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 THE MEMOIRS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LIFE OF EDWARD GIBBON 
 
THE MEMOIRS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 n 
 
 WITH VARIOUS OBSERVATIONS AND EXCURSIONS 
 
 BY HIMSELF 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 ) 
 
 HONORARY FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 New York : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 London: METHUEN & CO. 
 
 1900 
 
1 u^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 If, as Johnson said, there had been only three books 
 " written by man that were wished longer by their readers," 
 the eighteenth century was not to draw to its close with- 
 out seeing a fourth added. With Don Quixote, The 
 'Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe, the Autohio- 
 grapJiy of' Edward Gibbon was henceforth to rank as " a 
 work whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, 
 such as the traveller casts upon departing day". It is 
 indeed so short that it can be read by the light of a single 
 pair of candles; it is so interesting in its subject, and so 
 alluring in its turns of thought and its style, that in a 
 second and a third reading it gives scarcely less pleasure 
 than in the first. Among the books in which men have 
 told the story of their own lives it stands in the front 
 rank. It is a striking fact that one of the first of autobio- 
 graphies and the first of biographies were written in the 
 same years. Boswell was still working at his Life of 
 Johnson when Gibbon began those memoirs from which 
 his autobiography, in the form in which it was given to 
 the world, was so skilfully pieced together. But a short 
 time had gone by since Johnson had said that " he did 
 not think that the life of any literary man in England had 
 been well written ". That reproach against our writers he 
 himself did much to lessen by his Lives of Cowley and of 
 Milton, of Dryden and of Pope. It was finally removed 
 by two members of that famous club which he had helped 
 to found. However weak was the end of the eighteenth 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 century in works of imagination, in one great branch of 
 literature it faded nobly away. Both in the L%fe of 
 Johnson and in the Autobiography of Edward Gibbon, 
 it " left something so written to after- times as they should 
 not willingly let it die". Another hundred years have 
 gone by. Many Englishmen since then have written their 
 lives ; of many Englishmen the lives have been written by 
 others. Each of these books, in its own class, still remains 
 without a rival. Of each of them it may still be said : 
 " Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere ". 
 
 Admirable as is Gibbon's Autobiography in its present 
 form, we cannot help speculating on the perfection which 
 it might have attained had it been completed by the 
 hands of the author. He was an accomplished artist, who 
 both knew how to plan a stately temple, and how to give 
 to every corner its utmost polish. Though he left his 
 work imperfect, happily we have little need to exclaim with 
 the poet : — 
 
 Ah, who can raise that wand of magic power, 
 
 Or the lost clue regain ? 
 The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 
 
 Unfinished must remain. 
 
 The six sketches of his life which he left, covering as 
 they more or less did every part of it, excepting a year or two 
 at the close, were in each one of these divisions so highly 
 wrought that by a skilful editor they could be dovetailed 
 into a single work which should show few traces of incom- 
 pleteness. Judicious selection was what was most needed, 
 for Gibbon in his different sketches often travelled over 
 the same ground. In the main part of his task there 
 seems nothing wanting. "The review of my moral and 
 literary character," he wrote, "is the most interesting to 
 myself and to the public." That review he left so nearly 
 perfect that even he could have improved it but little. 
 
PREFACE vu 
 
 Of the real merit of the autobiography his first editor, 
 Lord Sheffield, shows an ignorance that seems strange 
 indeed when we remember the skill with which he dis- 
 charged his task. " It is to be lamented," he writes, " that 
 all the sketches of the memoirs, except that composed in 
 the form of annals, cease about twenty years before Mr. 
 Gibbon's death ; and consequently that we have the least 
 detailed account of the most interesting part of his life." 
 His lordship was misled by life's outward show and pomp. 
 It was Gibbon in the splendour of his success, in the full 
 blaze of the world, and not in the long and obscure stages 
 of his growth that he wished to see portrayed. He loved 
 to see his friend a member of Parliament and of the 
 ministry, a writer of state papers, the companion of the 
 most distinguished men at home or abroad, and basking in 
 the warmth of his great reputation. This to him was the 
 most interesting part of that unexampled life — this, which 
 the great historian had in common with troops of famous 
 men. 
 
 We may regret that Gibbon, when he had written his 
 life, did not think it right " to amuse the reader with a 
 gallery of portraits and a collection of anecdotes ". To do 
 so, as he tells us, " was most assuredly in his power ". 
 Admirable as they would have been in themselves, added 
 to his autobiography, they would have lessened its perfec- 
 tion as a whole. Bos well boasts with justice that, in his 
 Life of Johnson, "amidst a thousand entertaining and 
 instructive episodes, the hero is never long out of sight ". 
 Scarcely for a single moment do we lose sight of the hero 
 of the autobiography. It is the life of the author of the 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and his life alone, 
 that we read from the first page to the last. If he opens 
 his narrative with John Gibbon, the Marmorarius of King 
 Edward III., it is still his own life that, in a certain sense, 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 he is describing, for "we seemed to have lived in the 
 persons of our forefathers ". That " ideal longevity " of 
 the past belongs to him as much as the " ideal longevity " 
 of the future, when "his mind will be familiar to the 
 grandchildren of those who are yet unborn ". If he de- 
 scribes his maiden aunt, and her great struggles against 
 adversity, she it was whom he gratefully acknowledged as 
 " the true mother of his mind ". If he dwells at length on 
 the fourteen months he spent at Oxford, and on the five 
 years he spent "on the banks of the Leman Lake," it was "to 
 the fortunate banishment which placed him at Lausanne 
 that the fruits of his education must be ascribed *". His 
 service in the militia could not be passed over in a brief 
 paragraph, for however much " the reader may smile, the 
 captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers has not been useless 
 to the historian of the Roman Empire ". The seat he 
 held for some years in the House of Commons was worthy 
 of notice, for there he found a " school of civil prudence, 
 the first and most essential virtue of an historian ". 
 
 With the publication of the last volume of his history 
 he felt his public life was complete. For himself, indeed, 
 there still remained, he fondly hoped, a long "autumnal 
 felicity," happier by far than his boyhood and his youth, 
 happier, perhaps, even than those "twenty happy years, 
 animated by the labours of his history," to which he owed 
 that consciousness of high merit and that great fame 
 which were the very breath of his nostrils. Of this part 
 of his life the outside world need know nothing. He had 
 shown them how a great historian was made. How he 
 rested when once his long day's work was done, how he 
 enjoyed himself, with what great men he lived, what he 
 heard among them and what he saw — however interesting 
 all this might be in itself, it formed no chapter in " the 
 review of his moral aud literary character ". It is this 
 
PEEFACE ix 
 
 self-restraint of the consummate artist, this wise reticence 
 that gives us an almost perfect picture of a great scholar in 
 a work that can easily be read through at a single sitting. 
 Mark Pattison joins Gibbon with Milton as two men 
 " who are indulged without challenge in talk about them- 
 selves"". In each "the gratification of self-love, which 
 attends all autobiography, is felt to be subordinated to a 
 nobler end "". " It is his office," as poet or historian, " and 
 not himself, which he magnifies." He who had written 
 the Decline mid Fall had a right to tell the world how 
 he had been prepared for his great task. He was, it is 
 true, a vain man, foolishly vain in the opinion he enter- 
 tained of his ridiculous person, but of this kind of vanity 
 there are few traces to be discovered in his autobiography. 
 There is pride enough, unveiled consciousness of high 
 desert, "a lofty and steady confidence in himself'. This 
 is not indeed displayed with Milton's noble and severe 
 dignity. It is the pride of a great man who has worn a 
 periwig all his life. If now and then we smile at the 
 manner in which it is set forth, nevertheless we admit his 
 claim. 
 
 " Sume superbiam 
 Quaesitam meritis." 
 
 We the more readily forgive his pride from the pleasure 
 we take in readine his account of the formation of the 
 strong character by which it was justified. There is a 
 strange remark of Lowell's, where, speaking of "that 
 element of manhood which, for want of a better name, 
 we call character,"" he continues : " It is something dis- 
 tinct from genius, though all great geniuses are endowed 
 with it. Hence we always think of Dante Alighieri, of 
 Michael Angelo, of Will. Shakespeare, of John Milton, 
 while of such men as Gibbon and Hume we merely recall 
 the works, and think of them as the author of this and 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 that." That a man of letters, such as Lowell, should 
 have said this of Hume surprises me, for " that fattest of 
 Epicurus 's hogs,"" so Gibbon described him, however much 
 in his latter days he courted ease and the good opinion of 
 the world, nevertheless even then showed a curious and 
 interesting character of his own. Of Gibbon it is absurdly 
 beside the mark. For one reader who has read his Decline 
 and Fall, there are at least a score who have read his 
 autobiography, and who know him, not as the great his- 
 torian, but as a man of a most original and interesting 
 nature. There is no one like him. No wonder that his 
 friends, both English and French, used to speak of him 
 as " the Gibbon, le Gibbon "". He stands out, through the 
 deepening mists of years, clear and strongly marked, with 
 so many other members of the famous club, with Johnson, 
 Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds and Boswell. 
 
 Whether we like him is another question — love him we 
 certainly do not. There were indeed one or two who 
 loved him, whose love he had earned by the steadiness and 
 the warmth of his friendship. He had, however, too much 
 of the " rational voluptuary "" to be able to win our affec- 
 tion. His self-indulgence we are the more inclined to 
 despise, as in his later years it rendered his person ridicu- 
 lous through its unwieldy corpulence. He had besides 
 other and gi-eater failings. In a young man, in the full 
 flow of his life, we are less ready to forgive untruthfulness 
 than when we come across it in one who is stricken with the 
 timidity of age. He was only twenty when he sent, through 
 his father, the falsest message of affection to his unknown 
 step-mother, whom he was, as he tells us, in reality dis- 
 posed to hate as his own mother's rival. ^ Onilj a few years 
 later, when he should have been still in the generous 
 freshness of youth, he gave a friend that shameless advice 
 
 ^ Post, p. 113, n. 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 about love and married women which Lord Chesterfield 
 gave in the calculating coldness of old age.^ In middle 
 age, " at the beginning of the memorable contest between 
 Great Britain and America," he took his seat in Parlia- 
 ment. At such a time a man, deeply read as he was in 
 the reverses of great empires, might well have been swayed 
 by none but the loftiest of motives. When he looked 
 back upon that " school of civil prudence," in which he 
 had sat for eight sessions, where, by many a silent vote, he 
 had supported those measures which gave his country the 
 deepest wound she has ever suffered, he owned that in 
 entering Parliament all his views had been bounded by 
 the hope of the sinecure office which he at length attained 
 at the Board of Trade.^ We are set against him moreover 
 by the indecency of his writings, however much he " veiled 
 it in the obscurity of a learned language". We might 
 have found some excuse for a wantonness which sprang 
 from strong passions ; but who can forgive " une obscenite 
 erudite et froide " ? ^ 
 
 To set off against these grievous faults there was that 
 noble and unwearying industry which has given the world 
 The HiMory of the Decline and Fall of the Romaii Empire. 
 To this industry was added an accuracy which Porson pro- 
 nounces to be scrupulous, and his latest editor, amazing. If 
 he is sometimes unfair, if "his humanity never slumbers 
 unless when women are ravished or the Christians perse- 
 cuted," he does not intentionally alter or even suppress facts. 
 Through fourteen long centuries spreads the track of his 
 toilsome and accurate investigations. To him, too, might 
 be applied in large, though not in full measure, that 
 praise which he bestowed on Bayle : that " Nature had 
 designed him to think as he pleased, and to speak as he 
 
 1 Post, p. 153. 2 Post, p. 193, n. 
 
 3 It is thus that Sainte-Beuve describes it. Post, p. 231, n. 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 thought". If at times he veiled his scepticism with an 
 affectation of behef, part of the blame must be borne by 
 the law of the land, which still held the threat of three 
 years' imprisonment over anyone who, having been educated 
 in the Christian religion should, by writing, deny it to be 
 true. "Christianity," wrote Blackstone, "is part of the 
 laws of England." Offences against it " are punishable by 
 fine and imprisonment or other infamous corporal punish- 
 ment". Many years after Gibbon's time men were im- 
 prisoned for " profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures," for 
 doing rudely and avowedly what he had done politely and 
 covertly. After the long war that he had waged against 
 the stifling of truth by the Church of Rome, his fall was 
 deep indeed, when, under the terror inspired by the 
 French Revolution, he urged some Portuguese gentlemen 
 not to give up, at such a crisis, the Inquisition. 
 
 The publication that closely followed on the hundredth 
 anniversary of his death of the six sketches from which the 
 autobiography was compiled threw a most interesting 
 light on the great historian's method of work. To Mr. 
 John Murray — who by the purchase of the copyright, 
 first made them public — every student of our literature is 
 deeply indebted. To his enterprise, moreover, they owe 
 the two volumes of correspondence, in which a large addi- 
 tion was made to the letters of Gibbon already in print. 
 Grateful acknowledgment also is due to Miss Jane H. 
 Adeane, the editor of that charming book. The Girlhood 
 of Maria Josepha Holroyd, where we see our hero in 
 that pleasant mansion which he spoke of as his English 
 home, and also in that other home which he had above 
 the banks of the Leman Lake, whose "prospect was 
 crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy". 
 
 Important as was the publication of these sketches, it 
 had not the full importance assigned to it by the present 
 
PEEFACE xiii 
 
 Earl of Sheffield in his introduction to the volume. The 
 blunder into which he has fallen is strange indeed. John- 
 son, I am aware, "was of opinion, that when a man of 
 rank appeared in the character of a candidate for literary 
 fame, he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed ". 
 I might, therefore, perhaps have concealed my astonish- 
 ment at his lordship's mistake had he not been counten- 
 anced in it by Mr. Frederic Hari'ison, to whom he 
 acknowledges his " obligation for assistance in the prepara- 
 tion and composition of this preface". They are both, 
 therefore, equally responsible for the following statement : 
 "A piece, most elaborately composed by one of the 
 greatest writers who ever used our language, an autobio- 
 graphy often pronounced to be the best we possess, is now 
 proved to be in no sense the simple work of that illustrious 
 pen, but to have been dexterously pieced together out of 
 seven fragmentary sketches and adapted into a single and 
 coherent narrative ". All this should have been known to 
 everyone who had read the autobiography with any care, 
 for so much as that the first Lord Sheffield tells in a 
 note on the first page. "This passage," he writes, "is 
 found in one only of the six sketches, and in that which 
 seems to have been the first written." ^ In the preface he 
 shows how his part of the work was done. " Although," 
 he writes, " I have in some measure newly arranged those 
 interesting papers by forming one regular narrative from 
 the six different sketches, I have nevertheless adhered with 
 scrupulous fidelity to the very words of their author." 
 When nearly twenty years later on he brought out a 
 second edition, he recalled the fact that it was " from six 
 different sketches, and from notes and memoranda, that the 
 memoirs were composed and formed ". 
 
 1 What the latest editors describe as the seventh sketch he included among 
 " loose unconnected papers and cards all in Mr. Gibbon's handwriting". 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 There was no need to exaggerate the importance of 
 the publication of these different sketches. If we did not 
 learn for the first time that the autobiography was the 
 work of two hands, we were at all events admitted into 
 the very workshop, as it were, of one of our great writers. 
 There was, moreover, opened to us for the first time many 
 a striking passage that had been suppressed by Lord 
 Sheffield. The new work, with all its authenticity and 
 all its additions, can never supplant, however, the compila- 
 tion which has been the delight of many generations of 
 readers. Every student of English literature will have it 
 on his shelves; in every library that is worthy of the 
 name it will have a place ; but it is the autobiography as 
 it has been known to the world for more than a hundred 
 years that we shall read by the fireside. 
 
 Lord Sheffield went beyond the strict truth in asserting 
 that he had " adhered with scrupulous fidelity to the very 
 words of the author ". The changes that he made were by 
 no means few. None was more daring than the emenda- 
 tion by which he redeemed the character for gentility of 
 the Lausanne boarding-house where he and the historian 
 first met. " The boarders," wrote Gibbon, " were numer- 
 ous." " Numerous " offended his lordship's dignity. In his 
 revised version we read that " the boarders were select "} 
 Some changes he made for propriety's sake. Thus Gibbon, 
 after telling us how his grandfather, "at a mature age, 
 erected the edifice of a new fortune," continued : " I have 
 reason to believe that the second temple was not much 
 inferior to the first ". Temple was changed into struc- 
 ture,^ and the train of thought that would have been 
 raised by the allusion was lost. In the account of his 
 " elopements " from Magdalen College, he wrote ; " I was 
 
 1 Post, p. 156 ; Autobiography, p. 208. 
 ? Post^ p. 20 ; Auto., p. 16. 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 too young and bashful to enjoy, like a manly Oxonian in 
 town, the taverns and bagnios of Convent Garden ". The 
 last part of the sentence was veiled by the editor under 
 the " pleasures of London "} Some of the changes were 
 made to lessen the authors display of his own merits, and 
 some to moderate his swelling language. Of his sacrifices 
 in relieving his father from the pressure of debt he wrote : 
 "Under these painful circumstances my own behaviour 
 was not only guiltless but meritorious. Without stipulat- 
 ing any personal advantages, I consented, at a mature 
 and well-informed age, to an additional mortgage," etc. 
 Under the editor's ruthless pruning-knife the luxuriance of 
 these words was cut down to the following bare state- 
 ment : "Under these painful circumstances I consented to 
 an additional mortgage".^ Neither was Gibbon allowed, 
 in his later years, "to applaud as easy and happy" his 
 youthful emendation of a passage in Latin. It was enough 
 for the world to know that it was adopted by the learned 
 editor of Livy.^ In these last two instances there is 
 nothing more than omissions ; in the following we have an 
 example of the editor's simplification of his friend's exuber- 
 ant style. In the autobiography, as it was given to the 
 world, we read : " It had been my intention to pass the 
 Alps in the autumn, but such are the simple attractions 
 of the place that the year had almost expired before my 
 departure from Lausanne in the ensuing spring ". The fact 
 stated in the words which I have italicised had been ex- 
 pressed by Gibbon in the three following ways, neverthe- 
 less not one of these could win his editor's approbation : 
 " The annual circle was almost revolved " ; " the summer 
 was lost in the autumn and succeeding winter " ; " the 
 summer and autumn were lost in the succeeding winter ". 
 
 ^ Post, p. 65 ; Autobiography, p. 82. 
 
 2 Post, p. 185 ; Auto., p. 287. 2 Post, p. 100 ; Atito., p. 146. 
 
 h 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 Nay, even in a fourth version, recasting the sentence, he 
 said : " The simple charms of nature and society detained 
 me at the foot of the Alps till the ensuing spring".^ 
 " Whatsoever may have been the fruits of my education," 
 he wrote in another passage, " they must be ascribed to 
 the fortunate shipwreck which cast me on the shores of 
 the Leman Lake." The metaphor was too bold to be 
 allowed to pass, so that these fruits were ascribed " to the 
 fortunate banishment which placed me at Lausanne".^ 
 Writing of his return to England from his continental 
 tour, he said : " I tore myself from the embraces of Paris. 
 ... I reached the rural mansion of my parents." This 
 was too much for Lord Sheffield, who made him say, just 
 as if it were an ordinary Englishman coming home and 
 not "The Gibbon": "I reluctantly left Paris. ... I 
 arrived at my father's house." ^ It was surely not without 
 reason that the historian, in his autobiography, recorded 
 of his future editor : " My friend has never cultivated the 
 art of composition ". 
 
 Of the suppressions many were due to an unwillingness 
 to cause scandal or to give offence. Thus in speaking of 
 his youthful essay. The Age of Sesostris, and of his solution 
 of a difficulty in the chronology. Gibbon wrote : " In my 
 supposition the high priest is guilty of a voluntary error : 
 flattery is the prolific parent of falsehood ; and falsehood, 
 I will now add, is not incompatible with the sacerdotal 
 character ". The last part of the sentence was not allowed 
 to appear in print.^ The writer, it seems likely, was not 
 thinking so much of priests in general as of the divines, 
 " the polemics of either university," who had discharged 
 their "ecclesiastical ordnance" against The Decline and 
 
 1 Post, p. 154 ; Autobiography, pp. 205, 263, 301, 404. 
 
 2 Post, p. 108 ; Auto., p. 239. * Post, p. i68 ; Auto., p. 271. 
 * Post, p. 64; Auto., p. 80. 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. If he attacked the Church he 
 was not more sparing of the mihtary service. In his 
 account of his three years' service in the militia he wrote : 
 " My temper was insensibly soured by the society of our 
 rustic officers, who were alike deficient in the knowledge of 
 scholars and the manners of gentlemen ". Lord Sheffield 
 did not allow the latter half of the sentence to appear.^ 
 An hour may be pleasantly spent in examining these sup- 
 pressions in Mr. Murray's edition. The brackets in which 
 they are enclosed make tracking them an easy work. As 
 we read them we find ourselves wishing that his lordship 
 had been as indiscreet as Boswell. 
 
 Respect for Mr. Murray's copyright has made me spar- 
 ing in emendations. My text, with the exception of a few 
 words, is Lord Sheffield's. It does not, however, exactly 
 correspond with either his first or his second edition ; for it 
 contains two or three passages which are found only in one 
 or other of these, but not in both. When he came to 
 re-edit the work he made omissions as well as additions. 
 In two recent reprints I was surprised to find not a single 
 trace of the famous passage in which Gibbon foretold that 
 "the romance of Tom, Jones, that exquisite picture of 
 human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and 
 the imperial eagle of the House of Austria ". In the first 
 edition this exaltation of Fielding over the Habsburghs 
 does not appear, and it was from this edition that these two 
 reprints were made. On the other hand, Mr. Murray, who 
 evidently had the second edition before him, has marked 
 as " portions hitherto unpublished " some passages which 
 are included in the first edition. One striking description 
 I do not find in any one of the seven sketches, though 
 undoubtedly it comes from Gibbon's hand. It is where 
 he shows his readers Lord North seated on the Treasury 
 
 ^ Post, p. 138 ; Autobiography, p. i8g. 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 Bench, supported by Thurlow and Wedderburne, and 
 opposed by Barre and Dunning, by Burke and Fox.^ 
 
 The letters and long extracts from Gibbon*'s journal, 
 both in English and French, inserted as footnotes by Lord 
 Sheffield, are, in the present edition, either for the most 
 part omitted or else are transferred to the appendix. In 
 giving an appendix as well as footnotes I am following the 
 example set by Professor Bury in his learned edition of 
 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon 
 himself began by placing all his notes at the end of each 
 volume. With reluctance, yielding to "the public im- 
 portunity, he removed them," in later editions, "to the 
 bottom of the page ". One of my chief aims has been to 
 throw light on Gibbon's character from his own writings. 
 Many of my notes are drawn from Tlie Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire, and many from the five volumes of 
 his Miscellaneous Works. Of his correspondence, too, I 
 have made great use. To Mr. Murray we owe a large 
 debt of gratitude for printing the letters exactly as they 
 were written. We discovered for the first time the daring 
 liberties Lord Sheffield had at times taken in giving to the 
 world a patchwork of extracts as one entire letter. Thus, 
 on page 95 of the second volume of the Miscellaneous 
 Works, there is a short letter, dated 13th October, 1772. 
 It contains but four paragraphs. Of these the first was 
 written on 21st April of that year, the second on 3rd 
 October, the third on 3rd November, the first four lines 
 of the fourth on 30th October, the next two lines on 15th 
 October, and the last on 30th October.^ On the date 
 given by his lordship, not a single word was written. 
 This, however, is an extreme case. 
 
 1 See Post, p. 192, and Autobiography, p. 310, where this passage should be 
 found. 
 
 2 See Correspondence, i., 155, 165, 166, 169. 
 
PREFACE xix 
 
 Though by far the larger part of my quotations from 
 the Correspoiidence are found in the first two volumes of 
 the Miscellaneous Works, nevertheless, for the convenience 
 of my reader, my references are to Mr, Murray's edition 
 of the Correspondence. 
 
 To Lord Sheffield's daughter, Maria Josepha Holroyd, 
 whose Girlhood has delighted many a reader, is commonly 
 attributed, since the recent publications, a large share in 
 that excellent piece of work by which, out of seven frag- 
 ments, was formed one almost perfect whole. In the 
 preface to the Autobiography we are told that "she 
 evidently marked the manuscripts in pencil handwriting 
 (now recognised as hers) for the printer's copyist. These 
 pencil deletions, transpositions and even additions corre- 
 spond with the Autobiography as published by Lord 
 Sheffield". Nothing can justly be inferred from this, for 
 we learn from one of her own letters that she often was 
 her father's amanuensis. Three months before Gibbon's 
 death, she wrote : " I think the excursion to Tunbridge 
 Wells will be a good thing for papa, because he will 
 be more engaged, and he will not write or use his eyes, 
 which he will do, even by candle light, at home some- 
 times, though we write for him all the morning".^ 
 Eight months later she mentions the engagement of a 
 secretary, " recommended by Mr. Hayley, who had him 
 from Mr. Cowper, the author of The TasJc. He is about 
 sixteen ; has had a good education ; can read Latin and 
 French ; and is to have £^0 a year, and to live with the 
 servants. He will be particularly useful, as papa intends 
 to undertake the arrangement of Mr. Gibbon's memoirs 
 and letters for the public eye."^ She tells us, moreover, 
 whose assistance it was that her father did use in the 
 
 1 TAe Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd, p. 243. 
 
 2/3., p. 286. 
 
XX PREFACE 
 
 more difficult part of his task. Writing on 28th August, 
 1794, of the arrival at Sheffield Place of William Hayley, 
 the poet, with a barrister named More, who spoke sensibly 
 and clearly, but with " the pertness and conceit natural to all 
 young lawyers," she continued : " Mr. Hayley, Mr. More 
 and Miss Poole are closeted reading Mr. Gibbon's memoirs, 
 etc., and Mr. Hayley thinks a great deal must be omitted 
 in publication. I hope his advice will be taken, for I 
 have a great opinion of his judgment." A fortnight la^:er 
 she wrote : " I was quite happy that papa and he agreed 
 in every material point relative to the memoirs, etc. 
 They found much to lop off; but much, very much, of a 
 most interesting nature will remain, and by Mr. Hayley's 
 assistance I think such a work will appear next spring as 
 the public have not been treated with for many years. 
 . . . Mr. More was an excellent person to attend the 
 committee. He was as good a judge as the two others in 
 point of sense and feeling ; at the same time that being 
 unprejudicial to Mr. Gibbon as a friend, he gave the 
 opinion of an impartial person, which frequently furnished 
 the other members of the committee with useful hints."" ^ 
 Eighteen months later, when "the Gibbonian memoirs" 
 were going through the press, she wrote : " Milady [her 
 stepmother, the second Lady Sheffield] and I are excellent 
 devils, and corrected yesterday three sheets of sixteen 
 pages each".^ There is not a word to show that she 
 played anything but a minor part in the work of editing. 
 It was, we must assume, as the amanuensis, perhaps of the 
 " committee," perhaps of her father only, that she marked 
 the manuscripts. 
 
 I discovered with real regret in the course of my reading 
 that two passages that throw a charm over the genealogies 
 
 ^ The Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd, p. 303. 
 2 lb., p. 365. 
 
PREFACE xxi 
 
 with which the autobiography opens had been proved to 
 be mere illusions. To that pride of descent "from a 
 patron and martyr of learning," which Gibbon felt as " a 
 man of letters," he had no just claim. More than a hundred 
 years ago Sir Egerton Brydges showed that the historian 
 was not sprung from the Baron Say and Seale who was 
 murdered by Jack Cade for the crime of "erecting a 
 grammar school," and " building a paper mill contrary to 
 the king, his crown and dignity "".^ In our own day Mr. 
 J, H. Round has, at a blow, demolished the fabric by 
 which Henry Fielding and his kinsmen, the Earls of 
 Denbigh, were made "the brethren" of "the successors 
 of Charles the Fifth ".^ 
 
 I have done my best to trace the quotations and allu- 
 sions which are scattered throughout the autobiography. 
 Two, however, have baffled me, though I have con- 
 sulted some of the best Latin scholars in three univer- 
 sities. No one can tell me in what poet is to be found 
 the lines : — 
 
 " Manus haec inimica tyrannis 
 Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem " ; 
 
 nor who wrote : " Est sacrificulus in pago, et rusticos 
 decipit".^ 
 
 I have to acknowledge the kind assistance which I have 
 received from Mr. G. K. Fortescue, the Keeper of Printed 
 Books in the British Museum, who has once more facilitated 
 my researches in the library in every way in his power, and 
 has besides allowed me to draw freely on his wide know- 
 ledge. Gibbon lamented the want of a public library " in 
 the greatest city of the world". Had he lived in these 
 happier days, even the charms of Lausanne might not 
 have been strong enough to draw him away from the 
 
 1 Post, p. II, n, 2. ^ lb., p. s. «• 3. 2 lb., pp. 102, 171. 
 
xxii PREFACE 
 
 British Museum. There, if anywhere, is to be found that 
 Respubhca Literatorum to whom Bodley dedicated his 
 noble library. 
 
 To the President of Magdalen College I am indebted, both 
 for the assistance he gave me in my investigations into the 
 state of his college as it was in the middle of last century, 
 and also for drawing my attention to General Meredith 
 Read's Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne and Savoy, a work in 
 which is described in the greatest detail Lausanne and its 
 inhabitants as they were known to Gibbon. The general 
 had the run, as it were, of all the garrets in the houses of 
 the old families of that town, in which were stored up 
 the dusty records of past generations. Many a memorial 
 did he find of Gibbon himself He dined off the Wedge- 
 wood ware which the historian had sent for from England, 
 while the table was furnished with his table linen, so 
 ample had been the store and so durable the quality. He 
 even had a glimpse, though only a glimpse, of the few 
 remaining bottles of the great man's Madeira. Letters 
 and other documents he discovered in large numbers, 
 many of them in Gibbon's handwriting, and many in 
 Voltaire's and Rousseau's. None of these, unfortunately, 
 with one solitary exception, has he given in the original. 
 Everything he has translated. One letter of Gibbon's, and 
 one only, is printed in the French in which it was written. 
 It was thought better (to borrow, with a change of one 
 word, a line from The Decline and Fall) " to veil it in the 
 obscurity of a Joreign language "} A real service would 
 be done to literature were the most interesting of these 
 papers published in their original form. 
 
 My task in editing this famous autobiography has cost 
 me many months more work than I had counted on when 
 my publisher first asked me to undertake it. It has, how- 
 
 ^ See Post, p, 153, n 4, 
 
PREFACE xxiii 
 
 ever, been a labour of love. If I succeed in winning the 
 approval of scholars I shall be fully repaid. 
 
 G. B. H. 
 
 Hampstead, 
 April A:, 1900.1 
 
 1 The following are the editions of the works to which I most frequently 
 refer : — 
 
 Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by J. 
 B. Bury, 7 vols. London. Methuen & Company, 1897. 
 
 Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, edited by John, Lord Sheffield. Second 
 edition, 5 vols. London. John Murray, 1814. 
 
 Gibbon's Correspondence, edited by Rowland E. Prothero, 2 vols. London. 
 John Murray, 1896. 
 
 Gibbon's Autobiographies, edited by John Murray. Second edition, 2 vols. 
 London. John Murray, 1897. 
 
 Boswell's Life of Johnson, edited by George Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols. Claren- 
 don Press, 1887. 
 
 Voltaire. CEuvres Completes, 66 torn. Paris, 1819-25. 
 
 The title of the present edition is Gibbon's own. I found it, in his hand- 
 writing, in the manuscript of the various sketches of the Autobiography now 
 preserved in the British Museum. 
 
xxiv ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 EXTRACTS 
 
 FROM 
 
 LORD SHEFFIELD'S 
 ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF MR. GIBBON. 
 
 The melancholy duty of examining the papers of my de- 
 ceased friend devolved upon me at a time when I was 
 depressed by severe afflictions. 
 
 In that state of mind, I hesitated to undertake the task 
 of selecting and preparing his manuscripts for the press. 
 The warmth of my early and long attachment to Mr. 
 Gibbon made me conscious of a partiality which it was 
 not proper to indulge, especially in revising many of his 
 juvenile and unfinished compositions. I had to guard, 
 not only against a sentiment like my own, which I found 
 extensively diffused, but also against the eagerness occa- 
 sioned by a very general curiosity to see in print every 
 literary relic, however imperfect, of so distinguished a 
 writer. 
 
 Being aware how disgracefully authors of eminence have 
 been often treated by an indiscreet posthumous publica- 
 tion of fragments and careless effusions ; when I had selected 
 those papers which, to myself, appeared the fittest for the 
 public eye, I consulted some of our common friends, 
 whom I knew to be equally anxious with myself for Mr. 
 
TO THE FIRST EDITION xxv 
 
 Gibbon's fame, and fully competent from their judgment 
 to protect it. 
 
 Under such a sanction it is that, no longer suspecting 
 myself to view through too favourable a medium the com- 
 positions of my friend, I now venture to publish them : 
 and it may here be proper to give some information to 
 the reader respecting the contents of these volumes. 
 
 The most important part consists of memoirs of Mr. 
 Gibbon's life and writings, a work which he seems to have 
 projected with peculiar solicitude and attention, and of 
 which he left six different sketches, all in his own hand- 
 writing. One of these sketches, the most diffuse and cir- 
 cumstantial so far as it proceeds, ends at the time when 
 he quitted Oxford. Another at the year 1764, when he 
 travelled to Italy. A third, at his father's death in 1770. 
 A fourth, which he continued to March 1791, appears in 
 the form of annals, much less detailed than the others. 
 The two remaining sketches are still more imperfect. 
 But it is difficult to discover the order in which these 
 several pieces were written. From all of them the 
 following memoirs have been carefully selected and put 
 together. 
 
 My hesitation in giving these memoirs to the world 
 arose principally from the circumstance of Mr. Gibbon*'s 
 seeming, in some respect, not to have been quite satisfied 
 with them, as he had so frequently varied their form : yet, 
 notwithstanding this diffidence, the compositions, though 
 unfinished, are so excellent, that I think myself j ustified in 
 permitting my friend to appear as his own biographer, 
 rather than to have that office undertaken by any other 
 person less qualified for it. 
 
 This opinion has rendered me anxious to publish the 
 present memoirs without any unnecessary delay ; for I am 
 persuaded that the author of them cannot be made to 
 
xxvi ADVEETISEMENT 
 
 appear in a truer light than he does in the following pages. 
 In them, and in his different letters, which I have added, 
 will be found a complete picture of his talents, his disposi- 
 tion, his studies, and his attainments. 
 
 Those slight variations of character, which naturally 
 arose in the progress of his life, will be unfolded in a series 
 of letters selected from a correspondence between him and 
 myself, which continued full thirty years, and ended with 
 his death. 
 
 It is to be lamented, that all the sketches of the memoirs, 
 except that composed in the form of annals, cease about 
 twenty years before ,Mr. Gibbon's death ; and consequently 
 that we have the least detailed account of the most in- 
 teresting part of his life. His correspondence during that 
 period will, in great measure, supply the deficiency. It 
 will be separated from the memoirs, and placed in an 
 appendix, that those who are not disposed to be pleased 
 with the repetitions, familiarities and trivial circumstances, 
 of epistolary writing, may not be embarrassed by it. By 
 many the letters will be found a very interesting part of 
 the present publication. They will prove how pleasant, 
 friendly and amiable Mr. Gibbon was in private life ; and 
 if in publishing letters so flattering to myself I incur the 
 imputation of vanity, I shall meet the charge with a frank 
 confession, that I am indeed highly vain of having enjoyed 
 for so many years the esteem, the confidence and the affec- 
 tion of a man, whose social qualities endeared him to the 
 most accomplished society, and whose talents, great as 
 they were, must be acknowledged to have been fully 
 equalled by the sincerity of his friendship. 
 
 Whatever censure may be pointed against the editor, 
 the public will set a due value on the letters for their 
 intrinsic merit. I must indeed be blinded either by vanity 
 or affection, if they do not display the heart and mind of 
 
TO THE FIEST EDITION xxvii 
 
 their author in such a manner as justly to increase the 
 number of his admirers. 
 
 I have not been solicitous to garble or expunge passages 
 which to some may appear trifling. Such passages will 
 often, in the opinion of the observing reader, mark the 
 character of the writer ; and the omission of them would 
 materially take from the ease and familiarity of authentic 
 letters. 
 
 Few men, I believe, have ever so fully unveiled their 
 own character, by a minute narrative of their sentiments 
 and pursuits, as Mr. Gibbon will here be found to have 
 done ; not with study and labour — not with an affected 
 frankness — but with a genuine confession of his little foibles 
 and peculiarities, and a good-humoured and natural dis- 
 play of his own conduct and opinions. 
 
 Mr. Gibbon began a journal, a work distinct from the 
 sketches already mentioned, in the early part of his life, 
 with the following declaration : — 
 
 " I propose from this day (24th August, 1761) to keep 
 an exact journal of my actions and studies, both to assist 
 my memory, and to accustom me to set a due value on my 
 time. I shall begin by setting down some few events of 
 my past life, the dates of which I can remember." 
 
 This industrious project he pursued occasionally in 
 French, with the minuteness, fidelity and liberality of a 
 mind resolved to watch over and improve itself. 
 
 The journal is continued under different titles, and is 
 sometimes very concise, and sometimes singularly detailed. 
 One part of it is entitled " My Journal," another " Ephe- 
 merides, or Jom*nal of my Actions, Studies and Opinions ". 
 The other parts are entitled " Ephemerides, ou Journal de 
 ma Vie, de mes Etudes, et de mes Sentiraens ". In this 
 journal, among the most trivial circumstances, are mixed 
 very interesting observations and dissertations on a satire 
 
xxviii ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 of Juvenal, a passage of Homer or of Longinus, or of any 
 other author whose works he happened to read in the 
 course of the day ; and he often passes from a remark on 
 the most common event, to a critical disquisition of con- 
 siderable learning, or an inquiry into some abstruse point 
 of philosophy. 
 
 It certainly was not his intention that this private and 
 motley diary should be presented to the public ; nor have 
 I thought myself at liberty to present it in the shape in 
 which he left it. But when reduced to an account of his 
 literary occupations, it forms so singular and so interesting 
 a portrait of an indefatigable student, that I persuade 
 myself it will be regarded as a valuable acquisition by the 
 literary world, and as an accession of fame to the memory 
 of my friend. 
 
 In the collection of writings which I am now sending to 
 the press, there is no article that will so much engage the 
 public attention as the memoirs. I will, therefore, close 
 all I mean to say as their editor, by assuring the reader, 
 that although I have in some measure newly arranged those 
 interesting papers, by forming one regular narrative from 
 the six different sketches, I have nevertheless adhered with 
 scrupulous fidelity to the very words of their author ; and 
 I use the letter S to mark such notes as it seemed to me 
 necessary to add. 
 
 It remains only to express a wish that, in discharging 
 this latest office of affection, my regard to the memory of 
 my friend may appear, as I trust it will do, proportioned 
 to the high satisfaction which I enjoyed for many years 
 in possessing his entire confidence, and very partial 
 attachment. 
 
 Sheffield. 
 
 Sheffield Plaoe, 
 6tk Aug., 1795. 
 
TO THE SECOND EDITION xxix 
 
 EXTRACT 
 
 FBOM 
 
 LORD SHEFFIELD'S 
 ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 It will be remembered that the memoirs were composed * 
 
 and formed from six different sketches, and from notes and 
 memoranda on loose unconnected papers and cards, all in 
 Mr. Gibbon's handwriting. This new edition of his 
 posthumous works has furnished me with the opportunity 
 of interweaving several additional extracts from the same 
 sources; illustrating and enlarging the memoirs, where 
 they were most scanty, by notes principally selected from 
 his journal. 
 
 Sheffield. 
 
 Sheitield Place, 
 24M Nov., 1814. 
 
MEMOIRS 
 
 OF 
 
 MY LIFE AND WRITINGS 
 
 TN the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an 
 arduous and successful work, I now propose to employ some 
 moments of my leisure in reviewing the simple transactions 
 of a private and literary life. Truth, naked unblushing truth, 
 the first virtue of more serious history, must be the sole 
 recommendation of this personal narrative. The style shall 
 be simple and familiar ; but style is the image of character,^ 
 and the habits of correct writing may produce, without labour 
 or design, the appearance of art and study.^ My own amuse- 
 ment is my motive, and will be my reward : and if these sheets 
 are communicated to some discreet and indulgent friends, 
 they will be secreted from the public eye till the author shall 
 be removed beyond the reach of criticism or ridicule.^ 
 
 1 [See post, p. 190, where he says that ' ' the style of an author should be the 
 image of his mind". Buffon had said before him: " Le style est I'homme 
 meme". If style is the image of character, the general absence of style is 
 explained by Pope, who says : — 
 
 " Most women have no characters at all " 
 
 {Moral Essays, ii., 2) ; 
 and by Johnson, who goes still further, maintaining that "the greater part of 
 mankind have no character at all " (Johnson's Works, viii., 355). Wordsworth, 
 criticising Johnson's assertion, says that " every man has a character of his own 
 to the eye that has skill to perceive it" (Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1857, vi., 
 316).] 
 
 2 [" He that has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with 
 complete ease" (Johnson's Works, viii., 284).] 
 
 '^ This passage is found in one only of the six sketches, and in that which 
 seems to have been the first written, and which was laid aside among loose 
 papers. Mr. Gibbon, in his communications with me on the subject of his 
 Memoirs, a subject which he had never mentioned to any other person, ex- 
 pressed a determination of publishing them in his lifetime ; and never appears to 
 have departed from that resolution, excepting in one of his letters annexed, in 
 which he intimates a doubt, though rather carelessly, whether in his time, or at 
 any time, they would meet the eye of the public. In a conversation, however, 
 not long before his death, I suggested to him that, if he should make them 
 a full image of his mind, he would not have nerves to publish them, and there- 
 fore that they should be posthumous. He answered, rather eagerly, that he 
 was determined to publish them in his lifetime. — Sheffield. [For the 
 1 
 
2 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 A lively desire of knowing and of recording our ancestors 
 so generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of 
 some common principle in the minds of men. We seem to 
 have lived in the persons of our forefathers ; it is the labour 
 and reward of vanity to extend the term of this ideal longevity. 
 Our imagination is always active to enlarge the narrow circle 
 in which Nature has confined us. Fifty or an hundred years 
 may be allotted to an individual, but we step ^ forwards beyond 
 death with such hopes as religion and philosophy will suggest ; 
 and we fill up the silent vacancy that precedes our birth, by 
 associating ourselves to the authors of our existence. Our 
 calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate, than to sup- 
 press, the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The satirist 
 may laugh,^ the philosopher may preach ;^ but Reason herself 
 
 "letter annexed," dated January 6, 1793, see Corres., ii., 357. He writes: 
 " Of the Memoirs little has been done, and with that little I am not satisfied. 
 They must be postponed till a mature season ; and I much doubt whether the 
 book and the author can ever see the light at the same time." On December 
 28, 1791, he had written: "I have much revolved the plan of the Memoirs 
 I once mentioned, and, as you do not think it ridiculous, I believe I shall 
 make an attempt. If I can please myself I am confident of not displeasing ; 
 but let this be a profound secret between us ; people must not be prepared to 
 laugh, they must be taken by surprise " [ib. , ii. , 280). Even by this earlier date 
 he had made more than one attempt. A sketch that forms an important part 
 of the Memoirs as published was finished on March 2, 1791 (Auto., p. 349).] 
 
 1 [In the original, " stretch " (Auto., p. 417).] 
 
 2 [" Stemmata quid faciunt? Quid prodest, Pontice, longo 
 Sanguine censeri, pictosque ostendere vultus 
 Majorum, et stantes in curribus ^milianos, 
 Et Curios jam dimidios, humeroque minorem 
 Corvinum, et Galbam oculis nasoque carentem?" 
 
 (Juvenal, Sat. viii., i.) 
 Savage writes in the opening lines of The Bastard: — 
 
 " He lives to build, not boast, a generous race; 
 No tenth transmitter of a foolish face ". 
 Young says of the nobleman : — 
 
 ' ' He stands for fame on his forefathers' feet, 
 
 By heraldry prov'd valiant or discreet. 
 
 With what a decent pride he throws his eyes 
 
 Above the man by three descents less wise ! 
 
 If virtues at his noble hands you crave. 
 
 You bid him raise his father's from the grave. 
 
 Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase ; 
 
 Nobles look backward, and so lose the race. " 
 
 (Tke Universal Passion, Sat. i. , 1. 131.)] 
 3 ["The sophists of every age, despising, or affecting to despise, the acci- 
 dental distinctions of birth and fortune, reserve their esteem for the superior 
 qualities of the mind, with which they themselves are so plentifully endowed" 
 (Tke Decline, ii. , 486).] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 3 
 
 will respect the prejudices and habits, which have been con- 
 secrated by the experience of mankind.'^ Few there are who 
 can sincerely despise in others an advantage of which they 
 are secretly ambitious to partake. The knowledge of our own 
 family from a remote period will be always esteemed as an 
 abstract pre-eminence, since it can never be promiscuously 
 enjoyed ; but the longest series of peasants and mechanics 
 would not afford much gratification to the pride of their 
 descendant. We wish to discover our ancestors, but we wish 
 to discover them possessed of ample fortunes, adorned with 
 honourable titles, and holding an eminent rank in the class of 
 hereditary nobles, which has been maintained for the wisest 
 and most beneficial purposes in almost every climate of the 
 globe, and in almost every modification of political society.^ 
 
 Wherever the distinction of birth is allowed to form a 
 superior order in the state, education and example should 
 always, and will often, produce among them a dignity of 
 sentiment and propriety of conduct, which is guarded from 
 dishonour by their own and the public esteem. If we read 
 of some illustrious line so ancient that it has no beginning, 
 so worthy that it ought to have no end, we sympathize in its 
 various fortunes ; nor can we blame the generous enthusiasm, 
 or even the harmless vanity, of those who are allied to the 
 honours of its name. For my own part, could I draw my 
 pedigree from a general, a statesman, or a celebrated author, 
 I should study their lives with the diligence of filial love. In 
 the investigation of past events, our curiosity is stimulated by 
 
 1 [The rest of the paragraph to " political society " first appears in the second 
 edition. In its arrangement it differs in some places from the original, which 
 in Auto., p. 417, is marked as hitherto unpublished.] 
 
 2 ["But, sir (said Johnson), as subordination is very necessary for society, 
 and contentions for superiority very dangerous, mankind, that is to say, all 
 civilised nations, have settled it upon a plain, invariable principle. A man is 
 born to hereditary rank ; or his being appointed to certain offices gives him a 
 certain rank. Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we 
 all upon an equality we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal 
 pleasure" {Bosw&lY s Johnson, i. , 442). 
 
 Satan maintained in Hell that 
 
 ' ' Orders and degrees 
 Jar not with liberty, but well consist ". 
 
 {Paradise Lost, v. , 792. )] 
 
4 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 the immediate or indirect reference to ourselves ; but in the 
 estimate of honour we should learn to value the gifts of Nature 
 above those of Fortune ; to esteem in our ancestors the quali- 
 ties that best promote the interests of society ; and to pronounce 
 the descendant of a king less truly noble than the offspring of 
 a man of genius, whose writings will instruct or delight the 
 latest posterity. 1 The family of Confucius is, in my opinion, 
 the most illustrious in the world. After a painful ascent of 
 eight or ten centuries, our barons and princes of Europe are 
 lost in the darkness of the middle ages ; but, in the vast 
 equality of the empire of China, the posterity of Confucius 
 have maintained, above two thousand two hundred years, their 
 peaceful honours and perpetual succession. The chief of the 
 family is still revered, by the sovereign and the people, as the 
 lively image of the wisest of mankind. The nobility of the 
 Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of 
 Marlborough ; but I exhort them to consider the Fairy Queen " 
 as the most precious jewel of their coronet. Our immortal 
 Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, 
 who draw their origin from the Counts of Habsburgh, the lineal 
 descendants of Ethico, in the seventh century, Duke of Alsace.^ 
 Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German 
 divisions of the family of Habsburgh ; the former, the knights 
 and sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity 
 
 1 [" Few there are who dare trust the memorials of their family to the public 
 annals of their country " (The Decline, vi., 460).] 
 
 2 ' ' Nor less praiseworthy are the ladies [sisters] three, 
 The honour of that noble familie, 
 Of which I meanest boast myself to be." 
 
 (Spenser, Colin Clout, etc., v. ,538.) — GiBBON. 
 [The second daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough married Charles 
 Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, whose eldest son succeeded his aunt, Henrietta, 
 Duchess of Marlborough, in the Dukedom. From the Earl's youngest son, 
 Gibbon's friend, the second Earl Spencer, was descended.] 
 
 •* [Gibbon gives a brief account of Ethico in his ' ' Antiquities of the House of 
 Brunswick," Misc. Works, iii. , 504. 
 
 ' ' The origin of this family [the Habsburg] has been a constant puzzle to the 
 fertile imaginations of genealogists. Some among them trace it back to the 
 Merovingians, others to the Carolingians ; others, again, to that Duke Ethico, 
 of Alamania, who is supposed to have been the common stock from which 
 sprang the houses of Habsburg, Lorraine and Baden" (Lager's Austro-Hun- 
 gary, English trans., p. 141).] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 5 
 
 of a peerage ; ^ the latter, the Emperors of Germany and 
 Kings of Spain, have threatened the Hberty of the old, and 
 invaded the treasures of the new world. The successors of 
 Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England ; but 
 the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human 
 manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the 
 imperial eagle of the house of Austria. ^ 
 
 That these sentiments are just, or at least natural, I am 
 inclined to believe, since I do not feel myself interested in 
 the cause ; for I can derive from my ancestors neither glory 
 nor shame.3 Yet a sincere and simple narrative of my own 
 life may amuse some of my leisure hours ; but it will subject 
 me, and perhaps with justice, to the imputation of vanity. I 
 may judge, however, from the experience both of past and of 
 
 1 ["Geffery, Earl of Hapsburgh, by the oppression of Rodolph, Emperor of 
 Germany, being reduced to extreme poverty, one of his sons, named Geffery, 
 served King Henry III. in his wars in England, and because his father had 
 pretensions to the dominions of Laufenburgh and Rinfilding, he took the name 
 of Fielding " (Collins's Peerage, ed, 1756, ii., 247). The peerage was conferred 
 by James I. {ib., p. 251). 
 
 The novelist ' ' being in company with the Earl of Denbigh, his kinsman, 
 the Earl asked him how it was that he spelled his name ' Fielding ' and not 
 'Feilding,' like the head of the house. 'I cannot tell, my Lord,' said he, 
 ' except it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to 
 spell ' " (Thackeray's English Humourists, ed. 1858, p. 282).] 
 
 2 [" There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have 
 your name mentioned by Gibbon is like having it written on the dome of St. 
 Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it" (ib., p. 275). 
 Gibbon again praises TomJo?ies, post, p. 243, n. In The Decline, iii. , 363, he speaks 
 of it as " the romance of a great master, which may be considered as the history 
 of human nature". Mr. J. H. Round, in 7'he Genealogist, New Series, x., 193, 
 has ' ' demonstrated that the Habsburg descent of the Fieldings is an absurd 
 fiction". It first appeared in print, he believes, in 1656, in Dugdale's War- 
 ■wickshire. The splendour of Gibbon's language is but a " baseless fabric " ; 
 happily the pageant, insubstantial though it may be, shall never fade away. 
 
 The Earls of Denbigh may be consoled. If they have lost the Habsburghs, 
 of Henry Fielding they cannot be deprived.] 
 
 •'[Gibbon, writing to John Nichols about his ancestry, says : " Modesty, or 
 the affectation of modesty, may repeat the Vix ea nostra voco ; but experience 
 has proved that there is scarcely any man of a tolerable family who does not 
 wish to know as much as he can about it ; nor is such an ambition either foolish 
 in itself, or hurtful to society " (Nichols, Lit. Aiiec. , viii. , 557). Gibbon's quota- 
 tion is from Ovid's Metamorphoses , xiii., 140 : — 
 
 " Genus, et proavos, et quae non fecimus ipsi, 
 Vix ea nostra voco ". 
 Thus Englished by Johnson [Ratnbler, No. 46) : — 
 
 " Nought from my birth or ancestors I claim ; 
 All is my own, my honour and my shame ".] 
 
6 EDWAED GIBBON 
 
 the present times, that the public are always curious to know 
 the men, who have left behind them any image of their minds : 
 the most scanty accounts of such men are compiled with 
 diligence, and perused with eagerness ^ ; and the student of 
 every class may derive a lesson, or an example, from the lives 
 most similar to his own. My name may hereafter be placed 
 among the thousand articles of a Biographia Britannica ^ ; 
 and I must be conscious, that no one is so well qualified, as 
 myself, to describe the series of my thoughts and actions. 
 The authority of my masters, of the grave Thuanus,^ and the 
 philosophic Hume,* might be sufficient to justify my design ; 
 but it would not be difficult to produce a long list of ancients 
 and moderns, who, in various forms, have exhibited their own 
 portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and 
 sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings ; and if 
 they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or 
 prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the 
 younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in 
 the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. 
 The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us 
 home to the houses and bosoms of the authors ^ : we smile 
 
 1 [" The biographical part of literature," said Johnson, " is what I love most " 
 (Boswell's /o/?w5£)«, i., 425).] 
 
 '^[Horace Walpole {Works, i., 412) speaks of "the benign author of the 
 Biographia Britannica, a work which I cannot help calling vindicatio Britan- 
 nica, or a defence of everybody ".] 
 
 ■' [The French historian De Thou, whose Historia sui Temporis in 138 books 
 Johnson once thought of translating (Boswell's Johnson, iv. , 410; see also ib., 
 \., 32). His Autobiography is in vol. vii. of the edition of his Historia, published 
 in London in 1733. 
 
 Burnet " made him his pattern in history ". See the Preface by the Bishop's 
 son to Burnet's Hist, of His Own Time, p. 3. Gibbon includes him with Hume 
 in what he calls ' ' a small but venerable synod of historians ". ' ' Since the origin 
 of Theological Factions some historians, Ammianus Marcellinus \^post, p. 181], 
 Fra-Paolo, Thuanus, Hume, and perhaps a few others, have deserved the 
 singular praise of holding the balance with a steady and equal hand " {Misc. 
 Works, iv., 624).] 
 
 "* [Hume's brief autobiography, written shortly before his death, was prefixed 
 to the later editions of his History. I have edited it in my edition of his Letters 
 to William St7'ahan.'] 
 
 5 [Gibbon perhaps had running in his head the passage where Bacon, in the 
 dedication of his Essays, says that ' ' they come home to men's business and 
 bosoms ".] 
 
MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 7 
 
 without contempt at the headstrong passions of Benevenuto 
 Cellini, and the gay follies of Colley Gibber.^ The confessions 
 of St. Austin and Rousseau disclose the secrets of the huntian 
 heart ; the commentaries of the learned Huet ^ have survived 
 his evangelical demonstration ; and the memoirs of Goldoni 
 are more truly dramatic than his Italian comedies. The 
 heretic and the churchman are strongly marked in the charac- 
 ters and fortunes of Whiston ^ and Bishop Newton * ; and 
 even the dullness of Michael de MaroUes ^ and Anthony 
 Wood ^ acquires some value from the faithful representation 
 of men and manners. That I am equal or superior to some 
 of these, the efforts ^ of modesty or affectation cannot force 
 me to dissemble. 
 
 1 [Horace Walpole {Letters, v., 197) said that "Gibber's Apology deserved 
 immortality ".] 
 
 ^[Huet, Bishop^ of Avranches, published in 1718 Commentarius de rebus ad 
 eum pe7-tinentibus. Sainte-Beuve, quoting some "vers badins" of Voltaire's 
 on Huet, continues: " Soyez done la plume la plus savante de I'Europe, 
 I'homme de la plus vaste lecture qui fut jamais, le dernier de cette forte race des 
 savants du xve at du xvie siecle, . . . et tout cela pour que, sitot apr^s vous, 
 on ne sache plus que votre nom, et qu'on n'y rattache qu'une id6e vague, un 
 sourire n6 d'une plaisanterie ! Ah ! que le sage Huet avait raison quand il 
 d6montrait presque g^om^triquement quelle vanity et quelle extravagance c'est 
 de croire qu'il y a une r6putation qui nous appartienne aprfes notre mort ! " 
 (Ca7isei-ies, ii., 163.)] 
 
 "[" The honest, pious, visionary Whiston," Gibbon calls him [The Decline, 
 iv. , 433). Though he was heretic enough to be banished from the University of 
 Cambridge for his Arianism (Whiston's Memoirs, p. 173 ; Monk's Bentley, i. , 
 290), he was as superstitious as the most orthodox. In 1746 he gave notice 
 that the Millennium would begin in 1766, when "there will be no more an 
 infidel in Christendom, and there will be no more a gaming-table at Tunbridge" 
 {Memoirs, p. 398). He had once fixed an earlier date. Horace Walpole 
 {Letters, i., 381) mentions "the Duchess of Bolton's geographical resolution 
 of going to China, when Whiston told her the world would be burnt in three 
 years ".] 
 
 ''^Post, p. 211.] 
 
 s[" Michel de Marolles (1600-1681) composa soixante-neuf ouvrages, dont 
 plusieurs ^taient des traductions tr^s utiles dans leur temps " {(Euvres de 
 Voltaire, xvii. , 124).] 
 
 ^5 [" Mr. Joyner told me Mr. Wood used often to come to him, and that he 
 told him many stories which he (Mr. Wood) penned down in his presence, and 
 when anything pleased Mr. Wood, he would always cry Hum, upon which 
 Mr. Joyner would go on to expatiate" (Hearne's Remains, ed. 1869, iii. , 70). 
 
 "May 4, 178 1. Mine a great character! Mercy on me! I am a com- 
 position of Anthony Wood and Madame Danois [d'Aulnoy], and I know not 
 what trumpery writers " (Horace Walpole's Letters, viii., 34).] 
 
 ■^ [In Lord Sheffield's editions, "effects ".] 
 
8 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 My family is originally derived from the county of Kent.^ 
 The southern district, which borders on Sussex and the sea, 
 was formerly overspread with the great forest Anderida, and 
 even now retains the denomination of the Weald or Woodland. 
 In this district, and in the hundred and parish of Rolvenden, 
 the Gibbons were possessed of lands in the year one thousand 
 three hundred and twenty-six ; and the elder branch of the 
 family, without much increase or diminution of property, still 
 adheres to its native soil. Fourteen years after the first 
 appearance of his name, John Gibbon is recorded as the 
 Marmorarius or architect of King Edward the Third : the 
 strong and stately castle of Queensborough, which guarded 
 the entrance of the Medway, was a monument of his skill ; 
 and the grant of an hereditary toll on the passage from Sand- 
 wich to Stonar, in the Isle of Thanet, is the reward of no 
 vulgar artist. In the visitations of the heralds, the Gibbons 
 are frequently mentioned ; they held the rank of Esquire in 
 an age, when that title was less promiscuously assumed ^ : one 
 of them, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was captain of 
 the militia of Kent ; and a free school, in the neighbouring 
 town of Benenden, proclaims the charity and opulence of its 
 founder.^ But time, or their own obscurity,, has cast a veil of 
 
 1 [Part of the history of his family he derives from a letter in Tke Gent. Mag. , 
 1788, p. 698. In a letter to John Nichols, the editor, he calls it " a very curious 
 and civil account of the Gibbon family ". Nichols forwarded to him some 
 "genealogical documents relating to Mr. Gibbon's family; amongst them 
 ' some Remarques of the Family of me, John Gibbon, Bluemantle Pursuivant 
 at Arms,' with a full pedigree of the family, and several emblazoned arms " 
 (Nichols, Lit. Anec, viii., 557; Corres., ii., 301, 328).] 
 
 2[" Esquires and gentlemen," writes Blackstone, " are confounded together 
 by Sir Edward Coke, who observes that every esquire is a gentleman, and a 
 gentleman is defined to be one qui arma gerit, who bears coat-armour, the 
 grant of which adds gentility to a man's family. ... It is, indeed, a matter 
 somewhat unsettled, what constitutes the distinction, or who is a real esquii-e." 
 Here follows an enumeration of the various sorts of esquires {Commentaries, 
 ed. 1775, i., 406). 
 
 So early as 1709 The Tatler (No. 19) wrote : " In a word it is now Populus 
 Arm.igero7-um, a people of Esquires. And I don't know but by the late act of 
 naturalisation, foreigners will assume that title as part of the immunity of being 
 Englishmen." Eighty years later Bos well says that ' ' the appellation of Gentleman 
 was lost in the indiscriminate assumption of Esqtdre" {Life of Johnson, i. , 34).] 
 
