In the next place no friend will be a party to your actions [Sidenote: F] unless he has first been a party to planning them. He must first have looked into the business and helped to put it on a right and proper footing. Not so the flatterer. Even if you do grant him a share in weighing the matter and expressing an opinion about it, he is not only so anxious to gratify you with his complaisance, but is in such dread of leading you to suspect him of unreadiness to face the action, that he leaves you to take your course, or only lends spurs to your desire. It is not easy to find a rich man or a grandee who is ready to say: [Sidenote: 63] _Give me a man, a beggar—nay, no matter, Lower than beggar, if he means me well— To put fear by, and speak his heart to me._ Like the tragedian, he must have the support of a chorus of friends who keep his tune, or of an audience who give applause. Merope in the tragedy advises: _Get thee for friends such men as, when they speak, Yield not; but when a man will for thy pleasure Make himself knave, lock thou thy door against him._ [Sidenote: B] But such persons do the opposite. If, ‘when you speak’ you ‘yield not’, but oppose them for their good, they abominate you; but if ‘for their pleasure’ you are a ‘knave’ and a servile charlatan, they receive you not merely inside their locked doors but inside their most secret passions and concerns. The simple kind of flatterer, it is true, does not aim at so much. What he asks in such important matters is not to be your adviser, but your minister and servant. But the more crafty person will stand still—puzzling over the question with puckered brow and appropriate changes of countenance—but will say nothing. And if you give your own idea, he will exclaim, ‘How strange! You just managed to anticipate me. I was about to make exactly your suggestion.’