The Corsican peasants and soldiers were quite free and easy with me. Numbers of them used to come and see me of a morning, and just go out and in as they pleased. I did everything in my power to make them fond of the British, and bid them hope for an alliance with us. They asked me a thousand questions about my country, all which I cheerfully answered as well as I could. One day they would needs hear me play upon my German flute. To have told my honest natural visitants, 'Really, gentlemen, I play very ill,' and put on such airs as we do in our genteel companies, would have been highly ridiculous. I therefore immediately complied with their request. I gave them one or two Italian airs, and then some of our beautiful old Scotch tunes, 'Gilderoy,' 'The Lass of Patie's Mill,' 'Corn Riggs are Bonny.' The pathetick simplicity and pastoral gaiety of the Scots musick will always please those who have the genuine feelings of nature. The Corsicans were charmed with the specimens I gave them, though I may now say that they were very indifferently performed. My good friends insisted also to have an English song from me. I endeavoured to please them in this too, and was very lucky in that which occurred to me. I sung them, 'Hearts of oak are our ships, Hearts of oak are our men.' I translated it into Italian for them, and never did I see men so delighted with a song as the Corsicans were with 'Hearts of Oak.' 'Cuori di querco,' cried they, 'bravo Inglese.' It was quite a joyous riot. I fancied myself to be a recruiting sea-officer. I fancied all my chorus of Corsicans aboard the British fleet.[6] There is a natural good fellowship or social instinct, a splendid enjoyment in the company of others, revealed in this story: it is a quality that pleases everybody. To Paoli he was agreeable besides for other reasons. He had a real enthusiasm and taste for literature, which the intellectual world understood and appreciated readily enough. Hume writes of Boswell's return from Paris, in the company of Thérèse Le Vasseur. He calls him, 'a young gentleman, very good-humoured, very agreeable, and very mad'; and afterwards refers to his literary tastes: 'He has such a rage for literature that I dread some event fatal to our friend's honour. You remember the story of Terentia, who was first married to Cicero, then to Sallust, and at last, in her old age, married a young nobleman, who imagined that she must possess some secret which would convey to him eloquence and genius.'[7]