, and who became well known about 
1866 though his writings on the subject of [168] freindship. He gives, in his 
pamphlet Memnon, an account of the " story of his heart " in early years.In an 
apparently quite natural way, and independently cf outer influences, his 
thoughts had from the very first been of friends of his own sex. At the age of 
14, the picture of a Greek hero or god, a statue, seen in a book, woke in him 
the tenderest longings.

  " This picture (he says), put away from me, as it was, a hundred times, came 
  again a hundred times before the eyes of my soul. But of course for the origin 
  of my special temFerament it is in no way responsible. It only woke up what 
  was already slumbering there-a thing which might have been done equally well 
  by something else."

From that time forward the boy worshipped with a kind of romantic devotion elder 
friends, young men in the prime of early manhood; and later still his writings 
threw a flood of light on the "urning " temperament-as he called it-of which he 
was himself so marked an example. 
Some of Ulrich's verses are scattered among his prose writings: 

  To his friend Eberhard

  " And so farewell! perchance on Earth
  God's finger-as 'twixt thee and me
  [169] Will never make that wonder clear
  Why thus It drew me unto thee."

And this: 

  "It was the day of our first meeting -
  That happy day, in Davern's grove -
  I felt the Spring wind's tender greeting,
  And April touched my heart to love.
  Thy hand in mine lay kindly mated;
  Thy gaze held mine quite- fascinated -
  So gracious wast, and fair!
  Thy glance my life-thread almost severed;
  My heart for joy and gladness quivered,
  Nigh more than it could bear. 
  There in the grove at evening's hour
  The breeze thro' budding twigs hath ranged,
  And lips have learned to meet each other,
  And kisses mute exchanged." 
  Memnon, p. 23.


ENGLAND 
TO return to England. With the beginning of the 19th century we find two great 
poets, Byron and Shelley, both interested in and even writing in a romantic 
strain on the subject in question. 
Byron's attachment, when at Cambridge, to Eddleston the chorister, a youth two 
years younger than himself, is well known. In a youthful letter [170] to Miss 
Pigot he, Byron, speaks of it in enthusiastic terms: 

  " Trin. Coll., Camb., July 15th, 1807. 
  " I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protege; he has been my almost 
  constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His 
  voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners 
  attached me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in town in 
  October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my minority, 
  when I shall leave to his decision either entering as a partner through my 
  interest or residing with me altogether. Of course he would in his present 
  frame of mind prefer the latter, but he may alter his opinion previous to that 
  period; however, he shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any 
  human being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect on my (in 
  general) changeable disposition. In short we shall put Lady E. Butler and Miss 
  Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and Orestes out of countenance, and want 
  nothing but a catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus to give Jonathan and David 
  the ' go by.' He certainly is more attached to me than even I am in return. 
  During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day, summer and 
  winter, without passing one tiresome moment, and separated each time with 
  increasing reluctance."

[171]

Eddleston gave Byron a cornelian (brooch-pin) which Byron prized very much, and 
is said to have kept all his life. He probably refers to it, and to tlue 
inequality of condition between him and Eddleston, in the following stanza from 
his poem, The Adieu, written about this time: 

  " And thou, my friend, whose gentle love
  Yet thrills my bosom's chords,
  How much thy friendship was above
  Description's power of words!
  Still near my breast thy gift I wear
  Which sparkled once with Feeling's tear,
  Of Love, the pure, the sacred gem;
  Our souls were equal, and our lot
  In that dear moment quite forgot;
  Let pride alone condemn."

THE Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby mentioned in the above letter 
were at that time living at Llangollen, in Wales, and were known as the " Ladies 
of Llangollen," their romantic attachment to each other having already become 
proverbial. When Miss Ponsonby was seventeen, and Lady E. Butler some twenty 
years older, they had run away from their respective and respectable homes in 
Ireland, and taking a cottage at Llangollen lived there, inseparable [172] 
companions, for the rest of their lives. Letters and diaries of contemporary 
celebrities mention their romantic devotion. (The Duke of Wellington was among 
their visitors.) Lady Eleanor died in 1829, at the age of ninety; and Miss 
Ponsonby only survived her " beloved one " (as she always called her) by two 
years. 
As to the allusion to Nisus and Euryalus, Byron's paraphrase of the episode 
(from the 9th book of Virgil's AEneid) serves to show his interest in it : 
  Nisus, the guardian of the portal, stood, 
  Eager to gild his arms with hostile blood- 
  Well-skilled in fight the quivering lance to wield,
  Or pour his arrows thro' the embattled field: 
  From Ida torn, he left his Sylvan cave,
  And sought a foreign home, a distant grave. 
  To watch the movements of the Daunian host, 
  With him Euryalus sustains the post-
  No lovelier mlen adorn'd the ranks of Troy, 
  And beardless bloom yet graced the gallant boy-
  Tho' few the seasons of his youthful life, 
  As yet a novice in the martial strife, 
  'Twas his, with beautv, valor's gifts to share-
  A soul heroic, as his form was fair.
  These burn with one pure flame of generous love; 
  [173] In peace, in war, united still they move;
  Friendship and glory form their joint reward;
  And now combined they hold thelr nightly guard. '

[The two then carry out a daring raid on the enemy, in which Euryalus is slain. 
Nisus, coming to his rescue is-after performing prodigies of valor-slain too.]

  " Thus Nisus all his fond affection proved -
  Dying, revenged the fate of him he loved;
  Then on his bosom sought his wonted place,
  And death was heavenly in his friend's embrace !
  Celestial pair ! if aught my verse can claim,
  Wafted on Time's broad pimon, yours is fame !
  Ages on ages shall your fate admire,
  No future day shall see your names expire,
  While stands the Capitol, immortal dome!
  And vanquished millions hail their empress, Rome ! "

  Byron's "Death of Calmar and Orla: an Imitation of Ossian", is, like his Nisus 
  and Euryalus," a story of two hero-friends who, refusing to be separated, die 
  together in battle:

  "In Morven dwelt the chief; a beam of war to Fingal. His steps in the field 
  were marked in blood. Lochlin's sons had fled before his angry spear; but mild 
  was the eye of Calmar; [174] soft was the flow of his yellow locks: they 
  streamed like the meteor of the night. No maid was the sigh of his soul: his 
  thoughts were given to friendship-to dark-haired Orwa, destroyer of heroes! 
  Equal were their swords in battle; but fierce was the pride of Orla-gentle 
  alone to Calmar. Together they dwelt in the cave of Oithona." [Orla is sent by 
  the King on a mission of danger amid the hosts of the enemy. Calmar insists on 
  accompanying him, in spite of all entreaties to the contrary. They are 
  discovered. A fight ensues, and they are slain.] " Morn glimmers on the hills: 
  no living foe is seen; but the sleepers are many; grim they lie on Erin. The 
  breeze of ocean lifts their locks; yet they do not awake. The hawks scream 
  above their prey. 
  " Whose yellow locks uave o'er the breast of a chief ? Bright as the gold of 
  the stranger they mingle with the dark hair of his friend. 'Tis Calmar: he 
  lies on the bosom of Orla. Theirs is one stream of blood. Fierce is the look 
  of gloomy Orla. He breathes not, but his eye is still aflame. It glares in 
  death unclosed. His hand is grasped in Calmar's; but Calmar lives! He lives, 
  though low. ' Rise,' said the King, ' Rise, son of Mora: 'tis mine to heal the 
  wounds of heroes. Calmar may yet bound on the hills of Morven.' 
  " ' Never more shall Calmar chase the deer of Morven with Orla,' said the 
  hero. ' What were [175] the chase to me alone? Who should share the spoils of 
  battle with Calmar? Orla is at rest. Rough was thy soul, Orlat Yet soft to me 
  as the dew of morn. It glared on others in lightning: to me a silver beam of 
  night. Bear my sword to blue-eyed Mora; let it hang in my empty hall. It is 
  not pure from blood: but it could not save Orla. Lay me with my friend. Raise 
  the song when I am dead.' " [So they are laid by the stream of Lubar, and four 
  grey stones mark the dwelling of Orla and Calmar.]

