Did Santorum Mistakenly Cite C. S. Lewis for Friendship Quotation?

I think Senator Rick Santorum mistakenly cited C. S. Lewis as the author for the quotation he read on friendship last night. Tony Lee:

“'C.S. Lewis said a friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words,' Santorum said last night, referring to his wife."

That doesn't sound like C. S. Lewis. In fact, Coolnsmart.com attributes it to Bernard Meltzer.

C. S. Lewis did highly value friendship and wrote about it at some length (see his chapter on "Friendship" in The Four Loves). But, Lewis saw friendship much less romantically than the quotation above.

First of all, Lewis saw friendship as group-oriented.

". . . for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it." ("Inner Ring" in The Weight of Glory)

"In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative Love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others." ("Friendship" in The Four Loves)

Second, C. S. Lewis saw friendship as based on common interests and commitments rather than the more emotional figure of seeing into another person's heart.

"Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another, 'What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .'" ("Friendship" in The Four Loves)

"In [friendship], as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?--Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?" The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer." ("Friendship" in The Four Loves)

This is the closest I can find to Lewis linking "heart" and "friend".

"For we all wish to be judged by our peers, by the men 'after our own heart'. Only they really know our mind and only they judge it by standards we fully acknowledge. Theirs is the praise we really covet and the blame we really dread." ("Friendship" in The Four Loves)

But this isn't about seeing into another person's heart, but about sharing his values.

There isn't a lyrical passage like this in any of Lewis' letters to his life-long best friend, Arthur Greaves. (See They Stand Together)

Even in Lewis' most emotional book, A Grief Observed, on the loss of his wife, he does not write romantically about what lovers see in one another.

"Does H. now see exactly how much froth or tinsel there was in what she called, and I call, my love? So be it. Look your hardest, dear. I wouldn't hide if I could. We didn't idealize each other. We tried to keep no secrets. You knew most of the rotten places in me already. If you now see anything worse, I can take it. So can you. Rebuke, explain, mock, forgive. For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives--to both, but perhaps especially to the woman--a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted." (Chapter 4, A Grief Observed)

Singing the song back to you when you have forgotten the words is a lyrical way to say "encourage someone in tough times", but it was not C. S. Lewis' way. Senator Santorum might need someone to vet the quotations in his speeches.