Chapter III: Preface: To First Edition (3)

It is interesting to see, in these extracts from S. Augustine, and in those which follow from Montalembert, the points of likeness and difference between the Christian ideal of love and that of Plato. Both are highly transcendental, both seem to contemplate an inner union of souls, beyond the reach of space and time; but in Plato the union is in contemplation of the Eternal Beauty, while in the Christian teachers it is in devotion to a personal God.

“If inanimate nature was to them an abundant source of pleasure
they had a life still more lively and elevated in the life of the
heart, in the double love which burned in them—the love of their
brethren inspired and consecrated by the love of God.” _Monks of
the West_, introdn., ch. v.

“Everything invited and encouraged them to choose one or several
souls as the intimate companions of their life.... And to prove
how little the divine love, thus understood and practised, tends
to exclude or chill the love of man for man, never was human
eloquence more touching or more sincere than in that immortal
elegy by which S. Bernard laments a lost brother snatched by
death from the cloister:—‘Flow, flow my tears, so eager to flow!
he who prevented your flowing is here no more! It is not he who
is dead, it is I who now live only to die. Why, O why have we
loved, and why have we lost each other.’” _Ibid._

“The mutual affection which reigned among the monks flowed as a
mighty stream through the annals of the cloister. It has left
its trace even in the ‘formulas,’ collected with care by modern
erudition.... The correspondence of the most illustrious, of
Geoffrey de Vendôme, of Pierre le Vénérable, and of S. Bernard,
give proofs of it at every page.” _Ibid._

[Sidenote: _Saint Anselm_]

Saint Anselm’s letters to brother monks are full of expressions of the same ardent affection. Montalembert gives several examples:—

“Souls well-beloved of my soul,” he wrote to two near relatives
whom he wished to draw to Bec, “my eyes ardently desire to behold
you; my arms expand to embrace you; my lips sigh for your kisses;
all the life that remains to me is consumed with waiting for
you. I hope in praying, and I pray in hoping—come and taste how
gracious the Lord is—you cannot fully know it while you find
sweetness in the world.”

[Sidenote: _To his Friend Lanfranc_]

“‘Far from the eyes, far from the heart’ say the vulgar. Believe
nothing of it; if it was so, the farther you were distant from
me the cooler my love for you would be; whilst on the contrary,
the less I can enjoy your presence, the more the desire of that
pleasure burns in the soul of your friend.”

[Sidenote: _To Gondulph_]

“To Gondulf, Anselm——I put no other or longer salutations at the
head of my letter, because I can say nothing more to him whom I
love. All who know Gondulph and Anselm know well what this means,
and how much love is understood in these two names.” ... “How
could I forget thee? Can a man forget one who is placed like a
seal upon his heart? In thy silence I know that thou lovest me;
and thou also, when I say nothing, thou knowest that I love thee.
Not only have I no doubt of thee, but I answer for thee that thou
art sure of me. What can my letter tell thee that thou knowest
not already, thou who art my second soul? Go into the secret
place of thy heart, look there at thy love for me, and thou shalt
see mine for thee.” ... “Thou knewest how much I love thee, but
I knew it not. He who has separated us has alone instructed me
how dear to me thou wert. No, I knew not before the experience
of thy absence how sweet it was to have thee, how bitter to have
thee not. Thou hast another friend whom thou hast loved as much
or more than me to console thee, but I have no longer thee!—thee!
thee! thou understandest? and nothing to replace thee. Those who
rejoice in the possession of thee may perhaps be offended by what
I say. Ah! let them content themselves with their joy, and permit
me to weep for him whom I ever love.”

[Sidenote: _The Story of Amis and Amile_]

The story of Amis and Amile, a mediæval legend, translated by William Morris (as well as by Walter Pater) from the _Bibliotheca Elzeviriana_, is very quaint and engaging in its old-world extravagance and supernaturalism:—

Amis and Amile were devoted friends, twins in resemblance and
life. On one occasion, having strayed apart, they ceased not to
seek each other for two whole years. And when at last they met
“they lighted down from their horses, and embraced and kissed
each other, and gave thanks to God that they were found. And they
swore fealty and friendship and fellowship perpetual, the one to
the other, on the sword of Amile, wherein were relics.” Thence
they went together to the court of “Charles, king of France.”

Here soon after, Amis took Amile’s place in a tournament, saved
his life from a traitor, and won for him the King’s daughter
to wife. But so it happened that, not long after, he himself
was stricken with leprosy and brought to Amile’s door. And
when Amile and his royal bride knew who it was they were sore
grieved, and they brought him in and placed him on a fair bed,
and put all that they had at his service. And it came to pass
one night “whenas Amis and Amile lay in one chamber without other
company, that God sent to Amis Raphael his angel, who said to
him: ‘Sleepest thou, Amis?’ And he, who deemed that Amile had
called to him, answered: ‘I sleep not, fair sweet fellow.’ Then
the angel said to him: ‘Thou hast answered well, for thou art the
fellow of the citizens of heaven, and thou hast followed after
Job, and Thoby in patience. Now I am Raphael, an angel of our
Lord, and am come to tell thee of a medicine for thine healing,
whereas he hath heard thy prayers. Thou shalt tell to Amile thy
fellow, that he slay his two children and wash thee in their
blood, and thence thou shalt get the healing of thy body.’”