Byron's friendships, in fact, with young men were so marked that Moore in his 
Life and Letters of Lord Byron seems to have felt it necessary to mention and. 
to some extent, to explain them: 
  " During his stay in Greece (in 1810) we find him forming one of those 
  extraordinary friendships-if attachment to persons so inferior to himself can 
  be called by that name-of which I have already mentioned two or three 
  instances in his younger days, and in which the pride of being a protector and 
  the pleasure of exciting gratitude seem to have contributed to his mind the 
  chief, pervading charm. The person whom he now adopted in this manner, and 
  from similar feelings to those which had inspired his early attachments to the 
  cottage boy near Newstead and the young chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek 
  youth, named Nicolo Giraud. the son. I believe, of a widow lady [176] in whose 
  house the artist Lusieri lodged. In this young man he seems to have taken the 
  most lively and even brotherly interest."'

SHELLEY, in his fragmentary Essay on Friendship-stated by his friend Hogg to 
have been written " not long before his death "says: 
  " I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I cannot recall to 
  my memorv the precise epoch at which this took place; but I imagine it must 
  have been at the age of eleven or twelve. The object of these sentiments was a 
  boy about my own age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle, and 
  the elements of human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially 
  compounded within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, 
  inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him since 
  my schoolboy days; but either I confound my present recollections with the 
  delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honor and utility to 
  every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and winning, that 
  every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so deep that in 
  listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was 
  the being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship."

[177]

It may be noted that Hogg takes the reference as to himself ! 

WITH this passage we may compare the following from Leigh Hunt: 
  " If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ Hospital, the school would be 
  ever dear to me from the recollection of the friendships I formed in it, and 
  of the first heavenly taste it gave me of that most spiritual of the 
  affections.... If ever I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in 
  those friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of any 
  maturer feeling. I shall never forget the impression it made on me. I loved my 
  friend for his gentleness, his candor, his truth, his good repute, his freedom 
  even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not 
  any particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking 
  whatsoever. I should say, in one word, it was his goodness. I doubt whether he 
  ever had a conception of a tithe of the regard and respect I entertained for 
  him; and I smile to think of the perplexity (though he never showed it) which 
  he probably felt sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a 
  kind of angel. It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the unspiritual 
  part of it-the genius and the knowledge-and there is no height of eonceit 
  indulged in by the most romantic character in Shakespeare, which surpassed 
  [178] what I felt towards the merits I ascribed to him, and the delight which 
  I took in his society. With the other boys I played antics, and rioted in 
  fantastic jests; but in his society, or whenever I thought of him, I fell into 
  a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I am sure I could have died for him. 
  " I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive 
  schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into the world and 
  forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in more than one instance became 
  rivalled by a new set of emotions, especially in regard to the last, for I 
  fell in love with his sister-at least, I thought so. But on the occurrence of 
  her death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume an air of 
  greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to be relieved by the sight 
  of the first pretty face that turned towards me.... My friend, who died 
  himself not long after his quitting the University, was of a German family in 
  the service of the court, very refined and musical." 
  Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, Smith and Elder, 1870, p 75 


