of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, “that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa or take away his life:  there was no third way, he had made him so great.”  With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had ascended to that height as they two were termed and reckoned as a pair of friends.  Tiberius in a letter to him saith, “Haec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi” [these things, from our friendship, I have not concealed from you]; and the whole Senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two.  The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus.  For he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus; and would often maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son; and did write also, in a letter to the Senate, by these words:  “I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me.”  Now, if these princes had been as a Trajan or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half-piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire:  and yet, which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy; namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none, and least of all those secrets which troubled him most.  Whereupon he goeth on and saith, that toward his latter time “that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding.”  Surely Comineus mought have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master Louis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor.  The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true:  “Cor ne edito,”—­“Eat not the heart.”  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 works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves.  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.  So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man’s mind of like virtue as the alchymists use to attribute to their stone for man’s body; that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature.  But yet without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature:  for in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action, and on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression; and even so it is of minds.