these Empty persons have to maintaine the Credit of their Sufficiency[1]. Seeming Wise men may make shift to get Opinion[2]: But let no Man choose them for Employment; For certainly, you were better take[3] for Businesse a Man somewhat Absurd[4] then over Formall.
XXVII
OF FRENDSHIP
It had beene hard for him that spake it to have put more Truth and untruth together, in few Words, then in that Speech, Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wilde Beast or a God. For it is most true, that a Naturall and Secret Hatred and Aversation towards[5] Society, in any Man, hath somewhat of the Savage Beast; But it is most Untrue that it should have any Character at all of the Divine Nature; Except it proceed, not out of a Pleasure in Solitude, but out of a Love and desire to sequester[6] a Man's Selfe for a Higher Conversation[7]: Such as is found to have been falsely and fainedly in some of the Heathen; As Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; And truly and really, in divers of the Ancient Hermits and Holy Fathers of the Church. But little doe Men perceive what Solitude is, and how farre it extendeth. For a Crowd is not Company; And Faces are but a Gallery of Pictures; And Talke but a Tinckling Cymball, where there is no Love. The Latine Adage meeteth with it a little[8], Magna Civitas, Magna solitudo[9]; Because in a great Towne, Frends are scattered; So that there is not that Fellowship, for the most Part, which is in lesse Neighbourhoods. But we may