ON this subject of boy-friendships and their intensity Lord Beaconsfield [Ie. 
Benjamin Disraeli] has, in Coningsby, a quite romantic passage, which 
notwithstanding its sentimental setting may be worth quoting; because, after 
all, it signalizes an often forgotten or unconsidered aspect of school-life: 
[179] 
  " At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the 
  soul. All loves of after-life can never bring its rapture, or its 
  wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so 
  crushing and so keen! What tenderness and what devotion; what illimitable 
  confidence, infinite revelations of inmost thoughts; what ecstatic present and 
  romantic future; what bitter estrangements and what melting reconciliations; 
  what scenes of wild recrimination, agitating explanations, passionate 
  correspondence; what insane sensitiveness, and what frantic sensibility; what 
  earthquakes of the heart and whirlwinds of the soul are confined in that 
  simple phrase, a schoolboy's friendship I "

EDWARD FITZGERALD, the interpreter and translator of Omar Khayyam, was a man of 
the deepest feeling and sensibility, with a special gift for friendship. Men 
like Tennyson and Thackeray declared that they loved him best of all their 
friends. He himself said in one of his letters, " My friendships are more like 
loves." A. C. Benson, his biographer, writes of him: 
  " He was always taking fancies, and once under the spell he could see no 
  faults in his friend. His friendship for Browne arose out of one of these 
  romantic impulses. So too his affection for Posh, the boatman; for Cowell, and 
  for Alfred Smith, [180] the farmer of Farlingay and Boulge, who had been his 
  protege as a boy. He seems to have been one of those whose best friendships 
  are reserved for men; for though he had beloved women friends like Mrs. Cowell 
  and Mrs. Kemble, yet these are the exceptions rather than the rule. The truth 
  is, there was a strong admixture of the feminine in Fitzgerald's character." 
  Fitzgerald English Men of Letters Series, ch. viii.

The friendship with Posh, the fisherman, at Lowestoft and at Woodbridge, lasted 
over many years. Fitzgerald had a herring-lugger built for him, which he called 
the Meum and Tuum, and in which they had many a sail together. Benson, speaking 
of their first meeting, says: 
  "In the same year [1864] came another great friendship. He made the 
  acquaintance of a stalwart sailor named Joseph Fletcher, commonly called Posh. 
  It was at Lowestoft that he was found, where Fitzgerald used, as he wrote in 
  1850, ' to wander about the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost 
  me who might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my heart.' 
  Posh had seen the melancholy figure wandering about, and years after, when 
  Fitz used to ask him why he had not been merciful enough to speak to him, Posh 
  would reply that he had not thought of it becoming. Posh was, in Fitzgerald's 
  own words, ' a man of the finest Saxon [181] type, with a complexion, vif, 
  mâle et flamboyant, blue eyes, a nose less than Roman, more than Greek, and 
  strictly auburn hair that woman might sigh to possess.' He was too, according 
  to Fitz, ' a man of simplicity of soul, justice of thought, tenderness of 
  nature, a gentleman of Nature's grandest type.' Fitz became deeply devoted to 
  this big-handed, soft-hearted, grave fellow, then 24 years of age."
  Ibid., ch. iii.


ALFRED TENNYSON, in his great poem, In Memoriam, published about the middle of 
the 19th century, gives superb expression to his love for his lost friend, 
Arthur Hallam. Reserved, dignified, in sustained meditation and tender 
sentiment, yet half revealing here and there a more passionate feeling; 
expressing in simplest words the most difficult and elusive thoughts (e.g., 
Cantos 128 and 129), as well as the most intimate and sacred moods of the soul; 
it is indeed a great work of art. Naturally, being such, it was roundly abused 
by the critics on its first appearance. The Times solemnly rebuked its language 
as unfitted for any but amatory tenderness, and because young Hallam was a 
barrister spent much wit upon the poet's " Amaryllis of the Chancery bar." 
Tennyson himself, speaking of [182] In Memoriam, mentioned (see Memoir by his 
son, p. 800) " the number of shameful letters of abuse he had received about it 
I "

  CANTO XIII 
  " Tears of the widower, when he sees,
  A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
  And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
  Her place is empty, fall like these;

  Which weep a loss for ever new,
  A void where heart on heart reposed;
  And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
  Silence, till I be silent too.

