u were to read Richardson for the story, your
impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But
you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only
giving occasion to the sentiment.'

We talked of gaming, and animadverted on it with severity. JOHNSON.
'Nay, gentlemen, let us not aggravate the matter. It is not roguery to
play with a man who is ignorant of the game, while you are master of it,
and so win his money; for he thinks he can play better than you, as you
think you can play better than he; and the superiour skill carries it.'
ERSKINE. 'He is a fool, but you are not a rogue.' JOHNSON. 'That's much
about the truth, Sir. It must be considered, that a man who only does
what every one of the society to which he belongs would do, is not a
dishonest man. In the republick of Sparta, it was agreed, that stealing
was not dishonourable, if not discovered. I do not commend a society
where there is an agreement that what would not otherwise be fair,
shall be fair; but I maintain, that an individual of any society, who
practises what is allowed, is not a dishonest man.' BOSWELL. 'So then,
Sir, you do not think ill of a man who wins perhaps forty thousand
pounds in a winter?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest
man; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a
mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
Trade gives employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.'

On Thursday, April 9, I called on him to beg he would go and dine with
me at the Mitre tavern. He had resolved not to dine at all this day, I
know not for what reason; and I was so unwilling to be deprived of his
company, that I was content to submit to suffer a want, which was at
first somewhat painful, but he soon made me forget it; and a man is
always pleased with himself when he finds his intellectual inclinations
predominate.

He observed, that to reason philosophically on the nature of prayer, was
very unprofitable.

Talking of ghosts, he said, he knew one friend, who was an honest man
and a sensible man, who told him he had seen a ghost, old Mr. Edward
Cave, the printer at St. John's Gate. He said, Mr. Cave did not like to
talk of it, and seemed to be in great horrour whenever it was mentioned.
BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, what did he say was the appearance?' JOHNSON. 'Why,
Sir, something of a shadowy being.'

On Friday, April 10, I dined with him at Gener