Friendship, in each successive stage of life,
As we approach him, varies to the view;
In youth he wears the face of Love himself,
Of Love without his arrows and his wings.
Soon afterwards with Bacchus and with Pan
Thou findest him; or hearest him resign,
To some dog-pastor, by the quiet fire,
With much good will and jocular adieu,
His age-worn mule, or broken-hearted steed.
Fly not, as thou wert wont, to his embrace;
Lest, after one long yawning gaze, he swear
Thou art the best good fellow in the world,
But he had quite forgotten thee, by Jove!
Or laughter wag his newly bearded chin
At recollection of his childish hours.
But wouldst thou see, young man, his latest form,
When e'en this laughter, e'en this memory fails,
Look at yon fig-tree statue! golden once,
As all would deem it, rottenness falls out
At every little hole the worms have made;
And if thou triest to lift it up again
It breaks upon thee! Leave it! touch it not!
Its very lightness would encumber thee.
Come—thou has seen it: 'tis enough; be gone!
The admirable writer who composed these verses in some melancholy mood, is said to be himself one of the most constant and affectionate of friends. It may indeed safely be affirmed, that generous minds when they have once known each other, never can be alienated as long as both retain the characteristics which brought them into union. No distance of place, or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth. There are even some broken attachments in friendship as well as in love which nothing can destroy, and it sometimes happens that we are not conscious of their strength till after the disruption.
There are a few persons known to me in years long past, but with whom I lived in no particular intimacy then, and have held no correspondence since, whom I could not now meet without an emotion of pleasure deep enough to partake of pain, and who, I doubt not, entertain for me feelings of the same kind and degree; whose eyes sparkle when they hear, and glisten sometimes when they speak of me; and who think of me as I do of them, with an affection that increases as we advance in years. This is because our moral and intellectual sympathies have strengthened; and because, though far asunder, we know that we are travelling the same road toward our resting place in heaven. “There is such a pleasure as this,” says Cowper, “which would want explanation to some folks, being perhaps a mystery to those whose hearts are a mere muscle, and serve only for the purposes of an even circulation.”
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
PETER HOPKINS. REASONS FOR SUPPOSING THAT HE WAS AS GOOD A PRACTITIONER AS ANY IN ENGLAND; THOUGH NOT THE BEST. THE FITTEST MASTER FOR DANIEL DOVE. HIS SKILL IN ASTROLOGY.
Que sea Medico mas grave
Quien mas aforismos sabe,
Bien puede ser.
Mas que no sea mas experto
El que mas huviere muerto,
No puede ser.
GONGORA.
Of all the persons with whom Daniel Dove associated at Doncaster, the one who produced the most effect upon his mind was his master and benefactor, Peter Hopkins. The influence indeed which he exercised, insensibly as it were, upon his character, was little less than that whereby he directed and fixed the course of his fortune in life. A better professional teacher in his station could no where have been found; for there was not a more skilful practitioner in the Three Ridings, consequently not in England; consequently not in Christendom, and by a farther consequence not in the world. Fuller says of Yorkshire that “one may call, and justify it to be the best shire in England; and that not by the help of the general katachresis of good for great, (as a good blow, a good piece, &c.) but in the proper acceptation thereof. If in Tully's Orations, all being excellent, that is adjudged optima quæ longissima, the best which is the longest; then by the same proportion, this Shire, partaking in goodness alike with others, must be allowed the best.” Yorkshire therefore being the best county in England, as being the largest, of necessity it must have as good practitioners in medicine, as are to be found in any other county; and there being no better practitioner than Peter Hopkins there, it would have been in vain to seek for a better elsewhere.