scheme was, to amuse the Corsicans with hopes of foreign aid; and, by the force of hope, to carry them foreward. This might have succeeded, in which cafe, he could very easily have said, that the foreign aid would have come, had there been occasion for it; but they had behaved with such spirit, as to require no help. And, had he been fortunate, it is probable, some of the powers of Europe might have, in reality, stood by him.
The Corsicans now, talk differently of king Theodore. Some of them, who had most faith in his fine speeches, still extoll him to the skies, to support their own judgment; others, who looked upon him as an impostour, and never joined heartily in his measures, represent him as a kind of Wat Tyler, a king of a rabble; but the most knowing and judicious, and the General himself, consider him in the moderate light in which he has now been represented, and own, that he was of great service in reviving the spirit of the nation, which, after a good many years of constant war, was beginning to droop, but which, Theodore restored, while he rekindled the sacred fire of liberty.
They, indeed, are sensible, that his wretched fate has thrown a fort of ridicule on the nation, since their king was confined in a jail at London, which was actually the cafe of poor Theodore;
