Pascal Paoli was the Garibaldi of his day. When his father in 1738 had been driven from the island by the French, he had retired with him to Naples where he entered a military college and followed the profession of arms. The way was paved for his return by the disturbances in the island in 1755, and so successful was he in his guerilla warfare as general against the Genoese, the owners of Corsica, that they were speedily driven to sue for peace. It was in a sort of lull in the storm of hostilities that our traveller made his unexpected appearance, and the adroit way in which he managed to lay his plans of action and to carry them out with such complete success calls for our admiration. In his _Tour_ he simply says that 'having resolved to pass some years abroad (this is excellent, after his letter to Sir Andrew) for my instruction and entertainment, I conceived a design of visiting the Island of Corsica. I wished for something more than just the common course of what is called the tour of Europe, and Corsica occurred to me as a place where nobody else had been.' It may have been suggested to him by Rousseau, who had been engaged in some vague scheme of philandering philanthropy by which the wild philosopher was to play the Solon and the Lycurgus of the distressed islanders, and establish a fresh code of laws upon the basis of his new fraternity, but with which 'this steady patriot of the world alone,' as Canning styles him, 'the friend of every country but his own,' managed to mix in a much more practical way some not very honourable, if characteristic, intrigues for the surrender of the island to France.
Bozzy, at all events, was determined to make a bold bid for fame. Nothing like this had occurred, as an opening, during all his tour. The dangers of the plan were fully known to him, and the possibility was laid before his eyes of capture at the hands of the Barbary corsairs and a term of imprisonment at Algiers. Our adventurer waited on the commodore in command of the British squadron in the bay of Leghorn, and he was provided with a passport, the value of which against the threatened dangers does not sufficiently appear. Before he left Leghorn, his proposed visit had come to be regarded in a very serious light by Italian politicians. They saw in him an envoy from the British intrusted with powers to negotiate a treaty with Corsica, and all disclaimers of any such intention were politely treated as an evasion. Bozzy was in consequence viewed as 'a very close young man,' a trait that at no time of his life was ever applicable to James Boswell, on whom, indeed, the advice given by Sir Henry Wotton to Milton would have been thrown away. Putting out to sea in a Tuscan vessel bound for Capo Corso for wine, he had two days to spend on board in consequence of a dead calm. 'At sunset,' he says, 'all the people in the ship sang _Ave Maria_ with great devotion and some melody.' One recalls the similar circumstances under which Cardinal Newman found himself becalmed on the orange-boat in the Straits of Bonifacio. For some hours he had put himself in spirits by taking a hand at the oar, and at seven in the evening of the second day they landed in the harbour of Centuri. He delivered his credentials, and on Sunday heard a Corsican sermon, where the preacher told of Catharine of Siena who wished to be laid in the mouth of the awful pit, that she might stop it up, and so prevent the falling in of more souls. 'I confess, my brethren,' cried the friar, 'I have not such zeal, but I do what I can, I warn you how to avoid it.'