Hor. It is strange, that a nation should grudge to see, perhaps, half a dozen men sacrificed in a twelvemonth, to obtain so valuable a blessing, as the politeness of manners, the pleasure of conversation, and the happiness of company in general, that is often so willing to expose, and sometimes loses as many thousands in a few hours, without knowing whether it will do any good or not. This, indeed, seems to be said with a sneer: but in what goes before he is very serious.
Cleo. He is so, when he says that the practice of duelling, that is the keeping up of the fashion of it, contributes to the politeness of manners and pleasure of conversation, and this is very true; but that politeness itself, and that pleasure, are the things he laughs at and exposes throughout his book.
Hor. But who knows, what to make of a man, who recommends a thing very seriously in one page, and ridicules it in the next?
Cleo. It is his opinion, that there is no solid principle to go by but the Christian religion, and that few embrace it with sincerity: always look upon him in this view, and you will never find him inconsistent with himself. Whenever at first sight he seems to be so, look again, and upon nearer inquiry you will find, that he is only pointing at, or labouring to detect the inconsistency of others with the principles they pretend to.
Hor. He seems to have nothing less at heart than religion.
Cleo. That is true, and if he had appeared otherwise, he would never have been read by the people whom he designed his book for, the modern deists and all the beau monde: It is those he wants to come at. To the first he sets forth the origin and insufficiency of virtue, and their own insincerity in the practice of it: to the rest he shows the folly of vice and pleasure, the vanity of worldly greatness, and the hypocrisy of all those divines, who, pretending to preach the gospel, give and take allowances that are inconsistent with, and quite contrary to the precepts of it.
Hor. But this is not the opinion the world has of the book; it is commonly imagined, that it is wrote for the encouragement of vice, and to debauch the nation.
Cleo. Have you found any such thing in it?
Hor. To speak my conscience, I must confess, I have not: vice is exposed in it, and laughed at; but it ridicules war and martial courage, as well as honour and every thing else.
Cleo. Pardon me, religion is ridiculed in no part of it.