  Which weep the comrade of my choice,
  An awful thought, a life removed,
  The human-hearted man I loved,
  A spirit, not a breathing voice.

  Come Time, and teach me, many years,
  I do not suffer in a dream;
  For now so strange do these things seem,
  Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

  My fancies time to rise on wing,
  And glance about the approaching sails,
  As tho' they brought but merchant's bales,
  And not the burden that they bring."

  [183]

  CANTO XVIII

  'Tis well. 'tis something, we may stand
  Where he in English earth is laid,
  And from his ashes may be made
  The violet of his native land.

  'Tis little; but it looks in truth
  As if the quiet bones were blest
  Among familiar names to rest
  And in the places of his youth.

  Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
  That sleeps, or wears the mask of sleep,
  And come, whatever loves to weep,
  And hear the ritual of the dead.

  Ah yet. ev'n yet, if this might be,
  I, falling on his faithful head:,
  Would breathing thro' his lips impart
  The life that almost dies in me:

  That dies not, but endures with pain,
  And slowly forms the firmer mind,
  Treasuring the look it cannot find,
  The words that are not heard again."

  CANTO LIX

  If, in thy second state sublime,
  Thy ransom d reason change replies
  With all the circle of the wise,
  The perfect flower of human time;

  [184] 

  And if thou cast thine eyes below,
  How dimly character'd and slight,
  How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night,
  How blanch'd with darkness must I grow !

  Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
  Where thy first form was made a man;
  I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
  The soul of Shakspeare love thee more "

  CANTO CXXVII

  Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
  So far, so near, in woe or weal;
  O loved the most when most I feel
  There is a lower and a higher;

  Known and unknown, human, divine I
  Sweet human hand and lips and eye,
  Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
  Mine, mine, for ever, ever, mine I

  Strange friend, past, present and to be;
  Loved deeplier, darklier understood 
  Behold I dream a dream of good
  And mingle all the world with thee."

  CANTO CXXVIII 
  " Thy voice is on the rolling air;
  I hear thee where the waters run;
  Thou standest in the rising sun,
  And in the setting thou art fair.

  [185]

  What are thou then? I cannot guess;
  But tho' I seem in star and flower
  To feel thee some diffusive power,
  I do not therefore love thee less:

  My love involves the love before;
  My love is vaster passion now;
  Tho' mixed with God and Nature thou,
  I seem to love thee more and more.

  Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
  I have thee still, and I rejoice;
  I prosper, circled with thy voice;
  I shall not lose thee tho' I dle."


FOLLOWING is a little poem by Robert Browning, entitled May and Death, which may 
well be placed near the stanzas of In Memoriam 

  " I wish that when you died last May,
  Charles, there had died along with you
  Three parts of Spring's delightful things;
  Ay, and for me the fourth part too.

  A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps I
  There must be many a pair of friends
  Who arm-in-arm deserve the warm
  Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

  [186]

  So, for their sake, be May still May!
  Let their new time, as mine of old
  Do all it did for me; I bid
  Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

  Only one little sigh, onc plant
  Woods have in May, that starts up green
  Save a sole streak which, so to speak,
  Is Spring's blood, split its leaves between 

  That, they might spare; a certain wood
  Might miss the plant; their loss were small;
  But I-whene'er the leaf grows there
  It's drop comes from my heart, that's all."


BETWEEN Browning and Whitman we may insert a few lines from R. W. Emerson:

  " The only way to have a friend is to be one. . . . In the last analysis love 
  is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have 
  sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in 
  their friend each loved his own soul. 
  " The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to 
  establish it with flesh and blood.... Friends, such as we desire, are dreams 
  and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, 
  in other regions of the universal power, souls are now [187] acting, enduring, 
  and daring, which can love us, and which we can love." 
  Essay on Friendship.