 3[Benenden is near Rolvenden. "Edward Gibbon, in 1602, founded a 
 school, which has been subsequently endowed with property producing ;^ii4 
 per annum" (Lewis's Topog. Diet., ed. 1835, under Benenden).] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 9 
 
 oblivion over the virtues and vices of my Kentish ancestors ; 
 their character or station confined, them to the labours and 
 pleasures of a rural life : nor is it in my power to follow the 
 advice of the Poet, in an inquiry after a name, — 
 
 Go 1 search it there, where to be born, and die, 
 Of rich and poor makes all the history. ^ 
 
 So recent is the institution of our parish registers.^ In the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century, a younger branch of the 
 Gibbons of Rolvenden migrated from the country to the city ; 
 and from this branch I do not blush to descend. The law re- 
 quires some abilities ; the church imposes some restraints ; and 
 before our army and navy, our civil establishments, and Indian 
 empire, had opened so many paths of fortune, the mercantile 
 profession was more frequently chosen by youths of a liberal 
 race and education, who aspired to create their own indepen- 
 dence. Our most respectable families have not disdained the 
 counting-house, or even the shop ; their names are enrolled in 
 the Livery and Companies of London ; and in England, as well 
 as in the Italian commonwealths, heralds have been compelled 
 to declare that gentility is not degraded by the exercise of 
 trade.-^ 
 
 The armorial ensigns which, in the times of chivalry, adorned 
 the crest and shield of the soldier, are now become an empty 
 decoration, which every man, who has money to build a 
 carriage, may paint according to his fancy on the panels.* 
 My family arms are the same, which were borne by the 
 Gibbons of Kent in an age, when the College of Heralds 
 
 i[Pope, Moral Essays, iii. , 287.] 
 
 ^[" Church Register was instituted 30 Henry VIII." John Gibbon's Intro- 
 ductio ad Lati7iam Blasoniam, Preface. 
 
 In The Gent. Mag., 1785, p. 93, a copy is given of a " Constitution" of the 
 year 1597, ' ' in whicli it was ordeyned how the Register Bookes must be saufifiy 
 kept ■'.] 
 
 ■* [See Appendix i]. 
 
 ■* [Blackstone, writing of " the court military, or court of chivalry" says that 
 ' ' its civil jurisdiction is principally in two points ; the redressing injuries of 
 honour, and correcting encroachments in matters of coat-armour, precedency, 
 and other distinctions of families. . . . It is the business of this court, accord- 
 ing to Sir Matthew Hale, to adjust the right and armorial ensigns, bearings, 
 crests, supporters, pennons, etc." {Commentai'ies, ed. 1775, iii., 103-5).] 
 
10 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 religiously guarded the distinctions of blood and name : a 
 lion rampant gardant, between three schallop-shells argent, 
 on a field azure. ^ I should not however have been tempted 
 to blazon my coat of arms, were it not connected with a 
 whimsical anecdote. — About the reign of James the First, 
 the three harmless schallop-shells were changed by Edmund 
 Gibbon esq. into three Ogresses, or female cannibals,^ with 
 a design of stigmatizing three ladies, his kinswomen, who 
 had provoked him by an unjust law-suit. But this singular 
 mode of revenge, for which he obtained the sanction of Sir 
 William Seagar, king at arms, soon expired with its author ; 
 and, on his own monument in the Temple church, the 
 monsters vanish, and the three schallop-shells resume their 
 proper and hereditary place. 
 
 Our alliances by mai-riage it is not disgraceful to mention. 
 The chief honour of my ancestry is James Fiens, Baron Say 
 and Scale, and Lord High Treasurer of England, in the reign 
 of Henry the Sixth ; from whom by the Phelips, the Whet- 
 nalls, and the Cromers, I am lineally descended in the eleventh 
 degree."* His dismission and imprisonment in the Tower 
 were insufficient to appease the popular clamour ; and the 
 Treasurer, with his son-in-law Cromer, was beheaded (1450), 
 after a mock trial by the Kentish insurgents. The black list 
 of his offences, as it is exhibited in Shakespeare,* displays the 
 ignorance and envy of a plebeian tyrant. Besides the vague 
 reproaches of selling Maine and Normandy to the Dauphin, 
 the Treasurer is specially accused of luxury, for riding on a 
 foot-cloth ; and of treason, for speaking French, the language 
 of our enemies : " Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the 
 youth of the realm," s.ays Jack Cade to the unfortunate Lord, 
 
 ^ The father of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke married an heiress of this family 
 of Gibbon. The Chancellor's escutcheon in the Temple Hall quarters the arms 
 of Gibbon, as does also that, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, of Charles York, Chan- 
 cellor in 1770. — Sheffield. 
 
 2 [For an explanation of this " heraldic pun " see Auto., p. 4, n.'\ 
 
 3 [The descent was through Robert Gibbon, from whom he was not sprung, 
 according to Brydges. See note 2 on next page.] 
 
 ■* [2 Henry VI., Act iv.. Scenes 2 and 7.] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 11 
 
 " in erecting a grammar-school ; and whereas before our fore- 
 fathers had no other books than the score and the tally, thou 
 hast caused printing to be used ; and, contrary to the king, 
 his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will 
 be proved to thy face, that thou hast men about thee, who 
 usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words, 
 as no christian ear can endure to hear." Our dramatic poet 
 is generally more attentive to character than to history ; and 
 I much fear that the art of printing was not introduced into 
 England, till several years after Lord Say's death ; but of 
 some of these meritorious crimes I should hope to find my 
 ancestor guilty ; and a man of letters may be proud of his 
 descent from a patron and martyr of learning. 
 
 In the beginning of the last century Robert Gibbon esq. 
 of Rolvenden in Kent ^ (who died in 1618), had a son of 
 the same name of Robert, who settled in London, and be- 
 came a member of the Clothworkers' Company. His wife 
 was a daughter of the Edgars, who flourished about four 
 hundred years in the county of Suffolk, and produced an 
 eminent and wealthy serjeant-at-law. Sir Gregory Edgar, in 
 the reign of Henry the Seventh. Of the sons of Robert 
 Gibbon (who died in l643), Matthew ^ did not aspire above 
 
 1 Robert Gibbon, my lineal ancestor in the fifth degree, was captain of the 
 Kentish mihtia, and as he died in the year 1618 it may be presumed that he 
 had appeared in arms at the time of the Spanish invasion. His wife was 
 Margaret Phillips, daughter of Edward Phillips de la Weld in Tenterden, and 
 of Rose his wife, daughter of George Whitnell of East Peckham, esquire. 
 Peckham, the seat of the Whitnells in Kent, is mentioned, not indeed much 
 to its honour, in the Mdmoires die Co?nte de Grammo7it [English ed. , 1876, p. 
 292], a classic work, the delight of every man and woman of taste to whom the 
 French language is familiar \j>ost, p. 133].— Gibbon. [East Peckham is between 
 Tunbridge and Maidstone.] 
 
 2 [Sir S. E. Brydges in The Geiit. Mag., 1796, p. 271, says that : " Matthew 
 Gibbon was the son of Thomas Gibbon, of Westcliffe near Dover, gent., of a 
 totally different, and more distant branch of the Rolvenden family, who was a 
 man of considerable landed, and personal property". Thomas's grandfather, 
 also Thomas Gibbon, was " a wealthy and illiterate yeoman. He died in 
 1596." Matthew Gibbon's mother was sister to the wife of Sir John Maynard, 
 the old serjeant-at-law, who, but for the coming of the Prince of Orange, 
 " would have outlived, not only all the men of the law of his time, but the law 
 itself" (Burnet's Hist, of His Own Time, ed. 1818, ii., 441). " Matthew's half- 
 brother, Thomas, married the sister of Sir William Rooke, father of Sir George 
 Rooke the admiral."] 
 
12 EDWAED GIBBON 
 
 the station of a linen-draper in Leadenhall-street ; but John 
 has given to the public some curious memorials of his exist- 
 ence, his character, and his family. He was born on the 
 third of November hi the year 1629 ; his education was 
 liberal, at a grammar school, and afterwards in Jesus College 
 at Cambridge ; and he celebrates the retired content which 
 he enjoyed at Alles borough, in Worcestershire, in the house 
 of Thomas Lord Coventry,^ where he was employed as a 
 domestic tutor, the same office which Mr. Hobbes exercised 
 in the Devonshire family.^ But the spirit of my kinsman 
 soon immerged into more active life : he visited foreign 
 countries as a soldier and a traveller, acquired the knowledge 
 of the French and Spanish languages, passed some time in 
 the Isle of Jersey, crossed the Atlantic, and resided upwards 
 of a twelvemonth (1659) in the rising colony of Virginia. 
 In this remote province his taste, or rather passion, for 
 heraldry found a singular gratification at a war-dance of the 
 native Indians. As they moved in measured steps, brandish- 
 ing their tomahawks, his curious eye contemplated their 
 little shields of bark, and their naked bodies, which were 
 painted with the colours and symbols of his favourite science. 
 " At which I exceedingly wondered ; and concluded that 
 heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of human race. 
 If so, it desei-ves a greater esteem than now-a-days is put 
 upon it." ^ His return to England after the Restoration was 
 soon followed by his marriage — his settlement in a house 
 in St. Catherine's Cloister, near the Tower, which devolved 
 to my grandfather — and his introduction into the Heralds' 
 College (in l67l) by the style and title of Blue-mantle Pur- 
 
 1 [The second Earl of Coventry. Allesborough is close to Pershore.] 
 2[" Qui per multos annos servivit duobus comitibus Devonise (patri et filio). " 
 So Hobbes described himself in his epitaph (Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. A. 
 Clark, i., 386).] 
 
 s \l7itrod2ictio, etc., p. 156. La Fontaine might have had this passage in 
 mind when he wrote [Fables, x. , 16) : — 
 
 " Le noble poursuivit : 
 Moi, je sais le blason ; j'en veux tenir ^cole. 
 Comme si, devers I'lnde, on eut eu dans I'esprit 
 La sotte vanit6 de ce jargon frivole ! "] 
 
MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 13 
 
 suivant at Arms. In this office he enjoyed near fifty years 
 the rare felicity of uniting, in the same pursuit, his duty and 
 inclination : his name is rexnembered in the College, and 
 many of his letters are still preserved. Several of the most 
 respectable characters of the age, Sir William Dugdale,^ Mr. 
 Ashmole, Dr. John Betts and Dr. Nehemiah Grew, were his 
 friends ; and in the society of such men, John Gibbon may 
 be recorded without disgrace as the member of an astrological 
 club. 2 The study of hereditary honours is favourable to the 
 Royal prerogative ; and my kinsman, like most of his family, 
 was a high Tory both in church and state. In the latter end 
 of the reign of Charles the Second, his pen was exercised 
 in the cause of the Duke of York : the Republican faction he 
 most cordially detested ; and as each animal is conscious of 
 its proper arms, the herald's revenge was emblazoned on a 
 most diabolical escutcheon. ^ But the triumph of the Whig 
 government checked the preferment of Blue-mantle ; and he 
 was even suspended from his office, till his tongue could learn 
 to pronounce the oath of abjuration."^ His life was prolonged 
 
 1 [" ' Sir William Dugdale avowed to mee that at the time of his birth .... 
 a swarme of bees came and settled under the window where hee was borne. 
 September i8. Johan. Gybbon.' . . . 'He was borne September 12, 1605' 
 — from Mr. Gibbons, Blewmantle. That afternoon a swarme of bees pitch't 
 under his mother's chamber-window, as it were an omen of his laborious 
 collections" {AxLhrey's Brief Lives, i. , 241).] 
 
 2 ["When the king was prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, an astrologer was 
 consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an escape " (Johnson's 
 Works, vii., 154. See William Lilly's History of his Life, ed. 1826, pp. 61, 63). 
 
 ' ' One of Dryden's opinions will do him no honour in the present age, though 
 in his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it con- 
 fined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications of judicial 
 astrology" (Johnson's Works, vii., 300). Dryden defended his belief by the 
 authority of " not only Horace and Persius, but Augustus himself " (Dryden's 
 Works, ed. 1882, xiv. , 167).] 
 
 3 ["Tutus sit augustissimus Rex Carolus, Sancti Foslicis Festo prospere 
 natus ; Celsissimus Illustrissimus Dux Jacobus, quem Stellam Borealem ante 
 multos annos prsedixere Vates ; et universa Stirps Regia a Turba Fanatica 
 Antimonarchica ; Quibus Symbolum et Insigne est Bellua multorum Capitum, 
 coloris Diabolici (viz. nigri) in Campo sanguineo (Armes pour enquerir, ut 
 dicimus Gallice). Clamor bellicus : Iste est Haeres, trucidemus eum, et obtine- 
 amus Haereditatem " [Introductio, etc., p. 165). Littr^ defines armes d en- 
 quirir as " armes qui, 6tant contre les regies ordinaires, font qu'en les voyant 
 on se demande la raison de cette maniere extraordinaire ".] 
 
 ''[By the act of Abjuration, passed in the last year of William IIL, "all 
 persons in any office, trust, or employment," were required to take an oath 
 abjuring "the pretended Prince of Wales" (Blackstone's Commentaries, i., 
 368 ; Smollett's Hist, of England, ed. 1800, i., 436).] 
 
14 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 to the age of ninety : and, in the expectation of the inevitable 
 though uncertain hour,i he wishes to preserve the blessings 
 of health, competence, and virtue. In the year l682 he 
 published in London his Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam, an 
 original attempt, which Camden had desiderated, to define, 
 in a Roman idiom, the terms and attributes of a Gothic insti- 
 tution. ^ It is not two years since I acquired, in a foreign 
 land, some domestic intelligence of my own family ; and this 
 intelligence was conveyed to Switzerland from the heart of 
 Germany, I had formed an acquaintance with Mr. Langer, 
 a lively and ingenious scholar, while he resided at Lausanne 
 as preceptor to the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick.^ On his 
 return to his proper station of Librarian to the Ducal Library 
 of Wolfenbuttel, he accidentally found among some literary 
 rubbish a small old English volume of heraldry, inscribed with 
 the name of John Gibbon. From the title only Mr. Latiger 
 judged that it might be an acceptable present to his friend ; 
 and he judged rightly. His manner is quaint and affected ; 
 his order is confused : but he displays some wit, more reading, 
 and still more enthusiasm : and if an enthusiast be often 
 absurd, he is never languid. An English text is perpetually 
 interspersed with Latin sentences in prose and verse; but in 
 his own poetry he claims an exemption from the laws of 
 prosody. Amidst a profusion of genealogical knowledge, my 
 kinsman could not be forgetfvil of his own name ; and to him I 
 am indebted for almost the whole of my information concern- 
 ing the Gibbon family.''^ From this small work (a duodecimo 
 of one hundred and sixty-five pages) the author expected 
 
 i[" Alike await th' inevitable hour " (Gray's Elegy, 1. 35).] 
 
 2 [" Learned Camden (who addicted himself to Heraldry in his latter years) 
 was so out of conceit with their terms (being for the most part barbarous), that 
 in his Patents (which were always Latin) when he came to the Description of 
 the Arms themselves, he made it French " {Introductio, etc., Preface).] 
 
 3 [The Prince fell at the Battle of Ligny. For Gibbon's letter to Langer 
 and essay entitled "The Antiquities of the House of Brunswick," see Misc. 
 
 Works, iii. , 351.] 
 
 *Mr. Gibbon seems, after this was written, to have collected much additional 
 information respecting his family ; as appears from a number of manuscripts 
 in my possession. — Sheffield. 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 15 
 
 immortal fame, and at the conclusion of his labour he sings, 
 in a strain of self-exultation : — 
 
 Usque hue corrigitur Romana Blasonia per me ; 
 
 Verborumque dehinc barbara forma cadat. 
 Hie liber, in meritum si forsitan ineidet usum, 
 
 Testis rite meae sedulitatis erit. 
 Quiequid agat Zoilus, ventura fatebitur aetas 
 
 Artis quod fueram non Clypearis inops. 
 
 Such are the hopes of authors ! In the failure of those 
 hopes John Gibbon has not been the first of his profession, 
 and very possibly may not be the last of his name. His 
 brother Matthew Gibbon^ the draper, had one daughter and 
 two sons — my grandfather Edward, who was born in the year 
 1666, and Thomas, afterwards Dean of Carlisle. According 
 to the mercantile creed, that the best book is a profitable 
 ledger, the writings of John the herald would be much less 
 precious than those of his nephew Edward : but an author 
 professes at least to write for the public benefit ; and the 
 slow balance of trade can be pleasing to those persons only to 
 whom it is advantageous. The successful industry of my 
 grandfather raised him above the level of his immediate 
 ancestors ; he appears to have launched into various and 
 extensive dealings : even his opinions were subordinate to 
 his interest ; and I find him in Flanders clothing King 
 William's troops, while he would have contracted with more 
 pleasure, though not perhaps at a cheaper rate, for the service 
 of King James. During his residence abroad his concerns at 
 home were managed by his mother Hester, an active and 
 notable ^ woman. Her second husband was a widower of 
 the name of Acton : they united the children of their first 
 
 1 [Johnson defines itotable, used in this sense, as "careful, bustling". 
 The Spectator (No. 150), writing of men of business, says: "I have heard 
 my father say that a broad-brimmed hat, short hair, and unfolded handker- 
 chief, were in his time absolutely necessary to denote a Notable Man ". 
 Lamb, in his Essays of EUa, ed. 1889, p. 75, says that " the wife of a school- 
 master ought to be a busy, notable creature". See also Northcote's Life of 
 Reynolds, i. , 249, for Sir Joshua's "hearty laugh" at hearing Goldsmith 
 described as "a notable man".] 
 
16 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 nuptials. After his ^ marriage with the daughter of Richard 
 Acton, goldsmith in Leadenhall-street, he gave his own sister 
 to Sir Whitmore Acton, of Aldenham ; and I am thus con- 
 nected, by a triple alliance, with that ancient and loyal family 
 of Shropshire baronets. It consisted about that time of seven 
 brothers, all of gigantic stature ; one of whom, a pigmy of six 
 feet two inches, confessed himself the last and least of the 
 seven ; adding, in the true spirit of party, that such men were 
 not born since the Revolution. Under the Tory administra- 
 tion of the four last years of Queen Anne (1710-1714) Mr. 
 Edward Gibbon was appointed one of the Commissioners of 
 the Customs ; he sat at that board with Prior '^ ; but the 
 merchant was better qualified for his station than the poet ; 
 since Lord Bolingbroke has been heard to declare that he had 
 never conversed with a man who more clearly understood the 
 commerce and finances of England.^ In the year 171 6 he 
 was elected one of the Directors of the South Sea Company ; 
 and his books exhibited the proof that, before his acceptance 
 of this fatal office, he had acquired an independent fortune of 
 sixty thousand pounds. 
 
 But his fortune was overwhelmed in the shipwreck of the 
 year twenty, and the labours of thirty years were blasted in a 
 single day. Of the use or abuse of the South Sea scheme, of 
 the guilt or innocence of my grandfather and his brother 
 Directors, lam neither a competent nor a disinterested judge. 
 Yet the equity of modern times must condemn the violent 
 and arbitrary proceedings, which would have disgraced the 
 cause of justice, and would render injustice still more odious. 
 No sooner had the nation awakened from its ffolden dream 
 
 ^ ["His" should refer to Acton the widower. It does refer, of course, to 
 Gibbon's grandfather.] 
 
 2 [Prior was appointed Commissioner in January, 1711-12 (Swift's Journal to 
 Stella, Jan. 18, 31, 1711-12).] 
 
 ° [Bolingbroke, urging Queen Anne to make Prior one of the plenipoten- 
 tiaries for signing the Peace of Utrecht, wrote of him : " He is the best versed 
 in matters of trade of all your Majesty's servants who have been trusted in this 
 secret " (Johnson's Lives of the Poets, viii., 6). Prior, in earlier years, had been 
 a Commissioner of Trade, as Gibbon the historian was nearly eighty years later 
 (post, p. 207).] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 17 
 
 than a popular and. even a Parliamentary clamour demanded 
 their victims : but it was acknowledged on all sides that 
 the South Sea Directors, however guilty, could not be touched 
 by any known laws of the land. The speech of Lord Moles- 
 worth, the author of the State of Denmark, ^ may show the 
 temper, or rather the intemperance, of the House of Commons. 
 " Extraordinary crimes (exclaimed that ardent Whig) call 
 aloud for extraordinary remedies. The Roman lawgivers had 
 not foreseen the possible existence of a parricide ; but as soon 
 as the first monster appeared he was sewn in a sack and cast 
 headlong into the river ; and I shall be content to inflict the 
 same treatment on the authors of our present ruin."^ His 
 motion was not literally adopted ; but a bill of pains and 
 penalties was introduced, a retroactive statute, to punish the 
 offences, which did not exist at the time they were committed. 
 Such a pernicious violation of liberty and law can be excused 
 only by the most imperious necessity ; nor could it be defended 
 on this occasion by the plea of impending danger or useful 
 example. The Legislature restrained the persons of the 
 Directors, imposed an exorbitant security for their appearance, 
 and marked their characters with a previous note of ignominy : 
 they were compelled to deliver, upon oath, the strict value of 
 their estates ; and were disabled from making any transfer or 
 alienation of any part of their property.^ Against a bill of 
 pains and penalties it is the common right of every subject to 
 
 1 ["In 1694 Molesworth published his Account of Denmark, in which he 
 treats the Danes and their monarch with great contempt ; and takes the 
 opportunity of insinuating those wild principles by which he supposes liberty 
 to be established, and by which his adversaries suspect that all subordination 
 and government is endangered" (Johnson's Works, vii. , 384). Steele, in The 
 Plebeian, No. i, said of it : " Nothing can be better writ, or more instructive 
 to any one that values liberty. ... I wish gentlemen would see there how 
 Commoners were treated by the nobility, when they had the power over them " 
 (Addison's Works, ed. 1856, v., 245).] 
 
 '^IParl. Hist., vii., 683.] 
 
 3 [T. Brodrick wrote to his brother, Lord Chancellor (Ireland) Middleton, on 
 January 19, 1720-21 : " The directors had the assurance to petition to be 
 heard by counsel against the bill, which was rejected with the utmost indigna- 
 tion, although supported by some of our great men (which, by the way, was 
 very ill relished), not only in favour of the directors, but on account of justice, 
 for that no criminal (how great soever) ought to be condemned unheard ' ' 
 (Coxe's Walpole, ii., 205).] 
 
 2 
 
18 EDWAED GIBBON 
 
 be heard by his counsel at the bar : they prayed to be heard ; 
 their prayer was refused ; and their oppressors, who required 
 no evidence, would listen to no defence. It had been at first 
 proposed that one-eighth of their respective estates should be 
 allowed for the future support of the Directors ; but it was 
 speciously urged, that in the various shades of opulence and 
 guilt such an unequal proportion would be too light for many, 
 and for some might possibly be too heavy. ^ The character 
 and conduct of each man were separately weighed ; but, 
 instead of the calm solemnity of a judicial inquiry, the 
 fortune and honour of three and thirty Englishmen were 
 made the topic of hasty conversation, the sport of a lawless 
 majority ; and the basest member of the committee, by a 
 malicious word or a silent vote, might indulge his general 
 spleen or personal animosity. Injury was aggravated by 
 insult, and insult was embittered by pleasantry. Allowances 
 of twenty pounds, or one shilling, were facetiously moved.^ 
 A vague report that a Director had formerly been concerned 
 in another project, by which some unknown persons had lost 
 their money, was admitted as a proof of his actual guilt. ^ 
 One man was ruined because he had dropped a foolish speech, 
 that his horse should feed upon gold * ; dnother because he 
 was grown so proud, that, one day at the Treasury, he had 
 refused a civil answer to persons much above him.^ All were 
 
 '^\Parl. Hist., vii,, 800.] 
 
 2[" May 25, 1721. There was a long debate about Sir John Blunt; Mr. 
 Laurence Carter moved to allow him only is." He was allowed _^i,ooo (ib., 
 pp. 801-2).] 
 
 3 ["Mr. Robert Walpole showed that Sir John Blunt was a projector of 
 many years' standing, and had been the author of several fallacious schemes by 
 which unwary persons had been drawn in to their utter ruin " {ib., p. 801).] 
 
 * [" Mr. Arthur Moore moved to allow Mr. Grigsby ;;^io,ooo ; but another 
 member said that since that upstart was once so prodigally vain as to bid his 
 coachman feed his horses with gold, no doubt but he could feed on it himself ; 
 and therefore he moved that he might be allowed as much gold as he could 
 eat. After this, a motion being made for allowing him _^2,ooo, it was carried 
 without a division" {ib., p. 832).] 
 
 5 ["Mr. Sloper instanced in Sir John Blunt's behaviour one day at the 
 Treasury, of which he was himself witness, when a relation of a great man 
 asking Sir John for a subscription, the upstart knight, with a great deal of 
 contempt, bid him go to his cousin Walpole, and desire him to sell his stock in 
 the bank, and by that means he might be supplied " {ih.., p. 801).] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 19 
 
 condemned, absent and unheard, in arbitrary fines and for- 
 feitiu'es, which swept away the greatest part of their substance. 
 Such bold oppression can scarcely be shielded by the omnipo- 
 tence of parliament ; and yet it may be seriously questioned 
 whether the judges of the South Sea Directors were the true 
 and legal representatives of their country. The first Parlia- 
 ment of George the First had been chosen (1715) for three 
 years : the term had elapsed, the trust was expired ; and the 
 four additional years (1718-1722), during which they continued 
 to sit, were derived not from the people, but from themselves ; 
 from the strong measure of the Septennial Bill, which can only 
 be paralleled by il serar di consiglio of the Venetian history.^ 
 Yet candour will own that to the same Parliament every 
 Englishman is deeply indebted : the Septennial Act, so 
 vicious in its origin, has been sanctioned by time, experience, 
 and the national consent. Its first operation secured the 
 House of Hanover on the throne, and its permanent influence 
 maintains the peace and stability of government. As often 
 as a repeal has been moved in the House of Commons I have 
 given in its defence a clear and conscientious vote.^ 
 
 My grandfather could not expect to be treated with more 
 lenity than his companions. His Tory principles and con- 
 nections rendered him obnoxious to the ruling powers : his 
 name is reported in a suspicious secret ^ ; and his well-known 
 
 1 ["The twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous 
 aristocracy which has reduced the Doge to a pageant and the people to a 
 cipher" (Tke Decline, vi. , 382). By a decree of 1297 the admission into the 
 great Council was almost entirely confined to those who had sat in it in the last 
 four years and their descendants. "This law is become a marked epoch in 
 Venetian history by the name of ' La Serrata del maggior Consiglio,' the 
 shutting up of the Great Council " {Penny Cyclo., xxvi., 238).] 
 
 2 [The following is a list of the motions for repeal recorded in the Pari. Hist. 
 during the time Gibbon was a member : — 
 
 Feb. I, 1775. Lost by 195 to 100 {Pari. Hist,, xviii., 216). 
 
 March 6, 1776. Lost by 138 to 64 {ib. , p. 1237). 
 
 March 11, 1778. Lost by 83 to 32 {ib., xix. , 873). 
 
 May 8, 1780. Lost by 182 to 90 {j,b., xxi., 594). In this debate Burke spoke 
 
 against the motion. 
 May 17, 1782. Lost by 149 to 61 {ib. , xxiii. , 48). Fox and Pitt spoke for 
 
 the motion ; Burke against it. 
 May 16, 1783. Lost by 121 to 56 {ib. , p. 896).] 
 
 3 [In this strange piece of English reference seems to be made to a passage 
 in the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, where it is stated, 
 
20 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 abilities could not plead the excuse of ignorance or error. In 
 the first proceedings against the South Sea Directors, Mr, 
 Gibbon is one of the few who were taken into custody ^ ; and, 
 in the final sentence^ the measure of his fine proclaims him 
 eminently guilty. The total estimate which he delivered on 
 oath to the House of Commons amounted to one hundred and 
 six thousand five hundred and forty-three pounds five shillings 
 and sixpence, exclusive of antecedent settlements.- Two 
 different allowances of fifteen and of ten thousand pounds 
 were moved for Mr. Gibbon ; but, on the question being put, 
 it was carried without a division for the smaller sum.^ On 
 these ruins, with the skill and credit, of which parliament had 
 not been able to despoil him , my grandfather at a mature age 
 erected the edifice of a new fortune ; the labours of sixteen 
 years were amply rewarded ; and I have reason to believe that 
 the second structure was not much inferior to the first. He 
 had realized a very considerable property in Sussex, Hamp- 
 shire, Buckinghamshire and the New River Company ; and 
 had acquired a spacious house,* with gardens and lands, at 
 Putney, in Surry, where he resided in decent hospitality.'' 
 
 that ' ' the Directors to whom the secret management waS principally intrusted 
 had disposed of a fictitious stock of _^574,ooo". Mr. Gibbon was one of the 
 number, {^b., vii., 712.)] 
 
 i[He and four other Directors, after being examined before a committee of 
 the House of Lords, "were ordered into the custody of the Black Rod" [ib., 
 vii., 702).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon, as is shown by passages in the Memoirs omitted by Lord Sheffield, 
 knew that his grandfather had ' ' found means to elude the impending stroke 
 by previous settlements and secret conveyance " {Atcto. , pp. 16, 109, 215, 391).] 
 
 ^ [Pari. Hist. , vii. , 827. Nine of the Directors were allowed a still smaller 
 fraction of their property. One, Hawes, whose estimate of his property was 
 ^^40,031, retained only ^^31 [ib., p. 834). " The estates of the Directors were 
 valued at ;^2,oi4,ioo; the allowance made to them was ;^354,6oo" (Coxe's 
 Walpole, i., 150).] 
 
 4 Since inhabited by Mr. Wood, Sir John Shelley, the Duke of Norfolk, 
 etc. — Sheffield. 
 
 [In Dodsley's London, etc., v., 235 (ed. 1761), Putney is described as being 
 ' ' five miles south-west of London. About this village the citizens of London 
 have many pretty seats ; and on Putney Heath is a public house noted for 
 polite assemblies, and in the summer season for breakfasting and dancing, and 
 for one of the pleasantest bowling-greens in England.''] 
 
