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 her person and her dress. From this artifice, however, no
other effect can be expected, than perturbations which the writer can
never see, and conjectures of which he never can be informed; some
mischief, however, he hopes he has done; and to have done mischief, is
of some importance. He sets his invention to work again, and produces a
narrative of a robbery or a murder, with all the circumstances of time
and place accurately adjusted. This is a jest of greater effect and
longer duration: if he fixes his scene at a proper distance, he may for
several days keep a wife in terrour for her husband, or a mother for her