Moreover, Boswell often solicited Courtenay's advice in various crises. Courtenay, together with Malone, helped him out of scrapes with Alexander Tytler and Lord Macdonald, induced him to lighten his published attacks on Mrs. Piozzi and helped make him aware of the merit of her edition of Johnson's correspondence, and advised him to cancel some questionable passages in the _Life_ on William Gerard Hamilton. From time to time he also cautioned Boswell not to expect political preferment when he did not deserve it. It appears, too, that he took part in the prolonged deliberations over Johnson's monument in Westminster Abbey. Concerned that Boswell's drinking might impede his work on the _Life_, Courtenay made him promise to quit drinking from December 1790, to the following March, a promise which, as far as he was able, Boswell kept.[8] Courtenay's high spirits and his ability to relieve Boswell's melancholy were all the more remarkable because Courtenay, with a wife and seven children to support, was poverty-stricken during most of this period. Boswell, lamenting the failure of the Whigs to provide financial assistance to one of the party's most active members, found Courtenay's "firmness of mind ... amazing" under such difficulties.[9] No doubt Courtenay's resolve endeared him to Boswell, whose own financial and psychological problems were, of course, a great burden. This is not to say that relations between the two men were always cordial. Courtenay was evidently a non-believer, and the two men often differed on religious matters. Boswell condemned Courtenay's "wild ravings" in favor of the French revolution, and once confessed his deep regret about quarreling with so close a friend on this subject.[10] They also differed on the question of slavery, and Boswell good-naturedly chided Courtenay and William Windham as abolitionists in his poem, _No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love_ (1791).[11] It is clear, too, that as Boswell's depression grew, Courtenay's power to brighten his spirits waned considerably. Their friendship, nevertheless, seems to have ended on a happy note, for Boswell's final mention of Courtenay in his journal includes the remark that with Courtenay he had spent a "good day."[12] Courtenay's _Poetical Review_, characterized by Donald A. Stauffer as an embodiment of the "vice-and-virtue philosophy" in biography, was one of the most spirited pieces of Johnsoniana to appear.[13] The poem begins with disdain, but at line sixty-one reverses direction and becomes vigorously commendatory. Courtenay did not attempt to add fresh information about Johnson's life and career. Consequently, the unfavorable portion of the poem is a conventional catalog of Johnson's often publicized foibles and prejudices, just as the favorable section is in part a commonplace survey of his artistic achievement.