should not give it me with impunity. After what you know of me, sir! What do you presume to know of me to my disadvantage?'
'You say my cloth is my protection, colonel,' answered the doctor; 'therefore pray lay aside your anger: I do not come with any design of affronting or offending you.'
'Very well,' cries Bath; 'that declaration is sufficient from a clergyman, let him say what he pleases.'
'Indeed, sir,' says the doctor very mildly, 'I consult equally the good of you both, and, in a spiritual sense, more especially yours; for you know you have injured this poor man.'
'So far on the contrary,' cries James, 'that I have been his greatest benefactor. I scorn to upbraid him, but you force me to it. Nor have I ever done him the least injury.'
'Perhaps not,' said the doctor; 'I will alter what I have said. But for this I apply to your honour--Have you not intended him an injury, the very intention of which cancels every obligation?'
'How, sir?' answered the colonel; 'what do you mean?'
'My meaning,' replied the doctor, 'is almost too tender to mention. Come, colonel, examine your own heart, and then answer me, on your honour, if you have not intended to do him the highest wrong which one man can do another?'
'I do not know what you mean by the question,' answered the colonel.
'D--n me, the question is very transparent! 'cries Bath.' From any other man it would be an affront with the strongest emphasis, but from one of the doctor's cloth it demands a categorical answer.'
'I am not a papist, sir,' answered Colonel James, 'nor am I obliged to confess to my priest. But if you have anything to say speak openly, for I do not understand your meaning.'
'I have explained my meaning to you already,' said the doctor, 'in a letter I wrote to you on the subject--a subject which I am sorry I should have any occasion to write upon to a Christian.'
'I do remember now,' cries the colonel, 'that I received a very impertinent letter, something like a sermon, against adultery; but I did not expect to hear the author own it to my face.'
'That brave man then, sir,' answered the doctor, 'stands before you who dares own he wrote that letter, and dares affirm too that it was writ on a just and strong foundation. But if the hardness of your heart could prevail on you to treat my good intention with contempt and scorn, what, pray, could induce you to shew it, nay, to give it Mr. Booth? What motive could you have for that, unless you meant to insult him, and provoke your rival to give you that opportunity of putting him out of the world, which you have since wickedly sought by your challenge?'
'I give him the letter!' said the colonel.
'Yes, sir,' answered the doctor, 'he shewed me the letter, and affirmed that you gave it him at the masquerade.'
'He is a lying rascal, then!' said the colonel very passionately. 'I scarce took the trouble of reading the letter, and lost it out of my pocket.'
Here Bath interfered, and explained this affair in the manner in which it happened, and with which the reader is already acquainted. He concluded by great eulogiums on the performance, and declared it was one of the most enthusiastic (meaning, perhaps, ecclesiastic) letters that ever was written. 'And d--n me,' says he, 'if I do not respect the author with the utmost emphasis of thinking.'
The doctor now recollected what had passed with Booth, and perceived he had made a mistake of one colonel for another. This he presently acknowledged to Colonel James, and said that the mistake had been his, and not Booth's.
Bath now collected all his gravity and dignity, as he called it, into his countenance, and, addressing himself to James, said, 'And was that
