with every secret, and
summoned to every transaction: it is the supreme felicity of these men,
to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and
overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentick intelligence.
A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often
the oracle of an obscure club, and, till time discovers his impostures,
dictates to his hearers with uncontrouled authority; for if a publick
question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be
mentioned, he was at court the first day of its appearance; if a new
performance of literature draws the attention of the publick, he has
patronized the author, and seen his work in manuscript; if a criminal of
eminence be condemned to die, he often predicted his fate, and
endeavoured his reformation: and who that lives at a distance from the
scene of action, will dare to contradict a man, who reports from his own
eyes and ears, and to whom all persons and affairs are thus intimately
known?

This kind of falsehood is generally successful for a time, because it is
practised at first with timidity and caution: but the prosperity of the
liar is of short duration; the reception of one story is always an
incitement to the forgery of another less probable; and he goes on to
triumph over tacit credulity, till pride or reason rises up against him,
and his companions will no longer endure to see him wiser than
themselves.

It is apparent, that the inventors of all these fictions intend some
exaltation of themselves, and are led off by the pursuit of honour from
their attendance upon truth: their narratives always imply some
consequence in favour of their courage, their sagacity, or their
activity, their familiarity with the learned, or their reception among
the great; they are always bribed by the present pleasure of seeing
themselves superior to those that surround them, and receiving the
homage of silent attention and envious admiration.

But vanity is sometimes excited to fiction by less visible
gratifications: the present age abounds with a race of liars who are
content with the consciousness of falsehood, and whose pride is to
deceive others without any gain or glory to themselves. Of this tribe it
is the supreme pleasure to remark a lady in the playhouse or the park,
and to publish, under the character of a man suddenly enamoured, an
advertisement in the news of the next day, containing a minute
description of