that is incompatible with love. He will annoy by constant jealousy, which he is afraid to let sleep; and what mutual equanimity jealousy generates I leave you to judge. But suppose the lower in fortune is the higher in mind is full of wit, sense, learning, genius! criticises, perhaps quizzes! Think you this will be borne by the superior in rank, power, authority, and fortune? If he feels himself put out of countenance by his inferior, will he seek to recover his position by keeping up intercourse with the friend who obscures him? If the inferior assert his equality with only common familiarity, may not the familiarity, especially if in public, be thought too bold? Were you not yourself lately an instance of it, to the embittering of your spirit? How deceived as to this are not both the superior and inferior! How often do kings lament the want of real friends to unbend with! They themselves unbend; but will they suffer the friends to do so too? Lewis XV., fatigued with pomp at Versailles, retired to Marli with a chosen few to enjoy one another en égal. 'Let there be no king,' said he, no subjects; no restraint in conversation; let it be as if the king were out of the room. Charming,' said they all; when the cat's away, the mice will play." Now the king did not like to be called a cat, and the mice became so bold, and unceremonious, that he soon exclaimed, Ha ça messieurs; le roi revient.' This goes directly to the point; or, if you still doubt, try Hastings again, and though you may not trust a rusty parson like me, trust the politer Horace, 6 'Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici, 6 Expertus metuit. Tu dum tua navis in alto est, Hoc age, ne mutata retrorsum te ferat aura. : * Epist. i. 18, thus translated by Francis :- When tried, how dreadful the dependence! I owned this was a forcible authority, yet would have replied, and said something about Lord Oxford and Swift, which I had amused myself with in Sir Harry Goff's library. Fothergill immediately took it up, and said there was no proof that theirs was more than one of those alliances of mutual usefulness which he had mentioned. "Oxford," said he, "wanted a writer, and Swift wrote for him. By his own account, he was enlisted at first as a humble friend,* which did not at all suit Swift's pride, and soon produced a quarrel; for Harley, presuming to pay him with £50 (the reward was perhaps not large enough), Swift kicked, and pouted; though at length appeased with a Deanery, he could hold his head up better. What even then might have been the event, we don't know, for Harley's power was ruined, and himself forgotten, while Swift filled the world with his fame.The same may be almost said of Swift and Bolingbroke. They wrote freely to one another, and amuse us with their playfulness and seeming attachment. But a fat Dean is not so much below an attainted Viscount. Both were warmly engaged in trying to pull down a common political enemy, and this alone will bind the most unequal parties together for a time, with hoops of brass. The chief will not only tolerate Yet, while your vessel's under sail, Lest adverse winds, with rapid force, Should bear you from your destined course." October next it will be four, Since Harley bid me first attend, And chose me for a humble friend." SWIFT'S Imitation of Horace. the subaltern, but, while he wants him, will make him his most familiar companion, so that their friendship shall seem that of Damon and Pythias. "But even here observe, though his arms are open,ˇ his house is not; he may visit you, but not your wife. He will know you in the streets, and at the club, but not at court. His notice at best is confined to his single condescension to your single person, and that only as long as your usefulness continues; but to think of allowing my lady to visit your homely family, is a solescism with my lord. Once a year, perhaps, and in the country, with all the tag-rag of the neighbourhood, your wife and daughter may be admitted to the extraordinary condescension of the Countess, who meets them afterwards in town, and passes without knowing them. "These are considerations, my young cousin,” continued Fothergill," which, if I mistake not, will weigh with you, as Horace's Epistle we quoted just now did with Lollius. That epistle was, as you know, the caution of a man who well knew the world, to a young friend just entering it; and you would do well to ponder the whole; but in particular that part of it which paints the folly of the inferior in an unequal friendship, if, to prove his disregard of the inequality, he presume to imitate his superior in eccentricity or expense. "How fatal has this been in examples within our own time, ending in the ruin, and even death by suicide, of the subaltern; rendered more bitter by the indifference of the higher in degree, who, in the words of our Satirist, even insults and derides him. 'Dives amicus, Sæpe decem vitiis instructior, odit et horret, 'Meæ' (contendere noli) Stultitiam patiuntur opes; tibi peroula res est. Arcta decet sanum comitem toga, desine mecum Here Fothergill stopt, and these classical allusions certainly had their weight with me, both at the time and for ever after. For amply were these remarks afterwards confirmed in the world, where I have seen little men hanging on great ones, and fancying themselves part of them, but after being used, thrown neglected by. Possibly I may bring them forward in the course of these memoirs; at present I return to my tutor, to whom I could not help observing, that the passages he had adduced from Horace, pointed not so much at friendship, as a companionship in vice. "You are right," said he, "but take a virtuous mutual regard and esteem, with great inequality of condition; such as mine was, and is still, with Lord Castleton, though we now never see one another." "Lord Castleton ! what the minister ?” asked I. "Yes! and it may instruct you to know our history. We were college friends of the same age, and seemingly of the same tastes, like you and Hastings; that is, we loved reading, and talked of what we read, which united us much in this place. He was honourable, generous, frank, talented, and rich. I, in comparison, very poor. We both thought this no * My lord, more vicious and more great, Think not, he cries, to live like me; FRANCIS. thing; and, being sent to travel by his father, he insisted upon my accompanying him; and as I was to give up my career here as a tutor, he offered me three hundred a year, his table, and perfect equality. Notwithstanding all this, I was a mere rustic in manners; he one of the best bred men in the kingdom. Here began the rub. He was fond of me in private; but, his fine mind being not so experienced, and his sensibility not so well disciplined, as it is now, though I will not say he was ashamed, he was awkward with me in public. I took no pains to shew, by obsequious deference, my sense of the inequality of our conditions, nor even to get rid of my rust. I gave myself up to books, and the study of mankind, where I best found it (because in an undress), in shops, markets, the bourse, and courts of justice; while he passed his time in the palaces of princes, ministers, and ladies. Here, when I was admitted with him, as I sometimes was, though he never was what may be called disconcerted, he was not overpleased. I was not happy at this, and felt like Gray with Walpole, and we were near separating, as they did, yet without losing respect for one another. Indeed, like Walpole, he acknowleged he was in fault, and had the candour not to let me go.-On our return home, however, things altered still more. Though he kept me in his house, to assist, as he said, his reading—and complimented me on what he called my shrewdness, nay sometimes consulted me in politics, to which he gave himself up with ardour-he soon found that, from too great indifference towards the people he wished me to cultivate, or perhaps a want of sufficient ambition, he could not produce me in public as he wished. The independence of my manners, owing to the equal friendship which reigned |