solely to the situation; being a growth resembling ordinary friendship. It is a common mistake to treat the upward regards of child to parent as having a foundation in nature like the downward regards of parent to child. The basis of the reciprocal feeling must be sought in benefits received, in habitual companionship, and in community of interest. There is a beautiful ideal in this case too. The natural prompting of parents leads them to lavish good things on their children; and there is an equally natural prompting to respond with gratitude, and to contract likings for the givers of benefits. The effect equally arises towards benefactors generally; but there is no other class of benefactors or friends that can be put in comparison with our parents. In the case of a persistent good understanding and harmonious relation between parents and children, the reciprocal feeling attains a high pitch of intensity, and is second only to the sexual and parental emotions themselves. Yet the ideal should not be assumed as a matter of course. There are the unavoidable drawbacks of authority and restraint, and the frequent absence of the disposition or the ability of parents to contribute to the children's happi ness. * The same strain of remark applies to the relationship of brothers and sisters: a pure case of habitual intimacy and exchange of good offices, although often marred by rivalries and conflicting interests, as well as unsuitability of temper. It is allowable to hold up an ideal here, also, and to point to cases where it is realized. But when Tennyson endeavours to set forth the intensity of his friendship thus— Dear as the mother to the son, he inverts the order of strength. Cowper's poem on his mother's picture illustrates some of the forms and expressions of filial affection. The feeling is intensified by the sense of his own loss in his mother's early death, while it is also idealized by distance. *The saying of Victor Hugo-- Happy the son of whom we can say he has consoled his mother-is called by Matthew Arnold, 'fustian'; there being nothing in the language to redeem it from maudlin common-place. COWPER ON HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE. Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed "Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!" 177 The early kindness of the mother is made to express his own affection; and the picture appropriately suggests these expressions of maternal tenderness. The poem passes on to trace in vivid and touching lines the grief of the child over the death of his mother:— I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! But was it such ?-It was.-Where thou art gone Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting words shall pass my lips no more! Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. What ardently I wished, I long believed, And, disappointed still, was still deceived. The hearing of the bell, the sight of the hearse, the last view from the nursery window, are natural and touching expressions of the child's sorrow and love; and while the pain is lessened by the reference to the hope of meeting, the love is still further expressed by it. The deceptive expectation of the mother's return is an additional token of continued affection. After a digression, the poet returns to dwell on the kind offices of his mother : Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid; The biscuit or confectionary plum; The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd: All this, and more endearing still than all, Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall, The power of these touches depends on their simplicity and their appropriateness to the expression of maternal kind ness; while they are prevented from appearing commonplace by the halo of sorrow and filial affection. The whole passage, notwithstanding its intensity, leaves the impression of genuine feeling, and is thus saved from turning to sentimental maudlin. In his Rugby Chapel,' Matthew Arnold has composed an elegy on his dead father. The bond of filial affection is brought out by memory of the things lost : This is all general, but dwells on an inspiring reality. The dependence of children comes out more directly in the following: For fifteen years, We who till then in thy shade Lacking the shelter of thee. An appropriate heightening of the appropriate circumstance of fatherly protection. The poem then goes off in the consolatory strain, to the effect that his father may 'somewhere, surely, afar,' be carrying on his powers of beneficent work. Henceforward, the paternal relation is resolved into that of an elder comrade in the stormful mountain-journey of life and thought :— We were weary, and we Fearful, and we in our march Still thou turnedst, and still Beckoned'st the trembler, and still Gavest the weary thy hand. The appeal, here, is to a real situation, but loses by the fewness of those that can respond to it, though the familiar figure of a difficult journey makes it easier to comprehend. GROUNDWORK OF ATTACHMENT BETWEEN FRIENDS. 179 FRIENDSHIP. Attachments, occasionally of great power, spring up between persons of the same sex unrelated by blood. These have given birth to celebrated poetic situations. Intense friendships between those of the same sex have been known in all ages. They occur in celebrated examples, both historical and fictitious. In Greece, the sentiment of men for men was often more powerful than the strongest attachments between the sexes. In the Iliad we have the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus; in the Old Testament, the friendship of David and Jonathan. In both cases the poetic handling is founded on the pathetic termination. The groundwork of the attachment may be found in one or other of the following circumstances : (1) Personal fascination,-sometimes explicable by personal beauty or charm on one side; at other times having no assignable cause. (2) Companionship, with the rendering of mutual sympathy and good offices. This position is at its highest when one is able to supply what the other most needs and desires. The kind of differ ence that excludes rivalry, and renders possible the utmost support from each to the other, is eminently favourable. The liking of men for men, and of women for women, is aided by the more intimate knowledge of each other's peculiarities and situations. Such friendships are a part of our life no less than the family affections; and the highest ideals enter into poetry. Although not a frequent occurrence, the emotions, when roused by a rich aggregate of favouring circumstances, will rise to a degree of intensity equal to the sexual feeling at its utmost pitch, when the characteristics are scarcely distinguishable from the state of love. Although, in such a case, the poet seems justified in raising the one to the level of the other, he has to encounter the reader's reluctance to accept so elevated a standard. Most minds can respond to the feeling of sexual love when powerfully rendered; but not to the same lofty representation of friendship. The friendship of Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad is depicted solely by the furious grief of Achilles when Patro clus is slain. We hear nothing of the personal charms or amiable character of Patroclus; we are not told of the supreme delight of Achilles in his companionship; but, after the fatal issue of the fight with Hector, the grief of Achilles is frantic he tears his hair, heaps dust on his head, curses the hour of his birth. He is compared to a lion raging in the desert with anguish and fury at the loss of his young. He is prompted to immediate and dreadful revenge; he is reconciled to Agamemnon, and thus the death of Patroclus becomes a turning-point in the siege. The celebration of the friendship has a purely warlike interest, and does not come home to the tender feelings of the reader. There is a touch of real friendship in the tribute of Helen to the slain Hector. It is an outpouring of simple gratitude for his forbearance, when others were heaping reproaches upon her for her guilt and the calamities she had brought upon Troy. The Greek friendship between an elder and a younger person is celebrated in many compositions. Theocritus illustrates the sentiment in the tale of Hercules and Hylas. The emotions of love felt by Hercules towards the young man are expressed after the mature art of erotic Greek poetry : "Even the brazen-hearted son of Amphytrion, who withstood the fierceness of the lion, loved a youth, the charming Hylas, and taught him like a father everything by which he might become a good and famous man; nor would he leave the youth at dawn, or noon, or evening, but sought continually to fashion him after his own heart, and to make him a right yokefellow with him in mighty deeds". Here we have the circumstances of entranced companionship and devoted attention, the highest symptoms of love in all ages. Not the least remarkable delineation of this ecstatic sentiment of male friendship is afforded in the two Dialogues of Plato, n amed 'Phædrus' and 'Symposium'. So special and marked is the handling of the passion by the great philosopher, that it has ever since borne his name. The inspiring cause of the passion with Plato is solely the beauty of the youthful form, which is exhibited in the naked exercises of the palæstra, Nothing is said of mental attractiveness, although when the affection is once contracted, its mutual character may be supposed: the youth responding |