“Yes, indeed, have I,” cries the colonel. “What else is all Mr. Pope’s Homer full of but duels? Did not what’s his name, one of the Agamemnons, fight with that paultry rascal Paris? and Diomede with what d’ye call him there? and Hector with I forget his name, he that was Achilles’s bosom-friend; and afterwards with Achilles himself? Nay, and in Dryden’s Virgil, is there anything almost besides fighting?”
“You are a man of learning, colonel,” cries the doctor; “but—”
“I thank you for that compliment,” said the colonel.—“No, sir, I do not pretend to learning; but I have some little reading, and I am not ashamed to own it.”
“But are you sure, colonel,” cries the doctor, “that you have not made a small mistake? for I am apt to believe both Mr. Pope and Mr. Dryden (though I cannot say I ever read a word of either of them) speak of wars between nations, and not of private duels; for of the latter I do not remember one single instance in all the Greek and Roman story. In short, it is a modern custom, introduced by barbarous nations since the times of Christianity; though it is a direct and audacious defiance of the Christian law, and is consequently much more sinful in us than it would have been in the heathens.”
“Drink about, doctor,” cries the colonel; “and let us call a new cause; for I perceive we shall never agree on this. You are a Churchman, and I don’t expect you to speak your mind.”
“We are both of the same Church, I hope,” cries the doctor.
“I am of the Church of England, sir,” answered the colonel, “and will fight for it to the last drop of my blood.”
“It is very generous in you, colonel,” cries the doctor, “to fight so zealously for a religion by which you are to be damned.”
“It is well for you, doctor,” cries the colonel, “that you wear a gown; for, by all the dignity of a man, if any other person had said the words you have just uttered, I would have made him eat them; ay, d—n me, and my sword into the bargain.”
Booth began to be apprehensive that this dispute might grow too warm; in which case he feared that the colonel’s honour, together with the champagne, might hurry him so far as to forget the respect due, and which he professed to pay, to the sacerdotal robe. Booth therefore interposed between the disputants, and said that the colonel had very rightly proposed to call a new subject; for that it was impossible to reconcile accepting a challenge with the Christian religion, or refusing it with the modern notion of honour. “And you must allow it, doctor,” said he, “to be a very hard injunction for a man to become infamous; and more especially for a soldier, who is to lose his bread into the bargain.”