private person; of a master, and of a servant: I con you thank (quoth Socrates again, replying unto him), you have done it very well: I asked you but of one virtue, and you have raised and let fly a whole swarm (as it were) of virtues, guessing and collecting not amiss by such an answer that this deep clerk, who had named thus many virtues, knew not so much as one. And might not a man seem to scorn and mock us well enough, who having not yet gotten one friendship and amity certain, are afraid (forsooth) lest ere we be aware, we fall into a multitude and plurality of friends: for this were even as much as if one that is maimed and stark blind should fear to become either Briareus the giant, with an hundred arms and hands, or Argus, who had eyes all over his body. And yet we praise and commend excessively and beyond all measure the young man in Menander, when he saith:
Of all the goods which I do hold,
To think each one (I would be bold)
Right wonderful, if I might find
The shadow only of a friend.
But certainly this is one cause among many others, and the same not the least, that we cannot be possessed of any one assured amity, because we covet to have so many much like unto these common strumpets and harlots, who for that they prostitute their bodies so often and to so many men, cannot make any reckoning to hold and retain any one paramour or lover fast and sure unto them; for that the first comers, seeing themselves neglected and cast off by the entertainment of new, retire and fall away from them, and seek elsewhere; or rather, much after the manner of that foster-child[1] of Lady Hypsipyle:
Who being set in meadow green
With pleasant flowers all fair beseen,
One after other cropp'd them still,
Hunting this game with right goodwill:
For why, his heart took great content
In their gay hue and sweety scent:
So little wit and small discretion
The infant had, and no repletion;[2]
even so every one of us for the desire of novelty, and upon a satiety and fulness of that which is present and in hand, suffereth himself ever to be carried away with a new-come friend that is
