’Milverton. Well, I wonder whether love—­for I imagine you mean love—­was ever so described before, “that other thing!”

’Elles. When the world was younger, perhaps there was more of this friendship.  David and Jonathan!—­How does their friendship begin?  I know it is very beautiful; but I have forgotten the words.  Dunsford will tell us.

’Dunsford. “And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man?  And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.  And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”

’Elles. Now that men are more complex, they would require so much.  For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an uncommunicative man:  that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen people in the world.  It is only with a man of perfect reticence that you can speak completely without reserve.  We talk together far more openly than most people; but there is a skilful fencing even in our talk.  We are not inclined to say the whole of what we think.

’Mil..  What I should need in a friend would be a certain breadth of nature:  I have no sympathy with people who can disturb themselves about small things; who crave the world’s good opinion; are anxious to prove themselves always in the right; can be immersed in personal talk or devoted to self-advancement; who seem to have grown up entirely from the earth, whereas even the plants draw most of their sustenance from the air of heaven.

’Elles. That is a high flight.  I am not prepared to say all that.  I do not object to a little earthiness.  What I should fear in friendship is the comment, and interference, and talebearing, I often see connected with it.

’Mil. That does not particularly belong to friendship, but comes under the general head of injudicious comment on the part of those who live with us.  Divines often remind us, that in forming our ideas of the government of Providence, we should recollect that we see only a fragment.  The same observation, in its degree, is true too as regards human conduct.  We see a little bit here and there, and assume the nature of the whole.  Even a very silly man’s actions are often more to the purpose than his friend’s comments upon them.

’Elles. True!  Then I should not like to have a man for a friend who would bind me down to be consistent, who would form a minute theory of me which was not to be contradicted.

’Mil. If he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with yours—­to use the words of Scripture—­he would not demand this consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with another, he would not be greatly surprised or vexed at that other’s inconsistencies.