of equitie and libertie:  witnesse the comfortable loves of Hermodius and Aristogiton.  Therefore name they it sacred and divine, and it concerns not them whether the violence of tyrants, or the demisnesse of the people be against them:  To conclude, all that can be alleged in favour of the Academy, is to say, that it was a love ending in friendship, a thing which hath no bad reference unto the Stoical definition of love:  Amorem conatum esse amicitiae faciendae ex pulchritudinis specie:  [Footnote:  Cic.  Tusc.  Qu. ir. c. 34. ] “That love is an endevour of making friendship, by the shew of beautie.”  I returne to my description in a more equitable and equall manner.  Omnino amicitiae, corroboratis jam confirmatisque ingeniis et aetatibus, judicandae sunt. [Footnote:  Cic.  Amic.] “Clearely friendships are to be judged by wits, and ages already strengthened and confirmed.”  As for the rest, those we ordinarily call friendes and amities, are but acquaintances and familiarities, tied together by some occasion or commodities, by meanes whereof our mindes are entertained.  In the amitie I speake of, they entermixe and confound themselves one in the other, with so universall a commixture, that they weare out and can no more finde the seame that hath conjoined them together.  If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feele it cannot be expressed, but by answering; Because it was he, because it was my selfe.  There is beyond all my discourse, and besides what I can particularly report of it, I know not what inexplicable and fatall power, a meane and Mediatrix of this indissoluble union.  We sought one another before we had scene one another, and by the reports we heard one of another; which wrought a greater violence in us, than the reason of reports may well beare; I thinke by some secret ordinance of the heavens, we embraced one another by our names.  And at our first meeting, which was by chance at a great feast, and solemne meeting of a whole towneship, we found our selves so surprized, so knowne, so acquainted, and so combinedly bound together, that from thence forward, nothing was so neer unto us as one unto anothers.  He writ an excellent Latyne Satyre since published; by which he excuseth and expoundeth the precipitation of our acquaintance, so suddenly come to her perfection; Sithence it must continue so short a time, and begun so late (for we were both growne men, and he some yeares older than my selfe) there was no time to be lost.  And it was not to bee modelled or directed by the paterne of regular and remisse [Footnote:  Slight, languid.] friendship, wherein so many precautions of a long and preallable conversation [Footnote:  Preceding intercourse.] are required.  This hath no other Idea than of it selfe, and can have no reference but to itselfe.  It is not one especiall consideration, nor two, nor three, nor foure, nor a thousand:  It is I wot not what kinde of quintessence, of all this commixture, which having seized all my will,