GROUNDWORK OF ATTACHMENT BETWEEN FRIENDS. FRIENDSHIP. 179 Attachments, occasionally of great power, spring up between persons of the same sex unrelated by blood. These have given birth to celebrated poetic situations. Intense friendships between those of the same sex have been known in all ages. They occur in celebrated examples, both historical and fictitious. In Greece, the sentiment of men for men was often more powerful than the strongest attachments between the sexes. In the Iliad we have the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus; in the Old Testament, the friendship of David and Jonathan. In both cases the poetic handling is founded on the pathetic termination. The groundwork of the attachment may be found in one or other of the following circumstances : (1) Personal fascination,-sometimes explicable by personal beauty or charm on one side; at other times having no assignable cause. (2) Companionship, with the rendering of mutual sympathy and good offices. This position is at its highest when one is able to supply what the other most needs and desires. The kind of difference that excludes rivalry, and renders possible the utmost support from each to the other, is eminently favourable. The liking of men for men, and of women for women, is aided by the more intimate knowledge of each other's peculiarities and situations. Such friendships are a part of our life no less than the family affections; and the highest ideals enter into poetry. Although not a frequent occurrence, the emotions, when roused by a rich aggregate of favouring circumstances, will rise to a degree of intensity equal to the sexual feeling at its utmost pitch, when the characteristics are scarcely distinguishable from the state of love. Although, in such a case, the poet seems justified in raising the one to the level of the other, he has to encounter the reader's reluctance to accept so elevated a standard. Most minds can respond to the feeling of sexual love when powerfully rendered; but not to the same lofty representation of friendship. The friendship of Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad is depicted solely by the furious grief of Achilles when Patro clus is slain. We hear nothing of the personal charms or amiable character of Patroclus; we are not told of the supreme delight of Achilles in his companionship; but, after the fatal issue of the fight with Hector, the grief of Achilles is frantic he tears his hair, heaps dust on his head, curses the hour of his birth. He is compared to a lion raging in the desert with anguish and fury at the loss of his young. He is prompted to immediate and dreadful revenge; he is reconciled to Agamemnon, and thus the death of Patroclus becomes a turning-point in the siege. The celebration of the friendship has a purely warlike interest, and does not come home to the tender feelings of the reader. There is a touch of real friendship in the tribute of Helen to the slain Hector. It is an outpouring of simple gratitude for his forbearance, when others were heaping reproaches upon her for her guilt and the calamities she had brought upon Troy. The Greek friendship between an elder and a younger person is celebrated in many compositions. Theocritus illustrates the sentiment in the tale of Hercules and Hylas. The emotions of love felt by Hercules towards the young man are expressed after the mature art of erotic Greek poetry : "Even the brazen-hearted son of Amphytrion, who withstood the fierceness of the lion, loved a youth, the charming Hylas, and taught him like a father everything by which he might become a good and famous man; nor would he leave the youth at dawn, or noon, or evening, but sought continually to fashion him after his own heart, and to make him a right yokefellow with him in mighty deeds". Here we have the circumstances of entranced companionship and devoted attention, the highest symptoms of love in all ages. Not the least remarkable delineation of this ecstatic sentiment of male friendship is afforded in the two Dialogues of Plato, n amed 'Phædrus' and 'Symposium'. So special and marked is the handling of the passion by the great philosopher, that it has ever since borne his name. The inspiring cause of the passion with Plato is solely the beauty of the youthful form, which is exhibited in the naked exercises of the palæstra. Nothing is said of mental attractiveness, although when the affection is once contracted its mutual character may be supposed: the youth responding FRIENDSHIP-SHAKESPEARE.-MILTON.-BURNS. 