Amis was shocked when he heard these words, and at first refused
to tell Amile; but the latter had also heard the angel’s voice,
and pressed him to tell. Then, when he knew, he too was sorely
grieved. But at last he determined in his mind not even to spare
his children for the sake of his friend, and going secretly to
their chamber he slew them, and bringing some of their blood
washed Amis—who immediately was healed. He then arrayed Amis in
his best clothes and, after going to the church to give thanks,
they met Amile’s wife who (not knowing all) rejoiced greatly
too. But Amile, going apart again to the children’s chamber to
weep over them, found them at play in bed, with only a thread of
crimson round their throats to mark what had been done!

The two knights fell afterwards and were killed in the same
battle; “for even as God had joined them together by good accord
in their life-days, so in their death they were not sundered.”
And a miracle was added, for even when they were buried apart
from each other the two coffins leapt together in the night and
were found side by side in the morning.

Of this story Mr. Jacobs, in his introduction to William Morris’ translation, says: “Amis and Amile were the David and Jonathan, the Orestes and Pylades, of the mediæval world.” There were some thirty other versions of the legend “in almost all the tongues of Western and Northern Europe”—their “peerless friendship” having given them a place among the mediæval saints. (See _Old French Romances_ trans. by William Morris, London, 1896.)

[Sidenote: _Eastern Poets_]

It may not be out of place here, and before passing on to the times of the Renaissance and Modern Europe, to give one or two extracts relating to Eastern countries. The honour paid to friendship in Persia, Arabia, Syria and other Oriental lands has always been great, and the tradition of this attachment there should be especially interesting to us, as having arisen independently of classic or Christian ideals. The poets of Persia, Saadi and Jalal-ud-din Rumi (13th cent.), Hafiz (14th cent.), Jami (15th cent.), and others, have drawn much of their inspiration from this source; but unfortunately for those who cannot read the originals, their work has been scantily translated, and the translations themselves are not always very reliable. The extraordinary way in which, following the method of the Sufis, and of Plato, they identify the mortal and the divine love, and see in their beloved an image or revelation of God himself, makes their poems difficult of comprehension to the Western mind. Apostrophes to Love, Wine, and Beauty often, with them, bear a frankly twofold sense, material and spiritual. To these poets of the mid-region of the earth, the bitter antagonism between matter and spirit, which like an evil dream has haunted so long both the extreme Western and the extreme Eastern mind, scarcely exists; and even the body “which is a portion of the dust-pit” has become perfect and divine.

[Sidenote: _Jalal-ud-din Rumi_]

“Every form you see has its archetype in the placeless world....
From the moment you came into the world of being
A ladder was placed before you that you might escape (ascend).
First you were mineral, later you turned to plant,
Then you became an animal: how should this be a secret to you?
Afterwards you were made man, with knowledge, reason, faith;
Behold the body, which is a portion of the dust-pit, how perfect it has
grown!
When you have travelled on from man, you will doubtless become an angel;
After that you are done with earth: your station is in heaven.
Pass again even from angelhood: enter that ocean,
That your drop may become a sea which is a hundred seas of ‘Oman.’”

_From the Divani Shamsi Tabriz of Jalal-ud-din
Rumi, trans. by R. A. Nicholson._

“’Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment
Had not been: its being is but shame.
Be drunken in love, for love is all that exists....
Dismiss cares and be utterly clear of heart,
Like the face of a mirror, without image or picture.
When it becomes clear of images, all images are contained in it.”

_Ibid._

“Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, thou and I,
With two forms and with two figures, but with one soul, thou and I.”

_Ibid._

“Once a man came and knocked at the door of his friend.
His friend said, ‘Who art thou, O faithful one?’
He said, ‘’Tis I.’ He answered, ‘There is no admittance.
There is no room for the raw at my well-cooked feast.
Naught but fire of separation and absence
Can cook the raw one and free him from hypocrisy!
Since thy _self_ has not yet left thee,
Thou must be burned in fiery flames.’
The poor man went away, and for one whole year
Journeyed burning with grief for his friend’s absence.
His heart burned till it was cooked; then he went again
And drew near to the house of his friend.
He knocked at the door in fear and trepidation
Lest some careless word should fall from his lips.
His friend shouted, ‘Who is that at the door?’
He answered, ‘’Tis thou who art at the door, O beloved!’
The friend said, ‘Since ’tis I, let me come in,
There is not room for two I’s in one house.’”