 5 {Decently Johnson defines as " without meanness or ostentation ". It is in 
 this sense that Gibbon describes his grandfather's hospitality.] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 21 
 
 He died in December, 1736, at the age of seventy ; and by his 
 last will, at the expense of Edward, his only son (with whose 
 marriage he was not perfectly reconciled,^) enriched his two 
 daughters, Catherine and Hester. The former became the 
 wife of Mr. Edward Elliston, an East India captain : their 
 daughter and heiress Catherine was married in the year 1756 
 to Edward Eliot, Esq. (now Lord Eliot), of Port Eliot, in the 
 county of Cornwall ^ ; and their three sons are my nearest 
 male relations on the father's side. A life of devotion and 
 celibacy was the choice of my aunt, Mrs. Hester Gibbon, who, 
 at the age of eighty-five, still resides in a hermitage at ClifFe, 
 in Northamptonshire ^ ; having long survived her spiritual 
 guide and faithful companion Mr. William Law, who, at an 
 advanced age, about the year I76l, died in her house.* In 
 our family he had left the reputation of a worthy and pious 
 man, who believed all that he professed, and practised all that 
 he enjoined. The character of a non-juror, which he main- 
 tained to the last, is a sufficient evidence of his principles in 
 church and state ; and the sacrifice of interest to conscience 
 will be always respectable. ^ His theological writings, which 
 our domestic connection has tempted me to peruse, preserve 
 an imperfect sort of life, and I can pronounce with more 
 
 i[It was no doubt " the doubtful credit " of the father of his son's wife, which 
 was to end in a bankruptcy [pos^, p. 37), that displeased the old man. See 
 Auto., p. III.] 
 
 2 [He gave Gibbon his seat in ParUament. Post, p. 191. He was great- 
 great-grandson of Sir John Eliot, who died in the Tower, a victim to the 
 lawlessness of Charles I. He was raised to the peerage in January, 1784. The 
 second Baron was created Earl of St. Germains in 1815, "dropping in this title 
 his great inheritance in the name of Eliot. For Eliot as " a young Lord " see 
 BosweWs /oknson, iv. , 334.] 
 
 3 [Gibbon grew impatient of the prolonged life of "the Northamptonshire 
 Saint". On Feb. 4, 1789, he asked Lord Sheffield to apply to Lord Spencer 
 " to find a correspondent in that neighbourhood, who, without noise or scandal, 
 might send you regular and early notice of her decline and fall" [Corres., ii., 
 187). Four months later he wrote : " The Saint seems ripe for heaven " {ib., 
 p. 193). For her will see ib., p. 218.] 
 
 ■*[It was in his own house that he died ; " it did not become Miss Gibbon's 
 until after his death, when she received it as a bequest ; or rather a trust, from 
 him". Cliffe, or King's Cliffe, as it is properly called, was his native village. 
 There he was born in 1686, and thither he retired in 1740 (Overton's Law, 
 pp. 5, 222, 351, 446).] 
 
 s[For William Law and his writings see Appendix 2.] 
 
22 EDWAED GIBBON 
 
 confidence and knowledge on the merits of the author. His 
 last compositions are darkly tinctured by the incomprehensible 
 visions of Jacob Behmen ^ ; and his discourse on the absolute 
 unlawfulness of stage entertainments is sometimes quoted for 
 a ridiculous intemperance of sentiment and language. — " The 
 actors and spectators must all be damned : the playhouse is 
 the porch of Hell^ the place of the Devil's abode, where he 
 holds his filthy court of evil spirits : a play is the Devil's 
 triumph, a sacrifice performed to his glory, as much as in the 
 heathen temples of Bacchus or Venus, etc., etc." But these 
 sallies of religious frenzy must not extinguish the praise, which 
 is due to Mr. William Law as a wit and a scholar. His 
 argument on topics of less absurdity is specious and acute, his 
 manner is lively, his style forcible and clear ; and, had not his 
 vigorous mind been clouded by enthusiasm,^ he might be 
 ranked with the most agreeable and ingenious writers of the 
 times. While the Bangorian controversy was a fashionable 
 theme, he entered the lists on the subject of Christ's kingdom, 
 and the authority of the priesthood : against the plain account 
 
 ^[" Law (said Dr. Johnson) fell latterly into the reveries of Jacob Behmen, 
 whom Law alleged to have been somewhat in the same state with St. Paul, 
 and to have seen umitterable things. Were it even so (said Johnson), Jacob 
 would have resembled St. Paul still more, by not attempting to utter them " 
 (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 122). See ib., n. 6, for Behmen or Bohme, the mystic 
 shoemaker of Gorlitz, who was born in 1575 and died in 1624.] 
 
 2 [Johnson defines euthusias?n as " a vain belief of private revelation ; a vain 
 confidence of divine favour or communication ". Sprat, in 1667, in his History 
 of the Royal Society, ed. 1734, p. 53, speaking of the meetings of learned men 
 in the lodgings of the Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, during the 
 Commonwealth, says that " the minds of young men, receiving from them first 
 impressions of sober and generous knowledge, were invincibly armed against 
 all the enchantments of enthusiasm ". South describes " enthusiasm " as " that 
 pestilent and vile thing, which, wheresoever it has had its full course, has 
 thrown both Church and State into confusion" {Sermons, iv. , 41). Dennis, in 
 1696, dedicating his Letters npon Several Occasions to Charles Montague, 
 wrote : "The enthusiast, the quack, the pettifogger are rewarded for torturing 
 and deluding man". Bishop Hurd, in 1752, published a sermon on Tlie 
 Mischiefs of Enthusiasm and Bigotry. Adam Smith, in 1776, in the Wealth of 
 Nations, ed. 1811, iii., p. 216, says, "Science is the great antidote to the 
 poison of enthusiasm and superstition". Gibbon wrote in 1779: "If 
 Eusebius had shown that the virtues of the confessors were tinctured with 
 pride and obstinacy, and that their lively faith was not exempt from some 
 mixture of enthusiasm, he would have armed his readers against the excessive 
 veneration for those holy men which imperceptibly degenerated into religious 
 worship " [Misc. I ( 'orks, iv., 633). See/oj/, p. 147 ; and also p. 163, where he 
 uses the word in the more modern sense.] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 23 
 
 of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper he resumed the combat 
 with Bishop Hoadley, the object of Whig idolatry, and Tory 
 abhorrence ; and at every weapon of attack and defence the 
 non-juror, on the ground which is common to both, approves 
 himself at least equal to the prelate. On the appearance of 
 the Fable of the Bees, he drew his pen against the licentious 
 doctrine that private vices are public benefits, and morality 
 as well as religion must join in his applause. Mr. Law's 
 master-work, the Serious Call, is still read as a popular and 
 powerful book of devotion. His precepts are rigid, but they 
 are founded on the gospel ^ ; his satire is sharp, but it is di-awn 
 from the knowledge of human life ; and many of his portraits 
 are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a 
 spark of piety in his reader's mind, he will soon kindle it to a 
 flame ^ ; and a philosopher must allow that he exposes, with 
 equal severity and truth, the strange contradiction between 
 the faith and practice of the Christian world. Under the 
 names of Flavia and Miranda he has admirably described my 
 two aunts — the heathen and the Christian sister. 
 
 My father, Edward Gibbon, was born in October, 1707 : at 
 the age of thirteen he could scarcely feel that he was dis- 
 inherited by act of parliament ; and, as he advanced towards 
 manhood, new prospects of fortune opened to his view. A 
 parent is most attentive to supply in his children the de- 
 ficiencies, of which he is conscious in himself: my grand- 
 father's knowledge was derived from a strong understanding 
 and the experience of the ways of men ; but my father 
 enjoyed the benefits of a liberal education as a scholar and 
 a gentleman. At Westminster School, and afterwards at 
 Emmanuel College in Cambridge, he passed through a regular 
 course of academical discipline ; and the care of his learning 
 and morals was intrusted to his private tutor, the same Mr. 
 
 1 [Gibbon does not praise Law for adhering to the Gospel, but attacks the 
 Gospel for justifying Law's precepts. " The Ascetics, who obeyed and abused 
 the rigid precepts of the Gospel, were inspired by the savage enthusiasm which 
 represents man as a criminal, and God as a tyrant " (The Decline, iv. , 57),] 
 
 2[" Hell-fire is darted from every page of it " [Auto., p. 26).] 
 
24 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 William Law.^ But the mind of a saint ^ is above or below 
 the present world ; and while the pupil proceeded on his 
 travels, the tutor remained at Putney, the much-honoured 
 friend and spiritual director of the whole family.^ My father 
 resided some time at Paris to acquire the fashionable exercises ; 
 and as his temper was warm and social, he indulged in those 
 pleasures, for which the strictness of his former education had 
 given him a keener relish. He afterwards visited several 
 provinces of France ; but his excursions were neither long nor 
 remote ; and the slender knowledge, which he had gained of 
 the French language, was gradually obliterated. His passage 
 through Besangon is marked by a singular consequence in the 
 chain of human events. In a dangerous illness Mr. Gibbon 
 was attended, at his own request, by one of his kinsmen of 
 the name of Acton,^ the younger brother of a younger brother, 
 who had applied himself to the study of physic. Dm'ing the 
 slow recovery of his patient, the physician himself was attacked 
 by the malady of love : he married his mistress, renounced 
 his country and religion, settled at Besangon, and became the 
 father of three sons ; the eldest of whom. General Acton, is 
 conspicuous in Europe as the principal Minister of the King 
 
 1 [Law had been a Fellow of the College. John Byrom {Remains, i. , 422) 
 records how one evening in 1730, going to give Gibbon's father a lesson in 
 shorthand at Cambridge, he found that "he had been playing at quadrille, 
 had writ a little, but very ill ; for he makes his letters wretchedly, but reads 
 pretty well. Mr. Law came in while we were at it and sat with us. . . . We 
 had a bottle of wine, he drank none, I think, I two or three glasses." The next 
 day Byrom recorded : ' ' Gibbon had done nothing ; what a pity he should be so 
 slow, for Law's sake ! "] 
 
 2[See/oj-i?, pp. 69, n., 71, n.'\ 
 
 3[" March 4, 1729. We went to the Bull Inn, Putney, and sent to Mr. Law 
 that we should wait on him in the afternoon ; while we were eating a mutton 
 chop Mr. Law came to us, and we went with him to Mr. Gibbon's, where we 
 walked in the gardens and upstairs into some rooms, the library, and then we 
 sat in a parlour below with Mr. Law and young G. , who left us after a little 
 while over a bottle of French wine " {Remains of John Byrom, i. , 337). 
 
 If Miranda was Hester Gibbon the family did not obey their director, for we 
 are told of her that ' ' whilst she was under her mother, she was forced to go 
 patched, and loaded with a burden of fineries to the holy Sacrament ; to hear 
 profaneness at the play-house, and wanton songs and love intrigues at the 
 opera ; to dance at public places, that fops and rakes might admire the fineness 
 of her shape, and the beauty of her motions " ( The Serious Call, ch. viii.).] 
 
 ■*[See Appendix 3.] 
 
MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 25 
 
 of the Two Sicilies. By an uncle whom another stroke of 
 fortune had transplanted to Leghorn, he was educated in the 
 naval service of the Emperor ; and his valour and conduct in 
 the command of the Tuscan frigates protected the retreat 
 of the Spaniards from Algiers, ^ On my father's return to 
 England he was chosen, in the general election of 1734, to 
 serve in parliament for the borough of Petersfield, a burgage 
 tenure, of which my grandfather possessed a weighty share, 
 till he alienated (I know not why) such important property .^ 
 In the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, and the Pelhams, 
 pi'ejudice and society connected his son with the Tories, — 
 shall I say Jacobites ? ^ or, as they were pleased to style them- 
 selves, the country gentlemen? with them he gave many a 
 vote ; with them he drank many a bottle."^ Without acquiring 
 
 1 [In the Annual Register, xviii. , i, 142, an account is given of the Spanish 
 attack on Algiers in 1775, " with a force that, in its modern state of barbarism 
 and imbecihty, seemed sufficient to overwhehn all Africa. . . . This expedition 
 must be ranked amongst the most disgraceful in its event, as well as the most 
 formidable in its preparations of any in the present age" (ib., pp. 144, 146. 
 See also Gent. Mag. , xlv. , 405). 
 
 Smollett {Hist. Eng. , ed. 1800, iii. , 273), writing of the year 1748, says : ' ' All 
 the powers that border on the Mediterranean, except France and Tuscany, are 
 at perpetual war with the Moors of Barbary, and for that reason obliged to 
 employ foreign ships for the transportation of their merchandise. . . . The 
 Maritime Powers, for this puny advantage, not only tolerate the piratical states, 
 but even supply them with arms and ammunition, solicit their passes, and 
 purchase their forbearance with annual presents, which are, in effect, equal to a 
 tribute." 
 
 In 1816 an English fleet, under Lord Exmouth, bombarded Algiers, and 
 released more than 1,000 Christian slaves (Martineau's Thirty Years' Peace, 
 ed. 1849, i. , 62). In 1830 the French permanently occupied the town.] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 4.] 
 
 2 [Lord Yizxv&j {Memoirs, i. , 5), writing of the year 1727, says that "the 
 Tories were divided into Jacobites and what were called Hanover Tories". 
 Lord Bolingbroke complained in 1733 ( Works, iii. , 28) that the writers on the 
 side of the ministry ' ' frequently throw out that every man is a friend to the 
 Pretender who is not a friend to Walpole " . Churchill , in his Pj-ophecy of Famine 
 (1763), writes of — 
 
 "The old adherents of the Stuart race, 
 Who, pointed out no matter by what name, 
 Tories or Jacobites, are still the same". 
 
 {Poems, ed. 1766, i., 123.)] 
 •* [Swift, in his Journal to Stella, describes on Feb. 18, 1710-11, " the October 
 Club ; that is a set of above a hundred parliament men of the country who 
 drink October beer at home, and meet every evening at a tavern near the 
 parliament, to consult affairs, and drive things on to extremes against the 
 Whigs to call the old ministry to account, and get off five or six heads ". 
 
26 EDWARD GIBBON [1737-4.5 
 
 the fame of an orator or a statesman, he eagerly joined in the 
 great opposition, which, after a seven years' chase, hunted 
 down Sir Robert Walpole : and in the pursuit of an unpopular 
 minister, he gratified a private revenge against the oppressor 
 of his family in the South Sea persecution.^ 
 
 I was born at Putney, in the county of Surry, the 27th of 
 Aprils O.S.,^ in the year one thousand seven hundred and 
 thirty-seven ; the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, 
 esq., and of Judith Porten.^ My lot might have been that 
 of a slave, a savage, or a peasant ; nor can I reflect without 
 pleasure on the bounty of Nature, which cast my birth in a 
 free and civilized country, in an age of science and philosophy, 
 in a family of honourable rank, and decently endowed with 
 the gifts of fortune.* From my birth I have enjoyed the right 
 
 Fielding nearly forty years later took off these country gentlemen in Squire 
 Western : " ' Pox ! the world is come to a fine pass indeed, if we are all fools, ex- 
 cept a parcel of roundheads and Hanover rats. Pox ! I hope the times are a 
 coming that we shall make fools of them, and every man shall enjoy his own. . . . 
 I hope to zee it, sister, before the Hanover rats have eat up all our corn, and 
 left us nothing but turnips to feed upon.' — 'I protest, brother,' cries she, 
 'you are now got beyond my understanding. Your jargon of turnips and 
 Hanover rats is to me perfectly unintelligible.' — 'I believe,' cries he, 'you 
 don't care to hear o' em; but the country interest may succeed one day or 
 other for all that' " {Tom Jones, bk. vi. , ch. 14).] 
 
 1 [Walpole not only opposed the unjust measures of the prosecution, but was 
 inclined to leniency (Coxe's Walpole, i. , 148, 151).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon kept his birthday on May 8, N.S. {post, p. 229). The loss of the 
 eleven days on the alteration of the style in September, 1752, caused him great 
 surprise {Auto., p. 79). Johnson recorded in his Diary: "Jan. i, 1753, N.S. , 
 which I shall use for the future" {Johnsonian Alisc, i., 13).] 
 
 ^ The union to which I owe my birth was a marriage of inclination and esteem. 
 Mr. James Porten, a merchant of London, resided with his family at Putney, in 
 a house adjoining to the bridge and churchyard, where I have passed many 
 happy hours of my childhood. He left one son (the late Sir Stanier Porten) 
 and three daughters ; Catherine, who preserved her maiden name, and of whom 
 I shall hereafter speak ; another daughter married Mr. Barrel of Richmond, 
 and left two sons, Edward and Robert : the youngest of the three sisters was 
 Judith, my mother. — Gibbon. 
 
 ["June 3, 1736. Edward Gibbon Esq. of Putney, Member of Pari, for Peters- 
 field, to Miss Porteen" {Gent. Mag., 1736, p. 355). 
 
 "April 27, 1737. The Lady of Edw. Gibbon Esq., Member for Petersfield, 
 of a son" {ib., 1737, p. 252). 
 
 Sir Stanier Porten was Under-Secretary of State in 1776 {Corres., i., 298). 
 His two children inherited most of Gibbon's property. Edward Darell was one 
 of Gibbon's executors {post, p. 268).] 
 
 *[Post, p. 239.] 
 
1737-45] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 27 
 
 of primogeniture/ but I was succeeded by five brothers and 
 one sister, all of whom were snatched away in their infancy. 
 My five brothers, whose names may be found in the parish 
 register of Putney, I shall not pretend to lament ; ^ but from 
 my childhood to the present hour I have deeply and sincerely 
 regi-etted my sister, whose life was somewhat prolonged, and 
 whom I remember to have seen an amiable infant. The 
 relation of a brother and a sister, especially if they do not 
 marry, appears to me of a very singular nature. It is a 
 familiar and tender friendship with a female, much about our 
 own age ; an affection perhaps softened by the secret influence 
 of sex, but pure from any mixture of sensual desire, and the 
 sole species of Platonic love that can be indulged in with 
 truth, and without danger.^ 
 
 At the general election of 1741 , Mr. Gibbon and Mr. Delme 
 stood an expensive and successful contest at Southampton, 
 against Mr. Dummer and Mr, Henly, afterwards Lord Chan- 
 cellor and Earl of Northington.'^ The Whig candidates had 
 a majority of the resident voters ; but the corporation was 
 firm in the Tory interest : a sudden creation of one hundred 
 
 1 [" The insolent prerogative of primogeniture was unknown" to the Romans 
 ( The Decline, iv. , 488). ' ' The frequent partitions among brothers had almost 
 ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that just but pernicious law was 
 slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture" {ib., vi., 494).] 
 
 2 [Had they lived, their shares of their father's fortune, younger children 
 though they were, "would have been sufficient," he writes, "to oppress my 
 inheritance" {Auto., p. 28). 
 
 The first six children born to Sir Walter Scott's parents "all perished in 
 infancy" (Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, i., 108).] 
 
 3 [" I, who have no sisters nor brothers," wrote Johnson, •'•'look with some 
 degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to be friends " 
 (Boswell's 7(7^72 JO ;z, i. , 324).] 
 
 ■^[Horace Walpole wrote of Lord Northington on Dec. 29, 1763: "The 
 Chancellor is chosen a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital : a smart gentle- 
 man, who was sent with the staff, carried it in the evening, when the Chancellor 
 happened to be drunk. ' Well, Mr. Bartlemy,' said his lordship, snuffing, ' what 
 have you to say ? ' The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was trans- 
 ported to have so fair an opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much 
 dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation 
 on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, 
 ' By God, it is a lie ! I have neither health nor abilities ; my bad health has 
 destroyed my abilities" (Walpole's Letters, iv., 154). When, a little later, 
 Northington was made President of the Council, Walpole wrote : " He is never 
 sober after dinner, and causes are only heard before the Council in the after- 
 noon" (ib., v., 8).] 
 
28 EDWARD GIBBON [i7S7-45 
 
 and seventy new freemen turned the scale ; and a supply was 
 readily obtained of respectable volunteers, who flocked from ' 
 all parts of England to support the cause of their political 
 friends. The new parliament opened with the victory of an 
 opposition;, which was fortified by strong clamour and strange 
 coalitions. From the event of the first divisions, Sir Robert 
 Walpole perceived that he could no longer lead a majority 
 in the House of Commons, and prudently resigned (after a 
 dora.inion of one-and-twenty years) the guidance of the state 
 (1742). But the fall of an unpopular minister was not suc- 
 ceeded, according to general expectation, by a millennium of 
 happiness and virtue ; some courtiers lost their places, some 
 patriots lost their characters, ^ Lord Orford's ^ offences vanished 
 with his power : and after a short vibration, the Pelham govern- 
 ment was fixed on the old basis of the Whig aristocracy. In 
 the year 1745, the throne and the constitution were attacked 
 by a rebellion, which does not reflect much honour on the 
 national spirit ; since the English friends of the Pretender 
 wanted courage to join his standard, and his enemies (the 
 bulk of the people) allowed him to advance into the heart of 
 the kingdom.^ Without daring, perhaps without desiring, to 
 aid the rebels, my father invariably adhered to the Tory 
 opposition. In the most critical season he accepted, for the 
 
 1 [Pope, in the fragment of a satire entitled " One Thousand Seven Hundred 
 and Forty," thus attacked Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, the leader of the 
 " patriots" : — 
 
 "Thro' clouds of passion P— — 's views are clear, 
 He foams a patriot to subside a peer ; 
 Impatient sees his country bought and sold, 
 And damns the market where he takes no gold ". 
 (Warton's Pope's Works, iv. , 347; see also Boswell's /oAwjyw, v., 239.)] 
 
 2 [In Feb., 1742, Walpole was made Earl of Orford.] 
 
 •^ [When Johnson and Boswell were driving to Derby in 1777, " I observed," 
 writes Boswell, " that we were this day to stop just where the Highland army 
 did in 1745 ". "It was a noble attempt, ' ' answered Johnson (Boswell's Johnson, 
 iii., 162). Smollett tells how the English Jacobites ' ' were elevated to an insolence 
 of hope which they were at no pains to conceal ". Nevertheless, " except a few 
 that joined the Prince at Manchester, not a soul appeared in his behalf; one 
 would have imagined that all the Jacobites of England had been annihilated " 
 (Hist, of England, iii., 170). Horace Walpole wrote on Dec. 9, 1745 [Letters, 
 i., 410) : " The rebels have got no recruits since their first entry into England, 
 excepting one gentleman in Lancashire, one hundred and fifty common men, 
 and two parsons at Manchester, and a physician from York ".] 
 
1737-45] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 29 
 
 service of the party, the office of alderman in the city of 
 London : but the duties were so repugnant to his inclination 
 and habits that he resigned his gown at the end of a few 
 months.^ The second parliament in which he sat was pre- 
 maturely dissolved (1747) ; ^ and as he was unable or unwilling 
 to maintain a second contest for Southampton, the life of the 
 senator expired in that dissolution. 
 
 The death of a new-born child before that of its parents 
 may seem an unnatural, but it is strictly a probable, event : 
 since of any given number the greater part are extinguished 
 before their ninth year, before they possess the faculties of 
 the mind or body.^ Without accusing the profuse waste or 
 imperfect workmanship of Nature,^ I shall only observe, that 
 this unfavourable chance was multiplied against my infant 
 existence. So feeble was my constitution, so precarious my 
 life, that, in the baptism of each of my brothers, my father's 
 prudence successively repeated my Christian name of Edward, 
 
 i[He was elected Alderman of Vintry Ward in March, 1743 [Gent. Mag., 
 xiii. , 163). He resigned in June, 1745 [ib. , xv. , 333). Horace Walpole described 
 the historian as the " son of a foolish alderman " [Letters, vi., 311).] 
 
 2 [This parliament met in Dec, 1741, and was dissolved in June, 1747. 
 Though it sat through six sessions, nevertheless between 1714 and 1780 there 
 was only one shorter parliament — the one that after five sessions was brought to 
 a close by the death of George I. At the prorogation in 1747 the King said : 
 "As this parliament would necessarily determine in a short time ... I have 
 judged it expedient speedily to call a new parliament " [Pai'l. Hist., xiv., 65). 
 Horace Walpole wrote a few days later: "Lord Cornbury says the King's 
 speech put him in mind of a gaoler in Oxfordshire who was remarkably humane 
 to his prisoners ; one day he said to one of them, ' My good friend, you know 
 you are to be hanged on Friday se'nnight ; I want extremely to go to London ; 
 would you be so kind as to be hanged next Friday?' " (Walpole's Letters, 
 XX., 88).] 
 
 3[" On peut parier 12,245 contre 11,749 qu'un enfant qui vient de naitre ne 
 vivra pas 10 ans" (Buffon's Hist. Nat., ed. 1777, supplement iv. , 158). 
 
 " La moiti6 du genre humain p^rit avant I'age de huit ans un mois, c'est k 
 dire, avant que le corps soit d^velopp^, et avant que I'ame ne se manifeste par 
 la raison " [ib., p. 161). 
 
 In 1763 Gibbon read A Treatise on the Niimber of hihabitarits in Holland 
 and West Friesla7id, by Kerseboom, where it is stated that of 1,400 new-born 
 children ' ' the probable number of those who will remain alive at the age of 
 ten is 895" [Misc. Works, v., 413). 
 
 By Dr. W. Ogle's tables, constructed on the basis of the death-rates of 
 1871-80, not three-tenths of the children die before their ninth year (Whitaker's 
 Almanack, 1899, p. 690. See post, p. 239).] 
 
 ■* [" So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life. ' ' 
 
 [/n Memoriam, stanza liv.)] 
 
30 EDWARD GIBBON [1737-45 
 
 that, in case of the departure of the eldest son, this patro- 
 nymic appellation might be still perpetuated in the family. 
 
 Uno avulso non deficit alter. ^ 
 
 To preserve and to rear so frail a being, the most tender 
 assiduity was scarcely sufficient, and my mother's attention 
 was somewhat diverted by an exclusive passion for her husband, 
 and by the dissipation of the world, in which his taste and 
 authoi'ity obliged her to mingle. But the maternal office was 
 supplied by my aunt, Mrs. Catherine Porten ; at whose name 
 I feel a tear of gratitude trickling down my cheek.^ A life 
 of celibacy transferred her vacant affection to her sister's first 
 child : my weakness excited her pity ; her attachment was 
 fortified by labour and success : and if there be any, as I 
 trust there are some, who rejoice that I live, to that dear and 
 excellent woman they must hold themselves indebted. Many 
 anxious and solitary days did she consume in the patient trial 
 of every mode of relief and amusement. Many wakeful 
 nights did she sit by my bedside in trembling expectation 
 that each hour would be my last. Of the various and frequent 
 disorders of my childhood my own recollection is dark ; nor 
 do I wish to expatiate on so disgusting a topic. Suffice it to 
 say, that while every practitioner, from Sloane ^ and Ward to 
 the Chevalier Taylor,'^ was successively summoned to torture 
 
 1 [" Primo avulso, etc." {^neid, vi., 143). 
 " The first thus rent, a second will arise " (Dryden).] 
 
 2 [Worthy of respect as was Gibbon's emotion, nevertheless there is some- 
 thing a little comical when we find the same words in five of the six sketches 
 of his Memoirs. The tear could scarcely have five times trickled down his 
 cheek. See Auto., pp. 36, in, 219, 295, 392.] 
 
 ^ [Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection of rarities, purchased for the nation by 
 money raised by a lottery, was part of the foundation of the British Museum. 
 " He was first physician to George I., who created him a Baronet, and to his 
 present Majesty [George H.]" (Gent. Mag., 1753, p. 52).] 
 
 4 [' ' Talking of celebrated and successful irregular practisers in physick ; Dr. 
 Johnson said, ' Taylor was the most ignorant man I ever knew ; but sprightly. 
 Ward the dullest. Taylor challenged me once to talk Latin with him ; (laughing). 
 I quoted some of Horace, which he took to be a part of my own speech. He 
 said a few words well enough.' Beauclekk. ' I remember, Sir, you said 
 that Taylor was an instance how far impudence could carry ignorance '" (Bos- 
 well's /ij/z^zi-o;?, iii., 389. See Horace Walpole's Ze^fer^', iii. , 190, for his epigram 
 on Taylor).] 
 
1737-45] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 31 
 
 or relieve me, the care of my mind was too frequently neglected 
 for that of my health : compassion always suggested an excuse 
 for the indulgence of the master, or the idleness of the pupil ; 
 and the chain of my education was broken, as often as I was 
 recalled from the school of learning to the bed of sickness. 
 
 As soon as the use of speech had prepared my infant 
 reason for the admission of knowledge, I was taught the arts 
 of reading, writing, and arithmetic. So remote is the date, 
 so vague is the memory of their origin in myself, that, were 
 not the error corrected by analogy, I should be tempted to 
 conceive them as innate. In my childhood I was praised for 
 the readiness with which I could multiply and divide, by 
 memory alone, two sums of several figures ; such praise en- 
 couraged my growing talent ; and had I persevered in this 
 line of application, I might have acquired some fame in 
 mathematical studies. ^ 
 
 After this previous institution ^ at home, or at a day school 
 at Putney, I was delivered at the age of seven into the hands 
 of Mr. John Kirkby, who exercised about eighteen months 
 the office of my domestic tutor. His own words, which I 
 shall here transcribe, inspire in his favour a sentiment of 
 pity and esteem : " During my abode in my native county 
 of Cumberland, in quality of an indigent curate, I used 
 now and then in a summer, when the pleasantness of the 
 season invited, to take a solitary walk to the sea-shore, which 
 lies about two miles from the town where I lived. Here 
 I would amuse myself, one while in viewing at large the 
 agreeable prospect which surrounded me, and another while 
 (confining miy sight to nearer objects) in admiring the vast 
 variety of beautiful shells, thrown upon the beach ; some of 
 the choicest of which I always picked up, to divert my little 
 ones upon my return. One time among the rest, taking such 
 
 1 [Posi, p. 95. Gibbon found his arithmetic useful in writing his history. 
 "The best translators from the Greek," he wrote, "I find to be very poor 
 arithmeticians " (The Decline, v., 407, n.). " Arithmetic is an excellent touch- 
 stone to try the amplifications of passion and rhetoric " (i6., vi., 405, n.). See 
 Johnson's Ze^/fr^-, ii., 321.] 
 
 2 [Johnson gives instances of institution in the sense of education.'\ 
 
32 EDWARD GIBBON [1737-45 
 
 a journey in my head, I sat down upon the declivity of the 
 beach, with my face to [towards] the sea, which was now 
 come up within a few yards of my feet ; when immediately the 
 sad thoughts of the wretched condition of my family, and the 
 unsuccessfulness of all endeavours to amend it, came crowd- 
 ing into ray mind, which drove me into a deep melancholy, 
 and ever and anon forced tears from my eyes." ^ Distress at 
 last forced him to leave the country. His learning and virtue 
 introduced him to my father ; and at Putney he might have 
 found at least a temporary shelter, had not an act of indiscre- 
 tion driven him into the world. One day reading prayers in 
 the parish church, he most unluckily forgot the name of King 
 George^: his patron, a loyal subject, dismissed him with 
 some reluctance, and a decent reward ^ ; and how the poor 
 man ended his days I have never been able to learn.* Mr. 
 John Kirkby is the author of two small volumes ; Life of Auto- 
 mathes (London, 1745 ^), and an English and Latin Grammar 
 (London, 1746) ; which, as a testimony of gratitude, he dedi- 
 cated (Nov. 5th, 1745) to my father.'' The books are before 
 
 1 [Automathes, p. i.] 
 
 2 [In the family of Gibbon's grandfather the name of the King was always 
 omitted in family prayers [Atito., p. 17).] 
 
 3 [Gibbon says that Kirkby was guilty of a " public refusal to name King 
 George " (ib. , p. 221). If that were the case Mr. Gibbon could scarcely have 
 retained him in his family. Swift's friend, Dr. Sheridan, the grandfather of 
 R. B. Sheridan, lost preferment by selecting through inadvertence, as the text 
 for a sermon on the anniversary of the accession of the House of Hanover, 
 "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof" (Swift's Wo7-ks, ed. 1883, i. , 290).] 
 
 ■*[He died in 1754. According to the Diet, of Nat. Biog., in 1739 he had 
 been made Vicar of Waldershare, and in 1741 , Rector of Blackmanstone. The 
 vicarage in 1835 was worth ;^i33, but the rectory only ^44. There were but 
 five inhabitants and the church was " desecrated " (Lewis's Top. Diet.).] 
 
 ^ [ TAe Capacity and Extent of the Human Understanding Exemplified i?i the 
 Extraordinary Case o/" Automathes, A Young Nobleman, ivho was accident- 
 ally left in his infancy tipo?i a desolate Island a?id continued nineteeii years in 
 that solitary State sepa?-ate from all Huma?i Society. It was reprinted in 
 Weber's Popular Romances, Edin., 1812. See Notes and Queries, 6 s., xii., 
 68, 177.] 
 
 8 [Mr. G. K. Fortescue informs me that " no copy of this book is to be found 
 in the catalogues of the British Museum, Bodleian, Advocates' Library, Edin- 
 burgh, Trinity College Library, Dublin. It is mentioned in Lowndes' Bio- 
 grapher's Afanual apparently only on the strength of Gibbon's allusion to it. 
 It is not in Watt's Bibliotheea Britannica, either in the author or in the subject 
 volume. It does not appear in Book Prices Curre?it — a list of all books sold by 
 public auction since Dec, 1886, nor is it in Quaritch's Catalogues or that of any 
 other bookseller, so far as I have been able to see."] 
 
1737-45] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 33 
 
 me : from them the pupil may judge the preceptor ; and^ 
 upon the whole, his judgment will not be unfavourable. The 
 grammar is executed with accuracy and skill, and I know not 
 whether any better existed at the time in our language : but 
 the Life of Automathes aspires to the honours of a philosophical 
 fiction. It is the story of a youth, the son of a shipwrecked 
 exile, who lives alone on a desert island from infancy to 
 the age of manhood. A hind is his nurse ; he inherits a 
 cottage, with many useful and curious instruments ; some 
 ideas remain of the education of his two first years ; some 
 arts are borrowed from the beavers of a neighbouring lake ; 
 some truths are revealed in supernatural visions. With these 
 helps, and his own industry, Automathes becomes a self- 
 taught though speechless philosopher, who had investigated 
 with success his own mind, the natural world, the abstract 
 sciences, and the great principles of morality and religion. 
 The author is not entitled to the merit of invention, since he 
 has blended the English story of Robinson Crusoe with the 
 Arabian romance of Hai Ebn Yokhdan, which he might have 
 read in the Latin version of Pocock.^ In the Automathes I 
 cannot praise either the depth of thought or elegance of style ; 
 but the book is not devoid of entertainment or instruction ; 
 and among several interesting passages, I would select the 
 discovery of fire, which produces by accidental mischief the 
 discovery of conscience.^ A man who had thought so much 
 on the subjects of language and education was surely no 
 ordinary preceptor : my childish years, and his hasty de- 
 parture, prevented me from enjoying the full benefit of his 
 
 1 [I owe the following note to Professor Margoliouth : " The story of Hagy 
 Ibn Yakzan is a philosophical work, of which the purport is to show how a child 
 left on a desert island, by observing the phenomena of nature, could arrive at 
 the true religion. It was edited with translation by Pocock's son, with the title 
 oi Philosophus Autodidactus, Oxford, 1671 — of course in Latin." 
 
 Gibbon described it as "a fine, though irregular production of Arabian 
 genius and philosophy" {Misc. Works, v., 234).] 
 
 2 [The axe with which he cut down an old tree struck out sparks on a stone, 
 and so set the chips alight. The next day he repeated the experiment ; the fire 
 spread, and destroyed beasts and fowls. " With what horror was I seized ! 
 . . . This accident gave me the first sad experience of the severe lashes of a 
 self-condemning conscience" (p. 187).] 
 
 3 
 
34 EDWARD GIBBON [i746 
 
 lessons ; but they enlarged my knowledge of arithmetic, 
 and left me a clear impression of the English and Latin 
 rudiments. 
 
 In my ninth year (January, 1746), in a lucid interval ^ of 
 comparative health, my father adopted the convenient and 
 customary mode of English education ; and I was sent to 
 Kingston-upon-Thames, to a school of about seventy boys, 
 which was kept by Dr. Wooddeson and his assistants. Every 
 time I have since passed over Putney Common, I have always 
 noticed the spot where my mother, as we drove along in the 
 coach, admonished me that I was now going into the world, 
 and must learn to think and act for myself. The expression 
 may appear ludicrous ; yet there is not, in the course of life, 
 a more remarkable change than the removal of a child from 
 the luxury and freedom of a wealthy house, to the frugal diet 
 and strict subordination of a school ; from the tenderness of 
 parents, and the obsequiousness of servants, to the rude 
 familiarity of his equals, the insolent tyranny of his seniors, 
 and the rod, perhaps, of a cruel and capricious pedagogue.^ 
 Such hardships may steel the mind and body against the 
 injuries of fortune ; but my timid reserve was astonished by 
 the crowd and tumult of the school ; the want of strength 
 and activity disqualified me for the sports of the play-field ; 
 nor have I foi'gotten how often in the year forty -six I was 
 reviled and buffeted for the sins of my Tory ancestors.^ By 
 
 1 [" The long dissensions of the two Houses had had lucid intervals and happy 
 pauses" {History of Henry VH., Bacon's Works, ed. 1803, v., 9). 
 
 " Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, 
 Strike through and make a lucid interval. ' ' 
 
 (Dryden, MacFlecknoe, 1. 21.) 
 Gibbon may have borrowed the phrase from Johnson, who, in a letter to 
 Mrs. Thrale, written during illness, said: "I snatch every lucid interval, and 
 animate myself with such amusements as the time offers " (Johnson's Letters, 
 ii-. 377)-] 
 
 2 [" With the voice of a schoolmaster, or, what is often much the same, of a 
 tyrant " ( Tom Jones, bk. xi. , ch. 7). Fielding wrote this in 1749, three years 
 after Gibbon went to his first school. For instances of the cruelty of school- 
 masters in those days see Boswell's /oh?isofi, i., 44 ; ii. , 144, 146, 157 ; iii. , 212.] 
 
 •'[A writer in The Gent. Mag., 1794, p. 199, who signs himself " D. P." 
 [Daniel Prince], says, on the authority of one of Gibbon's school-fellows, that 
 " he was a most unhealthy, weakly child when at school at Kingston ".] 
 
1746] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 35 
 
 the common methods of discipline, at the expense of many 
 tears and some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the 
 Latin syntax : and not long since I was possessed of the 
 dirty volumes of Phsedrus and Coi'nelius Nepos, which I pain- 
 fully construed and darkly understood. The choice of these 
 authors is not injudicious. The /z'vei' of Cornelius Nepos, the 
 friend of Atticus and Cicero, are composed in the style of 
 the purest age : his simplicity is elegant, his brevity copious ; 
 he exhibits a series of men and manners ; and with such 
 illustrations, as every pedant is not indeed qualified to give, 
 this classic biographer may initiate a young student in the 
 history of Greece and Rome.^ The use of fables or apologues 
 has been approved in every age from ancient India to modern 
 Europe. They convey in familiar images the truths of moral- 
 ity and prudence ; and the most childish understanding (I 
 advert to the scruples of Rousseau) will not suppose either 
 that beasts do speak, or that men may lie.^ A fable repre- 
 sents the genuine characters of animals ; and a skilful master 
 might extract from Pliny and Buifon some pleasing lessons 
 of natural history, a science well adapted to the taste and 
 capacity of children. The Latinity of Phsedrus is not exempt 
 from an alloy of the silver age ; but his manner is concise, 
 terse and sententious : the Thracian slave discreetly breathes 
 the spirit of a freeman ; and when the text is sound, the 
 style is perspicuous. But his fables, after a long oblivion, 
 were first published by Peter Pithou from a corrupt manu- 
 script. The labours of fifty editors confess the defects of the 
 
 1 [Gibbon, in 1756, wrote of Nepos : " II excelle dans cet art, la difficult^ 
 duquel rend les bons abr^gi^s si peu communs, celui de saisir les traits qui 
 peignent les hommes et les ev^nemens, et de savoir laisser a I'^cart toutes les 
 ciixonstances qui ne font qu'embarrasser une narration, et d^tourner I'attention 
 du lecteur du principal sur I'accessoire " {Misc. Works, iv., 416).] 
 
 2 [" Comment peut-on s'aveugler assez] pour appeller les fables la morale 
 des enfans ? sans songer que I'apologue en les amusant les abuse, que s6duits 
 par le mensonge ils laissent ^chapper la v6rit6, et que ce qu'on fait pour leur ^ 
 rendre 1' instruction agr^able les erapeche d'en profiter. Les fables peu vent, ^ 
 instruire les hommes, mais il faut dire la v^rit6 nue aux enfans ; sitot qu'on la ^ 
 couvre d'un voile, ils ne se donnent plus la peine de le lever." Hereupon follows 
 
 an analysis of La Fontaine's Le Corbeau et le Renard, showing how ignorant 
 Rousseau often was of that Nature which he professed to have mastered 
 {Emile, livre ii. ; CEuvres de Rousseau, ed. 1780, vii., 209).] 
 
36 EDWARD GIBBON [i747 
 
 copy, as well as the value of the original ; and the schoolboy 
 may have been whipt for misapprehending a passage, which 
 Bentley could not restore, and which Burman could not 
 explain.^ 
 
 My studies were too frequently interrupted by sickness ; 
 and after a real or nominal residence at Kingston school of 
 near two years, I was finally recalled (December, 1747) by my 
 mother's death, which was occasioned in her thirty-eighth 
 year by the consequences of her last labour. I was too 
 young to feel the importance of my loss ; and the image 
 of her person and conversation is faintly imprinted in my 
 memory. The affectionate heart of my aunt, Catherine 
 Porten, bewailed a sister and a friend ; but my poor father 
 was inconsolable, and the transport of grief seemed to 
 threaten his life or his reason. I can never forget the scene 
 of our first interview, some weeks after the fatal event ; the 
 awful silence, the room hung with black, ^ the mid-day tapers, 
 his sighs and tears ; his praises of my mother, a saint in 
 heaven ; his solemn adjuration that I would cherish her 
 memory and imitate her virtues ; and the fervour with which 
 he kissed and blessed me as the sole surviving pledge of their 
 loves. The storm of passion insensibly subsided into calmer 
 melancholy. At a convivial meeting of -his friends, Mr. 
 Gibbon might affect or enjoy a gleam of cheerfulness ; but 
 his plan of happiness was for ever destroyed ; ^ and after the 
 loss of his companion he was left alone in a world, of which 
 the business and pleasure were to him irksome or insipid. 
 After some unsuccessful trials he renounced the tumult of 
 London and the hospitality of Putney, and buried himself in 
 
 1 [See Appendix 5.] 
 
 2 [On Swift's death his cousin, Mrs. Whiteway, reproached Iiis executors 
 with not hanging the room in which he lay with black (Swift's Works, ed. 
 1883, i., 426).] 
 
 ■" [Swift wrote to a friend who had lost his wife : ' ' Such misfortunes seem to 
 break the whole scheme of man's life " [ib., xvii., 201). Johnson wrote to Mrs. 
 Thrale on the death of her only son : " I know that a whole system of hopes, 
 and designs, and expectations is swept away at once" (Johnson's Letters, i., 
 383). To a friend he wrote on the loss of his wife : " A loss such as yours . . . 
 breaks the whole system of purposes and hopes " {ib., ii. , 67).] 
 
1748] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 37 
 
 the rural or rather rustic ^ solitude of Buriton/^ from which, 
 during several years, he seldom emerged. 
 
 As far back as I can remember, the house, near Putney- 
 bridge and churchyard, of my maternal grandfather appears 
 in the light of my proper and native home. It was there that 
 I was allowed to spend the greatest part of my time, in sick- 
 ness or in health, during my school vacations and my parents' 
 residence in London, and finally after my mother's death. 
 Three months after that event, in the spring of 1748, the 
 commercial ruin of her father, Mr. James Porten, was accom- 
 plished and declared. He suddenly absconded ; ^ but as his 
 effects were not sold, nor the house evacuated till the Christ- 
 mas following, I enjoyed during the whole year the society of 
 my aunt, without much consciousness of her impending fate. 
 I feel a melancholy pleasure in repeating my obligations to 
 that excellent woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, the true mother 
 of my mind as well as of my health.* Her natural good sense 
 was improved by the perusal of the best books in the English 
 language ; and if her reason was sometimes clouded by preju- 
 dice, her sentiments were never disguised by hypocrisy or 
 affectation. Her indulgent tenderness, the frankness of her 
 temper, and my innate rising curiosity, soon removed all 
 distance between us : like friends of an equal age, we freely 
 conversed on every topic, familiar or abstruse ; and it was her 
 delight and reward to observe the first shoots of my young 
 
 1 [Johnson's first definition of rustic is "rural " ; but he gives as a second 
 meaning " rude, untaught, inelegant," and as a third, "brutal, savage".] 
 
 2 [See/05<?, p. ii6.] 
 
 •* [These three words were omitted in the second edition.] 
 4 [On her death in 1786 Gibbon wrote: "A good understanding and an 
 excellent heart, with health, spirits, and a competency, to live in the midst of 
 her friends till the age of fourscore, and then to shut her eyes without pain or 
 remorse. ... I was a puny child, neglected by my mother, starved by my 
 nurse, and of whose being very little care or expectation was entertained ; 
 without her maternal vigilance I should either have been in my grave, or im- 
 perfectly lived a crooked ricketty \sic] monster, a burthen to myself and others. 
 To her instructions I owe the first rudiments of knowledge, the first exercise of 
 reason, and a taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life ; 
 and though she taught me neither language nor science, she was certainly the 
 most useful preceptor I ever had " {Corres., ii., 144).] 
 
38 EDWAKD GIBBON [i748 
 
 ideas.^ Pain and langaor were often soothed by the voice of 
 instruction and amusement ; and to her kind lessons I ascribe 
 my early and invincible love of reading, which I would not 
 exchange for the treasures of India. I should perhaps be 
 astonished, were it possible to ascertain the date at which 
 a favourite tale was engraved, by frequent repetition, in my 
 memory : the Cavern of the Winds ; the Palace of Felicity ; 
 and the fatal moment, at the end of three months or centuries, 
 when Prince Adolphus is overtaken by Time, who had worn 
 out so many pair of wings in the pursuit."^ Before I left 
 Kingston school I was well acquainted with Pope's Homer 
 and the Arabian Nights Entertainments, two books which will 
 always please by the moving picture of human manners and 
 specious miracles ; ^ nor was I then capable of discerning that 
 Pope's translation is a portrait endowed with every merit, 
 excepting that of likeness to the original.'' The verses of 
 Pope accustomed my ear to the sound of poetic harmony ; ^ 
 in the death of Hector, and the shipwreck of Ulysses, I tasted 
 the new emotions of terror and pity ; and seriously disputed 
 with my aunt on the vices and virtues of the heroes of the 
 Trojan war. From Pope's Homer to Dryden's Virgil was an 
 easy transition ; but I know not how, from some fault in the 
 author, the translator, or the reader, the pious Jjlneas did not 
 so forcibly seize on my imagination ; and I derived more 
 pleasure from Ovid's Metamorphoses, especially in the fall of 
 
 1 [" Delightful task ! to rear the tender thought, 
 To teach the young idea how to shoot." 
 
 (Thomson's ^Smjowj ; "Spring,"!. 1149.) 
 For Gibbon's obligations to his aunt see Misc. Wor^s, ii. , 388, 392.] 
 2 [See Appendix 6.] 
 
 ^["Speciosa . . . miracula. " 
 
 (Horace, Ars Poet., 1. 144.) 
 " Pilgrimage, and the holy wars, introduced into Europe the specious miracles 
 of Arabian magic " [The Decline, iv. , 151).] 
 
 *[" Mr. Pope, without perceiving it, has improved the theology of Homer " 
 (ib., i. , 29). " It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope," said Bentley ; " but you must 
 not call it Homer " (Boswell's /ohnso?i, iii., 256, «.).] 
 
 5[" I do not know," writes Lord Sheffield, " that Mr. Gibbon ever wrote a 
 line of verse ; yet he by no means neglected the Poets, but would read them 
 aloud even in his chaise when travelling, particularly Homer " (A/wt". Works, 
 Preface, p. 10). See Read's Historic Studies, ii., 450, and D'Haussonville's 
 Le Salon de Madame Necker, 1882, i., 49, for some of his French verses,] 
 
1749] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 39 
 
 Phaethon, and the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses. My grand- 
 father's flight unlocked the door of a tolerable library ; and I 
 turned over many English pages of poetry and romance, of 
 history and travels. Where a title attracted my eye, without 
 fear or awe I snatched the volume from the shelf; and Mrs. 
 Porten, who indulged herself in moral and religious specula- 
 tions, was more prone to encourage than to check a curiosity 
 above the strength of a boy. This year (1748), the twelfth of 
 my age, I shall note as the most propitious to the growth of 
 my intellectual stature. 
 
 The relics of my grandfather's fortune afforded a bare 
 annuity for his own maintenance ; and his daughter, my 
 worthy aunt, who had already passed her fortieth year, was 
 left destitute. Her noble spirit scorned a life of obligation 
 and dependence ; and after revolving several schemes, she 
 preferred the humble industry of keeping a boarding-house 
 for Westminster-school,! where she laboriously earned a 
 competence for her old age.^ This singular opportunity of 
 blending the advantages of private and public education 
 decided my father. After the Christmas holidays in January, 
 1749, I accompanied Mrs. Porten to her new house in College- 
 street ; and was immediately entered in the school, of which 
 Dr. John Nicoll was at that time head-master.^ At first I 
 was alone : but my aunt's resolution was praised ; her 
 character was esteemed ; her friends were numerous and 
 active : in the course of some years she became the mother of 
 forty or fifty boys, for the most part of family and fortune ; 
 and as her primitive habitation was too narrow, she built and 
 occupied a spacious mansion in Dean's Yard. I shall always 
 be ready to join in the common opinion, that our public 
 schools, which have produced so many eminent characters, 
 are the best adapted to the genius and constitution of the 
 
 lit is said in the family, that she was principally induced to this undertaking 
 by her affection for her nephew, whose weak constitution required her constant 
 and unremitted attention. — -Sheffield. 
 
 2[" An easy competency," Gibbon described it {Misc. Works, ii., 392).] 
 
 ^[See Appendix 7.] 
 
40 EDWARD GIBBON [i749 
 
 English people. A boy of spirit may acquire a previous and 
 practical experience of the world ; and his playfellows may 
 be the future friends of his heart or his interest. ^ In a free 
 intercourse with his equals, the habits of truth, fortitude, and 
 prudence will insensibly be matured. Birth and riches are 
 measured by the standard of personal merit ; and the mimic 
 scene of a rebellion has displayed, in their true colours, the 
 ministers and patriots of the rising generation. ^ Our semin- 
 aries of learning do not exactly correspond with the precept 
 of a Spartan king, " that the child should be instructed in 
 the arts, which will be useful to the man^ " ; since a finished 
 scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton, 
 in total ignorance of the business and conversation of English 
 gentlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth century. But 
 these schools may assume the merit of teaching all that they 
 pretend to teach, the Latin and Greek languages : they de- 
 posit in the hands of a disciple the keys of two valuable 
 chests ; nor can he complain, if they are afterwards lost or 
 neglected by his own fault. The necessity of leading in equal 
 ranks so many unequal powers of capacity and application, 
 
 1 [Fielding wrote in 1752: "Much the greater part of our lads of fashion 
 return from school at fifteen or sixteen very little wiser, and not at all the better, 
 for having been sent thither" (Fielding's Works, ed. 1806, x. , 116). 
 
 In the same year Chesterfield wrote to a friend : "If you would have your 
 son be a very learned man, you must certainly send him to some great school ; 
 but if you would have him be a better thing, a very honest man, you should have 
 him a portie of your own inspection. At those great schools the heart is wholly 
 neglected by those who ought to form it " (Chesterfield's Misc. Works, iv., 
 
 243)- 
 
 ■ For Johnson's opinion of public and private education see Boswell s Johnson, 
 ii., 407 ; iii. , 12 ; iv. , 312 ; v., 85.] 
 
 ^[Johnson writes in the Life of Addison : " The practice of barring-out was 
 a savage licence, practised in many schools to the end of the last century, by 
 which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at 
 the approach of liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took 
 possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master 
 defiance from the windows". Johnson goes on to mention a story which had 
 reached him that one such barring-out at Lichfield School "was planned and 
 conducted by Addison" (Johnson's Works, vii. , 419).] 
 
 '^[" 'EttiCtjtowtos de twos riva Se7 fxayddveiv tovs iraWas, 
 ravr' (eiirev) oTs Kal &i'Spes yev6fJi.evoL xP'^oi'Tai." 
 
 ( Agesilaus. ) 
 ' ' ' Cuidam autem quaerenti quaenam pueris discenda forent, Ea respondit 
 quibus et viri sint usuri. " 
 
 {^Apophthegmata Graeca Regiim et Ducufji, Hen. Steph. , 1568, pp. 306, 307.)] 
 
1750-1] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 41 
 
 will prolong to eight or ten years the juvenile studies, which 
 might be despatched in half that time by the skilful master 
 of a single pupil. Yet even the repetition of exercise and 
 discipHne contributes to fix in a vacant mind the verbal 
 science of grammar and prosody : and the private or voluntary 
 student, who possesses the sense and spirit of the classics, may 
 offend, by a false quantity, the scrupulous ear of a well-flogged 
 critic. For myself, I must be content with a very small share 
 of the civil and literary fruits of a public school. In the space 
 of two years (1749, 1750) interrupted by danger and debility, 
 I painfully climbed into the third form ; and my riper age 
 was left to acquire the beauties of the La,tin, and the rudi- 
 ments of the Greek tongue. Instead of audaciously mingling 
 in the sports, the quarrels, and the connections of our little 
 world, I was still cherished at home under the maternal wing 
 of my aunt ; and my removal from Westminster long preceded 
 the approach of manhood. 
 
 The violence and variety of iny complaint, which had 
 excused my frequent absence from Westminster School, at 
 length engaged Mrs. Porten, with the advice of physicians, to 
 conduct me to Bath : at the end of the Michaelmas vacation 
 (1750) she quitted me with reluctance, and I remained several 
 months under the care of a trusty maid-servant. A strange 
 nervous affection, which alternately contracted my legs, and 
 produced, without any visible symptoms, the most excruciat- 
 ing pain, was ineffectually opposed by the various methods of 
 bathing and pumping. From Bath I was transported to 
 Winchester, to the house of a physician ; and after the failure 
 of his medical skill, we had again recourse to the virtues of 
 the Bath waters. During the intervals of these fits, I moved 
 with my father to Buriton and Putney; and a short un- 
 successful trial was attempted to renew my attendance at 
 Westminster School. But my infirmities could not be recon- 
 ciled with the hours and discipline of a public seminaiy ; and 
 instead of a domestic tutor, who might have watched the 
 favourable moments, and gently advanced the progress of my 
 learning, my father was too easily content with such occasional 
 
42 EDWAED GIBBON [i752 
 
 teachers as the different places of my residence could supply. 
 I was never forced, and seldom was I persuaded, to admit 
 these lessons : yet I read with a clergyman at Bath some odes 
 of Horace, and several episodes of Virgil, which gave me an 
 imperfect and transient enjoyment of the Latin poets. It 
 might now be apprehended that I should continue for life an 
 illiterate cripple ; but, as I approached my sixteenth year. 
 Nature displayed in my favour her mysterious energies : my 
 constitution was fortified and fixed ; and my disorders, instead 
 of growing with my growth and strengthening with my 
 strength, most wonderfully vanished. I have never possessed 
 or abused the insolence of health ^ : but since that time few 
 persons have been more exempt from real or imaginary ills, 
 and, till I am admonished by the gout, the reader will no 
 more be troubled with the history of my bodily complaints. 
 My unexpected recovery again encouraged the hope of my 
 education ; and I was placed at Esher, in Surrey, in the house 
 of the Reverend Mr. Philip Francis, in a pleasant spot, which 
 promised to unite the various benefits of air, exercise, and 
 study (January, 175?). The translator of Horace might have 
 taught me to relish the Latin poets, had not my friends dis- 
 covered in a few weeks, that he preferred the pleasures of 
 London, to the instruction of his pupils. ^ My father's per- 
 plexity at this time, rather than his prudence, was urged to 
 embrace a singular and desperate measure. Without prepara- 
 tion or delay he carried me to Oxford ^ ; and I was matricu- 
 
 ^[Posi, p. 241. For his neglect of his health see post, p. 258.] 
 
 ^[" Dr. Johnson said : ' The lyrical part of Horace never can be perfectly 
 translated ; so much of the excellence is in the numbers and the expression. 
 Francis has done it the best ; I'll take his, five out of six, against them all' " 
 [Qo&vfelVs fohnsoit, iii., 356). 
 
 Francis was the father of Sir Philip Francis, vi'ho is commonly supposed to 
 have been Juiiius.'\ 
 
 3 [In a note at the end of the MS. of Gibbon's Memoirs in the British 
 Museum it is stated that the greatest number of matriculations at Oxford 
 between 1700 and 1800 was 372 — in the year 1717 ; the least number was 146 
 — in 1756. In 1750 190 matriculated. According to another MS. , drawn up in 
 1807 by the Registrar of Cambridge University, the greatest number of matricula- 
 tions at Cambridge between 1759 and 1800 was 210 — in 1792 ; the least number 
 was 92 — in 1766. 
 
 The population of Oxford in 1750 (excluding the inhabitants of the colleges) 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 43 
 
 lated in the university as a gentleman commoner of Magdalen 
 college, before I had accomplished the fifteenth year of my 
 age (April 3, 1752). 
 
 The curiosity, which had been implanted in my infant 
 mind, was still alive and active ; but my reason was not 
 sufficiently informed to understand the value, or to lament 
 the loss of three precious years from my entrance at West- 
 minster to my admission at Oxford. Instead of repining at 
 my long and frequent confinement to the chamber or the 
 couch, I secretly rejoiced in those infirmities, which delivered 
 me from the exercises of the school, and the society of my 
 equals. As often as I was tolerably exempt from danger and 
 pain, reading, free desultory reading, was the employment and 
 comfort of my solitary hours. At Westminster, my aunt sought 
 only to amuse and indulge me ; in my stations at Bath and 
 Winchester, at Buriton and Putney, a false compassion re- 
 spected my sufferings ; and I was allowed, without controul 
 or advice, to gratify the wanderings of an unripe taste. My 
 indiscriminate appetite subsided by degrees in the historic 
 line 1 ; and since philosophy has exploded all innate ideas and 
 natural propensities,^ I must ascribe this choice to the 
 assiduous perusal of the Universal History, as the octavo 
 volumes successively appeared.^ This unequal work, and a 
 
 was 8,292 [Gent. Mag., 1752, p. 347). "The north side of the city is open to 
 corn-fields and enclosures for many miles together, without an hill to intercept 
 the free current of air, which purifies it from all noxious vapours. The soil is 
 dry, being on a fine gravel, which renders it as healthful and pleasant a spot as 
 any in the Kingdom " [Pocket Companion for- Oxford, ed. 1762, p. 2). 
 
 ' ' Oxford stands in a beautiful plain and sweet air " {Gent. Mag. , 1765, p. 73). ] 
 
 i[" Johnson . . . was at all times prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms 
 such as . . . the civil line, the banking li?ie" ifiosmQlVs Johnson, iii., 196).] 
 2 [Dr. Watts wrote in 1725 : ' ' There has been a great controversy about 
 the origin of ideas, viz., whether any of our ideas are innate or no, that is, born 
 with us, and naturally belonging to our minds. Mr. Locke utterly denies it ; 
 others as positively affirm it " [Logic, i., 3, i. ). 
 
 For "a strong example of the innate difference of characters" see The 
 Decline, ii. , 256. See also /oj^, p. 143.] 
 
 ^[To Gibbon might be applied Dryden's lines — 
 
 " For what in Nature's dawn the child admired, 
 The youth endeavoured, and the man acquired ? ' ' 
 
 [Epistle to Kneller, 1. 130. ) 
 In the Register of Books in The Gent. Mag. for July, 1740, p. 360, is " An 
 
44 EDWAKD GIBBON [i752 
 
 treatise of HearnCj the Ductor historicus- ^ referred and intro- 
 duced me to the Greek and Roman historians, to as many at 
 least as were accessible to an English reader. All that I 
 could find wei'e greedily devoured, from Littlebury's lame 
 Herodotus and Spelman's valuable Xenophon, to the pompous 
 folios of Gordon's Tacitus and a ragged Procopius of the 
 beginning of the last century. The cheap acquisition of so 
 much knowledge confirmed my dislike to the study of 
 languages ; and I argued with Mrs. Porten, that, were I 
 master of Greek and Latin, I must interpret to myself in 
 English the thoughts of the original, and that such ex- 
 temporary versions must be inferior to the elaborate transla- 
 tions of professed scholars ; a silly sophism, which could not 
 easily be confuted by a person ignoi*ant of any other language 
 than her own. From the ancient I leaped to the modern 
 world : many crude lumps of Speed, Rapin, Mezeray, Davila, 
 Machiavel, Father Paul, Bower, &c., I devoured like so many 
 novels ; and I swallowed with the same voracious appetite the 
 descriptions of India and China, of Mexico and Peru. 
 
 My first introduction to the historic scenes, which have 
 since engaged so many years of my life, must be ascribed 
 to an accident. In the summer of 1751, I accompanied my 
 father on a visit to Mr. Hoare's, in Wiltshire ; but I was less 
 
 Universal History from the earliest Account of Time to the present. In five 
 volumes in folio. Price ;^io los. 6d." In the Register for March, 1749, p. 
 144, is " Universal History, in 8vo, vol, xx., and last. Price 5s. in boards." 
 
