Robert Henry Elliot

The Experiences of a Planter in the Jungles of Mysore (Volume 1) Robert Henry Elliot

Publisher Marketing: This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1871. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... but to what can interested motives not be attributed? "Do good even to the wicked" seems a position difficult to turn; but "it is best to stop the dog's mouth with a morsel." Turning now to the subject of veracity, I am insensibly reminded of the text a worthy Scotch clergyman of the olden days preached from, and of the remark he first made thereon. "'I said in my haste, All men are liars.' Ay, David, and had ye lived in this parish ye might have said it at your leesure." In saying that David might have extended his remarks to my native neighbours, had he lived amongst them, I might, if I chose to indulge in a little suggestio falsi, at once dismiss the whole subject of veracity. But this matter is not to be so easily got rid of. In truth, of all the subjects I have undertaken to write about, this is the most difficult; for who can tell the proportion of lies to truth in any country or in any class? And the subject, moreover, is so clogged by the variation in the current value of words, that it becomes very difficult to draw the line between lies and exaggerations. Talking of variations in the value of words and modes of expression, it may not be amiss if we turn back a little in the history of our phraseology, and listen to the complaints that Tillotson made many a year ago, and which were quoted by Addison on the 21st of June, 1714. Said the worthy archbishop: --"The old English plainness and sincerity, that generous integrity of nature and honesty of disposition, which always argues true greatness of mind, and is usually accompanied with undaunted courage and resolution, is in a great measure lost among us. The dialect of conversation is nowadays so swelled with vanity and compliment, and so surfeited (as I may H2 ioo NATIVE CHARACTER. say) with expressions o...