From the essay on “Friendship.”

WE are not here to bring the love we bear to women, though it be an act of our own choice, into comparison; nor rank it with the others; the fire of which I confess—

	Neque enim est Dea nescia nostri
	Quæ dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.
	—Catullus.

	“Nor is my goddess ign’rant what I am,
	Who pleasing sorrows mixes with my flame.”

is more active, more eager, and more sharp; but withal, ’tis more precipitous, fickle, moving, and inconstant: a fever subject to intermission, and paroxysms, that has seiz’d but on one part, one corner of the building; whereas in friendship, ’tis a general and universal fire, but temperate, and equal, a constant establish’d heat, all easie, and smooth, without poignancy or roughness. Moreover, in love, ’tis no other than frantick desire, to that which flies from us.

	“Com segue la lepre il cacciatore
	Al fredo, al caldo, alla montagna, al litto:
	Ne piu l’estima poi, che presa vede,
	Et sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede.”

	“Like hunters, that the flying hare pursue
	O’er hill, and dale, through heat, and morning dew,
	Which being ta’en, the quarry they despise,
	Being only pleas’d in following that which flies.”

    So soon as ever they enter into terms of friendship, that is to say, into a concurrence of desires, it vanishes, and is gone, fruition destroys it. Friendship, on the contrary, is enjoy’d proportionably, as it is desir’d, and only grows up, is nourish’d and improves by enjoyment, as being of it self spiritual, and the soul growing still more perfect by practice. Under, and subsellious to this perfect friendship, I cannot deny but that the other vain affections, have, in my younger years, found some place in my thoughts that I may say nothing of him, who him self confesses but too much in his verses; so that I had both these passions, but always so, that I could myself well enough distinguish them, and never in any degree of comparison with one another. The first maintaining its flight in so lofty and so brave a place, as with disdain to look down, and see the other flying at a far humbler pitch below. As concerning marriage, besides, that it is a covenant, the entrance into which, is only free, but the continuance in it, forc’d and compell’d, having another dependance than that of our own free will, and a bargain commonly contracted to other ends, there almost always happens a thousand intricacies in it, to unravel enough to break the thread, and to divert the current of a lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business or traffick with any but it self.