efore it is said that by the nail there always appears some
speck and tumor; and therefore it is rational that the other parts
should remain sound, when all the corruption gathers about that.

BOOK IV.

Polybius, my Sossius Senecio, advised Scipio Africanus never to
return from the Forum, where he was conversant about the affairs of
the city, before he had gained one new friend. Where I suppose the
word friend is not to be taken too nicely, to signify a lasting and
unchangeable acquaintance; but, as it vulgarly means, a well-wisher, and
as Dicearchus takes it, when he says that we should endeavor to make
all men well-wishers, but only good men friends. For friendship is to
be acquired by time and virtue; but good-will is produced by a familiar
intercourse, or by mirth and trifling amongst civil and genteel
men, especially if opportunity assists their natural inclinations to
good-nature. But consider whether this advice may not be accommodated
to an entertainment as well as the Forum; so that we should not break up
the meeting before we had gained one of the company to be a well-wisher
and a friend. Other occasions draw men into the Forum, but men of sense
come to an entertainment as well to get new friends as to make their old
ones merry; indeed, to carry away anything else is sordid and uncivil,
but to depart with one friend more than we had is pleasing and
commendable. And so, on the contrary, he that doth not aim at this
renders the meeting useless and unpleasant to himself, and departs at
last, having been a partaker of an entertainment with his belly but not
with his mind. For he that makes one at a feast doth not come only to
enjoy the meat and drink, but likewise the discourse, mirth, and genteel
humor which ends at last in friendship and good-will. The wrestlers,
that they may hold fast and lock better, use dust; and so wine mixed
with discourse is of extraordinary use to make us hold fast of, and
fasten upon, a friend. For wine tempered with discourse carries gentle
and kind affections out of the body into the mind; otherwise, it is
scattered through the limbs, and serves only to swell and disturb. Thus
as a marble, by cooling red hot iron, takes away its softness and makes
it hard, fit to be wrought and receive impression; thus discourse at
an entertainment doth not permit the men that are engaged to become
altogether liquid by the wine, but confines and makes their jocund and
obliging tempers very fit