_From the Masnavi of Jalal-ud-din Rumi,
trans, by E. H. Whinfield._

[Sidenote: _Hafiz and Saadi_]

Some short quotations here following are taken from _Flowers culled from Persian Gardens_ (Manchester, 1872):

“Everyone, whether he be abstemious or self-indulgent is
searching after the Friend. Every place may be the abode of love,
whether it be a mosque or a synagogue.... On thy last day, though
the cup be in thy hand, thou may’st be borne away to Paradise
even from the corner of the tavern.” _Hafiz_.

“I have heard a sweet word which was spoken by the old man of
Canaan (Jacob)—‘No tongue can express what means the separation
of friends.’” _Hafiz_.

“Neither of my own free will cast I myself into the fire; for
the chain of affection was laid upon my neck. I was still at a
distance when the fire began to glow, nor is this the moment
that it was lighted up within me. Who shall impute it to me as
a fault, that I am enchanted by my friend, that I am content in
casting myself at his feet?” _Saadi_.

Hahn in his _Albanesische Studien_, already quoted (p. 20), gives some of the verses of Neçin or Nesim Bey, a Turco-Albanian poet, of which the following is an example:—

“Whate’er, my friend, or false or true,
The world may tell thee, give no ear,
For to separate us, dear,
The world will say that one is two.
Who should seek to separate us
May he never cease to weep.
The rain at times may cease; but he
In Summer’s warmth or Winter’s sleep
May he never cease to weep.”

Besides literature there is no doubt a vast amount of material embedded in the customs and traditions of these countries and awaiting adequate recognition and interpretation. The following quotations may afford some glimpses of interest.

[Sidenote: _Suleyman and Ibrahim_]

Suleyman the Magnificent.—The story of Suleyman’s attachment to his Vezir Ibrahim is told as follows by Stanley Lane-Poole:—

“Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with a second
mind, to which his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand
Vezir Ibrahim was the counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman.
He was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by
corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at
Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince
Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary
talents and address brought him promotion.... From being Grand
Falconer on the accession of Suleyman, he rose to be first
minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523.

“He was the object of the Sultan’s tender regard: an emperor
knows better than most men how solitary is life without
friendship and love, and Suleyman loved this man more than a
brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining
and instructive companion. He read Persian, Greek and Italian;
he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan’s mind, and
Suleyman drank in his Vezir’s wisdom with assiduity. They lived
together: their meals were shared in common; even their beds were
in the same room. The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the
sailor’s son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power.” _Turkey,
Story of Nations series_, p. 174.

[Sidenote: _Story of a Bagdad Dervish_]

J. S. Buckingham, in his _Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia_, speaking of his guide whom he had engaged at Bagdad, and who was supposed to have left his heart behind him in that city, says:—

“Amidst all this I was at a loss to conceive how the Dervish
could find much enjoyment [in the expedition] while laboring
under the strong passion which I supposed he must then be
feeling for the object of his affections at Bagdad, whom he had
quitted with so much reluctance. What was my surprise however on
seeking an explanation of this seeming inconsistency, to find
it was the son, and not the daughter, of his friend Elias who
held so powerful a hold on his heart. I shrank back from the
confession as a man would recoil from a serpent on which he had
unexpectedly trodden ... but in answer to enquiries naturally
suggested by the subject he declared he would rather suffer death
than do the slightest harm to so pure, so innocent, so heavenly a
creature as this....

“I took the greatest pains to ascertain by a severe and
minute investigation, how far it might be possible to doubt
of the purity of the passion by which this Affgan Dervish was
possessed, and whether it deserved to be classed with that
described as prevailing among the ancient Greeks; and the result
fully satisfied me that both were the same. Ismael was however
surprised beyond measure when I assured him that such a feeling
was not known at all among the peoples of Europe.” _Travels,
&c._, 2nd edition, vol. 1, p. 159.

[Sidenote: _Another Story_]

“The Dervish added a striking instance of the force of these
attachments, and the sympathy which was felt in the sorrows to
which they led, by the following fact from his own history. The
place of his residence, and of his usual labour, was near the
bridge of the Tigris, at the gate of the Mosque of the Vizier.
While he sat here, about five or six years since, surrounded by
several of his friends who came often to enjoy his conversation
and beguile the tedium of his work, he observed, passing among
the crowd, a young and beautiful Turkish boy, whose eyes met his,
as if by destiny, and they remained fixedly gazing on each other
for some time. The boy, after ‘blushing like the first hue of a
summer morning,’ passed on, frequently turning back to look on
the person who had regarded him so ardently. The Dervish felt
his heart ‘revolve within him,’ for such was his expression, and
a cold sweat came across his brow. He hung his head upon his
graving-tool in dejection, and excused himself to those about
him by saying he felt suddenly ill. Shortly afterwards the boy
returned, and after walking to and fro several times, drawing
nearer and nearer, as if under the influence of some attracting
charm, he came up to his observer and said, ‘Is it really true,
then, that you love me?’ ‘This,’ said Ismael, ‘was a dagger in my
heart; I could make no reply.’ The friends who were near him, and
now saw all explained, asked him if there had been any previous
acquaintance existing between them. He assured them that they had
never seen each other before. ‘Then,’ they replied, ‘such an
event must be from God.’

