any degree
offended with another--as little disgusts and misunderstandings will
be--they allow themselves to defame and revile such a one without any
moderation or bounds; though the offence is so very slight, that they
themselves would not do, nor perhaps wish him, an injury in any other
way. And in this case the scandal and revilings are chiefly owing to
talkativeness, and not bridling their tongue, and so come under our
present subject. The least occasion in the world will make the humour
break out in this particular way or in another. It as like a torrent,
which must and will flow; but the least thing imaginable will first of
all give it either this or another direction, turn it into this or that
channel: or like a fire--the nature of which, when in a heap of
combustible matter, is to spread and lay waste all around; but any one of
a thousand little accidents will occasion it to break out first either in
this or another particular part.

The subject then before us, though it does run up into, and can scarce be
treated as entirely distinct from all others, yet it needs not be so much
mixed or blended with them as it often is. Every faculty and power may
be used as the instrument of premeditated vice and wickedness, merely as
the most proper and effectual means of executing such designs. But if a
man, from deep malice and desire of revenge, should meditate a falsehood
with a settled design to ruin his neighbour's reputation, and should with
great coolness and deliberation spread it, nobody would choose to say of
such a one that he had no government of his tongue. A man may use the
faculty of speech as an instrument of false witness, who yet has so
entire a command over that faculty as never to speak but from forethought
and cool design. Here the crime is injustice and perjury, and, strictly
speaking, no more belongs to the present subject than perjury and
injustice in any other way. But there is such a thing as a disposition
to be talking for its own sake; from which persons often say anything,
good or bad, of others, merely as a subject of discourse, according to
the particular temper they themselves happen to be in, and to pass away
the present time. There is likewise to be observed in persons such a
strong and eager desire of engaging attention to what they say, that they
will speak good or evil, truth or otherwise, merely as one or the other
seems to be most hearkened to: and this though it is sometimes jo