Definition of "humbugging"

Extract from a letter to Horace Walpole, written from Florence, in Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, ed. W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith, and George L. Lam (1960), p. 446. […] You will laugh at me, I suppose, when I say I don't understand Tristram Shandy, because it was probably the intention of the author that nobody should. It seems to me humbugging, if I have a right notion of an art of talking or writing that has been invented since I left England.

1760 November 1, Horace Mann [Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet], “Horace Mann on Sterne’s ‘Humbugging’”, quoted in Alan B. Howes, editor, Laurence Sterne: The Critical Heritage, London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1971 (reprinted 1995), ISBN 978-0-415-13425-5, page 104

My Friends, and Dear Countrymen, do not discard, / The Song and advice of a Patriot Bard, / Who wants you to listen to Cambria's praise, / To keep up old Customs, and walk in old ways, / So sung in Humbugging, and Tomfoolery.

1859, J[ohn] H[enry] P[hillips] [i.e., John Scourfield], “A Welsh Ode. Composed for the Eisteddfod.”, in Lyrics, and Philippics, [s.l.]: Middle Hill Press, OCLC 562485204; reprinted London: G. Norman, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, 1864, OCLC 260327185, page 27

Vice Lords call fighting humbugging, and robbing hustling. Humbugging is further subdivided: fighting between rival clubs is gangbanging, fighting between individuals is humbugging, and fighting which results when a group of club members goes out to jump on anyone they can find is wolf packing.

1979, R. Lincoln Keiser, The Vice Lords: Warriors of the Streets (Illinois Collection), New York, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, page 50