16.  “Whoso discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind.  Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if thou betrayest his secret, follow no more after him; for as a man hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go, and shall not get him again:  follow after him no more, for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare.  As for a wound, it may be bound up, and after reviling, there may be reconciliation; but he that betrayeth secrets, is without hope.”

17.  Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal; to these, others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and fortune, and, as Cicero calls it, morum comitas, a pleasantness of temper.

18.  If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a certain aequibility or evenness of behaviour.  A man often contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does not find out till after a year’s conversation:  when, on a sudden, some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him.

19.  There are several persons who, in some certain periods of their lives, are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable. Martial has given us a very pretty picture of one of these species in the following epigram: 

    Difficilis facilas, jocundus, acerbus, es idem,
    Nec tecum possum vivere; nec sine te.  Epig. 47. 1. 12.

    In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
    Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
    Hast so much wit and mirth, and spleen about thee,
    There is no living with thee nor without thee.

20.  It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one, who by these changes and vicissitudes of humour is sometimes amiable, and sometimes odious:  and as most men are at some times in an admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our character.

SPECTATOR, Vol. 1.  No. 68.

21.  “Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.”  Though the pleasures and advantages of friendship have been largely celebrated by the best moral writers, and are considered by all as great ingredients of human happiness, we very rarely meet with the practice of this virtue an the world.

22.  Every man is ready to give a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend, but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves.