because their mutual duty is bound upon them by religion long before any other friendships can be contracted; and therefore having first possession must abide for ever. The duty and love to Parents must not yield to religion, much less to any new friendships: and our Parents are to be preferred before the Corban; and are at no hand to be laid aside but when they engage against God: That is, in the rights which this relation and kind of friendship challenges as its propriety, it is supreme and cannot give place to any other friendships; till the Father gives his right away, and God or the Laws consent to it; as in the case of marriage, emancipation, and adoption to another family: in which cases though love and gratitude are still obliging, yet the societies and duties of relation are very much altered, which in the proper and best friendships can never be at all. But then this also is true: that the social relations of Parents and Children not having in them all the capacities of a proper friendship, cannot challenge all the significations of it: that is, it is no prejudice to the duty I owe there, to pay all the dearnesses which are due here, and to friends there are some things due which the other cannot challenge: I mean, my secret, and my equal conversation, and the pleasures and interests of these, and the consequents of all.

Next to this is the society and dearness of Brothers and Sisters: which usually is very great amongst worthy persons; but if it be considered what it is in it self, it is but very little; there is very often a likeness of natural temper, and there is a social life under the same roof, and they are commanded to love one another, and they are equals in many instances, and are endeared by conversation when it is merry and pleasant, innocent and simple, without art and without design. But Brothers pass not into noble friendships upon the stock of that relation: they have fair dispositions and advantages, and are more easie and ready to ferment into the greatest dearnesses, if all things else be answerable. Nature disposes them well towards it, but in this inquiry if we ask what duty is passed upon a Brother to a Brother even for being so? I answer, that religion and our parents and God and the laws appoint what measures they please; but nature passes but very little, and friendship less; and this we see apparently in those Brothers who live asunder, and contract new relations, and dwell in other societies: There is no love, no friendship without the entercourse of conversation: Friendships indeed may last longer than our abode together, but they were first contracted by it, and established by pleasure and benefit, and unless it be the best kind of friendship (which that of Brothers in that meer capacity is not) it dies when it wants the proper nutriment and support: and to this purpose is that which was spoken by Solomon: [better is a neighbour that is near, than a Brother that is far off :2] that is, although ordinarily, Brothers are first possessed of the entries and fancies of friendship, because they are of the first societies and conversations, yet when that ceases and the Brother goes away, so that he does no advantage, no benefit of entercourse; the neighbour that dwells by me, with whom if I converse at all, either he is my enemy and does, and receives evil; or if we converse in worthinesses and benefit

1 Mark vii. 11; Matthew xv. 5. Corban was a vow associated with a gift or offering to God, whence its name of "a gift." The thing interdicted by the vow was "Corban." Origen, associating the word with the gifts to the treasury of the Temple, called by Josephus Corbanas, says that children sometimes excused themselves from contribution to poor parents on the ground that they had paid money to the treasury from which they might be relieved. Jeremy Taylor means by Corban the vow that might cross duty to parents with plea of a pledge to God.

2 Prov. xxvii. 10.

and pleasant communication, he is better in the laws and measures of friendship than my distant Brother. And it is observable that [Brother] is indeed a word of friendship and charity and of mutual endearment, and so is a title of the bravest society; yet in all the Scripture there are no precepts given of any duty and comport which Brothers, that is, the descendents of the same parents are to have one towards another in that capacity, and it is not because their nearness is such that they need none: For Parents and children are nearer, and yet need tables of duty to be described; and for Brothers, certainly they need it infinitely if there be any peculiar duty; Cain and Abel are the great probation of that, and you know who said,3

Fratrum quoque gratia rara est: It is not often you shall see Two Brothers live in amity.

