and coupling together; when we are acquainted not with their virtues only, but their faults, their passions, their fears, their shame.—­and are bold on both sides to make their discovery.  And as it is in the love of the body, which is then at the height and full when it has power and admittance into the hidden and worst parts of it; so it is in friendship with the mind, when those verenda of the soul, and those things which we dare not shew the world, are bare and detected one to another.

Some men are familiar with all, and those commonly friends to none; for friendship is a sullener thing, is a contractor and taker up of our affections to some few, and suffers them not loosely to be scattered on all men.  The poorest tie of acquaintance is that of place and country, which are shifted as the place, and missed but while the fancy of that continues.  These are only then gladdest of other, when they meet in some foreign region, where the encompassing of strangers unites them closer, till at last they get new, and throw off one another.  Men of parts and eminency, as their acquaintance is more sought for, so they are generally more staunch of it, not out of pride only, but fear to let too many in too near them:  for it is with men as with pictures, the best show better afar off and at distance, and the closer you come to them the coarser they are.  The best judgment of a man is taken from his acquaintance, for friends and enemies are both partial; whereas these see him truest because calmest, and are no way so engaged to lie for him.  And men that grow strange after acquaintance seldom piece together again, as those that have tasted meat and dislike it, out of a mutual experience disrelishing one another.

A MERE COMPLIMENTAL MAN

Is one to be held off still at the same distance you are now; for you shall have him but thus, and if you enter on him farther you lose him.  Methinks Virgil well expresses him in those well-behaved ghosts that AEneas met with, that were friends to talk with, and men to look on, but if he grasped them, but air.[82] He is one that lies kindly to you, and for good fashion’s sake, and ’tis discourtesy in you to believe him.  His words are so many fine phrases set together, which serve equally for all men, and are equally to no purpose.  Each fresh encounter with a man puts him to the same part again, and he goes over to you what he said to him was last with him:  he kisses your hands as he kissed his before, and is your servant to be commanded, but you shall intreat of him nothing.  His proffers are universal and general, with exceptions against all particulars.  He will do any thing for you, but if you urge him to this, he cannot, or to that, he is engaged; but he will do any thing.  Promises he accounts but a kind of mannerly words, and in the expectation of your manners not to exact them:  if you do, he wonders at your ill breeding, that cannot distinguish betwixt what is spoken and what is meant.  No man gives better satisfaction at the first, and comes off more with the elegy of a kind gentleman, till you know him better, and then you know him for nothing.  And commonly those most rail at him, that have before most commended him.  The best is, he cozens you in a fair manner, and abuses you with great respect.