A Biter [1] is one who tells you a thing you have no reason to disbelieve in it self; and perhaps has given you, before he bit you, no reason to disbelieve it for his saying it; and if you give him Credit, laughs in your Face, and triumphs that he has deceiv’d you.  In a Word, a Biter is one who thinks you a Fool, because you do not think him a Knave.  This Description of him one may insist upon to be a just one; for what else but a Degree of Knavery is it, to depend upon Deceit for what you gain of another, be it in point of Wit, or Interest, or any thing else?

This way of Wit is called Biting, by a Metaphor taken from Beasts of Prey, which devour harmless and unarmed Animals, and look upon them as their Food wherever they meet them.  The Sharpers about Town very ingeniously understood themselves to be to the undesigning Part of Mankind what Foxes are to Lambs, and therefore used the Word Biting to express any Exploit wherein they had over-reach’d any innocent and inadvertent Man of his Purse.  These Rascals of late Years have been the Gallants of the Town, and carried it with a fashionable haughty Air, to the discouragement of Modesty and all honest Arts.  Shallow Fops, who are govern’d by the Eye, and admire every thing that struts in vogue, took up from the Sharpers the Phrase of Biting, and used it upon all Occasions, either to disown any nonsensical Stuff they should talk themselves, or evade the Force of what was reasonably said by others.  Thus, when one of these cunning Creatures was enter’d into a Debate with you, whether it was practicable in the present State of Affairs to accomplish such a Proposition, and you thought he had let fall what destroy’d his Side of the Question, as soon as you look’d with an Earnestness ready to lay hold of it, he immediately cry’d, Bite, and you were immediately to acknowledge all that Part was in Jest.  They carry this to all the Extravagance imaginable, and if one of these Witlings knows any Particulars which may give Authority to what he says, he is still the more ingenious if he imposes upon your Credulity.  I remember a remarkable Instance of this Kind.  There came up a shrewd young Fellow to a plain young Man, his Countryman, and taking him aside with a grave concern’d Countenance, goes on at this rate:  I see you here, and have you heard nothing out of Yorkshire—­You look so surpriz’d you could not have heard of it—­and yet the Particulars are such, that it cannot be false:  I am sorry I am got into it so far that I now must tell you; but I know not but it may be for your Service to know—­on Tuesday last, just after Dinner—­you know his Manner is to smoke, opening his Box, your Father fell down dead in an Apoplexy.  The Youth shew’d the filial Sorrow which he ought—­Upon which the witty Man cry’d, Bite, there was nothing in all this—­