But the Scripture which often describes the duty of Parents and Children, never describes the duty of Brothers; except where by Brethren are meant all that part of mankind who are tied to us by any vicinity and indearment of religion or country, of profession and family, of contract or society, of love and the noblest friendships; the meaning is, that though fraternity alone be the endearment of some degrees of friendship, without choice and without excellency; yet the relation it self is not friendship, and does not naturally infer it, and that which is procured by it, is but limited and little; and though it may pass into it, as other conversations may, yet the friendship is accidental to it; and enters upon other accounts, as it does between strangers; with this only dif ference that Brotherhood does oftentimes assist the valuation of those excellencies for which we entertain our friendships. Fraternity is the opportunity and preliminary disposition to friendship, and no more. For if my Brother be a fool or a vitious person, the love to which nature and our first conversation disposes me, does not end in friendship, but in pity and fair provisions, and assistances; which is a demonstration that Brotherhood is but the inclination and address to friendship: and though I will love a worthy Brother more than a worthy stranger; if the worthiness be equal, because the relation is something, and being put into the scales against an equal worthiness must needs turn the ballance, as every grain will do in an even weight; yet when the relation is all the worthiness that is pretended, it cannot stand in competition with a friend: for though a friend-Brother is better than a friend-stranger, where the friend is equal, but the Brother is not yet a Brother is not better than a friend; but as Solomons expression is [there is a friend that is better than a Brother,] and to be born of the same parents is so accidental and extrinsick to a mans pleasure or worthiness, or spiritual advantages, that though it be very pleasing and useful that a Brother should be a friend, yet it is no great addition to a friend that he also is a Brother: there is something in it, but not much. But in short, the case is thus. The first beginnings of friendship serve the necessities; but choice and worthiness are the excellencies of its endearment and its bravery; and between a Brother that is no friend, and a friend that is no Brother, there is the same difference as between the disposition, and the act or habit: a Brother if he be worthy is the readiest and the nearest to be a friend, but till he be so, he is but the twilight of the day, and but the blossom to the fairest fruit of Paradise. A Brother does not always make a friend, but a friend ever makes a Brother and more: And although nature sometimes finds the tree, yet friendship engraves the Image; the first relation places him in the Garden, but friendship sets it in the Temple, and

3 Ovid, "Metamorphoses," i. 145.

then only it is venerable and sacred: and so is Brotherhood when it hath the soul of friendship.

So that if it be asked which are most to be valued, Brothers or friends; the answer is very easie; Brotherhood is or may be one of the kinds of friendship, and from thence only hath its value, and therefore if it be compared with a greater friendship must give place: But then it is not to be asked which is to be preferred, a Brother or a Friend, but which is the better friend; Memnon or my Brother? For if my Brother says I ought to love him best, then he ought to love me best;* If he does, then there is a great friendship, and he possibly is to be preferred; if he can be that friend which he pretends to be, that is, if he be equally worthy: but if he says, I must love him only because he is my Brother, whether he loves me or no, he is ridiculous; and it will be a strange relation which hath no correspondent: but suppose it, and add this also, that I am equally his Brother as he is mine, and then he also must love me whether I love him or no; and if he does not, he says, I must love him though he be my Enemy; and so I must; but I must not love my Enemy though he be my Brother more than I love my Friend; and at last if he does love me for being his Brother, I confess that this love deserves love again; but then I consider, that he loves me upon an incompetent reason: for he that loves me only because I am his Brother, loves me for that which is no worthiness, and I must love him as much as that comes to, and for as little reason; unless this be added, that he loves me first: but whether choice and union of souls, and worthiness of manners, and greatness of understanding, and usefulness of conversation, and the benefits of Counsel, and all those endearments which make our lives pleasant and our persons Dear, are not better and greater reasons of love and Dearness than to be born of the same flesh, I think amongst wise persons needs no great inquiry. For fraternity is but a Cognation of bodies, but friendship is an Union of souls which are confederated by more noble ligatures. My Brother, if he be no more, shall have my hand to help him, but unless he be my friend too, he cannot challenge my heart and if his being my friend be the greater nearness, then friend is more than Brother, and I suppose no man doubts but that David lov'd Jonathan far more than he lov'd his Brother Eliab.

One inquiry more there may be in this affair, and that is, whether a friend may be more than a Husband or Wife; To which I answer, that it can never be reasonable or just, prudent or lawful: but the reason is, because Marriage is the Queen of friendships, in which there is a communication of all that can be communicated by friendship: and it being made sacred by vows and love, by bodies and souls, by interest and custome, by religion and by laws, by common Counsels, and common fortunes; it is the principal in the kind of friendship, and the measure of all the rest: And there is no abatement to this consideration, but that there may be some allay in this as in other lesser friendships by the incapacity of the persons: if I have not chosen my friend wisely or fortunately, he cannot be the correlative in the best Union; but then the friend lives as the soul does after death, it is in the state of separation, in which the soul strangely loves the body and longs to be reunited, but the body is an useless trunk and can do no ministeries to the soul; which therefore prays to have the body reformed and restored and made a brave and a fit companion: so must these best friends, when one is useless or unapt to the braveries of

• Ut præstem Pyladen, aliquis mihi præstet Oresten. Hoc non fit verbis, Marce, ut ameris, ama.

Mar. lib. 6, ep. 11. (Jeremy Taylor's Note.)

the princely friendship, they must love ever, and pray ever, and long till the other be perfected and made fit; in this case there wants only the body, but the soul is still a relative and must be so for ever.

A Husband and a Wife are the best friends, but they cannot always signifie all that to each other which their friendships would; as the Sun shines not upon a Valley which sends up a thick vapour to cover his face; and though his beams are eternal, yet the emission is intercepted by the intervening cloud. But however all friendships are but parts of this; a man must leave Father and Mother and cleave to his Wife, that is [the dearest thing in Nature is not comparable to the dearest thing of friendship: ] and I think this is argument sufficient to prove friendship to be the greatest band in the world; Add to this, that other friendships are parts of this, they are marriages too, less indeed than the other, because they cannot, must not be all that endearment which the other is; yet that being the principal, is the measure of the rest, and are all to be honoured by like dignities, and measured by the same rules, and conducted by their portion of the same Laws: But as friendships are Marriages of the soul, and of fortunes and interests, and counsels; s0 they are brotherhoods too; and I often think of the excellencies of friendships in the words of David, who certainly was the best friend in the World [Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum fratres habitare in unum:1] It is good and it is pleasant that Brethren should live like friends, that is, they who are any ways relative, and who are any ways social and confederate should also dwell in Unity and loving society, for that is the meaning of the word [Brother] in Scripture. [It was my Brother Jonathan] said David; such Brothers contracting such friendships are the beauties of society, and the pleasure of life, and the festivity of minds: and whatsoever can be spoken of love, which is God's eldest daughter, can be said of vertuous friendships; and though Carneades made an eloquent Oration at Rome against justice, and yet never saw a Panegyrick of malice, or ever read that any man was witty against friendship. Indeed it is probable that some men, finding themselves by the peculiarities of friendship excluded from the participation of those beauties of society which enamel and adorn the wise and the vertuous, might suppose themselves to have reason to speak the evil words of envy and detraction; I wonder not that all those unhappy souls which shall find heaven gates shut against them, will think they have reason to murmur and blaspheme: The similitude is apt enough, for that is the region of friendship, and love is the light of that glorious Countrey, but so bright that it needs no Sun: Here we have fine and bright rayes of that Celestial flame, and though to all Mankind the light of it is in some measure to be extended, like the treasures of light dwelling in the South, yet a little do illustrate and beautifie the North, yet some live under the line, and the beams of friendship in that position are imminent and perpendicular.

I know but one thing more in which the Communications of friendship can be restrained; and that is, in Friends and Enemies: Amicus amici, amicus meus non est: My friends friend is not always my friend; nor his enemy mine; for if my friend quarrel with a third person with whom he hath had no friendships, upon the account of interest; if that third person be my friend, the nobleness of our friendships despises such a quarrel; and what may be reasonable in him,

1 Psalm cxxxiii. 1. "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

See Note 1, page 136. The story is in Lactantius, "Div. Inst." v. 13, 16; and Quintilian, "Inst. Or." xii. 1,

would be ignoble in me; sometimes it may be otherwise, and friends may marry one anothers loves and hatreds, but it is by chance if it can be just, and therefore because it is not always right it cannot be ever necessary.

