If it is hard to catch him in connexion with such affections as these—their strength being so overpowering as to baffle the reason—he will give you a better opening in smaller matters; for he will be just the same with them. If you are apprehensive |62| of a headache or a surfeit, and are doubtful as to bathing or taking food, a friend will try to check you and will urge you to be cautious, whereas the toady will drag you to the bath, or ask them to put some novel dish on the table, begging you not ‘to keep so tight a hand upon your body as to be cruel to it’. If he sees you inclined to shirk a journey, a voyage, or a piece of work, he will say that there is no immediate hurry, and that it will do just as well if you postpone the matter or send someone else. If, after promising a friend to make him a loan or a present of a sum of money, you repent, but have your scruples, the toady |B| throws his weight into the less honourable scale; he corroborates ‘the argument of the purse’, and makes short work of your sense of shame by urging you to be economical, ‘seeing that you have so many expenses and so many persons to support.’
If, therefore, we are able to perceive our own covetousness, shamelessness, or cowardice, we shall also be able to see when a man is a toady. Such he is when he is always playing the advocate to those passions and ‘speaking his mind’ when we deviate from them.
Enough having been said upon this topic, we may next proceed to the question of the practical services rendered. In this |C| respect the flatterer makes his distinction from the friend a very obscure and perplexing matter; he always appears so prompt and indefatigable in his zeal. While a friend’s way, like the ‘speech of truth’ as described by Euripides, is ‘single’, open, and unaffected, that of the flatterer
Sick in itself, needs antidotes full shrewd
—uncommonly so, indeed, and plenty of them. When you meet a friend, he sometimes passes on without uttering or receiving a word, and with no more than a glance or a smile; he simply manifests by his expression, and gathers from yours, the kindly |D| understanding within. But the toady is on the run to overtake you, greets you from a long way off, and, if you catch sight of him and speak to him first, he excuses himself over and over again, calling his witnesses and taking his oath. So in the matter of actions. A friend will neglect many a trifle; he is no precisian and makes no fuss; he does not insist upon serving you at every turn. But the other is persistent, unremitting, unwearied; he leaves no opportunity or room for any one else to serve you; he is eager to receive your orders, and, if he does not get them, he is piqued, nay, absolutely heart-broken with disappointment. A sensible man, then, may take these as some indications that a friendship is not sincere and single-minded, |E| but is like a harlot who forces her embraces upon you before they are asked for.
The first place, however, in which to look for the difference is in promises. It has already been well said by previous writers that a friend will put his promise in the form familiar in
If I have power to achieve it, and if ’tis a thing for achievement,
while a time-server will put it in this:
Voice me the thought in thy mind.
The comedians present us with such characters: