"Anecdote for Fathers" (full title: "Anecdote for Fathers, Shewing how the practice of Lying may be taught" ) is a poem by William Wordsworth first published in his 1798 collection titled Lyrical Ballads, which was co-authored by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A later version of the poem from 1845 contains a Latin epigraph from Praeparatio evangelica: "Retine vim istam, falsa enim dicam, si coges,"[1] which translates as "Restrain that force, for I will tell lies if you compel me."[2]