Even among some, too thoughtless and volatile
for avarice or ambition, may be found a species of
falsehood more detestable than the levee or exchange
can shew. There are men that boast of debaucheries,
of which they never had address to be guilty; ruin,
by lewd tales, the characters of women to whom
they are scarcely known, or by whom they have
been rejected; destroy in a drunken frolick the
happiness of families; blast the bloom of beauty, and
intercept the reward of virtue.
Other artifices of falsehood, though utterly
unworthy of an ingenuous mind, are not yet to be
ranked with flagitious enormities, nor is it necessary
to incite sanguinary justice against them, since they
may be adequately punished by detection and laughter.
The traveller who describes cities which he has
never seen; the squire, who, at his return from
London, tells of his intimacy with nobles to whom he
has only bowed in the park or coffee-house; the
author who entertains his admirers with stories of the
assistance which he gives to wits of a higher rank;
the city dame who talks of her visits at great houses,
where she happens to know the cook-maid, are
surely such harmless animals as truth herself may
be content to despise without desiring to hurt them.
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