true, as we may know facts in common life to be true. Motives are
generally unknown. We cannot trust to the characters we find in history,
unless when they are drawn by those who knew the persons; as those, for
instance, by Sallust and by Lord Clarendon[234].'

He would not allow much merit to Whitefield's oratory. 'His popularity,
Sir (said he,) is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He
would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit,
or were he to preach from a tree[235].' I know not from what spirit of
contradiction he burst out into a violent declamation against the
Corsicans, of whose heroism I talked in high terms. 'Sir (said he,) what
is all this rout about the Corsicans? They have been at war with the
Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and have never yet taken their
fortified towns. They might have battered down their walls, and reduced
them to powder in twenty years. They might have pulled the walls in
pieces, and cracked the stones with their teeth in twenty years.' It was
in vain to argue with him upon the want of artillery: he was not to be
resisted for the moment.

On the evening of October 10, I presented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli.
I had greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem,
should meet[236]. They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their
own abilities, and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke
Italian, and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very well,
with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I compared myself
to an isthmus which joins two great continents. Upon Johnson's approach,
the General said, 'From what I have read of your works, Sir, and from
what Mr. Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in great
veneration.' The General talked of languages being formed on the
particular notions and manners of a people, without knowing which, we