’Tis base, impolitic, and merciless. 
   To these we add a miscellaneous kind,
By pleasure, pride, and indolence confined;
Those whom no calls, no warnings could divert,
The unexperienced, and the inexpert;
The builder, idler, schemer, gamester, sot, —
The follies different, but the same their lot;
Victims of horses, lasses, drinking, dice,
Of every passion, humour, whim, and vice. 
See! that sad Merchant, who but yesterday
Had a vast household in command and pay;
He now entreats permission to employ
A boy he needs, and then entreats the boy. 
   And there sits one improvident but kind,
Bound for a friend, whom honour could not bind;
Sighing, he speaks to any who appear,
“A treach’rous friend—­’twas that which sent me here: 
I was too kind,—­I thought I could depend
On his bare word—­he was a treach’rous friend.” 
   A Female too!—­it is to her a home,
She came before—­and she again will come: 
Her friends have pity; when their anger drops,
They take her home;—­she’s tried her schools and shops —
Plan after plan;—­but fortune would not mend,
She to herself was still the treach’rous friend;
And wheresoe’er began, all here was sure to end: 
And there she sits, as thoughtless and as gay
As if she’d means, or not a debt to pay —
Or knew to-morrow she’d be call’d away —
Or felt a shilling and could dine to-day. 
   While thus observing, I began to trace
The sober’d features of a well-known face —
Looks once familiar, manners form’d to please,
And all illumined by a heart at ease: 
But fraud and flattery ever claim’d a part
(Still unresisted) of that easy heart;
But he at length beholds me—­“Ah! my friend! 
“And have thy pleasures this unlucky end?”
“Too sure,” he said, and smiling as he sigh’d;
“I went astray, though Prudence seem’d my guide;
All she proposed I in my heart approved,
And she was honour’d, but my pleasure loved —
Pleasure, the mistress to whose arms I fled,
From wife-like lectures angry Prudence read. 
   “Why speak the madness of a life like mine,
The powers of beauty, novelty, and wine? 
Why paint the wanton smile, the venal vow,
Or friends whose worth I can appreciate now;
Oft I perceived my fate, and then could say,
I’ll think to-morrow, I must live to-day: 
So am I here—­I own the laws are just —
And here, where thought is painful, think I must: 
But speech is pleasant; this discourse with thee
Brings to my mind the sweets of liberty,
Breaks on the sameness of the place, and gives
The doubtful heart conviction that it lives. 
   “Let me describe my anguish in the hour
When law detain’d me and I felt its power. 
   “When, in that shipwreck, this I found my shore,
And join’d the wretched, who were wreck’d before;
When I perceived each feature in the face,
Pinch’d through neglect or turbid by disgrace;