themselves speedily contradicted. He examines by these rules that well meant but unfortunate lie of the conquest of France, which continued near twenty years together [1]: but at last, by being too obstinately insisted upon, it was worn threadbare, and became unsuccessful.
As to the τὸ τερατώδες, or the prodigious, he has little to advise, but that their comets, whales, and dragons should be sizeable; their storms, tempests, and earthquakes, without the reach of a day’s journey of a man and horse.
The seventh chapter is wholly taken up in an inquiry, which of the two parties are the greatest artists in political lying. He owns, that sometimes the one party, and sometimes the other, is better believed; but that they have both very good geniuses among them. He attributes the ill success of either party to their glutting the market, and retailing too much of a bad commodity at once: when there is too great a quantity of worms, it is hard to catch gudgeons. He proposes a scheme for the recovery of the credit of any party, which indeed seems to be somewhat chimerical, and does not savour of that sound judgment the author has shown in the rest of the work. It amounts to this, that the party should agree to vent nothing but truth for three months together, which will give them credit for six months lying afterward. He owns, that he believes it almost impossible to find fit persons to execute this scheme. Toward the end of the chapter, he inveighs severely against the folly of parties, in retaining scoundrels, and men of low genius, to retail their lies; such as most of the present
- ↑ During the reigns of king William and queen Anne.
