r off.

It was twice as large as the dinner, and my persecution doubled in
proportion. I desired at my usual hour to go to my repose, and was
conducted to my chamber by the gentleman, his lady, and the whole
train of children. They importuned me to drink something before I went
to bed; and upon my refusing, at last left a bottle of stingo, as they
called it, for fear I should wake and be thirsty in the night. I was
forced in the morning to rise and dress myself in the dark, because
they would not suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb me at the hour I
desired to be called. I was now resolved to break through all measures
to get away; and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold
beef, mutton, neats'-tongues, venison-pasty, and stale beer, took
leave of the family. But the gentleman would needs see me part of my
way, and carry me a short-cut through his own grounds, which he told
me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility had
like to have cost me dear, being once or twice in danger of my neck,
by leaping over his ditches, and at last forced to alight in the dirt;
when my horse, having slipt his bridle, ran away and took us up more
than an hour to recover him again. It is evident that none of the
absurdities I met with in this visit proceeded from an ill intention,
but from a wrong judgment of complaisance, and a misapplication in the
rules of it.

III

THE ART OF LYING IN POLITICS[112]

I am prevailed on, through the importunity of friends, to interrupt
the scheme I had begun in my last paper, by an essay upon the Art of
Political Lying. We are told the devil is the father of lies, and was
a liar from the beginning; so that, beyond contradiction, the
invention is old: and, which is more, his first essay of it was
purely political, employed in undermining the authority of his prince,
and seducing a third part of the subjects from their obedience: for
which he was driven down from heaven, where (as Milton expresses it)
he had been viceroy of a great western province; and forced to
exercise his talent in inferior regions among other fallen spirits,
poor or deluded men, whom he still daily tempts to his own sin, and
will ever do so, till he be chained in the bottomless pit.

But altho the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great
inventors, to have lost much of his reputation, by the continual
improvements that have been made upon him.

Who first reduced lying into