ul passage in it concerning
Lord Bathurst and the Angel, which, said our Doctor, had I been in the
house, I would have answered _thus_:--

"Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton or to Marlborough, or to any of
the eminent Whigs of the last age, the devil had, not with any great
impropriety, consented to appear, he would, perhaps, in somewhat like
these words, have commenced the conversation:

"'You seem, my lord, to be concerned at the judicious apprehension
that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and
propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resistance, the distance of
America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active. But
I will unfold to you the gay prospects of futurity. This people, now
so innocent and harmless, shall draw the sword against their mother
country, and bathe its point in the blood of their benefactors; this
people, now contented with a little, shall then refuse to spare what
they themselves confess they could not miss; and these men, now so
honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and for protection,
see their vile agents in the House of Parliament, there to sow the
seeds of sedition, and propagate confusion, perplexity, and pain. Be
not dispirited, then, at the contemplation of their present happy
state: I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and death shall, by my
care, be carried even across the spacious Atlantic, and settle in
America itself, the sure consequences of our beloved Whiggism.'"

This I thought a thing so very particular that I begged his leave to
write it down directly, before anything could intervene that might make
me forget the force of the expressions. A trick which I have, however,
seen played on common occasions, of sitting steadily down at the other
end of the room to write at the moment what should be said in company,
either _by_ Dr. Johnson or _to_ him, I never practised myself, nor
approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining
to treachery in this conduct, that were it commonly adopted all
confidence would soon be exiled from society, and a conversation assembly-
room would become tremendous as a court of justice. A set of
acquaintance joined in familiar chat may say a thousand things which, as
the phrase is, pass well enough at the time, though they cannot stand the
test of critical examination; and as all talk beyond that which is
ne