But with his friends he was forbearing, devoted, lenient to their foibles, not boring them with his own, liberal in construing their motives, and as trustful in their loyalty to himself as he was assured of his own to them; clearly a man to be loved--a man pleasant to meet and pleasant to remember, constant, and to be relied on in sunshine or in gloom. Friendship with him was not a thing to be given by halves. He could see a friend's faults-no man quicker-but it did not lie in his mouth to babble about them. He was not one of those who "whisper faults and hesitate dislikes." Love me, love my friend, was his rule. Neither would he sit quietly by, while his friends were being disparaged. And if he has occasion himself to rally their foibles in his poems, he does so openly, and does it with such an implied sympathy and avowal of kindred weakness in himself, that offence was impossible. Above all, he possessed in perfection what Mr Disraeli happily calls "the rare gift of raillery, which flatters the self-love of those whom it seems not to spare." These characteristics are admirably indicated by Persius (I. 116) in speaking of his Satires-- "Arch Horace, while he strove to mend, Probed all the foibles of his smiling friend; Played lightly round and round each peccant part, And won, unfelt, an entrance to his heart." (Gifford.) And we may be sure the same qualities were even more conspicuous in his personal intercourse with his friends. Satirist though he was, he is continually inculcating the duty of charitable judgments towards all men. "What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted," is a thought often suggested by his works. The best need large grains of allowance, and to whom should these be given if not to friends? Here is his creed on this subject (Satires, I. 3):--