Gratitude and Friendship

In the second book of Thomas Elyot’s mirror of magistrates, his 1531 The boke named the gouvernour , Elyot treats the vice of ingratitude, which he describes as “the most damnable vice and most against justice.” Elyot places gratitude and ingratitude in the context of friendship, which is in turn concerned with the governor’s selection of friends and favorites and the governor’s need to be cautious about flatterers and false friends.

Identifying ingratitude with “unkindness,” Elyot provides a series of examples to define what this vice entails: “He is unkind which denies to have received any benefit that indeed he has received; he is unkind that dissimules; he is unkind that recompenses not.” But the most vicious form of unkindness is forgetfulness. One who fails to return on a benefit still has some tokens of the benefit within in, and these might later lead him to return thanks in time. But the forgetful “may never be kind, since all the benefit is quite fallen from him.” In short, “where lacks remembrance, there is no hope of any recompense.”

Forgetful ingratitude makes men worse than beasts. Even beasts can remember a benefit after they’ve received it. A horse will allow the one who feeds him and keeps him to ride; but anyone else who tries to ride “though he be a king,” the horse will throw him. Animals in fact sometimes die in defense of their masters, a sign of their memory and gratitude. Elyot cites Pliny’s story of a dog who “so assaulted the murdered of his master in a great assembly of people, that with barking and biting him, he compelled him at the last to confess his offense.” Lions too show gratitude, though “of all other beasts . . . account most fierce and cruell,” yet they “have in remembrance benefit showed unto him.”

Gratitude is the bond of friendship, and these bonds should remain intact even if one or other of the friends advances in society: “How much are they repugnant and (I might say enemies) both to nature and reason that such one whom they have long known to be to them benevolent and joined to them in a sincere and assured friendship, approved by infallible tokes, ratified also with sundry kinds of benefits, they will condemn or neglect being advanced by any good fortune.”

Elyot lists several classical friendship, but laments that no such friendships are evident in his own day, where fair-weather friendships are the rule: “where at this day may be found such friendship between two, but that where fortune is more benevolent to the one than to the other the friendship wears tedious.” Once one advances, he wants “to be matched with one having semblable fortune.” If an old friend comes to misfortune, “he pities him, but he sorrows now, though he seem to be sorrowful, yet he helps not.” Or, at best, he wishes to be seen to help, yet “travails he not,” and though he wishes to be “seen to travail, yet he suffers not.” Few “esteem friendship” to such an extent that they will “enter into the displeasure not of his prince but of them whom he supposes may advance his estimation toward his prince.” It is a rare man who will “displease his new acquaintance equal with him in authority or fortune, for the defense, help, or advancement of his ancient and well approved friend.” What kind of times are they, when the best examples of virtue are found among beasts rather than men.