ON FRIENDSHIP
(For neither is the goddess unknown to us, who mingles a sweet bitterness with our pain)
is livelier, hotter, and sharper; but ’t is a daring and fickle flame, flickering and changeable, a fever flame, subject to increase and diminution, and touching us only at one corner. In friendship, there is a general and universal warmth, temperate moreover, and equable; a warmth that’s constant and serene, all sweetness and smoothness, with nothing sharp or poignant in it. Furthermore, in love, there is only a mad desire for what flees:—
Come segue la lepre il cacciatore
Al freddo, al caldo, alla montagna, al lito;
Ne pits Pestima poi che presa vede;
E sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede:
(So as the hunter follows on the hare
Through cold and heat, by mountains and the shore;
Nor prizes it when once ’t is made a prize;
And only presses hard on prey that flies)
as soon as it enters on terms of friendship, that
is to say on an agreement of desires, it grows
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