Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur

Well then, let us enquire regularly into this affair. We have already asserted, that friendship generally takes its rise from a conformity of tempers and dispositions, whereby different persons come to have the same taste of the like humors, customs, studies, exercises, and employs, as these following verses import:—;

Old men with old, and boys with boys agree;

And women’s clack with women’s company.

Men that are crazy, full of sores and pain,

Love to diseased persons to complain.

And they who labor under adverse fate,

Tell their sad stories to th’ unfortunate.

The flatterer then, observing how congenial it is to our natures to delight in the conversation of those who are, as

it were, the counterpart of ourselves, makes his first approaches to our affections at this avenue, where he gradually advances (like one making towards a wild beast in a pasture, with a design to tame and bring it to hand) by accommodating himself to the same studies, business, and color of life with the person upon whom he designs, till at last the latter gives him an opportunity to catch him, and becomes tractable by the man who strokes him. All this while the flatterer falls foul upon those courses of life, persons, and things he perceives his cully to disapprove, and again as extravagantly commends those he is pleased to honor with his approbation, still persuading him that his choice and dislike are the results of a solid and discerning judgment and not of passion.