Truth ... Meaning uncertain.
Vice ... Any fault in horses, dogs, and servants.
Wicked ... Irresistibly agreeable.
World ... The circle of fashionable people when in town.
Recipe for Establishing True Friendship.
In Pliny’s Natural History, we find a curious recipe for making the Roman Friendship, a cordial that was universally esteemed in those days, and very few families of any credit were without it. In the same place (he says) they were indebted to the Greeks for this recipe, who had it in the greatest perfection. The old Roman Friendship was a composition of several ingredients, of which the principal were:
Union of hearts, (a fine flower, that grew in several parts of the empire,) sincerity, frankness, disinterestedness, pity, and tenderness, (of each an equal quantity.) These were all mixed with two rich oils, which they called perpetual kind wishes, and serenity of temper; and the whole was strongly perfumed with the desire of pleasing, which gave it a most grateful smell, and was a sure restorative in all sorts of vapours. This cordial was of so durable a nature, that no length of time could waste it: and what is very remarkable, (says our author,) it increased in weight and value the longer you kept it.—The moderns have most grossly adulterated this fine cordial; some of the ingredients indeed are not to be found, but what they impose upon you as friendship, is as follows:
Outward professions, (a common weed that grows every where,) instead of the flower of union; the desire of being pleased; a large quantity of self-interest, conveniency, and reservedness (many handfuls;) a little pity and tenderness. But some pretend to make it up with these two last, and the common oil of inconstancy (which, like our linseed oil, is cold-drawn every hour) serves to mix them together. Most of these ingredients being of a perishable nature, it will not keep, and it shews itself to be counterfeit, by lessening continually in weight and value.
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