In all things else, let friendships be as high and expressive till they become an Union, or that friends like the Molionidæ1 be so the same that the flames of their dead bodies make but one Pyramis; no charity can be reproved; and such friendships which are more than shadows, are nothing else but the rayes of that glorious grace drawn into one centre, and made more active by the Union; and the proper significations are well represented in the old Hieroglyphick, by which the ancients depicted friendship: "In the beauties and strength "of a young man, bare-headed, rudely clothed, to signifie its "activity, and lastingness, readiness of action, and aptnesses “to do service; Upon the fringes of his garment was written "Mors et vita, as signifying that in life and death the friend'ship was the same; on the forehead was written Summer "and Winter, that is, prosperous and adverse accidents and "states of life; the left arm and shoulder was bare and naked down to the heart to which the finger pointed, and there 'was written longè et propè :" by all which we know that friendship does good far and near: in Summer and Winter, in life and death, and knows no difference of state or accident but by the variety of her services: and therefore ask no more to what we can be obliged by friendship; for it is every thing that can be honest and prudent, useful and necessary.

66

64

66

For this is all the allay of this Universality, we may do any thing or suffer any thing, that is wise or necessary, or greatly beneficial to my friend, and that in any thing, in which I am perfect master of my person and fortunes. But I would not in bravery visit my friend when he is sick of the plague, unless I can do him good equal at least to my danger, but I will procure him Physicians and prayers, all the assistances that he can receive, and that he can desire, if they be in my power and when he is dead, I will not run into his grave and be stifled with his earth; but I will mourn for him, and perform his will, and take care of his relatives, and do for him as if he were alive, and I think that is the meaning of that hard saying of a Greek Poet.?

"Ανθρωπ' ἀλλήλοισιν ἀπόπροθεν ὦμεν ἑταῖροι
Πλὴν τούτου παντός χρήματος ἐστὶ κόμος.

To me though distant let thy friendship fly,
Though men be mortal, friendship must not die,
Of all things else there's great satiety.

Of such immortal abstracted pure friendships indeed there is no great plenty; and to see brothers hate each other, is not so rare as to see them love at this rate. The dead and the absent have but few friends, say the Spaniards; but they who are the same to their friend dwóжpolev, when he is in another Countrey, or in another World, these are they who are fit to preserve the sacred fire for eternal sacrifices, and to perpetuate the memory of those exemplar friendships of the best men which have filled the World with history and wonder: for in no other sense but this, can it be true; that friendships are pure loves, regarding to do good more than to receive it : He that is a friend after death, hopes not for a recompense from his friend, and makes no bargain either for fame or love; but is rewarded with the conscience and satisfaction of doing bravely but then this is demonstration that they choose Friends best who take persons so worthy that can and will do so: This is the profit and usefulness of friendship; and he that contracts such a noble Union, must take care that his friend be such who can and will; but hopes that himself

:

1 The Molionida, Cteatus and Eurytus, twin sons of Molione by Neptune, slain by Hercules. The reference is from Plutarch on "Fraternal Friendship." * Theognis, 1. 595.

shall be first used, and put to act it: I will not have such a friendship that is good for nothing, but I hope that I shall be on the giving and assisting part; and yet if both the friends be so noble, and hope and strive to do the benefit, I cannot well say which ought to yield; and whether that friendship were braver that could be content to be unprosperous so his friend might have the glory of assisting him; or that which desires to give assistances in the greatest measures of friendship: but he that chooses a worthy friend that himself in the days of sorrow and need might receive the advantage, hath no excuse, no pardon, unless himself be as certain to do assistances when evil fortune shall require them. The sum of this answer to this enquiry I give you in a pair of Greek verses.3

ἴσον θεῷ σου τοὺς φίλους τιμᾷν θέλε.

