Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur

Now these observations are argument enough to convince a man of any tolerable sense, that the friendship such men pretend to is not really virtuous and chaste, but rather a sort of impudent whorish love that obtrudes its embraces upon you.

But, to be more particular, let us first examine the disparity betwixt their promises. For our forefathers well observed, that the offers of a friend run in such terms as these:

If I can serve you, sir, if your request

Be feasible by me, I’ll do my best;

but the flatterer’s thus:

Command me freely what you will, I’ll do it.[*](Il. XIV. 195.)

For the comedians introduce such brave promises as these:

Come, sir, let me but fight that fellow there;

I’ll beat him soft as sponge or jellies are.

Besides, no real friend will assist in the execution of a design, unless, being first advised with, he approve of it as either honest or useful. Whereas the flatterer, though permitted to consult and give his opinion about an undertaking, not only out of a paltry desire to comply with and gratify his friend at any rate, but lest he should be looked upon as disaffected to the business, servilely closes with and advances his proposal, how unreasonable soever. For there are few rich men or princes of this mind:

Give me a friend, though a poor beggar he,

Or meaner than the meanest beggar be,

If he his thoughts but freely will impart,

And boldly speak the language of his heart;

[*](From the Ino of Euripides, Frag. 416.)

for they, like actors in a tragedy, must have a chorus of their friends to join with them in the concert, or else the claps of the pit to encourage them. Whereupon Merope in the tragedy speaks thus:

Make choice of those for friends, who never knew

The arts of wheedling and betraying you;

But those poor rascals never entertain,

Who please you only with design to gain.

[*](From the Erechtheus of Euripides, Frag. 364.)

But alas! they invert the counsel, and abominate those who deal freely with them and advise them obstinately for the best, whilst pitiful cringing cheats and impostors are admitted not only into their houses, but into their affections and the nearest concernments of their life. You shall have some of them indeed more plain and simple than the rest, who confess themselves unworthy to consult about such weighty affairs, but are ready to serve you in the executive part of a design. But the more subtle hypocrite comes in at the consult, knits his brows, declares his consent by the gravity of a look or a nod, but speaks never a word, unless perchance, when the great man delivers his opinion, he cries, Lord! sir, you prevented me; I was just going to say so. For, as the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and lines, which are incorporeal and creatures of the understanding only, are neither bended nor moved nor extended of themselves, but are so affected together with the bodies whose extremities they are; so you shall observe the flatterer attends only the motion of another’s sense, opinion, or passion, without any principle of action in himself. So that the disparity betwixt them thus far is easily discernible.

And yet more easily in the manner they perform their good offices. For the kindnesses of a friend, like an animate creature, have their most proper virtues deep within, without any parade or pageantry on the outside. Nay, many times, as a faithful physician cures his patient when he least knows of it, so a true friend, either present or

absent, as occasion serves, is solicitous about your concerns, when perhaps you know nothing of it. Such was the excellent Arcesilaus, as in his other actions, so particularly in his kindness to Apelles, native of Chios, whom finding extremely indigent in his sickness, he repeated his visit to him with twenty drachms in his pocket; and sitting by his bedside, You have got nothing here, said he, but Empedocles’s elements, fire, water, earth, and the surrounding air; neither, methinks, do you lie easily. And with that, stirring up his pillow, he put the money privately under his head; which when the good old woman his nurse found and in great wonder acquainted Apelles with, Aye, says he, smiling a little, this is a piece of Arcesilaus’s thievery. And the saying that children resemble their parents is found true also in philosophy. For when Cephisocrates was impeached of high treason, and Lacydes, an intimate acquaintance of Arcesilaus, with several others of his friends, stood by him at his trial, the counsel for the state desired that the prisoner’s ring, wherein lay the principal evidence against him, might be produced in court; which Cephisocrates hearing dropped it softly off his finger, and Lacydes observing it set his foot upon it and buried it in the ground. Whereupon being acquitted, and going afterwards to pay his respects and thanks to his judges, one of them (who, it seems, had taken notice of the passages) told him that his thanks were owing to Lacydes, and so related the whole story, when yet Lacydes had never mentioned it.

Thus I am verily persuaded the Gods confer several benefits upon us which we are not sensible of, upon no other motive in the world than the mere pleasure and satisfaction they take in acts of kindness and beneficence.

But on the contrary, the seemingly good offices of a flatterer have nothing of that sincerity and integrity, that simplicity and ingenuousness, which recommend a kindness, but

are always attended with bustle and noise, hurry, sweat and contracting the brow, to enhance your opinion of the great pains he has taken for you; like a picture drawn in gaudy colors, with folded torn garments, and full of angles and wrinkles, to make us believe it an elaborate piece and done to the life.

Besides, the flatterer is so extremely troublesome in recounting the weary steps he has taken, the cares he has had upon him, the persons he has been forced to disoblige, with a thousand other inconveniencies he has labored under upon your account, that you will be apt to say, The business was never worth all this din and clutter about it.