 Gibbon in The Decline, v., 40, describes its authors as "these learned 
 bigots," and v., 455, as "its self-sufficient compilers". On p. 396 he says of 
 the 850 folio pages given to Mahomet and the Caliphs: "The dull mass is 
 not quickened by a spark of philosophy or taste ". On p. 318 he writes : "A 
 nameless doctor has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the 
 independence of the Arabs ". The list of the writers of the Universal History 
 drawn up by Johnson (Johnson's Letters, ii., 431) shows that this "nameless 
 doctor" was John Swinton. He it was who preaching to some convicts who 
 were to be hanged next morning, ' ' told them that he should give them the 
 remainder of what he had to say on the subject the next Lord's Day" \^os- 
 \^q\Vs Joh?ison, i., 273). 
 
 Charles Lamb, who at the age of six was taken to the theatre for the first 
 time, and saw Artaxerxes, writes: "I had dabbled a little in the Universal 
 History — the ancient part of it — and here was the Court of Persia" (Essays of 
 Elia, ed. 1889, p. iii).] 
 
 i[For this work and those mentioned on this and the next page see 
 Appendix 8.] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 45 
 
 delighted with the beauties of Stourhead, than with discover- 
 ing in the Ubrary a common book, the Continuation of 
 Eachard's Roman History, which is indeed executed with 
 more skill and taste than the previous work. To me the 
 reigns of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new ; 
 and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the 
 Danube,^ when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly 
 dragged me from my intellectual feast. This transient glance 
 served rather to irritate than to appease my curiosity ; and as 
 soon as I returned to Bath I procured the second and third 
 volumes of Howell's History of the World, which exhibit the 
 Byzantine period on a larger scale. Mahomet and his Saracens 
 soon fixed my attention ; and some instinct of criticism directed 
 me to the genuine sources. Simon Ockley, an original in 
 every sense, first opened my eyes ; and I was led from one 
 book to another, till I had ranged round the circle of 
 Oriental history. Before I was sixteen, I had exhausted all 
 that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, 
 the Tartars and Turks ; and the same ardour urged me to 
 guess at the French of D'Herbelot,^ and to construe the 
 barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius. Such vague and 
 multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to write, 
 or to act ; and the only principle that darted a ray of light 
 into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational appli- 
 cation to the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius 
 and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient 
 geography : from Strauchius I imbibed the elements of chron- 
 ology : the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of 
 Usher and Prideaux distinguished the connection of events, 
 and I engraved the multitude of names and dates in a clear 
 and indelible series. But in the discussion of the first ages 
 I overleaped the bounds of modesty and use. In my childish 
 balance I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and 
 Petavius, of Marsham and Newton,^ which I could seldom 
 
 ^ [See The Decline, iii., 94.] 
 '{Post, p. 63, nJ] "^{Ibid., pp. 63, 129.] 
 
46 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 study in the originals ; and my sleep has been disturbed by 
 the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew 
 computation.^ I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition, 
 that might have puzzled a doctor,^ and a degree of ignorance, 
 of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed. 
 
 At the conclusion of this first period of my life, I am 
 tempted to enter a protest against the trite and lavish praise 
 of the happiness of our boyish years, which is echoed with 
 so much affectation in the world. ^ That happiness I have 
 never known, that time I have never regretted ; and were 
 my poor aunt still alive, she would bear testimony to the 
 early and constant uniformity of my sentiments. It will 
 
 i["The primitive church of Antioch computed almost 6000 years from the 
 creation of the world to the birth of Christ. Africanus, Lactantius, and the 
 Greek Church have reduced that number to 5500, and Eusebius has contented 
 himself with 5200 years. These calculations were formed on the Septuagint, 
 which was universally received during the six first centuries. The authority of 
 the Vulgate and of the Hebrew text has determined the Moderns, Protestants 
 as well as Catholics, to prefer a period of about 4000 years ; though in the 
 study of profane antiquity they often find themselves straitened by those narrow 
 limits " [The Decline, ii., 23). " I regret this chronology [Africanus's], so far 
 preferable to our double and perplexed method of counting backwards and 
 forwards the years before and after the Christian era " [ib., iv., 269).] 
 
 2 [See Auto., p. 57, for Gibbon in his boyhood, "surrounded with a heap 
 of folios". Pattison writes of F. A. Wolf's entrance at Gottingen in 1777: 
 " Since Gibbon, who took to Magdalen ' a stock of learning which might have 
 puzzled a doctor,' so extraordinary a student had, perhaps, never entered a 
 university" (Pattison's Essays, ed. 1889, i., 348).] 
 
 "^ [" Dr. Johnson maintained that a boy at school was the happiest of human 
 beings. I supported a different opinion, from which I have never yet varied, 
 that a man is happier ; and I enlarged upon the anxiety and sufferings which 
 are endured at school. Johnson. ' Ah ! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so 
 severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. Men have a 
 solicitude about fame ; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid 
 they are of losing it ' " (Boswell's Johnson, i., 451). 
 
 Four years before Johnson said this, Adam Smith had written : " Compared 
 with the contempt of mankind, all other external evils are easily supported" 
 {Theory of Moral Sentime7its, ed. 1801, i. , 119). 
 
 Cowper had been happier than Gibbon. "My imagination," he wrote, 
 " set me down in the sixth form at Westminster. I fancied myself once more 
 a schoolboy, a period of life in which, if I had never tasted true happiness, I 
 was at least equally unacquainted with its contrary" (Southey's Coivpei; i. , 
 15). In The Task, i. , 116, writing of his schoolboy days, he says : — 
 
 ' ' I still remember, nor without regret 
 
 Of hours that sorrow since has much endear'd," etc. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, who had been at the same school as Boswell, sided with 
 Gibbon. "Did I ever," he wrote, "pass unhappy years anywhere? None 
 that I remember, save those at the High School, which I thoroughly detested 
 on account of the confinement " (Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, viii., 368).] 
 
1752] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 47 
 
 indeed be replied, that / am not a competent judge ; that 
 pleasure is incompatible with pain ; that joy is excluded from 
 sickness ; and that the felicity of a schoolboy consists in the 
 perpetual motion of thoughtless and playful agility, in which 
 I was never qualified to excel. My name, it is most true, 
 could never be enrolled among the sprightly race, the idle 
 progeny of Eton or Westminster, 
 
 Who foremost may [now] delight to cleave, 
 With pliant arm, the [thy] glassy wave, 
 Or urge the flying ball.^ 
 
 The poet may gaily describe the short hours of recreation ; but 
 he forgets the daily tedious labours of the school, which is 
 approached each morning- with anxious and reluctant steps. ^ 
 A traveller, who visits Oxford or Cambridge, is surprised and 
 edified by the apparent order and tranquillity that prevail 
 in the seats of the English muses. In the most celebrated 
 universities of Holland, Germany, and Italy, the students, 
 who swarm from different countries, are loosely dispersed in 
 private lodgings at the houses of the burghers : they dress 
 according to their fancy and fortune ; and in the intemperate 
 quarrels of youth and wine, their stvords, though less frequently 
 than of old, are sometimes stained with each other's blood.^ 
 The use of arms is banished fi'om our English universities ; 
 the uniform habit of the academics, the square cap, and black 
 
 1 [Gray's Eio?t College. ^ 
 
 2 [" Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school." 
 
 [As You Like It, Act ii., Sc. 7, 1. 145.)] 
 •^ [C. E. Jordan thus wrote of Oxford in 1733 : " Je logeai a Oxford au 
 Blow Board [? Blue Boar], ou on est fort bien. La villa est petite, et il y a 
 peu de belles maisons. Les Colleges y sont magnifiques. Les dehors de la 
 ville sont tres riants. . . . Le nombre des ^tudiants d'Oxford va a 2,000. lis 
 ne portent ni baton, ni 6pfe. Tous portent la robe et le bonnet quarr6 ; 
 I'habillement differe suivant les d6gr6s et la quality. Un ^tudiant vit fort 
 agr^ablement dans un College : il est bien log6 et nourri ; et sa d^pense monte 
 (s'il salt oeconomiser) par rapport k I'entretien a 100 pieces. Tout est bien 
 r6gl6 dans cette Acad^mie, ou plutot University ; les dfeordres n'y regnent pas 
 comme dans celles d'AUemagne " [Histoire d'un Voyage Littdraire, ed. 1735, 
 p. 174). Jordan, comparing Leipsic with Halle, says : " Les manieres y sont 
 plus polies, les ^tudians ne s'y livrent pas a una debauche aussi crasse ; ils y 
 sont fort galants, ils sacrifient plus a Venus qu'a Bacchus" {ib., p. 9).] 
 
48 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 gown, is adapted to the civil and even clerical professions ; 
 and from the doctor in divinity to the under-graduate, the 
 degrees of learning and age are externally distinguished. 
 Instead of being scattered in a town, the students of Oxford 
 and Cambridge are united in colleges ; their maintenance is 
 provided at their own expense, or that of the founders ; and 
 the stated hours of the hall and chapel represent the dis- 
 cipline of a regular, and, as it were, a religious community. ^ 
 The eyes of the traveller are attracted by the size or beauty of 
 the public edifices ; and the principal colleges appear to be so 
 many palaces, which a liberal nation has erected and endowed 
 for the habitation of science. My own introduction to the uni- 
 versity of Oxford forms a new aera in my life ; and at the distance 
 of forty years I still remember my first emotions of surprise and 
 satisfaction. In my fifteenth year I felt myself suddenly 
 raised from a boy to a man : the persons, whom I respected 
 as my superiors in age and academical rank, entertained me 
 with every mark of attention and civility ; and my vanity 
 was flattered by the velvet cap and silk gown, which dis- 
 tinguish a gentleman commoner ^ from a plebeian student. 
 A decent allowance, more money than a schoolboy had ever 
 seen, was at my own disposal ; and I might command, among 
 the tradesmen of Oxford, an indefinite and dangerous latitude 
 of credit. A key was delivered into my hands, which gave 
 me the free use of a numerous and learned library, my apart- 
 ment consisted of three elegant and well-furnished rooms 
 in the new building, a stately pile, of Magdalen College, 
 
 1 [" Their institutions, although somewhat fallen from their primaeval 
 simplicity, are such as influence in a particular manner the moral conduct of 
 their youth ; and in this general depravity of manners and laxity of principles, 
 pure religion is nowhere more strictly inculcated. . . . They render their 
 students virtuous, at least by excluding all opportunities of vice, and by teaching 
 them the principles of the Church of England confirm them in those of true 
 Christianity" {The Idler, Dec. 2, 1758, No. 33).] 
 
 2 [Sainte-Beuve describes him as entering "en qualite d'6tudiant ordinaire" 
 {Causeries, viii. , 436). 
 
 Mrs. Delany (Aufo. atid Co7'res., iii., 583), writing in 1760 about her nephew 
 going to Oxford, says: "I hope he will not fall into any vulgar error, now 
 much encouraged at Oxford, that 'peers are not worth being acquainted 
 with ' ".] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 49 
 
 and the adjacent walks, had they been frequented by Plato's 
 disciples, might have been compared to the Attic shade on 
 the banks of the Ilissus. Such was the fair prospect of my 
 entrance (April 3, 1752) into the university of Oxford.^ 
 
 A venerable prelate, whose taste and erudition must reflect 
 honour on the society in which they were formed, has drawn 
 a very interesting picture of his academical life."^ " I was 
 educated (says Bishop Lowth) in the university of Oxford. 
 I enjoyed all the advantages, both public and private, which 
 that famous seat of learning so largely affords. I spent many 
 years in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course 
 of useful discipline and studies, and in the agreeable and im- 
 proving commerce of gentlemen and of scholars ; in a society 
 where emulation without envy, ambition without jealousy, 
 contention without animosity, incited industry, and awakened 
 genius ; where a liberal pursuit of knowledge, and a genuine 
 [generous] freedom of thought, was raised, encouraged, and 
 pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by au- 
 thority. I breathed the same atmosphere that the Hookers, 
 the Chillingworths, and the Lockes had breathed before ; 
 whose benevolence and humanity were as extensive as their 
 vast genius and comprehensive knowledge ; who always treated 
 their adversaries with civility and respect ; who made candour, 
 moderation, and liberal judgment as much the rule and law 
 as the subject of their discourse. [. . .] And do you reproach 
 me with my education in this place, and with my relation to 
 this most respectable body, which I shall always esteem my 
 greatest advantage and my highest honour ? " ^ I transcribe 
 with pleasm-e this eloquent passage, without examining what 
 benefits or what rewards were derived by Hooker, or Chilling- 
 worth, or Locke, from their academical institution ; without 
 inquiring, whether in this angry controversy the spirit of 
 
 ^ [See Appendix 9.] 
 
 2 [In A Letter to the Right Revei-end Author of The Divine Legation, etc. 
 By a late Professor of the University of Oxford. 4th ed. London, 1766, p. 64. 
 The first edition is dated Aug. 31, 1765.] 
 
 "^ [See Appendix 10.] 
 
 4 
 
50 EDWAED GIBBON [i752 
 
 Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal/ which 
 Warburton had ascribed to the genius of the place. ^ It may 
 indeed be observed, that the atmosphere of Oxford did not 
 agree with Mr. Locke's constitution ; and that the philosopher 
 justly despised the academical bigots, who expelled his person 
 and condemned his principles.^ The expression of gratitude 
 is a virtue and a pleasure : a liberal mind will delight to 
 cherish and celebrate the memory of its parents ; and the 
 teachers of science are the parents of the minds. I applaud 
 the filial piety, which it is impossible for me to imitate ; 
 since I must not confess an imaginary debt, to assume the 
 mei'it of a just or generous retribution. To the university of 
 Oxford / acknowledge no obligation ; and she will as cheer- 
 fully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her 
 for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College ; 
 they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofit- 
 able of my whole life * : the reader will pronounce between 
 
 i[" In the time of Job the crime of impiety was punished by the Arabian 
 magistrate (c. xiii. , vv. 26-8). I blush for a respectable prelate {De Poesi 
 Hebrceorum, jjp. 650, 651, edit. Michaelis ; and Letter of a Late Professor in the 
 University of Oxford, pp. 15, 53) who justifies and applauds this patriarchal 
 inquisition " {The Decline, v., 354 ; see also Auto., p. 304).] 
 
 ^ [I do not think that these precise words are used by Warburton. Thomas 
 Warton uses them in The Idler, No. 33, where, speaking of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, he says : ' ' There is at least one very powerful incentive to learning ; 
 I mean the Genius of the place" . Dryden adjured Oxford " by the sacred 
 Genius of this place" {Works, ed. 1885, x., 386). Gibbon says of Jerusalem : 
 ' ' Sages and heroes . . . have confessed the inspiration of the genius of the 
 place" {The Decline, ii., 455).] 
 
 3 [See Appendix 11.] 
 
 4 [" Bentham spoke of the university with asperity to the end of his days " 
 (Bentham's Works, x., 39). Southey, who entered Balhol College in 1793, wrote 
 in 1807 : " Of all the months in my life (happily they did not amount to years) 
 those which were passed at Oxford were the most unprofitable. What Greek 
 I took there, I literally left there, and could not help losing ; and all I learnt 
 was a little swimming and a little boating. I never remember to have dreamt 
 of Oxford — a sure proof how little it entered into my moral being ; — of school, 
 on the contrary, I dream perpetually" (Southey's Life and Corres., iii., 85). 
 When he was at College he wrote : " With respect to its superiors, Oxford only 
 exhibits waste of wigs and want of wisdom ; with respect to under-graduates, 
 every species of abandoned excess. . . . Never shall child of mine enter a 
 public school or a university" (id., i., 177, 178). "It is curious," writes Mr. 
 Francis Darwin, "that my father, often spoke of his Cambridge hfe as if it had 
 been so much time wasted, forgetting that although the set studies of the place 
 were barren enough for him, he yet gained in the highest degree the best 
 advantages of a university life — the contact with men and an opportunity of 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 51 
 
 the school and the scholar ; but I cannot affect to believe that 
 Nature had disqualified me for all literary pursuits. The 
 specious and ready excuse of my tender age, imperfect pre- 
 paration, and hasty departure, may doubtless be alleged ; nor 
 do I wish to defraud such excuses of their proper weight. 
 Yet in my sixteenth year I was not devoid of capacity or 
 application ; even my childish reading had displayed an early 
 though blind propensity for books ; and the shallow flood 
 might have been taught to flow in a deep channel and a clear 
 stream. In the discipline of a well-constituted academy, 
 under the guidance of skilful and vigilant professors, I should 
 gradually have risen from translations to originals, from the 
 Latin to the Greek classics, from dead languages to living 
 science : my hours would have been occupied by useful 
 and agreeable studies, the wanderings of fancy would have 
 been restrained, and I should have escaped the temptations 
 of idleness, which finally precipitated my departure from 
 Oxford.i 
 
 Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the 
 fabulous and real antiquities of our sister universities, a ques- 
 tion which has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among 
 their fanatic sons.^ In the meanwhile it will be acknowledged 
 
 mental growth." He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker in 1847: " I am glad you 
 like my Alma Mater, which I despise heartily as a place of education, but love 
 from many most pleasant recollections " {Life of Charles Da7-win, ed. 1892, 
 P- 105).] 
 
 ^ [' ' No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are 
 really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are 
 given" {Wealth of Nations, ed. 1811, iii., 172).] 
 
 2 [Milton, in his History of England, mentions the reported foundation of 
 Cambridge by Sigebert, King of East Angles, and of Oxford by Alfred 
 (Milton's Works, ed. 1806, iv., 134, 183). Ayhffe, in The Ancient and Present 
 State of the University of Oxford, ed. 1723, i. , 9-13, says that " the traditions 
 touching the commencement of these two Universities, long contending with 
 each other on the score of antiquity, were at first the inventions of the monks, 
 receiving their education in these respective schools of learning, and were after- 
 wards imposed on the world for the sake of victory ". Oxford, he says, 
 according to one writer, was founded by some ' ' excellent philosophers, with 
 the Trojans coming out of Greece under Brute " ; while Cambridge owed 
 its foundation to " King Cantaber, a Spaniard, driven out of his own country 
 by his subjects, 375 years B.c," Ayhffe himself says that " it is probable that 
 the University of Oxford was founded soon after this kingdom embraced the 
 Christian rehgion ". Alfred did nothing more than "restore this University 
 
52 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 that these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of 
 all the prejudices and infirmities of age. The schools of 
 Oxford and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false 
 and barbarous science ; and they are still tainted with the 
 vices of their origin. Their primitive discipline was adapted 
 to the education of priests and monks ; and the government 
 still remains in the hands of the clergy, an order of men 
 whose manners are remote from the present world, and whose 
 eyes are dazzled by the light of philosophy.^ The legal 
 incorporation of these societies by the charters of popes ^ and 
 kings had given them a monopoly of the public instruction ; 
 and the spirit of monopolists is narrow, lazy, and oppressive ; 
 their work is more costly and less productive than that of 
 independent artists ; and the new improvements so eagerly 
 
 to its pristine glory. . . . King Edward the Elder, his son, restored the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge, confirming to the Doctors and Scholars there all their 
 privileges." 
 
 " The Divinity Lectures of Robert Pullein," wrote Gibbon, " in the Abbey 
 of Oseney (1129-1135) I consider as the punctum saliens oi the University." 
 He quotes a passage about a colony of monks opening public schools at 
 Cambridge in 1109, but adds "curious but spurious" {Misc. Woj-ks, v., 
 522, 523).] 
 
 ^ [" The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the 
 establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise of 
 reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the 
 infidel or sceptic to eternal flames " {The Decline, iv., 265). Gibbon, writing 
 of " Christian Geography" in the sixth century, says : " The study of nature 
 was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind" {ib., iv. , 234). 
 
 ' ' With the liberty of Europe its genius awoke, but the first efforts of its 
 growing strength were consumed in vain and fruitless pursuits. . . . The two 
 great sources of knowledge, nature and antiquity, were neglected. . . . The 
 numerous vermin of mendicant friars, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustins, 
 Carmelites, who swarmed in this century [the thirteenth], with habits and 
 institutions variously ridiculous, disgraced religion, learning, and common 
 sense. They seized on scholastic philosophy as a science peculiarly suited to 
 their minds ; and, excepting only Friar Bacon, they all preferred words to 
 things. The subtle, the profound, the irrefragable, the angelic, and the 
 seraphic Doctor acquired those pompous titles by filling ponderous volumes 
 with a small number of technical terms, and a much smaller number of ideas. . 
 Universities arose in every part of Europe, and thousands of students employed 
 their lives upon these grave folhes " ( Misc. Works, iii., 19-29). 
 
 "To speak freely, it were much better there were not one divine in the 
 universities, no school divinity known, the idle sophistry of monks, the canker 
 of religion " (Milton's Works, iii., 388).] 
 
 2[" In 1459 the University [of Basil] was founded by Pope Pius II. (.(Eneas 
 Sylvius), who had been Secretary to the Council [of Basil]. But what is a 
 Council or an University to the presses of Froben and the studies of 
 Erasmus?" {The Decline, vii., 100.)] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 53 
 
 grasped by the competition of freedom, are admitted with 
 slow and sullen reluctance in those proud corporations, above 
 the fear of a rival, and below the confession of an error. We 
 can scarcely hope that any reformation will be a voluntary 
 act ; and so deeply are they rooted in law and prejudice, that 
 even the omnipotence of parliament would shrink from an 
 inquiry into the state and abuses of the two universities.^ 
 
 The use of academical degrees, as old as the thirteenth 
 century, is visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations ; 
 in which an apprentice, after serving his time, obtains a testi- 
 monial of his skill, and a licence to practise his trade and 
 mystery. 2 It is not my design to depreciate those honours, 
 which could never gratify or disappoint my ambition ; and I 
 should applaud the institution, if the degrees of bachelor or 
 licentiate were bestowed as the reward of manly and success- 
 ful study : if the name and rank of doctor or master were 
 strictly reserved for the professors of science, who have 
 approved their title to the public esteem. 
 
 In all the universities of Europe, excepting our own, the 
 languages and sciences are distributed among a numerous list 
 of effective professors : the students, according to their taste, 
 their calling, and their diligence, apply themselves to the 
 proper masters ; and in the annual repetition of public and 
 private lectures, these masters are assiduously employed. ^ 
 Our curiosity may inquire what number of professors has 
 been instituted at Oxford ? (for I shall now confine myself 
 to my own university ;) by whom are they appointed, and 
 what may be the probable chances of merit or incapacity ; 
 how many are stationed to the three faculties, and how many 
 are left for the liberal arts ? what is the form, and what the 
 
 1 [It was not till 1850 that a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of 
 the Universities was appointed. Its report was issued in 1852, and the Act 
 embodying their recommendations was passed in 1854 — one hundred and one 
 years after Gibbon left Oxford. By that time the University as a whole, and 
 most of the Colleges, as " a voluntary act," had made an extensive reforma- 
 tion.] 
 
 2[" The privileges of graduates are a sort of statutes of apprenticeship " 
 {The Wealth of Nations, \\\., 170).] 
 
 * [See Appendix 12.] 
 
54 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 substance, of their lessons ? But all these questions are 
 silenced by one short and singular answer, " That in the 
 university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors 
 have for these many years given up altogether even the 
 pretence of teaching ".^ Incredible as the fact may appear, I 
 must rest my belief on the positive and impartial evidence of 
 a master of moral and political wisdom, who had himself 
 resided at Oxford. Dr. Adam Smith assigns as the cause of 
 their indolence, that, instead of being paid by voluntary con- 
 tributions, which would urge them to increase the number, 
 and to deserve the gratitude of their pupils, the Oxford 
 professors are secure in the enjoyment of a fixed stipend, 
 without the necessity of labour, or the apprehension of con- 
 troul.2 It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation 
 absurd, that excepting in experimental sciences, which 
 demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many 
 valuable treatises, that have been published on every subject 
 of learning, may now supersede the ancient mode of oral 
 instruction.^ Were this principle true in its utmost latitude, 
 I should only infer that the offices and salaries, which are 
 become useless, ought without delay to be abolished. But 
 
 1 [ ( Wealth of Nations, iii. , i68.) Gibbon, in describing the schools of Athens, 
 alludes to this passage : " A judicious philosopher prefers the free contributions 
 of the students to a fixed stipend for the professor ' ' ( The Decline, iv. , 264). 
 Adam Smith was at Balliol College without a break from 1740 to 1746, being 
 supported by an exhibition from the University of Glasgow. That he was 
 benefited by his residence he shows in his letter of acknowledgment, in 1787, 
 on his being chosen Rector of that university. "No man," he wrote, "can 
 owe greater obligations to a society than I do to the University of Glasgow. 
 They educated me ; they sent me to Oxford " (Dugald Stewart's Life of Smith, 
 ed. iBii, p. III).] 
 
 '^\_l'Vealth of Natio7ts, iii., 167.] 
 
 3 [Gibbon, no doubt, referred to Dr. Johnson, who, "talking of education, 
 said : ' People have now-a-days got a strange opinion that everything should 
 be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as 
 reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can 
 be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown. You 
 may teach chymistry by lectures. — You might teach making of shoes by 
 lectures'" (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 7). 
 
 Charles Darwin says of the two sessions he studied in Edinburgh University 
 {1825-7) : " The instruction was altogether by lectures, and these were intoler- 
 ably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry by Hope ; but to my mind 
 there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures compared with 
 reading" {Life of C. Darwin, ed. 1892, p. 11).] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 55 
 
 there still remains a material difference between a book and 
 a professor ; the hour of the lecture enforces attendance ; 
 attention is fixed by the presence, the voice, and the occa- 
 sional questions of the teacher ; the most idle will carry 
 something away ; and the more diligent will compare the 
 instructions, which they have heard in the school, with the 
 volumes, which they peruse in their chamber. The advice of 
 a skilful professor will adapt a course of reading to every 
 mind and every situation ; his authority will discover, ad- 
 monish, and at last chastise the negligence of his disciples ; 
 and his vigilant inquiries will ascertain the steps of their 
 literary progress. Whatever science he professes he may 
 illustrate in a series of discourses, composed in the leisure 
 of his closet, pronounced on public occasions, and finally 
 delivered to the press. I observe with pleasure, that in the 
 university of Oxford Dr. Lowth, with equal eloquence and 
 erudition, has executed this task in his incomparable Preelec- 
 tions on the Poetry of the Hebrews. ^ 
 
 The college of St. Mary Magdalen was founded in the 
 fifteenth century by Wainfleet, bishop of Winchester ; and 
 now consists of a president, forty fellows, and a number of 
 inferior students. ^ It is esteemed one of the largest and most 
 
 1 [" All Scotland (said Johnson) could not muster learning enough for 
 Lowth's " Praelections" {Johnsonian Misc., ii., 48). 
 
 Lowth was Professor of Poetry from 1741 to 1751. His Prmlectiones De 
 Sacra Poesi Hebrceorum is advertised in The Gent. Mag. for March, I7S3- 
 " It was the first sign of the awakening of Oxford from that torpor under 
 which two generations had now lain, under the besotting influence of Jacobite 
 and high-church politics. The Lectures, De Sacra Poesi Hebi-ceorum, seemed 
 to combine the polish of a past generation, long gone, with the learning of a 
 new period to come. The lore of Michaelis was here dressed out in Latin as 
 classical as, and more vigorous than, that of Addison. . . . Lowth's audience, 
 though no judges of Hebrew, were connoisseurs in Latin ; and these lectures, 
 interspersed with frequent passages of tasteful Latin translation, were delivered 
 to thronging crowds, such as professional lecture rooms had long ceased to 
 hold. In the ten years of Lowth's tenure of the chair he could boast that 
 the study of Hebrew, which had been almost extinct, ' nimium diu neglectam 
 et psene obsoletam,' had been rekindled by his exertions " (Pattison's Essays, 
 ed. 1889, ii., 135-6).] 
 
 2 [There were, and still are, thirty students on the foundation, called Demies 
 (the second syllable is accentuated). They were ' ' so called because their 
 allowance or ' commons ' was originally half that of a Fellow ; the Latin term 
 is setni-communarius" (The New Eng, Did.).] 
 
56 EDWAED GIBBON [i752 
 
 wealthy of our academical corporations, which may be com- 
 pared to the Benedictine abbeys of Catholic countries ; and I 
 have loosely heard that the estates belonging to Magdalen 
 College, which are leased by those indulgent landlords at 
 small quit-rents and occasional fines,i might be raised, in the 
 hands of private avarice, to an annual revenue of nearly thirty 
 thousand pounds.^ Our colleges are supposed to be schools 
 of science as well as of education ; nor is it unreasonable to 
 ' expect that a body of literary men, devoted to a life of celibacy, 
 exempt from the care of their own subsistence, and amply 
 provided with books, should devote their leisure to the pro- 
 secution of study, and that some effects of their studies should 
 be manifested to the world. The shelves of their library 
 groan under the weight of the Benedictine folios, of the 
 editions of the fathers, and the collections of the middle ages, 
 which have issued from the single abbey of St. Germain de 
 Prez at Paris. ^ A composition of genius must be the offspring 
 
 1 ["Some landlords, instead of raising the rent, take a fine for the renewal of 
 the lease. This practice is in most cases the expedient of a spendthrift, who, 
 for a sum of ready money, sells a future revenue of much greater value. It is in 
 most cases, therefore, hurtful to the landlord. It is frequently hurtful to the 
 tenant, and it is always hurtful to the community " ( Wealth of Nations, iii. , 268).] 
 
 2[" In the days of James the Second the riches of Magdalen were immense, 
 and were exaggerated by report. The college was popularly said to be wealthier 
 than the wealthiest abbeys of the Continent. When the leases fell in, — so ran 
 the vulgar rumour, — the rents would be raised to the prodigious sum of forty 
 thousand pounds a year" (Macaulay's Etiglaiid, ed. 1873, iii., 19).] 
 
 3 [Gibbon, writing of the end of the tenth century, says : ' ' While the Mus- 
 sulmans . . . preserved the light of science, Europe sunk still deeper into 
 ignorance, barbarism and superstition. The Benedictine abbeys, though they 
 nursed the last of these monsters, opposed some faint resistance against the two 
 former. They transcribed ancient books," etc. {Misc. Works, iii., 8). In the 
 last year of his life he acknowledged the merits of " the Monkish Historians, 
 as they are contemptuously styled. Our candour," he adds, "and even our 
 justice, should learn to estimate their value and to excuse their imperfections " 
 (ib., p. 561). 
 