181 to the extraordinary devotion that he has awakened. Plato idealizes the situation by supposing that the two lovers engage in philosophical studies together, the elder devoting himself to the improvement of the younger, as Hercules did with Hylas. But in actual history, these friendships, when they occurred, were characterized by mutual heroic devotion to the death; whence they became a power in war, and a terror to despots. Disparity of years, and the personal beauty of the younger, entered into Plato's friendship, but were not universal accompaniments of the passion. The age of Elizabeth witnessed the poetic celebration of friendship on a very great scale. (See Professor Minto's English Poets, p. 215.) Shakespeare is a conspicuous example. The susceptibility to male friendship seemed one of his special characteristics. He has, in consequence, given it poetical embodiment, occasionally in his plays, and markedly in his sonnets. The type is almost purely Platonic. The attraction of the beautiful youth of the sonnets is personal charm, which is described with all the fulness, and almost with the very epithets, of beauty in women. The sonnets contribute to erotic embodiment rather than to such an ideal of friendship as we should prefer to see expressed, having a character and nobility of its own, instead of being an objectionable imitation of sexual love. The Lycidas of Milton is a tribute to friendship inspired by the calamity of loss. The language of mourning is given in Milton's manner, and the circumstances attending the disaster are rendered in the terms of ancient mythology. The lines where he celebrates the companionship of the two at Cambridge are an adaptation of the pastoral, by which they are treated as fellow-shepherds : For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, The whole passage is too fanciful to impress us with an ideal picture of friendship. The poem might have been devoted to the memory of any college companion suddenly cut off by a disaster; and it is not on the representation of friendship that its greatness depends. The emotional temperament of Burns bursts forth in his friendships; and these are occasionally the subject of his poetic pen. His Epistles to friends overflow in geniality and kindness: Content with you to make a pair In occasional touches, he reverts to the theme, as in 'Tam O'Shanter' : And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, They had been fou for weeks thegither. Cowper is, by pre-eminence, the poet of friendship. He is wanting in purely erotic effusions. His own private life was made up of intense friendships, which he celebrated in every form, and with all the arts suited to their illustration. His gratitude for the long-continued kindness of Mrs. Unwin is poured forth in the poem 'To Mary'. Since he feels that she is nearing her end, he mingles pathos with the strain. The twentieth year is well-nigh past Since first our sky was overcast ;Ah would that this might be the last! My Mary! The daily offices of kindness and attention make the first essential in the picture of friendship. Nevertheless, as the consequence of the duration of the good offices, a disinterested feeling has grown up; the termination corresponding to the beginning of love in the sexes, and yielding the strongest fascination of personal companionship. Such friendship between opposite sexes is barely distinguishable from the happiest examples of the conjugal relation. Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, Are still more lovely in my sight My Mary! For could I view nor them nor thee, My Mary! The tokens of affection on her part are delicately introduced so as to heighten the picture. AFFECTIONATE RELATION OF MASTER AND SERVANT. 183 There is nothing wanting in the expression of tender friendship, except surroundings. Had the composition been a more purely artistic effort, these would have been supplied. In the Task, the circumstantials of the poet's daily life are wrought up to the highest point of interest as a domestic interior whose groundwork is the relationship of friends. A touching picture of friendship is given in the closing stanzas of Gray's Elegy'. The single line Large was his bounty, and his soul sincero speaks a volume of friendly attractiveness. We may append to this head the occasionally affectionate relation of Master and Servant, Patron and Dependent, Superior and Inferior, Teacher and Pupil. The relationship, in these instances, becomes tender, on the same grounds as friendship, by the mutual interchange of good offices and services, beyond what is strictly bargained for. The picture of Eumæus in the Odyssey is the celebration of fidelity on the part of the servant to his master. It recalls the faithful steward of Abraham, and the captive maiden in the service of Naaman the Syrian, by whose advice he was cured of his leprosy. The domestic (slave or servant) necessarily appears in epic and dramatic poetry, and performs many parts. The ideal of fidelity is an occasional type, but is rarely worked up with high poetic art; nor would it exhibit any novelty in the devices employed. Numerous varieties of the servant class are given in Shakespeare. The attached domestic in the old Scottish families is depicted by Scott. All the business relations of life are softened by the operation of the same disposition to mutual services, irrespective of the bare fulfilment of contracted obligations. The poet occasionally aids the moralist in setting forth the value of this element of human happiness. GREGARIOUSNESS.-PATRIOTISM. Under Strength, reference was made to the power of collective masses, which represent the highest form of human might. Another view needs to be taken of the same fact. Apart altogether from the exercise of power, there is |