[31] Rousseau had by this time published his Nouvelle Helloise and Emile.
[32] Less than three months after the date of this conversation Rousseau wrote to General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, thanking him for the pension which George III proposed secretly to confer on him. Hume's Private Corres., p. 165. Miss Burney, in her preface to Evelina, a novel which was her introduction to Johnson's strong affection, mentioning Rousseau and Johnson, adds in a footnote:— 'However superior the capacities in which these great writers deserve to be considered, they must pardon me that, for the dignity of my subject, I here rank the authors of Rasselas and Eloïse as novelists.'
[33] Rousseau thus wrote of himself:
'Dieu est juste; il veut que je souffre; et il sait que je suis innocent. Voilà le motif de ma confiance, mon coeur et ma raison me crient qu'elle ne me trompera pas. Laissons donc faire les hommes et la destinée; apprenons à souffrir sans murmure; tout doit à la fin rentrer dans Fordre, et mon tour viendra tôt ou tard.' Rousseau's Works, xx. 223.
[34] 'He entertained me very courteously,' wrote Boswell in his Corsica, p. 140.
[35] In this preference Boswell pretended at times to share. See post, Sept. 30, 1769.
[36] Johnson seems once to have held this view to some extent; for, writing of Savage's poem On Public Spirit, he says (Works, viii. 156):—'He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' See also post, Sept. 23, 1777, where he asserts:—'It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal.' For the opposite opinion, see ante, June 25, 1763.
[37] 'Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes.' 'Manners and towns of various nations viewed.' FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 142.
[38] By the time Boswell was twenty-six years old he could boast that he had made the acquaintance of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli among foreigners; and of Adam Smith, Robertson, Hume, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Horace Walpole, Wilkes, and perhaps Reynolds, among Englishmen. He had twice at least received a letter from the Earl of Chatham.
[39] In such passages as this we may generally assume that the gentleman, whose name is not given, is Boswell himself. See ante, i. 4, and post, Oct. 16, 1769.