 When Bentley was editing the New Testament he sent a Fellow of his college 
 to Paris, in 1719, to collate manuscripts. " The Benedictines," writes Bentley's 
 biographer, " besides communicating all their own manuscripts, and using their 
 interest in procuring collations from their brethren of Angers, accommodated 
 him with a room and fire in their monastery of St. Germain des Prfe for his 
 work, and several of them gave him assistance in the labour of collation" 
 (Monk's Bentley, ii. , 122). 
 
 Jordan wrote of the Abbey in 1733 : ' ' Tout y respire la science et la poli- 
 tesse " ( Voyage LiMraire fait e?i 1733, p. 78). For the kindness of the English 
 Benedictines to Johnson see Boswell's Johnson, ii., 402.] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 57 
 
 of one mind ; but such works of industry as may be divided 
 among many hands, and must be continued during many years, 
 are the peculiar province of a laborious community. If I 
 inquire into the manufactures of the monks ^ of Magdalen, 
 if I extend the inquiry to the other colleges of Oxford and 
 Cambridge, 2 a silent blush, or a scornful frown, will be the 
 only reply. The fellows or monks of my time were decent 
 easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder ; their 
 days were filled by a series of uniform employments ; the 
 chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common room, 
 till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. 
 From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had 
 absolved their conscience ; and the first shoots of learning and 
 ingenuity withered on the gi'ound, without yielding any fruits 
 to the owners or the public.^ As a gentleman commoner, I 
 was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected 
 
 1 [The scornfulness of the epithet is only fully understood by reading Gibbon's 
 account of the monks in The Decline. ' ' These unhappy exiles from social 
 life," he writes, " were impelled by the dark and implacable genius of super- 
 stition. . . . The freedom of the mind, the source of every generous and 
 rational sentiment, was destroyed by the habits of credulity and submission, 
 and the monk, contracting the vices of a slave, devoutly followed the faith 
 and passions of his ecclesiastical tyrant. . . . Pleasure and guilt are 
 synonymous terms in the language of the monks. . . . The monastic studies 
 have tended for the most part to darken rather than to dispel the cloud 
 of superstition. ... A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks 
 of every age and country. . . . The sacred indolence of the monks was 
 devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age. . . . Europe was overrun 
 by the Barbarians, and Asia by the monks " [The Decline, iv. , 62, 66, 67, 69, 
 74, 163, 235). In an earlier passage he says that "no church has been 
 dedicated, no altar has been erected, to the only monk who died a martyr in 
 the cause of humanity" {ib., iii. , 258). Of Athanasius he says: "As he was 
 writing to monks, there could not be any occasion for him to affect a rational 
 language" {ib., ii., 340).] 
 
 2 [Parr entered Emmanuel College in 1765. ' ' The unreserved conversation 
 of scholars," he writes, " the disinterested offices of friendship, the use of valu- 
 able books, and the example of good men, are endearments by which Cambridge 
 will keep a strong hold upon my esteem, my respect, and my gratitude, to the 
 latest moment of my life. Never shall I have the presumption ' to disclaim her 
 as a mother,' and never may she have just occasion 'to renounce me as a son' " 
 (Parr's Works, ii., 566. See also ib., p. 564, for the diligence of the students). 
 
 Pitt, who entered Cambridge in 1773, besides studying mathematics, read 
 with his tutor all the works of almost every Greek or Latin writer of any 
 eminence (Stanhope's Pitt, i. , 15). Gray, who entered in 1734, "always dis- 
 liked and ridiculed the system of education at Cambridge" (Mitford's Grafs 
 Works, i.. Preface, p. 22. See also ib., i., 140, for his " Hymn to Ignorance").] 
 
 ■^ [See Appendix 13.] 
 
58 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 that some questions of literature would be the amusing and 
 instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stag- 
 nated in a round of college business^ Tory politics, personal 
 anecdotes, and private scandal : ^ their dull and deep potations 
 excused the brisk intemperance of youth; and their consti- 
 tutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty 
 for the house of Hanover.^ A general election was now 
 approaching : the great Oxfordshire contest already blazed 
 with all the malevolence of party zeal. Magdalen College 
 was devoutly attached to the old interest ! and the names of 
 Wenman and Dashwood were more frequently pronounced 
 than those of Cicero and Chrysostom.^ The example of the 
 senior fellows could not inspire the under-graduates with a 
 liberal spirit or studious emulation ; and I cannot describe, as 
 I never knew, the discipline of college. Some duties may 
 possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars, whose ambi- 
 tion aspired to the peaceful honours of a fellowship (ascribi 
 
 ^ [Dr. Bloxam records an anecdote, too gross to quote, of an act of public 
 indecency committed by Richard Jaclcson, Doctor of Divinity, who became 
 Fellow of Magdalen in 1744 {Register of the Preside?its, etc. , of Magdalen College, 
 vi., 204). 
 
 Three days after Gibbon entered Oxford the "unfortunate" Miss Blandy 
 was hanged on the Castle Green for murdering her father. There were 5,000 
 spectators, "many of whom, and particularly several genttemen of the Univer- 
 sity, shed tears " {Gent. Mag., 1752, p. 188). There was no lack that day of a 
 subject for talk in the Common Room.] 
 
 2 [Lord Hervey {Memoirs, i., 205) records that in 1733, on the dropping of 
 the Excise Bill, " for three nights together, round the bonfires made at Oxford, 
 the healths of Ormond, Bolingbroke and James III., were publicly drank".] 
 
 '*[" Oxford. May 31, 1754. — On Monday last the gentlemen of the new 
 interest finished their objections to the voters for Lord Wenman and Sir James 
 Dashwood ; after which the gentlemen of the old interest proceeded to examine 
 evidence for requalifying the votes objected to, and continued their examination 
 till Thursday at noon. But the writ being returnable next morning, the High 
 Sheriff declared that as the time limited would not permit him to go through 
 the whole scrutiny, he found himself obliged to return all the four candidates, 
 and leave the determination to the House of Commons. By the care taken to 
 preserve the peace, notwithstanding the great concourse of people, no remark- 
 able disturbance happened till Thursday afternoon, when the gentlemen of the 
 new interest set out in a grand cavalcade with streamers flying, etc. , down the 
 High Street. Upon Magdalen Bridge, some dirt and stones being thrown by 
 the populace of the other party, a pistol was rashly discharged, as it is said, 
 out of a post-chaise, and a chimney-sweeper's boy had his skull fractured by 
 the ball" {Gent. Mag., 1754, p. 289). 
 
 See Colman's Connoisseur, No. xi. , dated April 11, 1754, for a dispute 
 between two ' ' academical rakes " in a Covent Garden tavern over the old and 
 new interest.] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 59 
 
 quietis ordinihus . . . Deorum) ; ^ but no independent members 
 were admitted below the rank of a gentleman commoner, and 
 our velvet cap was the cap of liberty. A tradition prevailed 
 that some of our predecessors had spoken Latin declamations 
 in the hall,^ but of this ancient custom no vestige remained : 
 the obvious methods of public exercises and examinations were 
 totally unknown ; ^ and I have never heard that either the 
 president or the society interfered in the private economy of 
 the tutors and their pupils. 
 
 The silence of the Oxford professors, which deprives the 
 youth of public instruction, is imperfectly supplied by the 
 tutors, as they are styled, of the several colleges. Instead of 
 confining themselves to a single science, which had satisfied 
 the ambition of Burman,* or Bernoulli,*' they teach, or 
 
 1 [" Ranked among the tranquil powers divine." 
 
 (Francis' Horace, Odes, iii. , 3, 35.) 
 
 "The more I see of the Foundation [of Queen's College] the more I 
 felicitate myself that I did not enter upon it. I could not bear to be so brow- 
 beaten" {Letters of Radcliffe and James, p. 56).] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 14.] 
 
 3 [James mentions in 1781, "a person of Merton College, who, being to 
 take orders on Sunday last, was under absolute necessity of having his degree. 
 Trifling and farcical as these things are known to be, I never saw a man under 
 more apprehensions, or with greater reason, for he protested to us with vehemence 
 that he had not looked in any Latin or Greek book since his matriculation ; and 
 as for the sciences, he was hardly acquainted with their names. Yet he escaped, 
 and was rewarded by a certificate signed by three Masters, setting forth — ay, 
 here it is — that Cattel of Merton College, ' in singulis artibus seu scientiis, quas 
 et quatenus per statuta audivisse tenetur, laudabiles progressus et pares ei gradui, 
 quem ambit, fecisse ; ac speciatim in rebus quotidiani usus animi sui sensa 
 lingua Latina explicandi ea facultate pollere quam statuta requirunt ' " {Letters 
 of Radcliffe and James, p. 160).] 
 
 * [Burman is an unfortunate instance. "In the University of Utrecht, 
 Burman, in 1696, was chosen Professor of Eloquence and History, to which 
 was added, after some time, the professorship of the Greek Language, and 
 afterwards that of Politics. " Vacating these offices he accepted the professor- 
 ships of History, Eloquence and the Greek Language at Leyden. He was 
 twice Rector of the University. "When the professorship of History of the 
 United Provinces became vacant, it was conferred on him, as an addition to 
 his honours and revenues which he might justly claim ; and afterwards they 
 made him Chief Librarian " (Johnson's Works, vi., 401-403).] 
 
 •''["The Bernoullis and Euler made Basel famous as the cradle of great 
 mathematicians. The family of Bernoullis furnished in the course of a century 
 eight members who distinguished themselves in mathematics. The first was 
 born in 1654 ; the last died in 1807 " (Cajori's Hist, of Math., 1894, p. 236). 
 
 Voltaire writes in his Si&cle de Louis XIV., ch. 31 : " Les id{5es supersti- 
 tieuses 6taient tellement enracin^es chez les hommes, que les cometes les 
 effrayaient encore en i68p. On osait a peine combattre cette crainte populaire. 
 
60 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 promise to teach, eithei* history or mathematics, or ancient 
 literature, or moral philosophy ; and as it is possible that 
 they may be defective in all, it is highly probable that of 
 some they will be ignorant. They are paid, indeed, by 
 volmitary contributions ; but their appointment depends on 
 the head of the house : their diligence is voluntary, and will 
 consequently be languid, while the pupils themselves, or their 
 parents, are not indulged in the liberty of choice or change. 
 The first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to 
 have been one of the best of the tribe : Dr. Waldegrave was 
 a learned and pious man, of a mild disposition, strict moi'als 
 and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or 
 the jollity of the college. But his knowledge of the world 
 was confined to the university ; his learning was of the last, 
 rather than the present age ; his temper was indolent ; his 
 faculties, which were not of the first rate, had been relaxed 
 by the climate, and he was satisfied, like his fellows, with the 
 slight and superficial discharge of an important trust. As 
 soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his pupil 
 in school-learning, he proposed that we should read every 
 morning from ten to eleven the comedies of Terence.^ The 
 sum of my improvement in the university of Oxford is 
 confined to three or four Latin plays ; and even the study 
 of an elegant classic, which might have been illustrated by 
 a comparison of ancient and modern theatres, was reduced 
 to a dry and literal interpretation of the author's text. 
 During the first weeks I constantly attended these lessons 
 in my tutor's room ; but as they appeared equally devoid 
 of profit and pleasure I was once tempted to try the experi- 
 ment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with 
 a smile. I repeated the offence with less ceremony ; the 
 excuse was admitted with the same indulgence : the slightest 
 
 Jacques Bernouilli, I'un des grands mathematiciens de 1' Europe, en r^pondant 
 a propos de cette comete aux partisans du pr(5jug6, dit que la chevelure de la 
 comete ne peut etre un signe de la colore divine, parce que cette chevelure est 
 ^ternelle ; mais que la queue pourrait en etre un. "] 
 
 1 [Hurdis in his Vindicaiio/t (p. 24) admits that "the attendance of young 
 men upon their tutors continues for an hour only in every day ".] 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 61 
 
 motive of laziness or indisposition, the most trifling avocation 
 at home or abroad, was allowed as a worthy impediment ; 
 nor did my tutor appear conscious of my absence or neglect.^ 
 Had the hour of lecture been constantly filled, a single hour 
 was a small portion of my academic leisure. No plan of 
 study was recommended for my use ; no exercises were pre- 
 scribed for his inspection ; and, at the most precious season 
 of youth, whole days and weeks were suffered to elapse 
 without labour or amusement, without advice or account. I 
 should have listened to the voice of reason and of my tutor ; 
 his mild behaviour had gained my confidence, I preferred 
 his society to that of the younger students ^ ; and in our 
 evening walks to the top of Heddington Hill,^ we freely 
 conversed on a variety of subj ects. Since the days of Pocock 
 and Hyde, Oriental learning has always been the pride of 
 
 1 [Pattison, in his article on F. A. Wolf {Essays, i. , 342), excuses Gibbon's 
 tutors. " Wolf's masters," he writes, " connived at his absence, judging, like 
 Gibbon's Magdalen tutors, that his time would be better employed elsewhere." 
 
 The late Rev. C. W. Boase, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and Univer- 
 sity Reader in Foreign History, a man full of learning and full of kindliness, 
 told me that Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, both members of his 
 College, had been his pupils. They were by no means regular in attending 
 his lectures, but he let them go their own ways, as he saw that they knew how 
 to teach themselves much better than he could have done it for them.] 
 
 2 [" Mr. Finden, an ancient Fellow of the College, and a contemporary of 
 Gibbon, told me (wrote Dr. Routh) that his superior abilities were known to 
 many, but that the gentlemen-commoners were disposed to laugh at his peculi- 
 arities ; and were once informed by Finden that if their heads were entirely 
 scooped. Gibbon had brains sufficient to supply them all " ( Tke Decline, 
 ed. Milman, 1854, i. , 32). 
 
 Parr describes Gibbon as entering college ' ' with a weakly frame of body, 
 with a coldness of temperament, which made him stand aloof from the gaiety 
 of companions, and from the generous sympathy of friends" (Parr's Works, 
 ii., 582). Gibbon speaks of his "awkward timidity" in his youth {post, 
 p. 86).] 
 
 •^ [Hearne recorded on Feb. 22, 1723-4: "Upon the top of Heddington 
 Hill, on the left hand as we go to Heddington, just at the brow of the branch 
 of the Roman way that falls down upon Marston Lane, is an elm, that is 
 commonly known by the name of Jo. Pullen's tree, it having been planted by 
 the care of the late Mr. Josiah PuUen of Magdalen Hall, who used to walk 
 to that place every day, sometimes twice a day, if tolerable weather, from 
 Magdalen Hall and back again in the space of half an hour " (Hearne's 
 Remains, ii., 194). Dr. Bliss says in a note on ii. , 238 : " This tree, mutilated 
 though it be, is still (1856) standing, and may in every sense be deemed univer- 
 sity property. First, from the associations belonging to it, and the numerous 
 visitants of early days, as well as of modern times, who have made it their 
 almost daily boundary of exercise." Nothing is now left of it but the lower 
 part of the dead trunk.] 
 
62 EDWAED GIBBON [i752 
 
 Oxford, and I once expressed an inclination to study Arabic. ^ 
 His prudence discouraged this childish fancy ; but he neglected 
 the fair occasion of directing the ardour of a curious mind. 
 During my absence in the summer vacation. Dr. Waldegrave 
 accepted a college living at Washington in Sussex, and on 
 my return I no longer found him at Oxford.'^ From that 
 time I have lost sight of my first tutor ; but at the end of 
 thirty years (1781) he was still alive ; and the practice of 
 exercise and temperance had entitled him to a healthy old 
 age. 
 
 The long recess between the Trinity and Michaelmas terms 
 empties the colleges of Oxford, as well as the courts of 
 Westminster.^ I spent, at my father's house at Buriton in 
 
 1 [Edward Pocock (ante, p. 33) was Professor of Arabic from 1636 to 1691, 
 when he was succeeded by Thomas Hyde, who held the office till 1702. 
 Hearne recorded on April 26, 1706, that " Dr. Hyde's books are mightily 
 bought up in Holland, and other parts of Germany, where they have a great 
 opinion of his learning, especially in Orientals (in which there is no doubt he 
 was the greatest master in Europe), though he was disrespected in Oxford by 
 several men, who now speak well of him " (Hearne's Remains, i., 104). 
 
 Jones, who entered Oxford in 1764, began to study Arabic under the 
 encouragement of a fellow student. He prevailed on a native of Aleppo to 
 come to Oxford from London and give him lessons (Teignmouth's Life of Si)- 
 IV. Jones, p. 40).] 
 
 2 [Southey wrote of his old tutor : "I believe he led but a melancholy life 
 after he left college ; without neighbours, without a family, without a pursuit, 
 he must have felt dismally the want of his old routine, and sorely have missed 
 his pupils, the chapel bells, and the Common Room. A monk is much happier 
 than an old fellow of a college who retires to reside upon a country living" 
 (Southey's Life and Corres., iv. , 343). 
 
 Dr. Waldegrave, six years after he left Magdalen, wrote to Gibbon : " It 
 will give me great pleasure to see you at Washington ; where I am, I thank 
 God, very well and very happy " {Misc. Works, ii. , 37).] 
 
 ^ [Only a quarter of a century earlier there were many students in residence 
 all the year round (Boswell's Johnson, i. , 63, n. i.). Johnson, who was absent 
 from college but one week in the long vacation of 1729, wrote of Oxford on 
 August I, 1775 : "The place is now a sullen solitude" (ib., i., 63; Johnson's 
 Letters, i. , 361). 
 
 ' ' Adam Smith resided uninterruptedly in Oxford from July 7, 1740, to August 
 IS, 1746, as the Buttery Books of Balliol College show " ( Wealth of Nations, 
 ed. J. E. T. Rogers, 1869, vol. i. , Preface, p. 7). 
 
 James wrote from Queen's College on July 30, 1779 : " My staircase is from 
 the noisiest become one of the most peaceful of any in college. I am able to 
 unravel the perplexities of a Greek paragraph without being disturbed by a 
 heavy foot or a caper over my head. ' ' On Oct. 7 he wrote : ' ' The university 
 is yet thin and desolate" {Letters of Radcliffe and James, pp. 80, 85). The 
 change was greatly due to better roads and swifter and more frequent stage- 
 coaches.! 
 
1752] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 63 
 
 Hampshire, the two months of August and September. It is 
 whimsical enough, that as soon as I left Magdalen College, 
 my taste for books began to revive ; but it was the same 
 blind and boyish taste for the pursuit of exotic history. ^ Un- 
 provided with original learning, unformed in the hat)its of 
 thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved — to 
 write a book. The title of this first Essay, The Age ofSesostris, 
 was perhaps suggested by Voltaire's Age of Lewis XIV. which 
 was new and popular ; but my sole object was to investigate 
 the probable date of the life and reign of the conqueror of 
 Asia. I was then enamoured of Sir John Marsham's Canon 
 Chronicus ; an elaborate work, of whose merits and defects 
 I was not yet qualified to judge. ^ According to his specious, 
 though narrow plan, I settled my hero about the time of 
 Solomon, in the tenth century before the Christian era. It 
 was therefore incumbent on me, unless I would adopt Sir 
 Isaac Newton's shorter chronology,^ to remove a formidable 
 objection ; and my solution, for a youth of fifteen, is not 
 devoid of ingenuity. In his version of the Sacred Books, 
 Manetho the high priest has identified Sethosis, or Sesostris, 
 
 1 [D. P. (Daniel Prince) wrote to The Gent. Mag. on Feb. 4, 1794 (p. 119) : 
 " I was Mr. Gibbon's bookseller at Oxford. He was a singular character, and 
 but little connected with the young gentlemen of his College. They admit at 
 Magdalen College only men of fortune ; no commoners. One uncommon book 
 for a young man I remember selling to him : La Bibliothtque Orientale 
 cC He7-helot., which he seems much to have used for authorities for his Eastern 
 Roman History. " " The art and genius of history have ever been unknown to 
 the Asiatics. . . . The Oriental Library of a Frenchman would instruct the 
 most learned mufti of the East " {The Decline, v., 402). For D'Herbelot see 
 ante, p. 45.] 
 
 2 [It was published in 1672. For Gibbon's criticism of it see Misc. Works, 
 V-.245-] 
 
 "* [Gibbon, in his Remarques critiques on Newton's chronology, written in 
 1758, says : " Son systeme de chronologic sufiflrait seul pour lui assurer I'im- 
 mortalit^ " [Misc. Works, iii. , 152). In The Decline, v., 104, writing of Newton's 
 detection of frauds in the text of the New Testament, he says : " I have weighed 
 the arguments and may yield to the authority of the first of philosophers, who 
 was deeply skilled in critical and theological studies ". 
 
 Whiston, Newton's successor at Cambridge in the chair of mathematics, 
 wrote of him in 1749 : " He was of the most fearful, cautious and suspici- 
 ous temper that I ever knew ; and had he been alive when I wrote against his 
 chronology, and so thoroughly confuted it that nobody has ever ventured to 
 vindicate it, that I know of, I should not have thought proper to publish it 
 during his lifetime ; because I knew his temper so well that I should have 
 expected it would have killed him " (Whiston's Memoirs, ed. 1749, p. 294).] 
 
64 EDWARD GIBBON [i752 
 
 with the elder brother of Danaus, who landed m Greece, 
 according to the Parian Marble/ fifteen hundred and ten 
 years before Christ. But in my supposition the high priest 
 is guilty of a voluntary error ; flattery is the prolific parent 
 of falsehood. Manetho's History of Egypt is dedicated to 
 Ptolemy Philadelphus, who derived a fabulous or illegitimate 
 pedigree froxn the Macedonian kings of the race of Hercules. 
 Danaus is the ancestor of Hercules ; and after the failure of 
 the elder branch, his descendants, the Ptolemies, are the sole 
 representatives of the royal family, and may claim by inherit- 
 ance the kingdom which they hold by conquest. Such were 
 my juvenile discoveries ; at a riper age I no longer presume 
 to connect the Greek, the Jewish and the Egyptian anti- 
 quities, which are lost in a distant cloud. Nor is this the 
 only instance, in which the belief and knowledge of the child 
 are superseded by the more rational ignorance of the man. 
 During my stay at Buriton, my infant labour was diligently 
 prosecuted, without much interruption from company or 
 country diversions ; and I already heard the music of public 
 applause. The discovery of my own weakness was the first 
 symptom of taste. On my return to Oxford, the Age of 
 Sesostris was wisely relinquished ; but the imperfect sheets 
 remained twenty years at the bottom of a drawer, till, in a 
 general clearance of papers (November, 1772), they were 
 committed to the flames. 
 
 After the departure of Dr. Waldegrave, I was transferred, 
 with his other pupils, to his academical heir, whose literary 
 character did not command the respect of the college. Dr. 
 . . . .^ well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and 
 
 1 [Gibbon, reading Marsham in 1762, recorded : " I cannot help wondering 
 at the blind deference which he pays to the oracular authority of the Parian 
 Marble : De ea re (the age of Homer) 7ion est amplius ambigendum. I respect 
 that monument as an useful, as an uncorrupt monument of antiquity ; but 
 why should I prefer its authority to that of Herodotus, for instance? It is 
 more modern, its authority is uncertam " {Misc. Works, v., 245).] 
 
 2 [Thomas Winchester. Archdeacon Churton described him as "a con- 
 siderable Tutor in the College, when, among others, the ingenious Mr. Lovibond 
 was his pupil. . . . His talents, if not splendid, were sound and good ; his 
 attainments various and useful ; and he was a true son to the Church of 
 England" (Bloxam's Register, iii., pp. 220, 224). Dr. Bloxam adds : "The 
 
1752-53] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 65 
 
 only forgot that he had a duty to perform.^ Instead of guid- 
 ing the studies, and watching over the behaviour of his disciple, 
 I was never summoned to attend even the ceremony of a 
 lecture ; and, excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms, 
 during the eight months of his titular office, the tutor and 
 pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other. 
 The want of experience, of advice, and of occupation, soon 
 betrayed me into some improprieties of conduct, ill-chosen 
 company, late hours, and inconsiderate expense. My growing 
 debts might be secret ; but my frequent absence was visible 
 and scandalous ^ : and a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckingham- 
 shire, and four excursions to London in the same winter, were 
 costly and dangerous frolics. They were, indeed, without a 
 meaning, as without an excuse. The irksomeness of a 
 cloistered life repeatedly tempted me to wander ; but my 
 chief pleasure was that of travelling; and I was too young 
 and bashful to enjoy, like a manly Oxonian in town, the 
 pleasures of London.^ In all these excursions I eloped from 
 
 late venerable President [Routh] remembered him coming occasionally to the 
 College Gaudy, and represented him to me as a man of a very florid com- 
 plexion" (ib., p. 225).] 
 
 1 [According to Bentham, one of the two tutors at Queen's College took 
 pupils for six guineas, and the other took them for eight. "The cheaper was 
 selected by Bentham's father. It mattered little — the difference was only 
 between Bavius and Msevius " (Bentham's Works, x. , 38). Gibbon, as a 
 gentleman-commoner, paid his tutor twenty guineas [Auto., p. 226). Archibald 
 Macdonald (afterwards Chief Baron of the Exchequer) wrote from Christ 
 Church in 1769 : " From the college tutor very little is to be expected. He 
 does not interfere at all with the expense of his pupil, not a great deal with his 
 Latin and Greek, far less with his progress in the sciences. The Gentleman- 
 Commoner pays his tutor twenty guineas per annum. The Commoner eight " 
 {Letters of Johnson, i., 419). John Wesley, who had been a tutor of Lincoln 
 College twenty years before Gibbon entered Magdalen, said : "I should have 
 thought myself little better than a highwayman if I had not lectured m}'- pupils 
 every day in the year but Sundays " (Wesley's Journals, ed. 1827, iv. , 75).] 
 
 ^[Hurdis, with matchless impudence, thus defends Magdalen : " In a large 
 college the absence of an individual, especially of Mr. Gibbon's dimensions, 
 might not have been visible, as he incorrectly asserts it must have been. . . . 
 It was Magdalen College which made him fly from the stately edifices of Oxford 
 to an old inconvenient tenement in Lausanne. Whatever application, sobriety 
 and literary desert were consequent, must be referred to this, salutary, though 
 severe, proof of discipline still alive and still endued with energy in Magdalen 
 College" (Hurdis's Vindication, pp. 5, 9).] 
 
 ■^[The prologue to Colraan's The Oxonian in Town (1769) was spoken by 
 "Mr. Woodward, in the character of a Gentleman-Commoner ". . . . The scene 
 opens at the door of a tavern in Covent Garden where two Oxonians have just 
 
 5 
 
66 EDWAED GIBBON [1752-53 
 
 Oxford ; I returned to college ; in a few days I eloped again, 
 as if I had been an independent stranger in a hired lodging, 
 without once hearing the voice of admonition, without once 
 feeling the hand of controul. Yet my time was lost, my ex- 
 penses were multiplied, my behaviour abroad was unknown ; 
 folly as well as vice should have awakened the attention of 
 my superiors, and my tender years would have justified a more 
 than ordinary degree of restraint and discipline.^ 
 
 It might at least be expected, that an ecclesiastical school 
 should inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our 
 venerable mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes 
 of bigotry and indiiFerence ^ ; an heretic, or unbeliever, was a 
 monster in her eyes ; but she was always, or often, or some- 
 times remiss in the spiritual education of her own children.^ 
 According to the statutes of the university, every student, 
 before he is matriculated, must subscribe his assent to the 
 thirty-nine articles of the church of England, which are 
 signed by more than read, and read by more than believe 
 them. My insufficient age excused me, however, from the 
 immediate performance of this legal ceremony, and the Vice- 
 Chancellor directed me to return, as soon as I should have 
 accomplished my fifteenth year ; recommending me, in the 
 meanwhile, to the instruction of my college. My college 
 
 arrived. One says to the other : ' ' Let's in. Perhaps we shall meet with some 
 Oxford acquaintance, for I know that Bob Lounge and Dick Scamper drew for 
 their quarterage but two days ago ; and they always spend the first week after 
 they receive it in Covent Garden."] 
 
 1 [See Appendix 15.] 
 
 2 [The general indifference of the Church at this time is shown by a letter 
 Whiston received in 1730 from "a worthy friend " of his living in Durham, who 
 wrote to him : " For near two years last past there hath not been one Bishop 
 appeared amongst us in all the North part of England " (Whiston's Memoirs, 
 P- 337)-] 
 
 3 [James wrote, on May 19, 1781 : " The new regulations introduced by the 
 Vice-Chancellor extend only to petty irregularities, whilst the weightier matters 
 of the law are disregarded. It is in these in particular that our superiors are 
 very exact and profuse of rebuke. Thus very lately a man was imposed [given 
 an imposition] for having missed chapel, while others were suffered to get drunk 
 without any but a trifling verbal reprimand " {Letters of Radcliffe and Ja7nes, 
 p. 141). See also Boswell's Johnson, iii. , 13, n. 3. "To a philosophic eye 
 the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues ' ' ( T/ie Decline, 
 v., 299).] 
 
1752-53] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 67 
 
 forgot to instruct : I forgot to return, and was myself forgotten 
 by the first magistrate of the university.^ Without a single 
 lecture, either public or private, either Christian or Protestant, 
 without any academical subscription, without any episcopal 
 confirmation, I was left by the dim light of my catechism to 
 grope my way to the chapel and communion-table, where I 
 was admitted, without a question, how far, or by what means, 
 I might be qualified to receive the sacrament. Such almost 
 incredible neglect was productive of the worst mischiefs. 
 From my childhood I had been fond of religious disputation : 
 my poor aunt has been often puzzled by the mysteries which 
 she strove to believe ; nor had the elastic spring been totally 
 broken by the weight of the atmosphere of Oxford. The 
 blind activity of idleness urged me to advance without armour 
 into the dangerous mazes of controversy ; and at the age of six- 
 teen, I bewildered myself in the errors of the Church of Rome. 
 The progress of my conversion may tend to illustrate, at 
 least, the history of my own mind. It was not long since Dr. 
 Middleton's Free Enquiry had sounded an alarm in the theo- 
 logical world : much ink and much gall had been spilt in the 
 defence of the primitive miracles '^ ; and the two dullest of 
 their champions were crowned with academic honours by the 
 university of Oxford.^ The name of Middleton was unpopular ; 
 
 1 [See Appendix i6.] 
 
 2 [Dr. Conyers Middleton's Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers -which 
 are supposed to have subsisted in the Ch7'istian Church from the Earliest Ages 
 through Several Sticcessive Centuries was published in 1749. He had preceded it 
 in 1747 by an Introductory Discourse. 
 
 Gibbon, reading the book in 1764, recorded of the author : " This man was 
 endowed with penetration and accuracy. He saw where his principles led ; but 
 he did not think proper to draw the consequences " {Misc. Wo>-ks, v. , 463). 
 
