ho took more
delight to talk of the living Lovelace and levities, than of the dying
Belton and his repentance.

I just saw him again on Saturday night before I went to bed; which I did
early; for I was surfeited with Mowbray's frothy insensibility, and could
not bear him.

It is such a horrid thing to think of, that a man who had lived in such
strict terms of--what shall I call it? with another; the proof does not
come out so, as to say, friendship; who had pretended so much love for
him; could not bear to be out of his company; would ride an hundred miles
on end to enjoy it; and would fight for him, be the cause right or wrong:
yet now, could be so little moved to see him in such misery of body and
mind, as to be able to rebuke him, and rather ridicule than pity him,
because he was more affected by what he felt, than he had seen a
malefactor, (hardened perhaps by liquor, and not softened by previous
sickness,) on his going to execution.

This put me strongly in mind of what the divine Miss HARLOWE once said to
me, talking of friendship, and what my friendship to you required of me:
'Depend upon it, Mr. Belford,' said she, 'that one day you will be
convinced, that what you call friendship, is chaff and stubble; and that
nothing is worthy of that sacred name,

'That has not virtue for its base.'

Sunday morning, I was called up at six o'clock, at the poor man's earnest
request, and found him in a terrible agony. O Jack! Jack! said he,
looking wildly, as if he had seen a spectre--Come nearer me!--Dear, dear
Belford, save me! Then clasping my arm with both his hands, and rearing
up his head towards me, his eyes strangely rolling, Save me! dear
Belford, save me! repeated he.

I put my other arm about him--Save you from what, my dear Belton! said I;
save you from what? Nothing shall hurt you. What must I save you from?

Recovering from his terror, he sunk down again, O save me from myself!
said he; save me from my own reflections. O dear Jack! what a thing it
is to die; and not to have one comfortable reflection to revolve! What
would I give for one year of my past life?--only one year--and to have
the same sense of things that I now have?

I tried to comfort him as well as I could: but free-livers to free-livers
are sorry death-bed comforters. And he broke in upon me: O my dear
Belford, said he, I am told, (and I have heard you ridiculed for it,)
that the excellent Miss Harlowe has wrought a conversi