as the means of preserving order and civilization, than of the predominance of one territory over another, which he looked upon as subjugation.’ Ib. p. 477.  Quite at the beginning of the struggle he foretold that the Americans would not be subdued, unless they broke in pieces among themselves. Ib. p. 482.  He was not frightened by the prospect of the loss of our supremacy.  He wrote to Adam Smith:—­’My notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined.  Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures.’ Ib. p. 484.  Johnson’s charge against Hume that he had no principle, is, no doubt, a gross one; yet Hume’s advice to a sceptical young clergyman, who had good hope of preferment, that he should therefore continue in orders, was unprincipled enough.  ‘It is,’ he wrote, ’putting too great a respect on the vulgar and on their superstitions to pique one’s self on sincerity with regard to them.  Did ever one make it a point of honour to speak truth to children or madmen?  If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every one to worship the gods—­[Greek:  nomo poleos].  I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular.  The common duties of society usually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pass through the world.’ Ib/. p. 187.

[608] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 48) says that Johnson told her that in writing the story of Gelaleddin, the poor scholar (Idler, No. 75), who thought to fight his way to fame by his learning and wit, ’he had his own outset into life in his eye.’  Gelaleddin describes how ’he was sometimes admitted to the tables of the viziers, where he exerted his wit and diffused his knowledge; but he observed that where, by endeavour or accident he had remarkably excelled, he was seldom invited a second time.’  See ante, p. 116.

[609] See ante, p. 115.

[610] Bar.  BOSWELL.

[611] Nard.  BOSWELL.

[612] Barnard.  BOSWELL.

[613] It was reviewed in the Gent.  Mag. 1781, p. 282, where it is said to have been written by Don Gabriel, third son of the King of Spain.

[614] Though ‘you was’ is very common in the authors of the last century when one person was addressed, I doubt greatly whether Johnson ever so expressed himself.

[615] See ante, i. 311.

[616] Horace Walpole (Letters v. 85) says, ’Boswell, like Cambridge, has a rage of knowing anybody that ever was talked of.’  Miss Burney records ’an old trick of Mr. Cambridge to his son George, when listening to a dull story, in saying to the relator “Tell the rest of that to George."’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 274.  See ante, ii. 361.