These also from Henry D. Thoreau: 

  " No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and indeed no thought 
  is more familiar to their aspirations. All men are dreaming of it, and its 
  drama, which is always a tragedy, is enacted daily. It is the secret of the 
  universe. You may thread the town, you may wander the country, and none shall 
  ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere busy about it, and the idea of 
  what is possible in this respect affects our behavior towards all new men and 
  women, and a great many old ones. Nevertheless I can remember only two or 
  three essays on this subject in all literature.... To say that a man is your 
  friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most 
  contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of 
  friendship, as that the friend can assist in time of need, by his substance, 
  or his influence, or his counsel; but he who foresees such advantages in this 
  relation proves himself blind to its real advantage, or indeed wholly 
  inexperienced in the relation itself.... What is commonly called Friendship is 
  only a little more honor among rogues. But sometimes we are said to love 
  another, that is, to stand in a true relation to him, so that we give the best 
  to, and receive the best from, him. Between whom there is hearty truth there 
  is love; and in [188] proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one 
  another our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There 
  are passages of affection in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such 
  as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our earthly life, and 
  anticipate heaven for us." 
  From On the Concord River

WHITMAN 
I CONCLUDE this collection with a few quotations from Whitman, for whom " the 
love of comrades " perhaps stands as the most intimate part of his message to 
the world-" Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting." 
Whitman, by his great power, originality and initiative, as well as by his deep 
insight and wide vision, is in many ways the inaugurator of a new era to 
mankind; and it is especially interesting to find that this idea of comradeship, 
and of its establishment as a social institution, plays so important a part with 
him. We have seen that in the Greek age, and more or less generally in the 
ancient and pagan world, comradeship was an institution; we have seen that in 
Christian and modern times, though existent, it was socially denied and ignored, 
and indeed to a great extent fell under a kind of ban; and now Whitman's 
attitude [189] towards it suggests to us that it really is destined to pass into 
its third stage, to arise again, and become a recognized factor of modern life, 
and even in a more extended and perfect form than at first. [As Whitman in this 
connection (like Tennyson in connection with In Memoriam) is sure to be accused 
of morbidity, it may he worth while to insert the following note from In reWalt 
Whitman, p. 115, " Dr. Drinkard in 1870, when Whitman broke down from rupture of 
a small blood-vessel in the brain, wrote to a Philadelphia doctor detailing 
Whitman's case, and stating that he was a man ' with the most natural habits, 
bases, and organisation he had ever seen.]'

  " It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that 
  fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivalling the amative love 
  hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it), that I 
  look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar 
  American Democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is 
  a dream, and will not follow my inferences; but I confidently expect 
  a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the 
  myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly 
  friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and lifelong, carried to 
  degrees hitherto unknown-not only giving tone to individual character, and 
  making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having 
  deepest relations to general politics. I say Democracy [190] infers such 
  loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which 
  it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself."
  Democratic Vistas note

The three following poems are taken from Leaves of Grass: 

  " Recorders ages hence,
  Come, I will take you down underneath this im passive exterior, I will tell 
  you what to say of me,
  Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
  The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,
  Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within 
  him, and freely pour'd it forth,
  Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
  Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at 
  night,
  Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be 
  indifferent to him,
  Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and 
  another wan dering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,
  Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his [191] arm the shoulder of 
  his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also."
  Leaves of Grass, 1891, 2 edn., p. 102.

  " When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with 
  plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd,
  And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still I was not 
  happy,
  But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh'd, 
  singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
  When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning 
  light,
  When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the 
  cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
  And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I 
  was happy,
  O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish'd me more, 
  and the beautiful day pass'd well,
  And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, 
  and that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continuously 
  up the shores,
  I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me 
  whispering to congratulate me,
  [192]For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the 
  cool night,
  In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
  And his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy." 
  Ibid, p. 103.

  "I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
  But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in 
  common with them? or what with the destruction of them?) 
  Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States 
  inland and seaboard,
  And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents 
  the water,
  Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
  The institution of the dear love of comrades." 
  lbid, p. 107.


END