'He Will Soon Find Himself Left Alone'

“If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life,” Dr. Johnson tells Boswell, “he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.” Which begs the question of the precise nature of friendship. Among children the definition is fairly elastic: a companion who shares at least some of your interests and whose behavior is not intolerable. It gets more complicated and even mysterious as we grow up.

 I have little in common with one of my closest friends. He’s an enthusiastic surfer, fisherman and auto mechanic. He’s a digital wizard, not much of a reader and a devoted Baptist. He has a daughter and lives in a house inhabited exclusively by women. Based on those external qualities, we ought to be indifferent strangers. Ours is a friendship I never pursued. Like Topsy, it just grew. We talk daily via text.

 

What do I look for in a friend? Are there minimal requirements? A sense of humor, certainly. Generosity, the absence of virulent self-regard. Someone who conceives of conversation as more than an exchange of stridently held opinions. Most elusive but instantly demonstrable: an interesting mind.

 

A rare quality I share with Dr. Johnson is a motley crew of friends. They fit no preconceived template. I see little in common among them. They’re like a group of Hollywood extras, people we may never have known without having me (or Johnson) in common. Take Bennet Langton (1736-1801), twenty-seven years Johnson’s junior. When young, Langton read and admired The Rambler essays and befriended their author. John Wain writes in his life of Johnson:

 

“Not that Langton’s pedigree was Johnson’s reason for liking him; it was merely a spice to his good qualities. Gentle, unassuming, benevolent, he seems fully to have merited Johnson’s judgement that ‘the earth does not bear a worthier man than Bennet Langton.’ Johnson went further and paid Langton the highest tribute he could possibly have paid anyone—‘I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not.’”

 

Johnson often contrasted himself with his young friend and found the differences attractive. Wain: “John recognized in Langton an instinctive goodness, deepened and strengthened by meditation and learning. Those qualities which he, Johnson, strove so hard to achieve, he felt Langton had by natural right. Convinced as he was of his own bad qualities, severely as he judged himself for sloth, wandering thoughts, fleshly temptations, tormented as he was by guilt and fear of the wrath to come, he deferred to Langton as a man God had chosen to make effortlessly good.”

 

Seemingly confirmation of the old “opposites attract” cliché.