Friendship, less vigorous than self-love, is, for that reason, less apt to communicate itself to children or other relations. Instances however are not wanting, of such communicated passion arising from friendship when it is strong. Friendship may go higher in the matrimonial state than in any other condition: and Otway, in _Venice preserv’d_, shows a fine taste in taking advantage of that circumstance. In the scene where Belvidera sues to her father for pardon, she is represented as pleading her mother’s merit, and the resemblance she bore to her mother. _Priuli._ My daughter! _Belvidera._ Yes, your daughter, by a mother Virtuous and noble, faithful to your honour, Obedient to your will, kind to your wishes, Dear to your arms. By all the joys she gave you, When in her blooming years she was your treasure, Look kindly on me; in my face behold The lineaments of hers y’ have kiss’d so often, Pleading the cause of your poor cast-off child. And again, _Belvidera._ Lay me, I beg you, lay me By the dear ashes of my tender mother. She would have pitied me, had fate yet spar’d her. _Act 5. sc. 1._ This explains why any meritorious action or any illustrious qualification in my son or my friend, is apt to make me overvalue myself. If I value my friend’s wife or his son upon account of their connection with him, it is still more natural that I should value myself upon account of my own connection with him. Friendship, or any other social affection, may produce opposite effects. Pity, by interesting us strongly for the person in distress, must of consequence inflame our resentment against the author of the distress. For, in general, the affection we have for any man, generates in us good-will to his friends and ill-will to his enemies. Shakespear shows great art in the funeral oration pronounced by Antony over the body of Cæsar. He first endeavours to excite grief in the hearers, by dwelling upon the deplorable loss of so great a man. This passion raised to a pitch, interesting them strongly in Cæsar’s fate, could not fail to produce a lively sense of the treachery and cruelty of the conspirators; an infallible method to inflame the resentment of the multitude beyond all bounds.