and in another passage Shakespeare writes of kindly
"Words of so sweet breath compounded,
As made the things more rich";
and it certainly appears to us that if we had reached the lowest depth of destitution we would yet rather have the gracious inability to help that some would express to us than the brusque brutality of some donors. When one would seek fine thoughts admirably presented one naturally turns in the first place to Shakespeare, but Chaucer makes an excellent second. How charming this line from "The Clerke's Tale," "He is gentil that doeth gentil dedis," and this passage again from the "Romant of the Rose":
"Loue of frendshippe also there is,
Which maketh no man dou amis,
Of wil knitte betwixt two,
That wol not breke for wele ne wo."
Tusser, in his quaint directness, says in his "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie":
"The quiet friend all one in worde and dede
Great comfort is, like ready golde at nede
With bralling fooles that wrall for euerie wrong
Firme friendship neuer can continue long.
Oft times a friend is got with easie cost,
Which vsed euill is oft as quickly lost.
Hast thou a friend, as heart may wish at will?
Then vse him so to haue his friendship still.
Wouldst haue a friend, wouldst knowe what friend is best?
Haue God thy friend, who passeth all the rest."
The following sayings of warning and experience have their valuable lessons:—"Trust not new friend nor old enemy"; "Though the sore may be healed yet the scar may remain";[221:A] "Small wounds, if many, may be mortal"; "Vexation is rather taken than given"; "At the gate which suspicion enters friendship departs"; "False friends are worse than open enemies"; "He that ceased to be a friend never was a good one"; "An unbidden guest knoweth not where to sit"; "All are not friends that speak us fair"; "Every one's friend, no one's"; "A friend that you buy will be bought from you."
An old saw bluntly says, "To make an enemy lend money, and ask for it again"; and it is certainly an excellent rule to have as little to do with money matters as one can help with one's friends and relatives. To appeal for help and to be refused, to lend and to see very little chance of repayal, to receive and to be under a heavy sense of obligation, are all destructive of frank and hearty friendship. Chaucer declares that
"His herte is hard that woll not weke
When men of meeknesse him beseeke."
An excellent man, most kindly in all his dealings, told us that he never lent money. The borrower is ordinarily in such straits that he has little chance of ever repaying. If he never intends to pay he is a knave,[222:A] and if he has more honourable thought he is crushed by the burden of the debt. Anyone who came to our excellent friend with a true and touching story was sympathetically received, and his request for the temporary loan of twenty pounds promptly declined! As an alternative he was offered a somewhat smaller sum, the half or, mayhap, the quarter of this, as a free gift, which he never failed to accept joyfully. In one of the Harleian manuscripts, dating from the reign of Edward IV., the writer's experience is a very common one, and his decision sound:
