The Virginian. [volume] (Lynchburg [Va.]) 1822-1829, 1827-06-05
From The Neto NoHthig Magazine. !
EMINENT LIARS.

| reverence Liars. must not he
understood as meaning those roincrs and
utterers OF his lalschoods, always petty
whether great OF small, which are inien-
Died either to lnlure other persons, or to
serve themselves; those despicablc crea-
lures who invent les or perycrt the
trnth, as means 10 attain an end all
such | abandon 10 The contempt they
deserve. Nor do | mean those ped.
ding, pettitoggng, would be hars, who
only lie by halves, who t,dsily facts, or
tlmdIy SET about ombroidering a ground
work Of truth with details Of their own
creating. No the liars | allude to are
the spirited emnlators Of the Mando-
Villes, the Pintos, aud Muneh- liausons,
who tell you the lie, the whole he, ana
nothing but the lie and who lie, too, L
do not desire a softer term, Tor, though
familiar yet, in the sense in which IL
Is here applied, il is : by no means vul-
gar from no less noble animpulse than
tho pnre, dlsinterostcd, honest, unadul-
iefatod love Of lying So profound is
my veneIation for that illusrous irater-
NIFTY, thai / cannot consent to honour
with niche IN their temple even Guilt
yer himself To say tue truth, GULL
yer was bur poor fellow alter all IN
| deed II never was seriously pretended
that such a man as CULVER did exist, or
ever had existed lie wa nothing
more than peg to hang SATIRE upon f;
the puny invention OF the novelist.
CULVER was Swift, and Swift was Gul.
liver, and the history of his adventures
was timIdiy put forth as 4 mere fiction.
For this reason the book called CULVER
| (tor Guliseris but a book md never
was a mJn) must be degraded 10 tn lev
ei OF the btOplas, the AIcadlas, auo o-
Their lllmsy books of the same ignoble
Kind. Had Jonathan Swift stood for
ward as g'llanl, gentlomanly liar Gas my
late lamented friend, Colonel Nlmrod,
for instance would have done J ~ round
ly asserted that he, himself, the Idcnti-
al Jonathan, that he, IN his own pro
per person, had visited country called
| Lllllput, where he had held intercourse
with race Of human beings Of such III
minutive proportions thai their very gi~
ants were scarcely sly inches tall bad
he pledged bis own character for vera
city on the positive occurrence To E.m-
set Of all the adventures he tamcly as
cribes 10 IA shadow, then had Jonathan
Swift been deemed worthy ofequal rank
with those glorious liars whose names |
have recorded, AS il is, he has COM
promised his fame. lie may be a fine
wrtor, keen satirist, profound phil-
osopher /; with SO much reputation as
those ordinary qualifications may ac-
qulrG for him, lei him rest SATISFIED f; but
- Liam he is not
| have mentioned Munch-IIauson. Il
Is generally believed that Munch-Hau-
sen is only a nomde gacre. Such, how
ever, is not the tact. Baron MUNICH
Hansen was Hanoyerian nobIcman,
and even SO lately as i've and forty
years ago he was alive and lylng.F 1t
Is true, that the travels published as his,
though not written by him, were intended
as satire orparody on the Travels oithe
famous Baron dc Tot but MUNICH
Hansen was really in the habit ofIcla-
| ting the adventures, now sanctioned by
authority of his mendacious name, as
having positively occurred to him and
from the frequency Of the repetition oil
the same stories, without the slightest
points, he at length believed the nara
tiyes he had himself invented, and deli
yered thon with as much sanE-1tOid as
if they had described nothing but so ma.
ny probable events. There was moth.
! ny OF the EdnfarOH, or brapgart, ia hr
manner on the contrary, he was dis
tingulshed by the peculiar modosty o
his demeanor. When called upon. II
company, as he invariably was, to rclat,
some OF the extraordinary adventures o
his life, he would enter dpon the subject
with as.much dillidence as a Wellington
or Nelson, describing his own real a.
''io '''' BidbudllY wal L!Iu8
no would become vehement, and oudoa-
Your to illustrate his descriptions by the
most oXtraVagant, yet, at the same time
the most expressive gestures and atti
tndcs. lie was a mastery liar; a pgca
artist. Unjust be remarked, that in IN
widest inventions there is nothing Il
shock the understanding admit tn,
cause, and the consequence follows na,u.
rally enough. He shoots a handful o
cherry-stoncs inc stag's forehead
Allow the possibility of cherry-stone.
taking rootin stag's forehead, anc
there is nothing improbable in his Gnd.
inr, a few years afterwards, a cherrytrec
sproutiug from 1t. The cold, in Ger.
tain country where he is travelling, is SC
intense as to freeze the tunes a post TO,
endesvours to play upon his horn. Tn,
horn is hung by the fre-side, and, a,
the tunes in it become thawed, they