“The boy continued to remain for a while with this party, told
with great frankness the name and rank of his parents, as well
as the place of his residence, and promised to repeat his visit
on the following day. He did this regularly for several months
in succession, sitting for hours by the Dervish, and either
singing to him or asking him interesting questions, to beguile
his labours, until as Ismael expressed himself, ‘though they were
still two bodies they became one soul.’ The youth at length fell
sick, and was confined to his bed, during which time his lover,
Ismael, discontinued entirely his usual occupations and abandoned
himself completely to the care of his beloved. He watched the
changes of his disease with more than the anxiety of a parent,
and never quitted his bedside, night or day. Death at length
separated them; but even when the stroke came the Dervish could
not be prevailed on to quit the corpse. He constantly visited the
grave that contained the remains of all he held dear on earth,
and planting myrtles and flowers there after the manner of the
East, bedewed them daily with his tears. His friends sympathised
powerfully in his distress, which he said ‘continued to feed his
grief’ until he pined away to absolute illness, and was near
following the fate of him whom he deplored.” _Ibid_, p. 160.

[Sidenote: _Explanation_]

“From all this, added to many other examples of a similar kind,
related as happening between persons who had often been pointed
out to me in Arabia and Persia, I could no longer doubt the
existence in the East of an affection for male youths, of as pure
and honorable a kind as that which is felt in Europe for those
of the other sex ... and it would be as unjust to suppose that
this necessarily implied impurity of desire as to contend that
no one could admire a lovely countenance and a beautiful form in
the other sex, and still be inspired with sentiments of the most
pure and honorable nature towards the object of his admiration.”
_Ibid_, p. 163.

“One powerful reason why this passion may exist in the East,
while it is quite unknown in the West, is probably the seclusion
of women in the former, and the freedom of access to them in the
latter.... Had they [the Asiatics] the unrestrained intercourse
which we enjoy with such superior beings as the virtuous and
accomplished females of our own country they would find nothing
in nature so deserving of their love as these.” _Ibid_, p. 165.

V.

_The Renaissance and Modern Times_

_The Renaissance and Modern Times_

[Sidenote: _Montaigne and Stephen de la Boëtie_]

With the Renaissance, and the impetus it gave at that time to the study of Greek and Roman models, the exclusive domination of Christianity and the Church was broken. A literature of friendship along classic lines began to spring up. Montaigne (b. 1533) was saturated with classic learning. His essays were doubtless largely formed upon the model of Plutarch. His friendship with Stephen de la Boëtie was evidently of a romantic and absorbing character. It is referred to in the following passage by William Hazlitt; and the description of it occupies a large part of Montaigne’s Essay on Friendship.

“The most important event of his counsellor’s life at Bordeaux
was the friendship which he there formed with Stephen de la
Boëtie, an affection which makes a streak of light in modern
biography almost as beautiful as that left us by Lord Brook and
Sir Philip Sydney. Our essayist and his friend esteemed, before
they saw, each other. La Boëtie had written a little work[8] in
which Montaigne recognised sentiments congenial with his own,
and which indeed bespeak a soul formed in the mould of classic
times. Of Montaigne, la Boëtie had also heard accounts, which
made him eager to behold him, and at length they met at a large
entertainment given by one of the magistrates of Bordeaux. They
saw and loved, and were thenceforward all in all to each other.
The picture that Montaigne in his essays draws of this friendship
is in the highest degree beautiful and touching; nor does la
Boëtie’s idea of what is due to this sacred bond betwixt soul
and soul fall far short of the grand perception which filled the
exalted mind of his friend.... Montaigne married at the age of
33, but, as he informs us, not of his own wish or choice. ‘Might
I have had my wish,’ says he, ‘I would not have married Wisdom
herself if she would have had me.’” _Life of Montaigne_, _by Wm.
Hazlitt_.

[Sidenote: _Montaigne on Friendship_]

The following is from Montaigne’s Essay, bk. 1, ch. xxvii:—

“As to marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the _making_
of which is only free, but the continuance in it forced and
compelled, having another dependence than that of our own free
will, and a bargain moreover commonly contracted to other
ends, there happen a thousand intricacies in it to unravel,
enough to break the thread, and to divert the current, of a
lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business
or traffic with anything but itself.... For the rest, what
we commonly call friends and friendships are nothing but an
acquaintance and connection, contracted either by accident or
upon some design, by means of which there happens some little
intercourse betwixt our souls: but, in the friendship I speak
of, they mingle and melt into one piece, with so universal a
mixture that there is left no more sign of the seam by which they
were first conjoined. If any one should importune me to give a
reason why I loved him [Stephen de la Boëtie] I feel it could no
otherwise be expressed than by making answer, ‘Because it was
he; because it was I.’ There is, beyond what I am able to say,
I know not what inexplicable and inevitable power that brought
on this union. We sought one another long before we met, and
from the characters we heard of one another, which wrought more
upon our affections than in reason mere reports should do, and,
as I think, by some secret appointment of heaven; we embraced
each other in our names; and at our first meeting, which was
accidentally at a great city entertainment, we found ourselves
so mutually pleased with one another—we became at once mutually
so endeared—that thenceforward nothing was so near to us as one
another....

