Some imagine, that the laws have provided all necessary relief, in common cases, and remit the poor to the care of the publick; some have been deceived by fictitious misery, and are afraid of encouraging imposture; many have observed want to be the effect of vice, and consider casual alms-givers as patrons of idleness.

But the trials of Paul in Ephesus, the capital of Asia Minor, the most celebrated of all the Ionian cities,"more Hellenic than Antioch, more Oriental than Corinth, more wealthy than Thessalonica, more populous than Athens,"were incessant and discouraging, since it was the headquarters of pagan superstitions, and of all forms of magical imposture.

Vanity and benevolence had conspired to make him an easy prey to adulation and imposture.

Tyrwhitt, whose critical acumen had enabled him to detect a supposititious passage in a tragedy of Euripides, was at first a dupe to the imposture of Chatterton, and treated the poems as so decidedly genuine, that he cited them for the elucidation of Chaucer; but seeing good grounds for changing his opinion, as Mr. Nichols informs us, he cancelled several leaves before his volume was published.

And, realising that that was Mr. Sutherland Bangs as he appears to the world, he would return home as humble and abject as Mr. Tom Lofty in The Good-Natured Man was when his imposture was found out.

The most notorious case of the sort was that of Arthur Orton, the impudent Tichborne claimant, whose strongest card in his imposture was that Lady Tichborne believed him to be her long-lost son.

Deception N. deception; falseness &c 544; untruth &c 546; imposition, imposture; fraud, deceit, guile; fraudulence, fraudulency^; covin^; knavery &c (cunning) 702; misrepresentation &c (falsehood) 544; bluff; straw-bail, straw bid

E. [20] The Cakerlaka of other writers, which can only be large monkeys or baboons, called men with tails, through ignorance or imposture.

These words would seem to describe an accomplice, were they not immediately followed by an express declaration, that Johnson was "unacquainted with the imposture."

For these, and such like reasons, Johnson calls the whole an imposture.

The hero's belief in them, indeed, helps to bring about the conclusion; but the apparition which so potently works upon him is an admitted imposture, a pious fraud.

Consider all the different Pursuits and Employments of Men, and you will find half their Actions tend to nothing else but Disguise and Imposture; and all that is done which proceeds not from a Man's very self, is the Action of a Player.

I thought your book an imposture: I think it an imposture still.

I thought your book an imposture: I think it an imposture still.

It is not too much to say that it was a grand cheata national imposture at the expense of the poor victims of oppression, whom, with benevolent pretences, it offered up a sacrifice to cupidity and power.

In the just use of words, the American Union is and always has been a shaman imposture.

Cock Lane Ghost imposture exposed, i. 406.

Was he insane, or was he practising an imposture?

They have to show how that which is instinct with never-dying truth sprang out of what was false and mistaken, if not corrupt; how that which alone has revealed God to man's conscience had no other origin than what in other instances has led men through enthusiasm and imposture to a barren or a mischievous superstition.

The other canon is one of moral likelihood, and it is, that it is credible and agreeable to what we gather from experience, that the highest moral elevation ever attained by man should have admitted along with it, and for its ends, conscious imposture.

The conscience of that age as to veracity or imposture was quite clear on such a point.

These three, he states, were perfectly convinced of the reality of the observed facts, and that they were not to be attributed to imposture or prestidigitation.

The three companions understood this conventional imposture, and politely claimed the spare half seats from the nearest ladies.

Marcus felt a momentary humiliation at having consented to this innocent imposture.

The conclusions at which he arrives are that the miracle was a miracle indeed so long as the Catholics had the management of it; but that since it fell into the hands of the heretics it has been nothing but a barefaced trick and imposture.