rted his soul, and he entered
into it with the liveliest ardour. He resolved to quarter himself with
Theresa in a cottage in some lonely district in the island; in a year
he would collect the necessary information as to the manners and
opinions of the inhabitants, and three years afterwards he would
produce a set of institutions that should be fit for a free and
valorous people.[155] In the midst of this enthusiasm (May 1765) he
urged Boswell to visit Corsica, and gave him a letter to Paoli, with
results which we know in the shape of an Account of Corsica (1768),
and in a feverishness of imagination upon the subject for many a long
day afterwards. "Mind your own affairs," at length cried Johnson
sternly to him, "and leave the Corsicans to theirs; I wish you would
empty your head of Corsica."[156] At the end of 1765, the immortal
hero-worshipper on his return expected to come upon his hero at
Motiers, but finding that he was in Paris wrote him a wonderful letter
in wonderful French. "You will forget all your cares for many an
evening, while I tell you what I have seen. I owe you the deepest
obligation for sending me to Corsica. The voyage has done me
marvellous good. It has made me as if all the lives of Plutarch had
sunk into my soul.... I am devoted to the Corsicans heart and soul; if
you, illustrious Rousseau, the philosopher whom they have chosen to
help them by your lights to preserve and enjoy the liberty which they
have acquired with so much heroism--if you have cooled towards these
gallant islanders, why then I am sorry for you, that is all I can
say."[157]

Alas, by this time the gallant islanders had been driven out of
Rousseau's mind by personal mishaps. First, Voltaire or some other
enemy had spread the rumour that the invitation to become the Lycurgus
of Corsica was a practical joke, and Rousseau's suspicious temper
found what he took for confirmation of this in some trifling incidents
with which we certainly need not concern ourselves.[158] Next, a very
real storm had burst upon him which drove him once more to seek a new
place of shelter, other than an island occupied by French troops. For
France having begun by despatching auxiliaries to the assistance of
the Genoese (1764), ended by buying the island from the Genoese
senate, with a sort of equity of redemption (1768)--an iniquitous
transaction, as Rousseau justly called it, equally shocking to
justice, humanity, reason, and policy.[159] Civilisation wou