Only on topics left at large,

How fiercely will they meet and charge!

No combatants are stiffer.

XXII.

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

No cutting and contriving.
Seeking a real friend we seem
T'adopt the chemist's golden dream,
With ftill lefs hope of thriving.

XXIII.

Then judge before 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.

VARIATIONS.

XXII.-
.-I. To prove at last my main intent,
Needs no expense of argument,

XXIII

VOL. 1.

Sometimes the fault is all your own,
Some blemish in due time made known
By trespass or omission :
Sometimes occafion brings to light
Our friend's defect, long hid from fight,
And even from suspicion.

-1. Then judge yourself, and prove your man.
4. Beware, no negligence of yours

That fecrets are a facred trust,

That friends fhould be fincere and juft,

That constancy befits them,

Are observations on the cafe,
That favour much of common-place,
And all the world admits them.

R

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

Is fuch a friend that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed,

To pardon, or to bear it.

XXVII.

Some friends make this their prudent plan-
Say little, and hear all you can,

Safe policy, but hateful!

VARIATIONS.

XXIV. -I. But 'tis not timber, lead, and ftone,

XXV.

3. To finish a fine building.

5. If he could poffibly forget,

-3. First fixes our attention.

XXVI.- --I. The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves by thumps upon your back,

How he esteems your merit.

XXVII. --I, Some act upon this prudent plan

So barren fands imbibe the fhow'r,

But render neither fruit nor flow'r,
Unpleasant and ungrateful.

XXVIII.

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

Things ferious, deem improper.
Their feculence and froth they show,
But keep their best contents below,
Just like a fimm'ring copper.

XXIX.

Thefe famples (for alas! at laft
Thefe are but famples, and a taste
Of evils, yet unmention'd)

XXVIII.

XXIX.

VARIATIONS.

-The man (I truft) if shy to me,
Shall find me as referv'd as he.
No fubterfuge or pleading,
Shall win my confidence again,
I will by no means entertain

A spy on my proceeding.
-Pursue the fearch and you will find
Good fenfe and knowledge of mankind.
The nobleft friendship ever shown
The Saviour's history makes known,
Though fome have turn'd and turn'd it,
And (whether being crazed, or blind,
Or feeking with a bias'd mind)

Have not (it seems) difcern'd it.
O Friendship, if my foul forego
Thy dear delights, while here below,
To mortify and grieve me,
May I myself at last appear,
Unworthy, base, and infincere,
Or may my friend deceive me!

This fprightly little Poem contains the effence of all that has been faid on this interefting fubject, by the best writers of different countries. It is pleasing to reflect, that a man, who entertained fuch refined ideas of friendship, and expressed them fo happily, was fingularly fortunate in this very important article of human life. Indeed he was fortunate in this refpect to fuch a degree, that Providence seems to have supplied him most unexpectedly, at different periods of his troubled existence, with exactly fuch friends, as the peculiar exigencies of his fituation required. The truth of this remark is exemplified in the feasonable affiftance, that his tender fpirits derived from the kindness of Mrs. Unwin, at Huntingdon; of Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh, at Olney,

1

and of his young kinfman in Norfolk, who will foon attract the notice, and obtain the esteem of my reader, as the affectionate fuperintendent of Cowper's declining days. To the honour of human nature, and of the prefent times, it will appear, that a fequeftered Poet, preeminent in genius and calamity, was beloved and affifted by his friends of both fexes, with a purity of zeal, and an inexhauftible ardour of affection, more refembling the friendship of the heroic ages, than the precarious attachments of the modern world.

The vifit of Lady Hefketh, to Olney, led to a very favourable change in the residence of Cowper. He had now paffed nineteen years in a fcene that was far from fuiting him. The house he inhabited looked on a market-place, and once in a season of illness, he was so apprehensive of being incommoded by the bustle of a fair, that he requested to lodge, for a fingle night, under the roof of his friend, Mr. Newton; and he was tempted, by the more comfortable fituation of the vicarage, to remain fourteen months in the house of his benevolent neighbour. His intimacy with this venerable Divine was fo great, that Mr. Newton has described it in the following remarkable terms, in Memoirs of the Poet, which affection induced him to begin, but which the troubles and infirmities of very advanced life, have obliged him to relinquifh.

"For nearly twelve years we were feldom feparated for seven hours at a time, when we were awake, and at home :-The first fix I paffed in daily, admiring, and aiming to imitate him: during the fecond fix, I walked penfively with him in the valley of the fhadow of death."

Mr. Newton records, with a becoming fatisfaction, the evangelical charity of his friend: "He loved the poor," (fays his devout Memorialift :) "He often vifited them