“Common friendships will admit of division, one may love the
beauty of this, the good humour of that person, the liberality
of a third, the paternal affection of a fourth, the fraternal
love of a fifth, and so on. But this friendship that possesses
the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute
sovereignty, can admit of no rival.... In good earnest, if I
compare all the rest of my life with the four years I had the
happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, ’tis
nothing but smoke, but an obscure and tedious night. From the day
that I lost him I have only led a sorrowful and languishing life;
and the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of
administering anything of consolation, double my affliction for
his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree that,
methinks, by outliving him I defraud him of his part.”

[Sidenote: _Sidney, Greville and Dyer_]

Philip Sidney, born 1554, was remarkable for his strong personal attachments. Chief among his allies were his school-mate and distant relative, Fulke Greville (born in the same year as himself), and his college friend Edward Dyer (also about his own age). He wrote youthful verses to both of them. The following, according to the fashion of the age, are in the form of an invocation to the pastoral god Pan:—

“Only for my two loves’ sake,
In whose love I pleasure take;
Only two do me delight
With their ever-pleasing sight;
Of all men to thee retaining
Grant me with these two remaining.”

[Sidenote: _Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet_]

An interesting friendship existed also between Sidney and the well-known French Protestant, Hubert Languet—many years his senior—whose conversation and correspondence helped much in the formation of Sidney’s character. These two had shared together the perils of the massacre of S. Bartholomew, and had both escaped from France across the Rhine to Germany, where they lived in close intimacy at Frankfort for a length of time; and after this a warm friendship and steady correspondence—varied by occasional meetings—continued between the two until Languet’s death. Languet had been Professor of Civil Law at Padua, and from 1550 forwards was recognised as one of the leading political agents of the Protestant Powers.

“The elder man immediately discerned in Sidney a youth of no
common quality, and the attachment he conceived for him savoured
of romance. We possess a long series of Latin letters from
Languet to his friend, which breathe the tenderest spirit of
affection, mingled with wise counsel and ever watchful thought
for the young man’s higher interests.... There must have been
something inexplicably attractive in his [Sidney’s] person and
his genius at this time; for the tone of Languet’s correspondence
can only be matched by that of Shakespeare in the sonnets written
for his unknown friend.” _Sir Philip Sidney_, _English Men of
Letters Series_, pp. 27, 28.

Of this relation Fox Bourne says:—

“No love-oppressed youth can write with more earnest passion and
more fond solicitude, or can be troubled with more frequent fears
and more causeless jealousies, than Languet, at this time 55
years old, shows in his letters to Sidney, now 19.”

[Sidenote: _Giordano Bruno_]

It may be appropriate here to introduce two or three sonnets from Michel Angelo (b. 1475). Michel Angelo, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, artist of the Italian Renaissance, was deeply imbued with the Greek spirit. His conception of Love was close along the line of Plato’s. For him the body was the symbol, the expression, the dwelling place of some divine beauty. The body may be loved, but it should only be loved _as_ a symbol, not for itself. Diotima in the _Symposium_ had said that in our mortal loves we first come to recognise (dimly) the divine form of beauty which is Eternal. Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. xxvi. 8) commenting on this, confirms it, saying that nowhere else but in the human form, “the loveliest and most intelligent of bodily creatures,” does the light of divine beauty shine so clear. Michel Angelo carried on the conception, gave it noble expression, and held to it firmly in the midst of a society which was certainly willing enough to love the body (or try to love it) merely for its own sake. And Giordano Bruno (b. 1550) at a later date wrote as follows:—

“All the loves—if they be heroic and not purely animal, or what
is called natural, and slaves to generation as instruments in
some way of nature—have for object the divinity, and tend towards
divine beauty, which first is communicated to, and shines in,
souls, and from them or rather through them is communicated to
bodies; whence it is that well-ordered affection loves the body
or corporeal beauty, insomuch as it is an indication of beauty
of spirit.” _Gli Eroici Furori_ (dial. iii. 13), _trans. L.
Williams_.

[Sidenote: _Michel Angelo’s Sonnets_]

The labours of Von Scheffler and others have now pretty conclusively established that the love-poems of Michel Angelo were for the most part written to male friends—though this fact was disguised by the pious frauds of his nephew, who edited them in the first instance. Following are three of his sonnets, translated by J. A. Symonds. It will be seen that the last line of the first contains a play on the name of his friend:—

_To Tommaso de’ Cavalieri:_

A CHE PIU DEBB’IO.

“Why should I seek to ease intense desire
With still more tears and windy words of grief,
When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
To souls whom love hath robed around with fire.

Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
When all must die? Nay death beyond belief
Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!

Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
Gliding between her gladness and her woe?
If only chains and bands can make me blest,
No marvel if alone and bare I go
An armèd Knight’s captive and slave confessed.”

NON VIDER GLI OCCHI MIEI.

“No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair face I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
This fair false world her wings to earth have bound;
Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.

Nay, things that suffer death quench not the fire
Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.”

VEGGIO NEL TUO BEL VISO.

“From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
That which no mortal tongue can rightly say;
The soul imprisoned in her house of clay,
Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
And tho’ the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford.
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
Nor have we first fruits or remembrances
Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
I rise to God and make death sweet by thee.”

[Sidenote: _Richard Barnfield_]

Richard Barnfield, one of the Elizabethan singers (b. 1574) wrote a long poem, dedicated to “The Ladie Penelope Rich” and entitled “The Affectionate Shepheard,” which he describes as “an imitation of Virgil in the 2nd Eclogue, of Alexis.” I quote the first two stanzas:—

I.

“Scarce had the morning starre hid from the light
Heaven’s crimson Canopie with stars bespangled,
But I began to rue th’ unhappy sight
Of that fair boy that had my heart intangled;
Cursing the Time, the Place, the sense, the sin;
I came, I saw, I view’d, I slippèd in.

II.

If it be sin to love a sweet-fac’d Boy,
(Whose amber locks trust up in golden tramels
Dangle adown his lovely cheekes with joye
When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels)
If it be sin to love a lovely Lad,
Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad.”

[Sidenote: _Barnfield’s Sonnets_]

These stanzas, and the following three sonnets (also by Barnfield) from a series addressed to a youth, give a fair sample of a considerable class of Elizabethan verses, in which classic conceits were mingled with a certain amount of real feeling:—

SONNET IV.

“Two stars there are in one fair firmament
(Of some intitled Ganymede’s sweet face)
Which other stars in brightness do disgrace,
As much as Po in cleanness passeth Trent.
Nor are they common-natur’d stars; for why,
These stars when other shine vaile their pure light,
And when all other vanish out of sight
They add a glory to the world’s great eie:
By these two stars my life is only led,
In them I place my joy, in them my pleasure,
Love’s piercing darts and Nature’s precious treasure,
With their sweet food my fainting soul is fed:
Then when my sunne is absent from my sight
How can it chuse (with me) but be darke night?”

SONNET XVIII.

“Not Megabetes, nor Cleonymus
(Of whom great Plutarch makes such mention,
Praysing their faire with rare invention),
As Ganymede were halfe so beauteous.
They onely pleased the eies of two great kings,
But all the world at my love stands amazed,
Nor one that on his angel’s face hath gazed,
But (ravisht with delight) him presents bring:

Some weaning lambs, and some a suckling kyd,
Some nuts, and fil-beards, others peares and plums;
Another with a milk-white heyfar comes;
As lately Ægon’s man (Damœtas) did;
But neither he nor all the Nymphs beside,
Can win my Ganymede with them t’ abide.”

SONNET XIX.

“Ah no; nor I my selfe: tho’ my pure love
(Sweete Ganymede) to thee hath still been pure,
And ev’n till my last gaspe shall aie endure,
Could ever thy obdurate beuty move:
Then cease, oh goddesse sonne (for sure thou art
A Goddesse sonne that can resist desire),
Cease thy hard heart, and entertain love’s fire
Within thy sacred breast: by Nature’s art.

And as I love thee more than any Creature
(Love thee, because thy beautie is divine,
Love thee, because my selfe, my soule, is thine:
Wholie devoted to thy lovely feature),
Even so of all the vowels, I and U
Are dearest unto me, as doth ensue.”

[Sidenote: _Francis Bacon on Friendship_]

Francis Bacon’s essay _Of friendship_ is known to everybody. Notwithstanding the somewhat cold and pragmatic style and genius of the author, the subject seems to inspire him with a certain enthusiasm; and some good things are said.

“But we may go farther and affirm most truly that it is a mere
and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which
the world is but a wilderness; and even in this scene also of
solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections
is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not
from humanity. A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and
discharge of the fulness of the heart, which passions of all
kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and
suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not
much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the liver,
steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs,
castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a
true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes,
suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to
oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession....

“Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that
want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their
own hearts; but one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will
conclude this first fruit of friendship) which is, that this
communicating of a man’s self to his friend worketh two contrary
effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs;
for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but
he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his griefs to his
friend, but he grieveth the less.” Essay 27, _Of friendship_.

[Sidenote: _Shakespeare’s Sonnets_]

Shakespeare’s sonnets have been much discussed, and surprise and even doubt have been expressed as to their having been addressed (the first 126 of them) to a man friend; but no one who reads them with open mind can well doubt this conclusion; nor be surprised at it, who knows anything of Elizabethan life and literature. “Were it not for the fact,” says F. T. Furnivall, “that many critics really deserving the name of Shakespeare students, and not Shakespeare fools, have held the Sonnets to be merely dramatic, I could not have conceived that poems so intensely and evidently autobiographic and self-revealing, poems so one with the spirit and inner meaning of Shakespeare’s growth and life, could ever have been conceived to be other than what they are—the records of his own loves and fears.”

