te of my teeth and my
doors, and I see has given a foolish account of all he could pick up
from me about King Theodore.[2] He then took an antipathy to me on
Rousseau's account, abused me in the newspapers, and exhorted Rousseau
to do so too: but as he came to see me no more, I forgave all the rest.
I see he now is a little sick of Rousseau himself; but I hope it will
not cure him of his anger to me. However, his book will I am sure
entertain you.
[Footnote 1: Boswell, Dr. Johnson's celebrated biographer, had taken
great interest in the affairs of Corsica, which, in this year (1768),
Choiseul, the Prime Minister of France, had bought of Genoa, to which
State it had long belonged. Paoli was a Corsican noble, who had roused
his countrymen to throw off the domination of Genoa; and, on the arrival
of French troops to take possession of their purchase, he made a
vigorous resistance to the French General, the Comte de Marboeuf; but
eventually he was overpowered, and forced to fly. He took refuge in
England, where George III. granted him a pension, which he enjoyed till
his death in 1807, when he was buried in Westminster Abbey. One of his
relations was M. Charles Buonaparte, the father of Napoleon, who was
only prevented from accompanying him in his abandonment of Corsica by
the persuasion of his uncle, the Archdeacon of Ajaccio. Boswell, who was
apt to be enthusiastic in his hero-worship and anxiety for new
acquaintances (whom, it must be admitted, he commonly chose with
judgement, if with little dignity), introduced him to Johnson, who also
conceived a high regard for him, and on one occasion remarked that "he
had the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen."]
[Footnote 2: After several outbreaks within a few years, the Corsicans
in 1736 embarked in a revolt so formal and complete that they
altogether threw off their allegiance to Genoa, and chose as their king
Theodore Neuhof, a Westphalian baron. But Cardinal Fleury, the French
Prime Minister, from a belief that Theodore was an instrument of
Walpole, lent the Genoese a force of three thousand men, which at last
succeeded in crushing the insurrection and expelling Theodore. (See the
Editor's "France under the Bourbons," iii. 157.) Theodore is one of the
six ex-kings whom, in Voltaire's "Candide," his hero met at a hotel in
Venice during the carnival, when he gave a melancholy account of his
reverse of fortune. "He had been called 'Your Majesty;' now he can
hardly fin
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