THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 



Obstrep'rous creditors besiege my door, 



And my whole house clamorous echoes fill ; 

 From these there can be no retirement free, 

 From room to room they hunt and follow me ; 



They will not let me eat, nor sleep, nor pray, 

 But persecute me night and day, 

 Torment my body and my mind; 

 Nay, if I take my heels and fly, 

 They follow me with open cry. 

 At home no rest, abroad no refuge can I find." 



That he experienced the common desertion of false friends 

 from the unfortunate, he rather eloquently laments in one of his 

 eclogues, as elsewhere. 



" The want of wealth I reckon not distress, 

 But of enough to do good offices ; 

 Which, growing less, those friends will fall away ; 

 Poverty is the ground of all decay ; 

 With our prosperities our friendships end, 

 And to misfortune no one is a friend. 

 Which I already find in that degree, 

 That my old friends are now afraid of me, 

 And all avoid me, as good men would fly 

 The common hangman's shameful company. 

 Those who by fortune were advanced above. 

 Being obliged by my most ready love. 

 Shun me, for fear lest my necessity 

 Should urge what they're unwilling to deny 

 And are resolved they w-ill not grant ; and those 

 Have shared my meat, my money, and my clothes. 

 Grown rich with others' spoils as well as mine. 

 The coming near me now do all decline, 

 Lest shame and gratitude should draw them in. 

 To be to me what I to them have been. 

 By which means I am stripped of all supplies, 

 And left alone to my own miseries." 



Hawkins states that he was sometimes obliged to conceal him- 

 self from his creditors in a cave near Beresford Hall, where a 

 faithful woman servant supplied him with food ; and at another 

 time he was confined in a debtors' prison at London, where he 

 inscribed on the wall those lines so often quoted : 



