hers barter servile faith for gold,
His friendship is not to be bought or sold:
Fierce opposition he, unmov'd, shall face,
Modest in favour, daring in disgrace,
To share thy adverse fate alone, pretend;
In power, a servant; out of power, a friend.
Here pour thy favours in an ample flood,
Indulge thy boundless thirst of doing good:
Nor think that good to him alone confin'd;
Such to oblige, is to oblige mankind.
If thus thy mighty master's steps thou trace,
The brave to cherish, and the good to grace;
Long shalt thou stand from rage and faction free,
And teach us long to love the king, through thee:
Or fall a victim dangerous to the foe,
And make him tremble when he strikes the blow;
While honour, gratitude, affection join
To deck thy close, and brighten thy decline;
(Illustrious doom!) the great, when this displac'd,
With friendship guarded, and with virtue grac'd,
In awful ruin, like Rome's senate, fall,
The prey and worship of the wondering Gaul.
No doubt, to genius some reward is due,
(Excluding that, were satirizing you;)
But yet, believe thy undesigning friend,
When truth and genius for thy choice contend,
Tho' both have weight when in the balance cast,
Let probity be first, and parts the last.
On these foundations if thou dar'st be great,
And check the growth of folly and deceit;
When party rage shall droop thro' length of days,
And calumny be ripen'd into praise,
Then future times shall to thy worth allow
That fame, which envy would call flattery now.
Thus far my zeal, though for the task unfit,
Has pointed out the rocks where others split;
By that inspir'd, though stranger to the Nine,
And negligent of any fame--but thine,
I take the friendly, but superfluous part;
You act from nature what I teach from art.

THE OLD MAN'S RELAPSE.

Verses Occasioned by the Foregoing Epistle.

Sopitos suscita ignes.

--VIRG.

From man's too curious and impatient sight,
The future, Heaven involves in thickest night.
Credit gray hairs: though freedom much we boast,
Some least perform, what they determine most.
What sudden changes our resolves betray!
To-morrow is the satire on to-day,
And shows its weakness. Whom shall men believe,
When constantly themselves, themselves deceive?

Long had