Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/52

 and Sallustius, stand forth out of Grecian and Roman classics. David and Jonathan, Christ and John, the beloved young Disciple, are familiar Biblical "friendships" of exceeding beauty and sentimental tenderness. Coming down into the light of common day the list shines brightly. All tempers, all races, all professions add to it, be its colouring now of one tinge, now of another. Michael Angelo Buonarrotti and Tommaso Cavalieri, Cinq-Mars (Henri d'Effiat) and François de Thou, Shakespeare and the young Earl of Southampton. Sir Philip Sydney and his three beloved friends Greville, Dyer and Languet; Montagne and Etienne de la Boetie, Erasmus of Rotterdam and "that one companion of my innermost life"; the learned Beza and his "other self", young Audebert: Edward II of England and Piers Gaveston; James I of England and those intimacies, so strangely passional which James maintained with Robert Carr, Villiers, (Buckingham) and others; Frederick the Great with Baron Trenck, Lieutenant Kette, Graf von Görz, and others; the dauntless Charles XII of Sweden with brother-soldiers sometimes far inferior in rank; the philanthropic Bishop Jocelyn of Clogher and the ill-fortuned soldier Henry Moverly; Lord Byron with Lord Clare, Nicolo Giraud and Eddleston; Horace Walpole in the one—perhaps—deep sentiment of Walpole's life, Sir Henry Conway; Grillparzer and Georg Altmütter; the masterly historian Johannes Müller and Bonstetten; the unhappy Ludwig II of Bavaria with many men whose kingdoms were only of art or letters, including Richard Wagner, and the gifted and erratic actor Joseph Kainz: the fiery General Skobeleff and his mysterious "Vassilieff" not to mention two or three others; General Gordon brave, yet tender, with Lord Arthur Hamilton—but no need to cite further the record of typically profound "friendships". Worth noting is the fact that many of them refer us not only to aesthetic life, but to the military profession and temperament, to the most genuine and even stalwart masculinity of physiques and occupations, with no trace or