PRÆD.

what a man could gain by uttering falfehoods, he replied- Not to be credited when he shall tell the 'truth.'

The character of a liar is at once fo bateful and contemptible, that even of thofe who have loft their virtue it might be expected, that from the violation of truth they fhould be reftrained by their pride. Almost every other vice that difgraces human nature may be kept in countenance by applaufe and affociation: the corrupter of virgin innocence fees himfelf envied by the men, and at least not detefted by the women: the drunkard may cafily unite with beings devoted like himfelf to noify merriments or filent infenfibility, who will celebrate his victories over the novices of intemperance, boaft themselves the companions of his prowefs, and tell with rapture of the multitudes whom unfuccefsful emulation has hurried to the grave: even the robber and the cut-throat have their followers, who admire their addi efs and intrepidity, their ftratagems of rapine, and their fidelity to the gang.

The liar, and only the liar, is invariably and univerfally defpifed, abandoned, and difowned: he has no domeftic confolations which he can oppofe to the cenfure of mankind; he can retire to no fraternity where his crimes may stand in the place of virtues; but is given up to the hiffes of the multitude, without friend and without apologift. It is the peculiar condition of falfehood, to be equally detested by the good and bad: The devils," fays Sir Thomas Brown, 'do 'not tell lyes to one another; for truth is neceffary to all focieties, nor can the fociety of hell fubfift without it,'

It is natural to expect, that a crime thus generally detested fhould be generally avoided; at least, that none should expose himself to unabated and unpitied infamy, without an adequate temptation; and that to guilt so easily detected,

temptation would not readily be found. Yet fo it is, that in defiance of cenfure and contempt, truth is frequently violated; and scarcely the most vigilant and unremitted circumfpection will fecure him that mixes with mankind, from being hourly deceived by men of whom it can fcarcely be imagined that they mean any injury to him or profit to themfelves; even where the fubject of converfation could not have been expected to put the paffions in motion, or to have excited either hope or fear, or zeal or malignity, fufficient to induce any man to put his reputation in hazard, however little he might value it, or to overpower the love of truth, however weak might be it's influence.

The cafuifts have very diligently diftinguished lyes into their feveral claffes, according to their various degrees of malignity: but they have, I think, generally omitted that which is moft common, and, perhaps, not least mischievous; which, fince the moralifts have not given it a name, I shall diftinguish as the LYB of VANITY.

To vanity may juftly be imputed moft of the falfehoods which every man perceives hourly playing upon his ear, and perhaps most of thofe that are propagated with fuccefs. To the lye of commerce, and the lye of malice, the motive is fo apparent, that they are feldom negligently or implicitly received: fufpicion is always watchful over the practices of intereft; and whatever the hope of gain, or defire of mifchief, can prompt one man to affert, another is by reafons equally cogent incited to refute. But vanity pleases herself with such slight gratifications, and looks forward to pleature to remotely confequential, that her practices raise no alarm, and her stratagems are not eafily difcovered.

Vanity is, indeed, often fuffered to pafs unpurfued by fufpicion; because he that would watch her motions, can never R be

be at rest: fraud and malice are bounded in their influence; fome opportunity of time and place is neceffary to their agency; but fcarce any man is abstracted one moment from his vanity; and he to whom truth affords no gratifications, is generally inclined to seek them in falfehoods.

It is remarked by Sir Kenelm Digby,' that every man has a defire to appear fuperior to others, though it were only in having feen what they have not feen. Such an accidental advantage, fince it neither implies merit, nor confers dignity, one would think thould not be defired fo much as to be counterfeited: yet even this vanity, trifling as it is, produces innumerable narratives, all equally falfe; but more or less credible in proportion to the skill or confidence of the relater. How many may a man of diffufive converfation count among his acquaintances, whofe lives have been fignalized by numberiefs escapes; who never cross the river but in a form, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knighterrants of antient times in pathlefs forefts or enchanted caffles! How many muft he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to fupply them with fubjects of converfa

tion!

