'Your idea of friendship apparently does not include intellectual intimacy, as mine does, but consists of mutual esteem and spiritual encouragement. This is the thought represented, on antique gems and bas-reliefs, of the meeting between God and Goddess, I find; for they rather offer one another the full flower of being, than grow together. As in the figures before me, Jupiter, king of Gods and men, meets Juno, the sister and queen, not as a chivalric suppliant, but as a stately claimant; and she, crowned, pure, majestic, holds the veil aside to reveal herself to her august spouse.'
* * * * *
'How variously friendship is represented in literature! Sometimes the two friends kindle beacons from afar to apprize one another that they are constant, vigilant, and each content in his several home. Sometimes, two pilgrims, they go different routes in service of the same saint, and remember one another as they give alms, learn wisdom, or pray in shrines along the road. Sometimes, two knights, they bid farewell with mailed hand of truth and honor all unstained, as they ride forth on their chosen path to test the spirit of high emprise, and free the world from wrong,—to meet again for unexpected succor in the hour of peril, or in joyful surprise to share a frugal banquet on the plat of greensward opening from forest glades. Sometimes, proprietors of two neighboring estates, they have interviews in the evening to communicate their experiments and plans, or to study together the stars from an observatory; if either is engaged he simply declares it; they share enjoyments cordially; they exchange praise or blame frankly; in citizen-like good-fellowship they impart their gains.
'All these views of friendship are noble and beautiful, yet they are not enough for our manifold nature. Friends should be our incentives to Right, yet not only our guiding, but our prophetic stars. To love by sight is much, to love by faith is more; together they make up the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. Friends should love not merely for the absolute worth of each to the other, but on account of a mutual fitness of character. They are not merely one another's priests or gods, but ministering angels, exercising in their part the same function as the Great Soul does in the whole,—of seeing the perfect through the imperfect, nay, creating it there. Why am I to love my friend the less for any obstruction in his life? Is not that the very time for me to love most tenderly, when I must see his life in despite of seeming? When he shows it to me I can only admire; I do not give myself, I am taken captive.
'But how shall I express my meaning? Perhaps I can do so from the tales of chivalry, where I find what corresponds far more thoroughly with my nature, than in these stoical statements. The friend of Amadis expects to hear prodigies of valor of the absent Preux, but if he be mutilated in one of his first battles, shall he be mistrusted by the brother of his soul, more than if he had been tested in a hundred? If Britomart finds Artegall bound in the enchanter's spell, can she doubt therefore him whom she has seen in the magic glass? A Britomart does battle in his cause, and frees him from the evil power, while a dame of less nobleness might sit and watch the enchanted sleep, weeping night and day, or spur on her white palfrey to find some one more helpful than herself. These friends in chivalry are always faithful through the dark hours to the bright. The Douglas motto, "tender and true," seems to me most worthy of the strongest breast. To borrow again from Spencer, I am entirely satisfied with the fate of the three brothers. I could not die while there was yet life in my brother's breast. I would return from the shades and nerve him with twofold life for the fight. I could do it, for our hearts beat with one blood. Do you not see the truth and happiness of this waiting tenderness? The verse—
"Have I a lover
Who is noble and free,
I would he were nobler
Than to love me,"—
does not come home to my heart, though this does:—
"I could not love thee, sweet, so much,
Loved I not honor more."
* * * 'October 10th, 1840.—I felt singular pleasure in seeing you quote Hood's lines on "Melancholy." I thought nobody knew and loved his serious poems except myself, and two or three others, to whom I imparted them.[A] Do you like, also, the ode to Autumn, and—
"Sigh on, sad heart, for love's eclipse"?