Dr. South, Lloyd's cotemporary, but who survived him more than twenty years, expresses the sentiment in nearly the same words:
"In short, this seems to be the true inward judgment of all our politick sages, that speech was given to the ordinary sort of men, whereby to communicate their mind, but to wise men whereby to conceal it."
The next writer in whom this thought occurs is Butler, the author of Hudibras. In one of his prose essays on the "Modern Politician," he says:
"He (the modern politician) believes a man's words and his meanings should never agree together: for he that says what he thinks lays himself open to be expounded by the most ignorant; and he who does not make his words rather serve to conceal than discover the sense of his heart, deserves to have it pulled out, like a traitor's, and shown publicly to the rabble."
Young has the thought in the following couplet on the duplicity of courts:
"When Nature's end of language is declin'd,
And men talk only to conceal their mind."
From Young it passed to Voltaire, who in the dialogue entitled "Le Chapon et la Poularde," makes the former say of the treachery of men:
"Ils n'emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées."
Goldsmith, about the same time, in his paper in The Bee, produces it in the well-known words: