It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of
these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen
in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in
all ages. You must surely have seen instances enough of that
frailty. You have yourself heard many such marvellous relations
started, which, being treated with scorn by all the wise and
judicious, have at last been abandoned even by the vulgar. Be assured,
that those renowned lies, which have spread and flourished to such a
monstrous height, arose from like beginnings; but being sown in a more
proper soil, shot up at last into prodigies almost equal to those
which they relate.
It was a wise policy in that false prophet, Alexander, who though
now forgotten, was once so famous, to lay the first scene of his
impostures in Paphlagonia, where, as Lucian tells us, the people
were extremely ignorant and stupid, and ready to swallow even the
grossest delusion. People at a distance, who are weak enough to
think the matter at all worth enquiry, have no opportunity of
receiving better information. The stories come magnified to them by
a hundred circumstances. Fools are industrious in propagating the
imposture; while the wise and learned are contented, in general, to
deride its absurdity, without informing themselves of the particular
facts, by which it may be distinctly refuted.
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