aintance of any one who was much talked about, naturally led him
to seek so singular a character as the man who was now at Motiers.
What Rousseau thought of one who was as singular a character as
himself in another direction, we do not know.[151] Lord Marischal
warned Rousseau that his visitor is of excellent disposition, but full
of visionary ideas, even having seen spirits--a serious proof of
unsoundness to a man who had lived in the very positive atmosphere of
Frederick's court at Berlin. "I only hope," says the sage Scot, of the
Scot who was not sage, "that he may not fall into the hands of people
who will turn his head: he was very pleased with the reception you
gave him."[152] As it happens, he was the means of sending Boswell to
a place where his head was turned, though not very mischievously.
Rousseau was at that time full of Corsican projects, of which this is
the proper place for us very briefly to speak.

The prolonged struggles of the natives of Corsica to assert their
independence of the oppressive administration of the Genoese, which
had begun in 1729, came to end for a moment in 1755, when Paoli
(1726-1807) defeated the Genoese, and proceeded to settle the
government of the island. In the Social Contract Rousseau had said,
"There is still in Europe one country capable of legislation, and that
is the island of Corsica. The valour and constancy with which this
brave people has succeeded in recovering and defending its liberty,
entitle it to the good fortune of having some wise man to teach them
how to preserve it. I have a presentiment that this little isle will
one day astonish Europe,"[153]--a presentiment that in a sense came
true enough long after Rousseau was gone, in a man who was born on the
little island seven years later than the publication of this passage.
Some of the Corsican leaders were highly flattered, and in August
1764, Buttafuoco entered into correspondence with Rousseau for the
purpose of inducing him to draw up a set of political institutions and
a code of laws. Paoli himself was too shrewd to have much belief in
the application of ideal systems, and we are assured that he had no
intention of making Rousseau the Solon of his island, but only of
inducing him to inflame the gallantry of its inhabitants by writing a
history of their exploits.[154] Rousseau, however, did not understand
the invitation in this narrower sense. He replied that the very idea
of such a task as legislation transpo