e are inimical to
it. Finally, all that can be said in favour of the Academy is, that it
was a love which ended in friendship, which well enough agrees with the
Stoical definition of love:

"Amorem conatum esse amicitiae faciendae
ex pulchritudinis specie."

["Love is a desire of contracting friendship arising from the beauty
of the object."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., vi. 34.]

I return to my own more just and true description:

"Omnino amicitiae, corroboratis jam confirmatisque,
et ingeniis, et aetatibus, judicandae sunt."

["Those are only to be reputed friendships that are fortified and
confirmed by judgement and the length of time."
--Cicero, De Amicit., c. 20.]

For the rest, what we commonly call friends and friendships, are nothing
but acquaintance and familiarities, either occasionally contracted, or
upon some design, by means of which there happens some little intercourse
betwixt our souls. But in the friendship I speak of, they mix and work
themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture, that there is no
more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined. If a man
should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no
otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because
it was I. There is, beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what
inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union. We sought one
another long before we met, and by the characters we heard of one
another, which wrought upon our affections more than, in reason, mere
reports should do; I think 'twas by some secret appointment of heaven.
We embraced in our names; and at our first meeting, which was
accidentally at a great city entertainment, we found ourselves so
mutually taken with one another, so acquainted, and so endeared betwixt
ourselves, that from thenceforward nothing was so near to us as one
another. He wrote an excellent Latin satire, since printed, wherein he
excuses the precipitation of our intelligence, so suddenly come to
perfection, saying, that destined to have so short a continuance, as
begun so late (for we were both full-grown men, and he some years the
older), there was no time to lose, nor were we tied to conform to the
example of those slow and regular friendships, that require so many
precautions of long preliminary conversation: This has no other idea than
that of itself, and can