For any novelty, and show

Its variations rather.

105

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.

110

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.

115

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.

120

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; 125

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 chemist's golden dream

With still less hope of thriving.

130

135

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.

140

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.

.

145

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.

150

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.

155

Some friends make this their prudent plan “Say little, and hear all you can;"

Safe policy, but hateful.
So barren sands imbibe the shower,

160 But render neither fruit nor flower,

Unpleasant and ungrateful.

165

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

Things serious, deem improper;
Their feculence and froth they show,
But keep their best contents below,

Just like a simmering copper.

а

170

These samples (for alas! at last
These are but samples, and a taste

Of evils yet unmentioned)
May prove the task a task indeed,
In which 'tis much if we succeed,

However well-intentioned.

175

Pursue the theme, and you shall find
A disciplined and furnished mind

To be at least expedient;

And after summing all the rest,
Religion ruling in the breast

A principal ingredient.

180

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.

185

30

Her timbers yet are sound,

And she may float again
Full-charged with England's thunder,

And plough the distant main.

But Kempenfelt is gone,

His victories are o'er;