ἐν τοῖς κακοῖς δὲ τους φίλους ευεργετεί, Friends are to friends as lesser Gods, while they Honour and service to each other pay.

But when a dark cloud comes, grudge not to lend Thy head, thy heart, thy fortune to thy friend.

:

3. The last inquiry is, how friendships are to be conducted? That is, what are the duties in presence and in absence; whether the friend may not desire to enjoy his friend as well as his friendship? The answer to which in a great measure depends upon what I have said already: and if friendship be a charity in society, and is not for contemplation and noise, but for material comforts and noble treatments and usages, this is no peradventure, but that if I buy land, I may eat the fruits, and if I take a house I may dwell in it; and if I love a worthy person, I may please my self in his society and in this there is no exception, unless the friendship be between persons of a different sex: for then not only the interest of their religion, and the care of their honour, but the worthiness of their friendship requires that their entercourse be prudent and free from suspicion and reproach: and if a friend is obliged to bear a calamity, so he secure the honour of his friend, it will concern him to conduct his entercourse in the lines of a vertuous prudence, so that he shall rather lose much of his own comfort, than she any thing of her honour; and in this case the noises of people are so to be regarded, that next to innocence they are the principal. But when by caution and prudence and severe conduct, a friend hath done all that he or she can to secure fame and honourable reports; after this, their noises are to be despised; they must not fright us from our friendship, nor from her fairest entercourses; I may lawfully pluck the clusters from my own Vine, though he that walks by, calls me thief.

But by the way (Madam) you may see how much I differ from the morosity of those Cynicks who would not admit your sex into the communities of a noble friendship. I believe some Wives have been the best friends in the World; and few stories can out do the nobleness and piety of that Lady that suck'd the poysonous, purulent matter from the wound of our brave Prince in the holy Land, when an Assasine had pierc'd him with a venom'd arrow; and if it be told that Women cannot retain counsel, and therefore can be no brave friends; I can best confute them by the story of Porcia, who being fearful of the weakness of her sex, stabb'd her self into the thigh to try how she could bear pain; and finding herself constant enough to that sufferance, gently chid her Brutus for not daring to trust her, since now she perceived that no torment could wrest that secret from her, which she hoped might be intrusted to her. If there were not more things to be said for your satisfaction, I could have made it disputable whether have been more illustrious in their friendships Men or Women? I cannot say that Women

3 Anon, from Grotius, "Excerpt, ex Trag. et Com.," p. 945.

6. Never be a Judge between thy friends in any matter where both set their hearts upon the victory: If strangers or enemies be litigants, what ever side thou favourest, thou gettest a friend, but when friends are the parties thou losest

one.

7. Never comport thy self so, as that thy friend can be afraid of thee: for then the state of the relation alters when a new and troublesome passion supervenes. ODERUNT quos METUUNT Perfect love casteth out fear, and no man is friend to a Tyrant; but that friendship is Tyranny where the love is changed into fear, equality into empire, society into obedience; for then all my kindness to him also will be no better than flattery.

8. When you admonish your friend, let it be without bitterness; when you chide him, let it be without reproach; when you praise him, let it be with worthy purposes and for just causes, and in friendly measures; too much of that is flattery, too little is envy; if you do it justly, you teach him true measures: but when others praise him, rejoyce, though they praise not thee, and remember that if thou esteemest his praise to be thy disparagement, thou art envious, but neither just nor kind.

9. When all things else are equal prefer an old friend before a new. If thou meanest to spend thy friend, and make a gain of him till he be weary, thou wilt esteem him as a beast of burden, the worse for his age; But if thou esteemest him by noble measures, he will be better to thee by thy being used to him, by trial and experience, by reciprocation of indearments, and an habitual worthiness. An old friend is like old wine, which when a man hath drunk, he doth not desire new, because he saith the old is better. But every old friend was new once; and if he be worthy keep the new one till he become old.

