This respected some particular sorts of goods only, and chiefly spices and drugs, and dye-stuffs, and the like.  It were well if some other method than that of a rattling tongue could be found out, to ascertain the goodness and value of goods between the shopkeeper and the retail buyer, that such a flux of falsehoods and untruths might be avoided, as we see every day made use of to run up and run down every thing that is bought or sold, and that without any effect too; for, take it one time with another, all the shopkeeper’s lying does not make the buyer like the goods at all the better, nor does the buyer’s lying make the shopkeeper sell the cheaper.

It would be worth while to consider a little the language that passes between the tradesman and his customer over the counter, and put it into plain homespun English, as the meaning of it really imports.  We would not take that usage if it were put into plain words—­it would set all the shopkeepers and their customers together by the ears, and we should have fighting and quarrelling, instead of bowing and curtseying, in every shop.  Let us hark a little, and hear how it would sound between them.  A lady comes into a mercer’s shop to buy some silks, or to the laceman’s to buy silver laces, or the like; and when she pitches upon a piece which she likes, she begins thus: 

Lady.—­I like that colour and that figure well enough, but I don’t like the silk—­there is no substance in it.

Mer.—­Indeed, Madam, your ladyship lies—­it is a very substantial silk.

Lady.-No, no! you lie indeed, Sir; it is good for nothing; it will do no service.

Mer.—­Pray, Madam, feel how heavy it is; you will find it is a lie; the very weight of it may satisfy you that you lie, indeed, Madam.

Lady.—­Come, come, show me a better piece; I am sure you have better.

Mer.—­Indeed, Madam, your ladyship lies; I may show you more pieces, but I cannot show you a better; there is not a better piece of silk of that sort in London, Madam.

Lady.—­Let me see that piece of crimson there.

Mer.—­Here it is, Madam.

Lady.—­No, that won’t do neither; it is not a good colour.

Mer.—­Indeed, Madam, you lie; it is as fine a colour as can be dyed.

Lady.—­Oh fy! you lie, indeed, Sir; why, it is not in grain.

Mer.—­Your ladyship lies, upon my word, Madam; it is in grain, indeed, and as fine as can be dyed.

I might make this dialogue much longer, but here is enough to set the mercer and the lady both in a flame, and to set the shop in an uproar, if it were but spoken out in plain language, as above; and yet what is all the shop-dialect less or more than this?  The meaning is plain—­it is nothing but you lie, and you lie—­downright Billingsgate, wrapped up in silk and satin, and delivered dressed finely up in better clothes than perhaps it might come dressed in between a carman and a porter.