For a kindness once upbraided loses its grace, turns a burden, and becomes intolerable. But the flatterer not only reproaches us with his services already past, but at the very instant of their performance; whereas, if a friend be obliged to speak of any civility done another, he modestly mentions it indeed, but attributes nothing to himself. Thus, when the Lacedaemonians supplied the people of Smyrna in great scarcity of provisions, and they gratefully resented and extolled the kindness; Why, replied the Spartans, it was no such great matter, we only robbed ourselves and our cattle of a dinner. For a favor thus bestowed is not only free and ingenuous, but more acceptable to the receiver, because he imagines his benefactor conferred it on him without any great prejudice to himself.

But the temper of a flatterer is discernible from that of a friend not only in the easiness of his promises and the troublesome impertinence that attends his good offices, but more signally in this, that the one is ready to promote any base and unworthy action, the other those only which are fair and honest. The one labors to please, the other to profit you. For a friend must not, as Gorgias would have him, beg another’s assistance in a just undertaking, and

then think to compensate the civility by contributing to several that are unjust.

In wisdom, not in folly, should they join.

And if, after all, he cannot prevail upon him, he may disengage himself with the reply of Phocion to Antipater; Sir, I cannot be both your friend and your flatterer,—;that is, Your friend and not your friend at the same time. For we ought to be assistant to him in his honest endeavors indeed, but not in his knaveries; in his counsels, not in his tricks; in appearing as evidence for him, but not in a cheat; and must bear a share in his misfortunes, but not in his acts of injustice. For if a man ought not to be as much as conscious of any unworthiness in his friend, how much less will it become him to partake in it? Therefore, as the Lacedaemonians, defeated and treating of articles of peace with Antipater, prayed him to command them any thing, howsoever grievous and burthensome to the subject, provided it were not base and dishonorable; so a friend, if you want his assistance in a chargeable, dangerous, and laborious enterprise, embarks in the design cheerfully and without reserve; but if such as will not stand with his reputation and honor, he fairly desires to be excused. Whereas, on the contrary, if you offer to put a flatterer upon a difficult or hazardous employment, he shuffles you off and begs your pardon. For but sound him, as you rap a vessel to try whether it be whole or cracked, full or empty; and he shams you off with the noise of some paltry, frivolous excuses. But engage him in any mean, sordid, and inglorious service, abuse him, kick him, trample on him, he bears all patiently and knows no affront. For as the ape, who cannot keep the house like a dog or bear a burden like an horse or plough like an ox, serves to be abused, to play the buffoon, and to make sport; so the parasite, who can neither plead your cause nor be your counsel nor espouse your quarrel, as being averse from all painful and good offices, denies you in nothing that may contribute to your pleasure, turns pander to your lust, pimps for a whore, provides you an handsome entertainment, looks that your bill be reasonable, and sneaks to your miss; but he shall treat your relations with disrespect and impudently turn your wife out of doors, if you commission him. So that you may easily discover him in this particular. For put him upon the most base and dirty actions; he will not spare his own pains, provided he can but gratify you.

There remains yet another way to discover him by his inclinations towards your intimates and familiars. For there is nothing more agreeable to a true and cordial acquaintance than to love and to be beloved with many; and therefore he always sedulously endeavors to gain his friend the affections and esteem of other men. For being of opinion that all things ought to be in common amongst friends, he thinks nothing ought to be more so than they themselves. But the faithless, the adulterate friend of base alloy, who is conscious to himself of the disservice he does true friendship by that false coin of it which he puts upon us, is naturally full of emulation and envy, even towards those of his own profession, endeavoring to outdo them in their common talent of babbling and buffoonry, whilst he reveres and cringes to his betters, whom he dares no more vie with than a footman with a Lydian chariot, or lead (to use Simonides’s expression) with refined gold. Therefore this light and empty counterfeit, finding he wants weight when put into the balance against a solid and substantial friend, endeavors to remove him as far as he can, like him who, having painted a cock extremely ill, commanded his servant to take the original out of sight; and if he cannot compass his design, then he proceeds to compliment and ceremony, pretending outwardly to admire him as a

person far beyond himself, whilst by secret calumnies he blackens and undermines him. And if these chance to have galled and fretted him only and have not thoroughly done their work, then he betakes himself to the advice of Medius, that arch parasite and enemy to the Macedonian nobility, and chief of all that numerous train which Alexander entertained in his court. This man taught his disciples to slander boldly and push home their calumnies; for, though the wound might probably be cured and skinned over again, yet the teeth of slander would be sure to leave a scar behind them. By these scars, or (to speak more properly) gangrenes and cancers of false accusations, fell the brave Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas; whilst Alexander himself became an easy prey to an Agnon, Bagoas, Agesias, and Demetrius, who tricked him up like a barbarian statue, and paid the mortal the adoration due to a God. So great a charm is flattery, and, as it seems, the greatest with those we think the greatest men; for the exalted thoughts they entertain of themselves, and the desire of a universal concurrence in the same opinion from others, both add courage to the flatterer and credit to his impostures. Hills and mountains indeed are not easily taken by stratagem or ambuscade; but a weak mind, swollen big and lofty by fortune, birth, or the like, lies naked to the assaults of every mean and petty aggressor.