A man renown'd for repartee
Will seldom scruple to make free

With friendship's finest feeling;
Will thrust a dagger at your breast,
And tell you, 'twas a special jest,
By way of balm for healing.

Beware of tatlers; keep your ear
Close stopt against the tales they bear,
Fruits of their own invention;

The separation of chief friends

Is what their kindness most intends;
Their sport is your dissension.

Friendship that wantonly admits
A joco-serious play of wits

In brilliant altercation,

Is union such as indicates,
Like hand-in-hand insurance-plates,
Danger of conflagration.

Some fickle creatures boast a soul
True as the needle to the pole ;

Yet shifting, like the weather,

The needle's constancy forego
For any novelty, and show

Its variations rather.

Insensibility makes some
Unseasonably deaf and dumb,

When most you need their pity;

'Tis waiting till the tears shall fall From Gog and Magog in Guildhall, Those playthings of the city.

The great and small but rarely meet
On terms of amity complete :

The attempt would scarce be madder,
Should any from the bottom hope,
At one huge stride, to reach the top
Of an erected ladder.

Courtier and patriot cannot mix
Their heterogeneous politics

Without an effervescence,

Such as of salts with lemon juice,
But which is rarely known to induce,
Like that, a coalescence.

Religion should extinguish strife,
And make a calm of human life:
But even those, who differ

Only on topics left at large,

How fiercely will they meet and charge! No combatants are stiffer.

To

prove, alas! my main intent, Needs no great cost of argument,

No cutting and contriving;

Seeking a real friend, we seem

To adopt the chymist's golden dream
With still less hope of thriving.

Then judge, or ere you choose your man,
As circumspectly as you can,

And, having made election,

See that no disrespect of yours,
Such as a friend but ill endures,
Enfeeble his affection.

It is not timber, lead, and stone,
An architect requires alone,

To finish a great building;

The palace were but half complete
Could he by any chance forget
The carving and the gilding.

As similarity of mind,

Or something not to be defined,
First rivets our attention;

So manners, decent and polite,
The same we practised at first sight,
Must save it from declension.

The man who hails you Tom-or Jack,
And proves by thumping on your back
His sense of your great merit,

Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed,
To pardon or to bear it.

Some friends make this their prudent plan

66

Say little, and hear all you can ;"

Safe policy, but hateful.

So barren sands imbibe the shower,
But render neither fruit nor flower,
Unpleasant and ungrateful.

They whisper trivial things, and small;
But to communicate at all

Things serious deem improper;
Their feculence and froth they show,
But keep the best contents below,
Just like a simmering copper.

These samples (for, alas! at last
These are but samples, and a taste
Of evils yet unmention'd)

May prove the task a task indeed,
In which 'tis much if we succeed,
However well intention'd.

Pursue the theme, and you shall find
A disciplined and furnish'd mind
To be at least expedient,
And, after summing all the rest,
Religion ruling in the breast
A principal ingredient.

True friendship has, in short, a grace
More than terrestrial in its face;

That proves it heaven-descended: Man's love of woman not so pure, Nor, when sincerest, so secure

To last till life is ended.

ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE.

WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED.

TO THE MARCH IN SCIPIO.

TOLL for the brave!

The brave that are no more!

All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!

Eight hundred of the brave,

Whose courage well was tried,

Had made the vessel heel,

And laid her on her side.

A land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset ;

Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.

Toll for the brave!

Brave Kempenfelt is gone;

His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.

It was not in the battle;

No tempest gave the shock;

She sprang no fatal leak;

She ran upon no rock.