It is natural that prosperity should attract
friendship, or at least the semblances of friendship. The friends of a
prosperous man derive many obvious advantages from their connections with him.
If their rich friend is hospitable, he invites all who have the privilege of
knowing him to pleasant entertainments in his fine house and beautiful grounds.
At these social gatherings a large number of agreeable and clever persons
assemble, determine to do what they can to repay their host’s hospitality and
secure for themselves future invitations by promoting the general cheerfulness.
The rich man has also many opportunities of conferring, more material benefits
on his friends. When they are poor, he can relieve their necessities by
supplying them with money or helping them to obtain lucrative appointments.
Also from a feeling of vanity most men take a great deal of pleasure in being
seen frequently in the company of the rich and powerful. Thus there are many
motives by which men are urged to cultivate the friendship of the prosperous.
But when the rich man loses his wealth, or the powerful
man is deprived of his power. All the friends, who were attracted only by
considerations of self-interest, fall away. They did not lo the man himself,
but his riches, his hospitality, and the favour he could confer on those who
pleased him. Therefore when, owing to a change of fortune. He loses the power
of conferring benefits, and is himself in need of the help of others; they
leave him and seek more profitable friendships. By their conduct they show that
they were not real friends, but only pretenders to the name.
The true friend is constant in evil as in good
fortune, and remains faithful until death. Thus it is that friendship is tried
by adversity, as gold is tried by fire; and it is one of the consolations of
adversity that it gives us the satisfaction of knowing that those who cultivate
our friendship are not self-seekers. Acting with an eye to their own advantage,
but true friends who love us for ourselves.
History and fiction give us many instances of
friends tried by adversity, some of whom were found wanting in the hour of
trial, while others showed their genuine worth. In Shakespeare’s King Lear,
Kent and the Fool and fine examples of faithful friendship rising superior to
fortune, and in the former character the poet shows how a true friend can in
adversity return good for the evil unjustly inflicted upon him by his powerful
friend, before the hour of misfortune
came upon him.
We have the exact opposite of such a character as
that o Shakespeare’s Kent in the famous Bacon. This great philosopher required
the kindness he had received from his friend and benefactor. the Earl of Essex,
by attacking him in his hour of adversity’. And even went so far as to blacken
his. Memory after his death. It is on account of this base desertion of his
friend that he has been deservedly branded for all time as the “meanest of
mankind.”