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for a long time been in the hands of men of understanding, not without very great and well-deserved commendation, for it is as noble and perfect as possible. Yet it is far from being the best that he could do; and if, in his maturer years, when I knew him, he had conceived such a plan as mine, of writing down his thoughts, we should now see many things of rare excellence which would bring us very near to the fame of antiquity; for especially in this portion of the gifts of Nature, I know no man who can be compared to him.” But nothing of his has survived except this discourse — and that only by chance, and I believe that he never saw it after it left his hands — and some notes upon that edict of January,[1] famous in our civil wars, which also will perchance find their place elsewhere.
This is all that I have been able to recover of his (c) (I whom, when death was at hand, he made, in his will, heir of his library and his papers, as a most loving remembrance of him), (a) except the little volume of his works which I have had published;[2] and I am under special obligation to this treatise because it was the means of our first acquaintance. For it was shown to me a long while before I saw him, and gave me my first knowledge of his name, thus opening the way to the friendship between us, which we cherished as long as God willed, so absolute and so perfect that surely the like has seldom been read of, and among the men of our day[3] no trace is seen of any such. So many accidental circumstances must concur to build it up, that it is much if fortune attains that end once in three centuries. There is nothing to which nature seems more to have shown us the way than to companionship;[4] (c) and Aristotle says that good legislators have given more thought to friendship than to justice.[5] (a) Now the highest point of its perfection is this. (c) For in general all those companionships which pleasure or profit, or public or private needs, beget and nourish, are in so far less beautiful and noble, and in so far less true friendships, as they{{smallrefs}