Some are carrying elsewhere what is told them; the measure of the fiction is ever on the increase, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard. Rileys Ovid Met., Book XII. Page 416.
For slander lives upon succession; For ever housed where it gets possession. Shakespeare.Comedy of Errors, Act III. Scene 1. (Balthasar to Antipholus of Ephesus.)
Enemies carry about slander, not in the form in which it took its rise. The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead. Rileys Plautus.The Persa, Act III. Scene 1.
The flying rumours gatherd as they rolld, Scarce any tale was sooner heard than told; And all who told it added something new, And all who heard it made enlargements too, In every ear it spread, on every tongue it grew. Prior.Temple of Fame, Line 468; Somerville, The Night-Walker.
Those men who carry about and who listen to accusations, should all be hanged, if so it could be at my decisionthe carriers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears. Rileys Plautus.The Pseudolus, Act I. Scene 5.
The man that dares traduce, because he can With safety to himself, is not a man: An individual is a sacred mark, Not to be pierced in play or in the dark. Cowper.Expostulation, Line 432.
I will be hangd if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devised this slander. Shakespeare.Othello, Act IV. Scene 2. (Emilia to Desdemona.)