SONNET XVIII.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Some time too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

SONNET XX.

“A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes, and women’s souls amazeth;
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.”

SONNET CIV.

“To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forest shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons I have seen;
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived;
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.”

SONNET CVIII.

“What’s in the brain that ink may character,
Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?
What’s new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o’er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.

So that eternal love, in love’s fresh case,
Weighs not the dust and injury of age;
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.”

[Sidenote: _Merchant of Venice_]

That Shakespeare, when the drama needed it, could fully and warmly enter into the devotion which one man may feel for another, as well as into the tragedy which such devotion may entail, is shown in his _Merchant of Venice_ by the figure of Antonio, over whom from the first line of the play (“In sooth I know not why I am so sad”) there hangs a shadow of destiny. The following lines are from Act iv. sc. 1:—

_Antonio_: “Commend me to your honorable wife;
Tell her the process of Antonio’s end;
Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death;
And when the tale is told, bid her be judge,
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
Repent not you that you shall lose your friend,
And he repents not that he pays your debt;
For, if the Jew do cut but deep enough,
I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.

_Bassanio_: Antonio, I am married to a wife,
Who is as dear to me as life itself;
But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
Are not with me esteem’d above thy life:
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all,
Here to this devil, to deliver you.”

[Sidenote: _Henry the Fifth_]

We may also, in this connection, quote his _Henry the Fifth_ (act iv. scene 6) for the deaths of the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk at the battle of Agincourt. Exeter, addressing Henry, says:—

“Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep’d,
And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes,
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
He cries aloud,—‘Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk!
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine; then fly abreast,
As in this glorious and well-foughten field
We kept together in our chivalry!’
Upon these words I came and cheered him up:
He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,
And, with a feeble gripe, says, ‘Dear my Lord,
Commend my service to my sovereign.’
So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck
He threw his wounded arm, and kissed his lips;
And so, espoused to death, with blood he seal’d
A testament of noble-ending love.”

[Sidenote: _Sir Thomas Browne_]

Shakespeare, with his generous many-sided nature was, as the Sonnets seem to show, and as we should expect, capable of friendship, passionate friendship, towards both men and women. Perhaps this marks the highest reach of temperament. That there are cases in which devotion to a man-friend altogether replaces the love of the opposite sex is curiously shown by the following extract from Sir Thomas Browne:—

“I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved
my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God.... I love my friend
before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough: some
few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I
have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I
be with him; when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would
be still nearer him.... This noble affection falls not on vulgar
and common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue:
he that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will in a
competent degree affect all.” _Sir Thomas Browne_, _Religio
Medici_, 1642.

[Sidenote: _William Penn_]

William Penn (b. 1644) the founder of Pennsylvania, and of Philadelphia, “The city of brotherly love” was a great believer in friendship. He says in his _Fruits of Solitude_:—

“A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily,
adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and
continues a friend unchangeably.... In short, choose a friend as
thou dost a wife, till death separate you.... Death cannot kill
what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and
live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their
friendship.... This is the comfort of friends, that though they
may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the
best sense, ever present, because immortal.”

[Sidenote: _William of Orange_]

It may be worth while here to insert two passages from Macaulay’s History of England. The first deals with the remarkable intimacy between the Young Prince William of Orange and “a gentleman of his household” named Bentinck. William’s escape from a malignant attack of small-pox

“was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly
to the intrepid and indefatigable, friendship of Bentinck. From
the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine—by
Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down
in it. ‘Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill,’ said
William to Temple with great tenderness, ‘I know not. But this I
know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called
for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.’ Before
the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he had
himself caught the contagion.” (But he recovered.) _History of
England_, ch. vii.

[Sidenote: _Princess Anne and Lady Churchill_]

The second passage describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter of James II. and afterwards Queen Anne) to Lady Churchill—a devotion which had considerable influence on the political situation.

“It is a common observation that differences of taste,
understanding, and disposition are no impediments to friendship,
and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds, each
of which supplies what is wanting in the other. Lady Churchill
was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not
live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married,
and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince
George, a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his
dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable
to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself
up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and
commanding spirit by which his wife was governed.” _History of
England_, ch. vii.

[Sidenote: _Archbishop Potter_]

That the tradition of Greek thought was not quite obliterated in England by the Puritan movement is shown by the writings of Archbishop Potter, who speaks with approval of friendship as followed among the Greeks, “not only in private, but by the public allowance and encouragement of their laws; for they thought there could be no means more effectual to excite their youth to noble undertakings, nor any greater security to their commonwealths, than this generous passion.” He then quotes Athenæus, saying that “free commonwealths and all those states that consulted the advancement of their own honour, seem to have been unanimous in establishing laws to encourage and reward it.” _John Potter_, _Antiquities of Greece_, 1698.

