drawest a sword at a friend, yet despair not, for there may be a
returning to favour. If thou hast opened thy mouth against thy
friend, fear not, for there may be a reconciliation: except for
upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous
wound; for, for these things every friend will depart." We may
observe in this, and several other precepts in this author, those
little familiar instances and illustrations which are so much
admired in the moral writings of Horace and Epictetus. There are
very beautiful instances of this nature in the following passages,
which are likewise written upon the same subject: "Whose
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 bewrayeth his secrets, 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 bewrayeth secrets, is without
hope."

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." If I were to give my opinion upon such an
exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a
certain equability 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