Having got thus far, to be sure he is not wanting to his good Fortune, but drives on to an Intimacy, or what they are pleas’d, now a-days, though very unjustly, to call a Friendship; all is safe under this sacred Character, which sets them above little Aims and mean Designs. A Character that must be conducted with the nicest Honour, allows the greatest Trusts, leads to the highest Improvements, is attended with the purest Pleasures and most rational Satisfaction. And what if the malicious World, envious of his Happiness, should take Offence at it, since he has taken all due Precautions, such unjust and ill-natur’d Censures are not to be regarded; for his Part the Distance that is between them checks all aspiring Desires, but her Conversation is what he must not, cannot want: Life is insipid, and not to be endur’d without it; and he is too much the Lady’s Friend, has too just a Value for her, to entertain a Thought to her Disadvantage. Now if once it is come to this, _GOD_ help the poor Woman! for not much Service can be done her by any of her Friends on Earth. That Pretender, to be sure, will be the Darling, he will worm out every other Person, though ever so kind and disinterested. For tho’ true Friends will endeavour to please in order to serve, their Complaisance never goes so far as to prove injurious; the beloved Fault is what they chiefly strike at, and this the Flatterer always sooths; so that at last he becomes the most acceptable Company, and they who are conscious of their own Integrity, are not apt to bear such an unjust Distinction, nor is it by this Time to any Purpose to remonstrate the Danger of such an Intimacy. When a Man, and for certain much more when a Woman, is fallen into this Toil, that is, when either have been so unwary and indiscreet as to let another find out by what Artifices he may manage their Self-love, and draw it over to his Party, ’tis too late for anyone who is really their Friend, to break the Snare and disabuse them.