[Sidenote: _Winckelmann’s Letters_]

The 18th century however in England, with its leaning towards formalism, was perhaps not favorable to the understanding of the Greek spirit. At any rate there is not much to show in that direction. In Germany the classical tradition in art was revived by Raphael Mengs, while Winckelmann, the art critic, showed himself one of the best interpreters of the Hellenic world that has ever lived. His letters too, to his personal friends, breathe a spirit of the tenderest and most passionate devotion: “Friendship,” he says, “without love is mere acquaintanceship.” Winckelmann met, in 1762, in Rome, a young nobleman, Reinhold von Berg, to whom he became deeply attached:—

“Almost at first sight there sprang up, on Winckelmann’s side,
an attachment as romantic, emotional and passionate as love.
In a letter to his friend he said, ‘From the first moment an
indescribable attraction towards you, excited by something more
than form and feature, caused me to catch an echo of that harmony
which passes human understanding and which is the music of the
everlasting concord of things.... I was aware of the deep consent
of our spirits, the instant I saw you.’ And in a later letter:
‘No name by which I might call you would be sweet enough or
sufficient for my love; all that I could say would be far too
feeble to give utterance to my heart and soul. Truly friendship
came from heaven and was not created by mere human impulses....
My one friend, I love you more than any living thing, and time
nor chance nor age can ever lessen this love.” _Ludwig Frey_,
_Der Eros und die Kunst_, _Leipzig_, 1898, p. 211.

[Sidenote: _Goethe on Winckelmann_]

Goethe, that universal genius, has some excellent thoughts on this subject; speaking of Winckelmann he says:—

“The affinities of human beings in Antiquity give evidence of
an important distinction between ancient and modern times. The
relation to women, which among us has become so tender and full
of meaning, hardly aspired in those days beyond the limits of
vulgar necessity. The relation of parents to their children seems
in some respects to have been tenderer. More to them than all
other feelings was the friendship between persons of the male
sex (though female friends too, like Chloris and Thyia, were
inseparable, even in Hades). In these cases of union between two
youths, the passionate fulfilment of loving duties, the joys of
inseparableness, the devotion of one for the other, the unavoided
companionship in death, fill us with astonishment; indeed one
feels oneself ashamed when poets, historians, philosophers and
orators overwhelm us with legends, anecdotes, sentiments and
ideas, containing such meaning and feeling. Winckelmann felt
himself _born_ for a friendship of this kind—not only as capable
of it, but in the highest degree in need of it; he became
conscious of his true self only under the form of friendship.”
_Goethe on Winckelmann_.

[Sidenote: _Poem by Goethe_]

Some of Goethe’s poems further illustrate this subject. In the Saki Nameh of his West-Oestlichen Divan he has followed the style of a certain class of Persian love-songs. The following poem is from a Cupbearer to his Master:—

“In the market-place appearing
None thy Poet-fame dispute;
I too gladly hear thy singing,
I too hearken when thou’rt mute.

Yet I love thee, when thou printest
Kisses not to be forgot,
Best of all, for words may perish,
But a kiss lives on in thought.

Rhymes on rhymes fair meaning carry,
Thoughts to think bring deeper joy;
Sing to other folk, but tarry
Silent with thy serving-boy.”

[Sidenote: _August von Platen_]

Count August von Platen (born at Ansbach in Bavaria, 1796) was in respect of style one of the most finished and perfect of German poets. His nature (which was refined and self-controlled) led him from the first to form the most romantic attachments with men. He freely and openly expressed his feelings in his verses; of which a great number are practically love-poems addressed to his friends. They include a series of twenty-six sonnets to one of his friends, Karl Theodor German. Of these Raffalovich says (_Uranisme_, Lyons, 1896, p. 351):—

“These sonnets to Karl Theodor German are among the most
beautiful in German literature. Platen in the sonnet surpasses
all the German poets, including even Goethe. In them perfection
of form, and poignancy or wealth of emotion are illustrated to
perfection. The sentiment is similar to that of the sonnets of
Shakespeare (with their personal note), and the form that of the
Italian or French sonnet.”

[Sidenote: _Platen’s Sonnets_]

Platen, however, was unfortunate in his affairs of the heart, and there is a refrain of suffering in his poems which comes out characteristically in the following sonnet:—

“Since pain is life and life is only pain,
Why he can feel what I have felt before,
Who seeing joy sees it again no more
The instant he attempts his joy to gain;
Who, caught as in a labyrinth unaware,
The outlet from it never more can find;
Whom love seems only for this end to bind—
In order to hand over to Despair;

Who prays each dizzy lightning-flash to end him,
Each star to reel his thread of life away
With all the torments which his heart are rending;
And envies even the dead their pillow of clay,
Where Love no more their foolish brains can steal.
He who knows this, knows me, and what I feel.”

[Sidenote: _On the Death of Pindar_]

One of Platen’s sonnets deals with an incident, referred to in an earlier page, namely, the death of the poet Pindar in the theatre, in the arms of his young friend Theoxenos:—