Others there are that amufe themfelves with the diffemination of falfehood, at greater hazard of detection and difgrace; men marked out by fome lucky planet for univerfal confidence and friendship, who have been confulted in every difficulty, entrusted with every fecret, and fummoned to every tranfaction: it is the fupreme felicity of thefe men to fun all companies with noify information; to ftill doubt, and overbear oppofition, with certain knowledge or authentic intelligence. A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brifk imagination, is often the oracle of an obfcure club, and, till time difcovers his impoftures, dictates to his hearers with uncontrouled authority; for if a public queftion be started, he was prefent at the debate; if a new fashion be mentioned, he was at court the first day of it's appearance; if new performance of literature draws the attention of the public, he has patronized the author, and feen his work in manufcript; if a criminal of

eminence be condemned to die, he often predicted his fate, and endeavoured his reformation: and who that lives at-a diftance from the scene of action, will dare to contradict a man who reports from his own eyes and ears, and to whom all perfons and affairs are thus intimately known?

This kind of falfehood is generally fuccessful for a time, because it is practifed at first with timidity and caution. But the profperity of the liar is of fhort duration; the reception of one ftory is always an incitement to the forgery of another lefs probable; and he goes on to triumph over tacit credulity, till pride or reafon rifes up against him, and his companions will no longer endure to fee him wifer than themfelves.

It is apparent, that the inventors of all thefe fictions intend fome exaltation of themselves, and are led off by the purfuit of honour from their attendance upon truth: their narratives always imply fome confequence in favour of their courage, their fagacity, or their activity, their familiarity with the learned, or their reception among the great; they are always bribed by the prefent pleasure of feeing themfelves fuperior to thofe that furround them, and receiving the homage of filent attention and envious admiration.

Bat vanity is fometimes excited to fiction by lefs vifible gratifications: the prefent age abounds with a race of liars who are content with the consciousness of falfehood, and whofe pride is to deceive others without any gain or glory to themfelves. Of this tribe it is the fupreme pleasure to remark a lady in the playhoufe or the park; and to publish, under the character of a man fuddenly enamoured, an advertisement in the news of the next day, containing a minute defcription of her perfon and her drefs, From this artifice, however, no other effect can be expected, than perturbations which the writer can never see, and conjectures of which he can never be informed; fome mifchief, however, he hopes he has done; and to have done mitchief is of fome importance. He fets his invention to work again, and produces a narrative of a robbery or a murder, with all the circumstances of time and place accurately adjusted. This is a jeft of greater effect and longer duration: if he fixes his fcene at a proper diftance, he may for feveral days

keep

· lance? Produce me, Terentianus, any image or defeription in Plato himself, fo truly elevated and divine! Where did thefe barbarians learn to speak of GOD, in terms that alone appear worthy of him? How contemptible and vile are the deities of Homer and Hefiod, in comparifon of this JEHOVAH of the illiterate Jews; before whom, to use this poet's own words, all other gods are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the fall duft of the balance!'

Had I been acquainted with this wonderful volume, while I was writing my treatife on the Pathetic, I could have enriched my work with many ftrokes of eloquence, more irresistibly moving than any I have borrowed from our three great tragedians, or even from the tender Simonides himself. The fame Mofes I formerly mentioned, relates the hiftory of a youth fold into captivity by his brethren, in a manner fo deeply interesting, with so many little strokes of nature and paffion, with fuch penetrating knowledge of the human heart, with fuch various and unexpected changes of fortune, and with fuch a striking and important difcovery, as cannot be read without aftonifhment and tears; and which, I am almoft confident, Aristotle would have preferred to the story of his admired Oedipus, for the artificial manner in which the recognition, dvayvápsois, is effected, emerging gradually from the incidents and circumitances of the story itself, and not from things extrinfical and uneffential to the fable.

