welcome in society than swollen
fiction. The frog in the fable killed itself by trying to be as big as
the ox; so you are in danger of killing truth when you inflate it beyond
its own natural proportions. Truth needs no extraneous aids to commend
it; or, as Cowper says,--

"No meretricious graces to beguile,
No clustering ornaments to clog the pile,
From ostentation as from weakness free,
Majestic in its own simplicity."

"The apocrypha," says the Rev. J. B. Owen, "into which you may elaborate
your observations will ultimately be sifted from the canonical, and you
will appear before society as _interpolaters_, inserting your own
spurious statements among the genuine records of facts already received
as simple, authentic truths. Have the modesty to suppose that others
know a thing or two as well as yourselves. The scraps of facts which may
lie scattered among the profusion of your hyperbolisms may be old
acquaintances of your hearers. Let them speak for themselves in their
own artless, ingenuous way, and take their own chance of success to
whatever branch of the lovely family of truth they may belong.

"Hyperbole is a fault of no trivial importance in conversation. Carried,
as it generally is, to such an extent, it is nothing more nor less than
equivalent to lying. It frequently places the Hyperbolist in a position
of distrustful scrutiny and strong doubt, on the part of those with whom
he converses. His authentication of a rumour reacts as its
contradiction. He himself robs it of a large amount of evidence, by
welcoming the proof of anybody else as better than his own. He
anticipates the discount which will be made off his commodity, and so
adds exorbitancy to his statements, which will leave a balance in hand
after all. But people will not be deceived again and again. His credit
becomes damaged. His moral bill returns dishonoured. His extravagance of
diction, like extravagance in expenditure, involves him in difficulties,
and thus the immediate fate of mendacity symbolizes that awful
retribution which will finally exclude all liars from the society of the
good and true."

"Old Humphrey," in speaking of a painter who over-coloured his pictures,
was wont to express the defect by saying, "Too much red in the brush."
It would be well for the Hyperbolist to have some friend at his elbow,
when he over-colours things, to say, "Too much red in the brush."

XV.

_THE INQUISITIVE._

"The Inquisitive