Boswells Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica | Page 2

were the working thoughts which swelled the breast Of generous
Boswell; when with nobler aim And views beyond the narrow beaten
track By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course From polished Gallia's
soft delicious vales, From the grey reliques of imperial Rome, From her
long galleries of laureled stone, Her chiseled heroes and her marble
gods, Whose dumb majestic pomp yet awes the world, To animated
forms of patriot zeal; Warm in the living majesty of virtue; Elate with
fearless spirit; firm; resolved; By fortune nor subdued; nor awed by
power."[2]
[Footnote 2: "Mrs. Barbauld's Poems," vol. i., p. 2. It is certainly
strange that Boswell, so far as I know, nowhere quotes these lines. He
was not wont to let the world remain in ignorance of any compliment
that had been paid him. I fear that he was rather ashamed at finding
himself praised by a writer who was not only a woman, but also was
the wife of "a little presbyterian parson who kept an infant boarding
school."]
Gray was moved greatly by the account given of Paoli. "He is a man,"
he wrote, "born two thousand years after his time." Horace Walpole
had written to beg him to read the book. "What relates to Paoli," he said,
"will amuse you much." What merely amused Walpole "moved" Gray
"strangely." It moved others besides him. Subscriptions were raised for
the Corsicans, and money and arms were sent to them from this country.
Boswell writes to tell his friend Temple--"I have hopes that our
Government will interfere. In the meantime, by a private subscription
in Scotland, I am sending this week £700 worth of ordnance." Other
subscriptions were forwarded which Paoli, as is told in a letter from
him published in the "Gentleman's Magazine,"[3] "applied to the
support of the families of those patriots who, abhorring a foreign yoke,
have abandoned their houses and estates in that part of the country held
by the enemy, and have retired to join our army."
[Footnote 3: "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. xxxix., p. 214.]
Boswell's work met with a rapid sale. The copyright he sold to Dilly for

one hundred guineas. The publisher must have made no small gain by
the bargain, for a third edition was called for within a year. "My book,"
writes Boswell, "has amazing celebrity: Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole,
Mrs. Macaulay, Mr. Garrick have all written me noble letters about it."
With his Lordship's letter he was so much delighted that in the third
edition he obtained leave to use it to "enrich" his book. Johnson
pronounced his Journal in a very high degree curious and delightful. It
is surprising that a work which thus delighted Johnson, moved Gray
strangely, and amused Horace Walpole, can now be met with only in
old libraries and on the shelves of a dealer in second-hand books. I
doubt whether a new edition has been published in the last hundred
years. It is still more surprising when we remember that it is the work
of an author who has written a book "that is likely to be read as long as
the English exists, either as a living or as a dead language." The
explanation of this, I take it, is to be found in the distinction that
Johnson draws between Boswell's Account of Corsica, which forms
more than two-thirds of the whole book, and the Journal of his Tour.
His history, he said, was like other histories. It was copied from books.
His Journal rose out of his own experience and observation. His history
was read, and perhaps read with eagerness, because at the time when it
appeared there was a strong interest felt in the Corsicans. In despair of
maintaining their independence, they had been willing to place
themselves and their island entirely under the protection of Great
Britain. The offer had been refused, but they still hoped for our
assistance. Not a few Englishmen felt with Lord Lyttelton when he
wrote--"I wish with you that our Government had shown more respect
for Corsican liberty, and I think it disgraces our nation that we do not
live in good friendship with a brave people engaged in the noblest of all
contests, a contest against tyranny." But in such a contest as this
Corsica was before long to play a different part. Scarcely four years
after Boswell from some distant hill "had a fine view of Ajaccio and its
environs," that town was rendered famous by the birth of Napoleon
Buonaparte.
With whatever skill Boswell's history had been compiled it could not
have lived. There were not, indeed, the materials out of which a history
that should last could have been formed. The whole island boasted of

but one printing press and one bookseller's shop. The feuds and wars of
the wild islanders might