In another part we are prefented with the picture of a man moft virtuous and upright, who, for the trial and exercise of his fortitude and patience, is hurled down from the fuminits of felicity into the lowest depths of diftrefs and despair. Were ever forrow and mifery and compaffion expreffed more forcibly and feelingly, than by the behaviour of his friends, who when they first difcovered him in this altered condition, deftitute, afflicted, tormented, fat down with him upon the ground feven days, and feven nights; and none fpake a word unto him, for they faw that his grief was very great! Let us candidly confefs, that this noble paffage is equal, if not fuperior, to that celebrated defcription of parental forrow in fchylus; where that venerable father of tragedy, whofe fire and enthufiafim fometimes force him

forwards to the very borders of inprobability, has in this inftance justly reprefented Niobe fitting difconfolately three days together upon the tomb of her children, covered with a veil, and obferving a profound filence. Such filences are fomething more affecting, and more ftrongly expreflive of paffion, than the most artfui fpeches. In Sophocles, when the unfortunate Deianira difcovers her mistake in having fent a poifoned veftiment to her husband Hercules, her furprize and forrow are unspeakable, and the answers not her fon, who acquaints her with the difafter, but goes off the ftage without uttering a fyllable. A writer unacquainted with nature and the heart, would have put into her mouth twenty florid iambics, in which the would bitterly have bewailed her misfortunes, and informed the fpectators that he was going to die.

In reprefenting likewife the defolation and destruction of the cities of Babylon and Tyre, thefe Jewish writers have afforded many inttances of true pathos. One of them expresses the extreme diftrefs occafioned by a famine, by this moving circumftance: The

tongue of the fucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children afk bread, and no man breaketh it unto them; the hands of the pitiful women have fodden their own children.' Which tender and affecting ftroke reminds me of the picture of a facked city by Ariftides the Theban, on which we have fo often gazed with inexpreffible delight: that great artift has expreffed the concern of a bleeding and dying mother, left her infant, who is creeping to her fide, fhould lick the blood that flows from her breast, and miftake it for her milk.

In the ninth book of the Iliad, Homer reprefents the horrors of a conquered city, by faying, that her heroes fhould be flain, her palaces overthrown, her matrons ravifhed, and her whole race enflaved. But one of thefe Jewish poets, by a fingle circumftance, has far more emphatically pointed out the utter defolation of Babylon: I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a fingle perfon than the golden wedge of Ophir."

What feems to be particularly excellent in thefe writers, is their felection of

fuch

fuch adjuncts and circumftances upon each fubject, as are beft calculated to frike the imagination and embellish their defcriptions. Thus, they think it not enough to fay, that Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, fhall never be 'more inhabited; but they add a pictureique ftroke, 'neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there; the wild beafts of the island fhall cry in their defolate houfes, and dragons in their pleasant 'places."

You have heard me frequently obfarve, how much vifions, or images by which a writer feems to behold objects that are abfent, or even non-existent, contribute to the true fublime. For this reason I have ever admired Minerva's fpeech in the fifth book of the Iliad, where the tells her favourite Diomede, that he will purge his eyes from the mitts of mortality, and give him power clearly to difcern the gods that were at that time affifting the Trojans, that he might not be guilty of the impiety of wounding any of the celestial beings, Venus excepted. Obferve the fuperior strength and liveliness of the following image: JEHOVAH, (the tutelar God of the Jews) open'ed the eyes of the young man, and he faw; and behold, the mountain was 'full of horfes, and chariots of fire 'round about him!'

4

Do we start, and tremble, and turn pale, when Oreftes exclaims that the furies are rufhing forward to feize him? and fhall we be lefs affected with the writer who breaks out into the following question: Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments 'from Bozra, this that is glorious in his

of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine 6 anger and trample them in my fury, and their blood fhall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. Another writer, full of the idea of that destruction with which his country was threatened, cries outHow long fhall I fee the standard, and hear the found of the trumpet!' And to reprefent total defolation, he imagines he fees the universe reduced to it's primitive chaos: I beheld the earth, and lo! it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.'

Above all, I am marvellously ftruck with the beauty and boldness of the Profopopeias, and the rich variety of comparitons with which every page of thefe extraordinary writings abound. When I fhall have pointed out a few of thefe to your view, I fhall think your curiofity will be fufficiently excited to perufe the book itself from which they are drawn. And do not fuffer yourself to be prejudiced against it, by the reproaches, raillery and fatire, which I know my friend and difciple Porphyry is perpetually pouring upon the Jews. Farewell.

Z.

to the vicious. The various evils of difeafe and poverty, pain and forrow, are frequently derived from others; but fhame and confufion are fuppofed to proceed from ourselves, and to be incurred only by the misconduct which they punish. This fuppofition is indeed spe