The
approbation of my own heart is enough."

He said he would have great pleasure in seeing the world, and enjoying
the society of the learned, and the accomplished in every country. I
asked him how with these dispositions he could bear to be confined to an
island yet in a rude uncivilised state; and instead of participating
Attick evenings, "noctes coenaeque Deum," be in a continual course of
care and of danger. He replied in one line of Virgil,

"Vincet amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido."

This uttered with the fine open Italian pronunciation, and the graceful
dignity of his manner, was very noble. I wished to have a statue of him
taken at that moment.

I asked him if he understood English. He immediately began and spoke it,
which he did tolerably well. When at Naples he had known several Irish
gentlemen who were officers in that service. Having a great facility in
acquiring languages, he learnt English from them. But as he had been now
ten years without ever speaking it, he spoke very slow. One could see
that he was possessed of the words, but for want of what I may call
mechanical practice, he had a difficulty in expressing himself.

I was diverted with his English library. It consisted of--

Some broken volumes of the "Spectatour" and "Tatler."

Pope's "Essay on Man."

"Gulliver's Travels."

A "History of France," in old English. And "Barclay's Apology
for the Quakers."

I promised to send him some English books.[105]

[Footnote 105: I have sent him the works of Harrington, of Sidney, of
Addison, of Trenchard, of Gordon, and of other writers in favour of
liberty. I have also sent him some of our best books of morality and
entertainment, in particular the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson, with a
compleat set of the "Spectatour," "Tatler," and "Guardian;" and to the
University of Corte, I have sent a few of the Greek and Roman Classicks,
of the beautiful editions of the Messieurs Foulis at Glasgow.[A]]

[Footnote A: The fate of one of these books was curious. Dr. Moore (the
author of "Edward," and the father of Sir John Moore) visited Berne
somewhere about the year 1772 (he gives no dates). He went to examine
the public library of that town. "I happened," he says, "to open the
Glasgow edition of Homer, which I saw here; on a blank page of which was
an address in Latin to the Corsican General, Paoli, signed James
Boswell. This very elegant book had been sent, I suppose,