10. After all this, treat thy friend nobly, love to be with him, do to him all the worthinesses of love and fair endearment, according to thy capacity and his; Bear with his infirmities till they approach towards being criminal; but never dissemble with him, never despise him, never leave him. 2 Give him gifts and upbraid him not, 3 and refuse not his kindnesses, and be sure never to despise the smallness or the impropriety of them. Confirmatur amor beneficio accepto: A gift (saith Solomon) fasteneth friendships; for as an eye that dwells long upon a star must be refreshed with lesser beauties and strengthened with greens and looking-glasses, lest the sight become amazed with too great a splendor; so must the love of friends sometimes be refreshed with material and low Caresses; lest by striving to be too divine it become less humane: It must be allowed its share of both : It is humane in giving pardon and fair construction, and openness and ingenuity, and keeping secrets; it hath something that is divine, because it is beneficent; but much because it is eternal.

1 They will Hate those whom they Fear. Words of an unknown author quoted by Seneca, "De Ira" ("Oderint dum metuant"), and more than once by Cicero.

2 Extra fortunam est quicquid donatur amicis;
Quas dederis solas semper habebis opes.-Mart., lib. 5, ep. 43.
Et tamen hoc vitium, sed non leve, sit licet unum,
Quod colit ingratas pauper amicitias.

Quis largitur opes veteri fidoque sodali ?-Ep. 19.

3 Non belle quædam faciunt duo: sufficit unus Huic operi: si vis ut loquar, ipse tace. Crede mihi, quamvis ingentia, Posthume, dones, Authoris pereunt garrulitate sui.-Ep 53. (These references to Martial are Jeremy Taylor's notes.)

CHAPTER VI.

UNDER THE LATER STUARTS.— -A.D. 1660 TO A.D. 1688.

Initial from the Earl of Orrery's "Parthenissa."

HE love of Nature in the reign of Charles II. chiefly took the form of study of her secrets. The impulse given to scientific inquiry by the writings of Francis Bacon, is to be felt in the speculations of ingenious men who clubbed their wits together, in Oxford, or in London at Gresham College, and escaped from the storms of the Civil War and Commonwealth, into a harbour of quiet thought where their chief care was to secure what Bacon called the merchandise of light. When Robert Boyle settled at Oxford in 1654, for love of the companionship of men of science there, Dr. John Wilkins was warden of Wadham College. Dr. Wilkins, son of Walter Wilkins, citizen and goldsmith, was then forty years old. He had been of the Parliament's side in the Civil War, and in 1656 he married Oliver Cromwell's sister Robina, widow of Peter French, formerly Canon of Christchurch. In 1659, Richard Cromwell made Dr. Wilkins Master of Trinity, but he was ejected at the Restoration, and then came to London, where he was at first made preacher to the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn and minister of St. Laurence Jewry. Dr. Wilkins was one of the most ingenious men of his time. He was well skilled in mathematics, and had endeavoured to apply his knowledge to the well-being of society by stimulating men's minds with suggestions of possible mechanical inventions, and of future conquests of nature. He had written in his youth one book to show that the earth is a planet, another (in 1638)

to

argue that the moon is an inhabited world, and to suggest that intercourse between inhabitants of the earth and the moon is among the future possibilities of life. Into speculations of this kind he entered with manifest enjoyment, pouring out good and bad or half humorous suggestions and arguments together. For instance, when he had finished his argument upon the conceivable possibility of a man's getting to the moon, he added this:

Having thus finished this discourse, I chanced upon a late fancy to this purpose, under the feigned name of Domingo Gonsales, written by a late reverend and learned bishop: in which (besides sundry particulars wherein this latter chapter did unwittingly agree with it) there is delivered a very pleasant and well-contrived fancy concerning a voyage to

this other world.

He supposeth that there is a natural and usual passage for many creatures betwixt our earth and this planet. Thus he says, those great multitudes of locusts, wherewith divers countries have been destroyed, do proceed from thence. And if we peruse the authors who treat of them, we shall find