 " The miracles of the primitive Church, after obtaining the sanction of ages, 
 have been lately attacked in a very free and ingenious inquiry ; which, though it 
 has met with the most favourable reception from the Public, appears to have 
 excited a general scandal among the divines of our own as well as of the other 
 Protestant Churches of Europe " ( The Decline, ii. , 29). 
 
 In The Gent. Mag., 1749, pp. 96, 161, 240, 288, 480, 528, there is mention of 
 seven works on this controversy ; and in 1750, pp. 48, 96, 144, 192, 240, 528, 576, 
 of twenty.] 
 
 3[Dr. Dodwell and Dr. Church. "On this, indeed," writes Middleton, 
 "they have great reason to plume themselves, but would have had much 
 greater, if that learned body could stamp the truth of opinions by the same seal 
 with which it stamps diplomas " (Middleton, Misc. Works, ed. 1752 ^ i., 290).] 
 
68 EDWARD GIBBON [i758 
 
 and his proscription very naturally led me to peruse his 
 writings, and those of his antagonists. His bold criticism, 
 which approaches the precipice of infidelity,^ produced on my 
 mind a singular effect ; and had I persevered in the com- 
 munion of Rome, I should not apply to my own fortune 
 the prediction of the Sibyl, 
 
 Via prima salutis, 
 
 Quod minime reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe.^ 
 
 The elegance of style and freedom of argument were repelled 
 by a shield of prejudice. I still revered the character, or 
 rather the names, of the saints and fathers whom Dr. 
 Middleton exposes ; nor could he destroy my implicit belief 
 that the gift of miraculous powers was continued in the 
 church, during the first four or five centuries of Christianity.^ 
 But I was unable to resist the weight of historical evidence, 
 that within the same period most of the leading doctrines of 
 popery were already introduced in theory and practice : nor 
 was ray conclusion absurd, that miracles are the test of truth, 
 and that the church must be orthodox and pure, which was so 
 often approved by the visible interposition of the Deity. The 
 
 1 [Gibbon wrote in 1779: "A theological barometer might be formed of 
 which Cardinal Baronius and our countryman Dr. Middleton should constitute 
 the opposite and remote extremities, as the former sunk to the lowest degree of 
 credulity which was compatible with learning, and the latter rose to the highest 
 pitch of scepticism in anywise consistent with religion. The intermediate 
 gradations would be filled by a line of ecclesiastical critics, whose rank has been 
 fixed by the circumstances of their temper and studies, as well as by the spirit 
 of the church or society to which they were attached. It would be amusing 
 enough to calculate the weight of prejudice in the air of Rome, of Oxford, of 
 Paris, and of Holland ; and sometimes to observe the irregular tendency of 
 Papists towards freedom, sometimes to remark the tmnatural gravitation of 
 Protestants towards slavery" [Misc. Works, iv. , 588).] 
 
 ^[yEneid, vi., 96. 
 
 " The dawnings of thy safety shall be shown 
 
 From whence thou least shalt hope, a Grecian town." 
 
 (Dryden.)] 
 
 3[" The conversion of Constantine is the era which is most usually fixed by 
 Protestants [of the withdrawal of miraculous powers from the Church]. The 
 more rational divines are unwilling to admit the miracles of the fourth, whilst 
 the more credulous are unwilling to reject those of the fifth century" {T/ie 
 Decline, ii., 30). Whiston, the Unitarian, published in 1749 A?i Accouni of the 
 Exact Time when Miraculous Gifts Ceased in the Church. He placed it (p. 9) 
 "just at, or after, the Council of Constantinople [a.d. 381] ".] 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 69 
 
 marvellous tales which are so boldly attested by the Basils 
 and Chrysostoms, the Austins and Jeroms^ compelled me to 
 embrace the superior merits of celibacy, the institution of the 
 monastic life^^ the use of the sign of the cross, of holy oil, and 
 even of images, ^ the invocation of saints,^ the worship of relics, 
 the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead,"^ and the 
 tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and blood of 
 Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of transub- 
 stantiation. In these dispositions, and already more than 
 half a convert, I formed an unlucky intimacy with a young 
 gentleman of our college, whose name I shall spare. With 
 
 a character less resolute, Mr. ^ had imbibed the same 
 
 religious opinions ; and some Popish books, I know not 
 through what channel, were conveyed into his possession. 
 I read, I applauded, 1 believed ; ^ the English translations 
 of two famous works of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, the 
 Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine,'' and the History of 
 
 ^[Ante, p. 57, n. i.] 
 
 2 [Writing of the introduction of images into the Church he says : ' ' The 
 fond alliance of the monks and females obtained a final victory over the reason 
 and authority of man " ( TAe Decline, v., 276).] 
 
 '^ [" The title of saint is a mark that his opinions and his party have finally 
 prevailed" {ib., v., 107). "Bernard seems to have preserved as much 
 reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character of a saint ' ' 
 {ib., vi., 333).] 
 
 * [Some ten or twelve years after he left Oxford Gibbon thus wrote of the 
 Church of the fifteenth century : "If we turn from letters to religion the 
 Christian must grieve, and the philosopher will smile. By a propensity natural 
 to man the multitude had easily relapsed into the grossest polytheism. The 
 existence of a Supreme Being was indeed acknowledged ; his mysterious attri- 
 butes were minutely, and es'en indecently, canvassed in the schools ; but he 
 was allowed a very small share in the public worship, or the administration of 
 the universe. The devotion of the people was directed to the Saints and the 
 Virgin iVIary, the delegates and almost the partners, of his authority. . . . 
 New legends and new practices of superstition were daily invented by the 
 interested diligence of the mendicant friars ; and as this religion had scarcely 
 any connection with morality, every sin was expiated by penance, and every 
 penance indulgently commuted into a fine " [Misc. Works, iii., 54).] 
 
 '' [Gibbon does not give the name. In the second edition Lord Sheffield 
 filled up the blank with "Mr. Molesworth". The name is not given in 
 Alumni Oxon. ; neither, the President tells me, is it in the College books.] 
 
 ^[It was in March, 1753, that his conversion began {Auto., p. 296).] 
 
 '^ [Exposition de la Doctrine de I'Eglise Catholique sur les Matiires de 
 Controverse. Paris, 1671. An English translation was printed at Paris the 
 following year. Hearne {Remains, i., 58) says that the Exposition was 
 "translated into English by Mr. Dryden, then only a poet, afterwards a 
 
70 EDWARD GIBBON [i753 
 
 the Protestant Variations, ^ achieved my conversion, and I 
 surely fell by a noble hand.^ I have since examined the 
 originals with a more discerning eye, and shall not hesitate 
 to pronounce that Bossuet is indeed a master of all the 
 weapons of controversy. In the Exposition, a specious 
 apology, the orator assumes, with consummate art, the tone 
 of candour and simplicity ; and the ten-horned monster is 
 transformed, at his magic touch, into the milk-white hind, 
 who must be loved as soon as she is seen.^ In the History, 
 a bold and well-aimed attack, he displays, with a happy 
 m.ixture of narrative and argument, the faults and follies, 
 the changes and contradictions of our first reformers ; whose 
 variations (as he dexterously contends) are the mark of 
 historical error, while the perpetual unity of the catholic 
 church is the sign and test of infallible truth.* To my 
 present feelings it seems incredible that I should ever believe 
 
 papist, and may be so before, though not known". Though James II. made 
 a miserable waste of Dr5'den's time by withdrawing him from poetry to the 
 translation of controversial books, Bossuet's Exposition was not done by him. 
 " Perhaps," to quote Johnson's words when he is speaking of the attribution 
 to Dryden of another translation, ' ' Perhaps the use of his name was a pious 
 fraud" (Johnson's Works, vii., 279).] 
 
 '^\Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes. 2 Vols., quarto. Paris, 
 1688. An English translation of the sixth edition was printed at Antwerp in 
 1742. It was reprinted in Dublin in 1829. 
 
 " La gloire de Bossuet est devenue I'une des religions de la France " 
 (Sainte-Beuve, Causeries, x., 180).] 
 
 2 Mr. Gibbon never talked with me on the subject of his conversion to 
 popery but once : and then he imputed his change to the works of Parsons 
 the Jesuit, who lived in the reign of Elizabeth, and who, he said, had urged all 
 the best arguments in favour of the Roman Catholic religion. — Sheffield. 
 
 [In Lowndes's Bibl. Man. , p. 1790, six columns are given to the works of 
 Robert Parsons.] 
 
 3 ["A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 
 Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged ; 
 
 'Tis true she bounded -by, and tripped so light, 
 They had not time to take a steady sight ; 
 For truth has such a face and such a mien, 
 As to be loved needs only to be seen." 
 
 (Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, part i., 11. i, 31.)] 
 *[" One in herself, not rent by schism, but sound. 
 Entire, one solid shining diamond ; 
 Not sparkles shattered into sects like you : 
 One is the Church, and must be to be true." 
 
 [lb., part ii., 1. 526.)] 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 71 
 
 that I believed in transubstantiation.^ But my conqueror 
 oppressed me with the sacramental words, " Hoc est corpus 
 meum," and dashed against each other the figurative half- 
 meanings of the protestant sects ; ^ every objection was 
 resolved into omnipotence ; and after repeating at St. Mary's 
 the Athanasian creed,^ I humbly acquiesced in the mystery 
 of the real presence. 
 
 To take up half on trust, and half to try, 
 
 Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry ; 
 
 Both knave and fool, the merchant we may call, -v 
 
 To pay great sums, and to compound the small, J- 
 
 For who would break with Heaven, and would not break for all ? * J 
 
 No sooner had I settled my new religion than 1 resolved to 
 profess myself a catholic. Youth is sincere and impetuous; 
 and a momentary glow of enthusiasm had raised me above all 
 temporal considerations.^ 
 
 By the keen protestants, who would gladly retaliate the 
 example of persecution, a clamour is raised of the increase of 
 popery : and they are always loud to declaim against the 
 
 ^[Gibbon, writing of Pope Innocent III., says : " It was at the feet of his 
 legate that John of England surrendered his crown ; and Innocent may boast 
 of the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the establishment of 
 transubstantiation, and the origin of the Inquisition" [T/ie Decline, vi., 355). 
 In The Outlines of the History of the World, written many years earlier, 
 Gibbon had thus expressed the same thought : " By establishing the doctrine 
 of transubstantiation and the tribunal of the Inquisition, Innocent III. obtained 
 the two most memorable victories over the common sense and common rights 
 of mankind " {Misc. IVorks, iii., 21). In the same Essay he speaks of Lewis 
 IX. as being " disgraced by the title of Saint " (ii., p. 25). For Gibbon's 
 spelling of transuista filiation see Auto., pp. 86, 128, 137.] 
 
 2 [I do not find that Bossuet in his Exposition (pp. 79-152) anywhere quotes 
 the Latin. He frequently repeats " Ceci est mon corps ". His adversaries he 
 always describes as "Messieurs de la Religion Pr^tendue R6form6e ". He 
 examines the same question in the History, bks. ii. , vi., xiv.] 
 
 •'[" The three following truths, however surprising they may seem, are now 
 universally acknowledged : i. St. Athanasius is not the author of the creed 
 which is so frequently read in our churches. 2. It does not appear to have 
 existed within a century after his death. 3. It was originally composed in 
 the Latin tongue, and consequently in the Western Provinces. Gennadius, 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, was so much amazed by this extraordinary com- 
 position that he frankly pronounced it to be the work of a drunken man " {The 
 Decline, iv. , 89). ] 
 
 '^\The Hind and the Panther, i., 141.] 
 
 5 He described the letter to his father, announcing his conversion, as written 
 with all the pomp, the dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr. — Sheffield. 
 
72 EDWARD GIBBON [i753 
 
 toleration of priests and Jesuits^ who pervert so many of his 
 majesty's subjects from their religion and allegiance.^ On 
 the present occasion, the fall of one or more of her sons 
 directed this clamour against the university : and it was con- 
 fidently affirmed that popish missionaries were suffered, under 
 various disguises, to introduce themselves into the colleges 
 of Oxford. But justice obliges me to declare, that^ as far as 
 relates to myself, this assertion is false ; and that I never 
 conversed with a priest, or even with a papist, till my resolu- 
 tion from books was absolutely fixed. ^ In my last excursion 
 to London, I addressed myself to Mr. Lewis,^ a Roman 
 catholic bookseller in Russell Street/ Covent Garden, who 
 recommended me to a priest, of whose name and order I am 
 at present ignorant.^ In our first interview he soon discovered 
 that persuasion was needless. After sounding the motives 
 and merits of my conversion, he consented to admit me into 
 the pale of the church ; and at his feet, on the eighth of June, 
 1753, I solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of 
 
 1 [" Under the reign of Lewis XIV. his subjects of every rank aspired to the 
 glorious title of Coitvertisseur, expressive of their zeal and success in making 
 proselytes. The word and the idea are growing obsolete in France ; may they 
 never be introduced into England ! " [The Declitie, ii., 451.)]' 
 
 2[" Cette conversion solitaire et toute par les livres caract^rise bien Gibbon " 
 (Causeries du Lundi, viii., 437).] 
 
 3[" He died in 1802. He used to relate that his father was a schoolfellow 
 with Pope" (Nichols's Lit. Artec, iii. , 646).] 
 
 4 [It was at the shop of a bookseller in the same street (No. 8) that, on May 
 16, 1763, Boswell first saw Johnson (Boswell's Johnson, i. 390). 
 
 Mary Lamb wrote to Miss Wordsworth on Nov. 21, 1817 : " Here we are, 
 living at a brazier's shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place 
 all alive with noise and bustle ; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front 
 and Covent Garden from our back windows". Charles Lamb wrote on the 
 same day : ' ' We are in the individual spot I like best in all this great city. 
 The theatres, with all their noises. Covent Garden, dearer to me than any 
 gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 
 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are examined, within a few yards of 
 us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a thief. 
 She sits at the window working ; and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees 
 a concourse of people coming this way with a constable to conduct the solemnity. 
 These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life" (Lamb's Letters, ed. 
 1888, ii., 6, 8).] 
 
 5 His name was Baker, a Jesuit, and one of the chaplains of the Sardinian 
 ambassador. Mr. Gibbon's conversion made some noise, and Mr. Lewis 
 was summoned before the Privy Council and interrogated on the subject. This 
 was communicated by Mr. Lewis's son, 1814. — Sheffield. 
 
175S] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 73 
 
 heresy. The seduction of an English youth of family and 
 fortune was an act of as much danger as glory ; but he bravely 
 overlooked the danger^ of which I was not then sufficiently 
 informed. " Where a person is reconciled to the see of Rome, 
 or procures others to be reconciled, the oifence (says Blackstone) 
 amounts to high treason." ^ And if the humanity of the age 
 would prevent the execution of this sanguinary statute, there 
 were other laws of a less odious cast, which condemned the 
 priest to perpetual imprisonment, and transferred the pro- 
 selyte's estate to his nearest relation. ^ An elaborate contro- 
 versial epistle, approved by my director, and addressed to my 
 father, announced and justified the step which I had taken. 
 My father was neither a bigot nor a philosopher ; but his 
 affection deplored the loss of an only son ; and his good sense 
 was astonished at my strange departure from the religion of 
 my country. In the first sally of passion he divulged a secret 
 which prudence might have suppressed, and the gates of 
 Magdalen College were for ever shut against my return.^ 
 Many years afterwards, when the name of Gibbon was become 
 as notorious as that of Middleton, it was industriously 
 whispered at Oxford, that the historian had formerly " turned 
 Papist " ; 't my character stood exposed to the reproach of 
 inconstancy ; and this invidious topic would have been handled 
 
 1 [" Where these errors are also aggravated by apostacy or perversion, where 
 a person," etc. (Blackstone's Comm., ed. 1775, iv. , 56).] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 17.] 
 
 ^[" As to the secret," asks Parr, " if it had been kept, did Mr. Gibbon, the 
 convert, mingle so little sincerity with his zeal as to be capable of returning to 
 Magdalen, even if he had not been forbidden to return ? " (Parr's Works, ii., 572.) 
 
 Gibbon wrote to his aunt on Sept. 20, 1755 : ' ' My scheme would be to 
 spend this winter at Lausanne . . . and after that, finish my studies either at 
 Cambridge (for after what has passed one cannot think of Oxford) or at an 
 university in Holland" [Alisc. Works, i., 98).] 
 
 * [Gibbon no doubt refers to the following passage in Boswell's Johnson, ii., 
 447 : " We talked of a work much in vogue at that time . . . which, under 
 pretext of another subject, contained much artful infidelity. . . . The author 
 had been an Oxonian, and was remembered there for having ' turned Papist '. 
 I observed, that as he had changed several times — from the Church of England 
 to the Church of Rome, — from the Church of Rome to infidelity, — I did not 
 despair yet of seeing him a methodist preacher. Johnson (laughing). ' It is 
 said, that his range has been more extensive, and that he has once been 
 Mahometan.' " For Macaulay's explanation of the rumour that Gibbon had 
 been a Mahometan see his Essays, ed. 1874, i. , 373, n.~\ 
 
74 EDWARD GIBBON [i753 
 
 without mercy by my opponents, could they have separated 
 my cause from that of the university. For my own part, I 
 am proud of an honest sacrifice of interest to conscience. I 
 can never blush, if my tender mind was entangled in the 
 sophistry that seduced the acute and manly understandings 
 of Chillingworth and Bayle, who afterwards emerged from 
 superstition to scepticism. 
 
 While Charles the First governed England^ and was himself 
 governed by a Catholic queen, it cannot be denied that the 
 missionaries of Rome laboured with impunity and success in 
 the Court, the country, and even the universities. One of 
 the sheep, 
 
 Whom the grim wolf with privy paw 
 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said,^ 
 
 is Mr. William Chillingworth, Master of Arts, and Fellow of 
 Trinity College, Oxford ; who, at the ripe age of twenty- 
 eight years, was persuaded to elope from Oxford, to the 
 English seminary at Douay in Flanders. Some disputes with 
 Fisher, a subtle Jesuit, might first awaken him from, the 
 prejudices of education ; but he yielded to his own victorious 
 argument, " that there must be somewhere an infallible judge ; 
 and that the Church of Rome is the only Christian society 
 which either does or can pretend to that character ".^ After 
 
 i["What the grim wolf," etc. {Lycidas, 1. 128). In The Hind and the 
 Panther X\\.% "insatiate wolf" is the Presbyterian Church.] 
 
 2 [" The study and conversation of the university scholars at that time turned 
 chiel^y upon the controversies between the Church of England and that of 
 Rome ; and the great liberty which had been allowed the Popish missionaries 
 in the end of the reign of King James I. being continued under King Charles I., 
 upon the account of his marriage with Henrietta, daughter to Henry IV. of 
 France. There was among them a famous Jesuit, who went under the name 
 of John Fisher, though his true name was John Perse, or Percey, and was very 
 busy in making converts, particularly at Oxford ; and attacking Mr. Chilling- 
 worth upon the necessity of an infallible living judge in matters of faith, the 
 latter forsook the communion of the Church of England." ChiUingworth on 
 his conversion wrote to Sheldon, asking him : " i. Whether it be not evident 
 from Scripture, and Fathers, and reason ; from the goodness of God and the 
 necessity of mankind, that there must be some one Church infallible in matters of 
 faith ? 2. Whether there be any society of men in the world, besides the Church 
 of Rome, that either can, upon good warrant, or indeed at all, challenge to 
 itself the privilege of infallibility in matter of faith? " (Birch's Life of Chilling- 
 worth prefixed to Chillingworth's Works, ed. 1820, i. , 2. See also ib., iii., 
 428, for An Account of what moved the Author to turn Papist.) 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 75 
 
 a short trial of a few months, Mr. Chillingworth was again 
 tormented by religious scruples : he returned home, resumed 
 his studies, unravelled his mistakes, and delivered his mind 
 from the yoke of authority and superstition. His new creed 
 was built on the principle, that the Bible is our sole judge, 
 and private reason our sole interpreter : and he ably main- 
 tains this principle in the Religion of a Protestant, a book 
 which, after startling the doctors of Oxford, is still esteemed 
 the most solid defence of the Reformation.^ The learning, 
 the virtue, the recent merits of the author, entitled him to 
 fair prefernxent : but the slave had now broken his fetters ; 
 and the more he weighed, the less was he disposed to sub- 
 scribe to the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England. 
 In a private letter he declares, with all the energy of 
 language, that he could not subscribe to them without sub- 
 scribing to his own damnation ; and that if ever he should 
 depart from this immoveable resolution, he would allow his 
 friends to think him a madman, or an atheist.^ As the letter 
 
 Dryden spreads this argument over the second part of The Hind and the 
 Panther. 
 
 Johnson, writing of Dryden's conversion to Popery, says: "Chillingworth 
 himself was awhile so entangled in the wilds of controversy as to retire for quiet 
 to an infallible Church" (Johnson's Works, vii., 278). 
 
 ' ' I would be a Papist if I could, ' ' said Johnson. ' ' I have fear enough ; but 
 an obstinate rationality prevents me" (Boswell's Johnson, iv. , 289).] 
 
 1 [Gibbon's first tutor at Magdalen wrote to him on Dec. 7, 1758, after his 
 reconversion : " Had I in the least suspected your design of leaving us, I should 
 immediately have put you upon reading Mr. ChiUingworth's Religion of 
 ProtestMits ; any one page of which is worth a library of Swiss divinity " [Misc. 
 
 Works, ii., 37). 
 
 Clarendon, describing " the felicity of the times before the Long Parliament," 
 mentions: "The Protestant religion more advanced against the Church of 
 Rome by writing, especially by those two books of the late Lord Archbishop of 
 Canterbury his Grace, and of Mr. ChiUingworth, than it had been from the 
 Reformation" [History of the Rebellion, ed. 1826, i., 134).] 
 
 2 [In this letter, addressed to Sheldon, he wrote : "The case stands so with 
 me, and I can see no remedy but for ever it will do so, that if I subscribe, I 
 subscribe my own damnation. ... I will never undervalue the happiness 
 which God's love brings to me with it, as to put it to the least adventure in the 
 world, for the gaining of any worldly happiness. I remember very well quczrite 
 prinium regnum Dei, et ccBtera omnia adjicientii.r tibi ; and therefore, whenever 
 I make such a preposterous choice, I will give you leave to think I am out of 
 my wits, or do not believe in God, or at least am so unreasonable as to do a 
 thing, in hope I shall be sorry for it afterwards, and wish it undone " (ChiUing- 
 worth's Works, 1., 15, 17).] 
 
76 EDWAED GIBBON [i753 
 
 is without a date, we cannot ascertain the number of weeks 
 or months that elapsed between this passionate abhorrence 
 and the Salisbury Register, which is still extant. " Ego Guliel- 
 mus Chillingworth, , . . omnibus hisce articulis, . . . et 
 singulis in iisdem contentis volens, et ex animo subscribo, et 
 consensum meum iisdem praebeo. 20 die Julii 1638." ^ But, 
 alas ! the chancellor and prebendary of Sarum soon deviated 
 from his own subscription : as he more deeply scrutinized the 
 article of the Trinity, neither scripture nor the primitive 
 fathers could long uphold his orthodox belief ; and he could 
 not but confess, " that the doctrine of Arius is either a truth, 
 or at least no damnable heresy ".^ From this middle region 
 of the air, the descent of his reason would naturally rest on 
 the firmer ground of the Socinians : and if we may credit a 
 doubtful story, and the popular opinion, his anxious inquiries 
 at last subsided in philosophic indifference. So conspicuous, 
 however, were the candour of his nature and the innocence 
 of his heart, that this apparent levity did not affect the 
 reputation of Chillingworth. His frequent changes pro- 
 ceeded from too nice an inquisition into truth. His doubts 
 grew out of himself; he assisted them with all the strength 
 of his reason : he was then too hard for himself ; but finding 
 as little quiet and repose in those victories, he quickly 
 recovered, by a new appeal to his own judgment: so that 
 in all his sallies and retreats, he was in fact his own con- 
 vert. 
 
 Bayle was the son of a Calvinist minister in a remote 
 province of France, at the foot of the Pyrenees. For the 
 benefit of education, the Protestants were tempted to risk 
 their children in the Catholic universities ; and in the twenty- 
 second year of his age, young Bayle was seduced by the arts 
 and arguments of the Jesuits of Toulouse. He remained 
 about seventeen months (19th March, 1669 — 19th August, 
 1 670) in their hands, a voluntary captive : and a letter to his 
 parents, which the new convert composed or subscribed 
 
 1 [Chillingworth's Works, Preface, p. xii.] "^[/b., i., 12.] 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 77 
 
 (15th April, l6"70), is darkly tinged with the spirit of popery. 
 But Nature had designed him to think as he pleased, and to 
 speak as he thought : his piety was offended by the excessive 
 worship of creatures,^ and the study of physics convinced him 
 of the impossibility of trans ubstantiation, which is abundantly 
 refuted by the testimony of our senses. His return to the 
 communion of a falling sect was a bold and disinterested step, 
 that exposed him to the rigour of the laws : and a speedy 
 flight to Geneva protected him from the resentment of his 
 spiritual tyrants, unconscious as they were of the full value 
 of the prize which they had lost. Had Bayle adhered to the 
 Catholic Church, had he embraced the ecclesiastical pro- 
 fession, the genius and favour '^ of such a proselyte might have 
 aspired to wealth and honours in his native country : but the 
 hyprocite would have found less happiness in the comforts of 
 a benefice, or the dignity of a mitre, than he enjoyed at 
 Rotterdam in a private state of exile, indigence, and freedom. 
 Without a country, or a patron, or a prejudice, he claimed the 
 liberty and subsisted by the labours of his pen : the inequality 
 of his voluminous works is explained and excused by his alter- 
 nately writing for himself, for the booksellers, and for posterity ; 
 and if a severe critic would reduce him to a single folio,^ that 
 relic, like the books of the Sibyl, would become still more 
 
 ^[" Among the Barbarians of the West the worship of images advanced 
 with a silent and insensible progress ; but a large atonement is made for their 
 hesitation and delay by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the 
 Reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are 
 still immersed in the gloom of superstition " ( The Declme, v. , 279).] 
 
 2 \Qucere fervour. ] 
 
 '[Voltaire, dans Le Teviple du Gout, describing " la bibliotheque de ce 
 palais enchant^," continues : "Tout I'esprit de Bayle se trouve dans un seul 
 tome, de son propre aveu ; car ce judicieux philosophe, ce juge ^clair^ de 
 tant d'auteurs et de tant de sectes, disait souvent qu'il n'aurait pas compose 
 plus d'un in-folio s'il n'avait ^crit que pour lui, et non pour les libraires " 
 (CEuvres de Voltaire, x., 160). 
 
 In a letter dated " 21 Juin, 1739," Voltaire wrote : " Quel a done ete mon 
 but, en r^duisant en un seul tome le bel esprit de Bayle ? De faire sentir ce 
 qu'il pensait lui-mSme, ce qu'il dit et ^crit a M. Desmaizeaux, ce que j'ai vu de 
 sa main : qu'il aurait 6crit moins s'il eut €i€ le maitre de son temps " [ib., xlvii., 
 403). In another passage Voltaire described Bayle as " cet esprit, si ^tendu, 
 si sage et si penetrant, dont les livres, tout diffus qu'ils peuvent ^tre, seront k 
 jamais la bibliotheque des nations " {ib., xliii., 208).] 
 
78 EDWARD GIBBON [i753 
 
 valuable. A calm and lofty spectator of the religious tempest, 
 the philosopher of Rotterdam condemned with equal firmness 
 the persecution of Lewis the Fourteenth, and the republican 
 maxims of the Calvinists ; their vain prophecies, and the in- 
 tolerant bigotry which sometimes vexed his solitary retreat. 
 In reviewing the controversies of the times, he turned against 
 each other the arguments of the disputants ^ ; successively 
 wielding the arms of the Catholics and Protestants, he proves 
 that neither the way of authority, nor the way of examina- 
 tion can afford the multitude any test of religious truth ; and 
 dexterously concludes that custom and education must be 
 the sole grounds of popular belief. ^ The ancient paradox of 
 Plutarch, that atheism is less pernicious than superstition,^ 
 acquires a tenfold vigour, when it is adorned with the 
 colours of his wit, and pointed with the acuteness of his 
 logic. His critical dictionary is a vast repository of facts 
 
 1 [Gibbon recorded on April 4, 1764 : " I finished Bayle's General Criticism 
 on Maimbourg' s Histmy of Calvinism. No man was ever better qualified than 
 Bayle for assuming the character of his adversary, showing his system in a new 
 garb, and for availing himself of all places open to assault ; which is one of the 
 greatest advantages of the sceptical philosophy " {Misc. Works, v., 480).] 
 2 [" By education most have been misled ; 
 
 So they believe, because they so were bred. 
 
 The priest continues what the nurse began. 
 
 And thus the child imposes on the man." 
 
 (Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, iii. , 389.) 
 " BosWELL. 'Then the vulgar, Sir, never can know they are right, but 
 must submit themselves to the learned.' Johnson. ' To be sure. Sir. The 
 vulgar are the children of the State, and must be taught like children.' Bos- 
 well. ' Then, Sir, a poor Turk must be a Mahometan, just as a poor 
 Englishman must be a Christian ? ' Johnson. ' Why, yes. Sir ; and what 
 then ? This now is such stuff as I used to talk to my mother when I first 
 began to think myself a clever fellow ; and she ought to have whipt me for 
 it'" (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 14).] 
 
 3 ["When Alexander had once abandoned himself to superstition, his mind 
 was so worried by vain fears and anxieties that he turned the least incident 
 which was in any respect strange and extraordinary into a sign or a prodigy. 
 The Court swarmed with sacrificers, purifiers, and prognosticators ; these were 
 all to be seen exercising their talents there. So true it is, that though the 
 disbelief of religion and contempt of things divine is a great evil, yet superstition 
 is a greater" (Langhorne's Plutarch's Lives, ed, 1809, iv. , 310). Gibbon, re- 
 cording in 1764 that he had read Remarks on Bayle's Dictionary, added : 
 ' ' Intolerant superstition is more dangerous than impiety " [Misc. Works, v. , 462). 
 " L'ath6isme ne peut faire aucun bien a la morale, et peut lui faire beau- 
 coup de mal. II est presque aussi dangereux que le fanatisme" {CEuvres de 
 Voltaire, xlii. , 245).] 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 79 
 
 and opinions^^ and he balances the false religions ^ in his 
 sceptical scales, till the opposite quantities (if I may use the 
 language of algebra) annihilate each other. The wonderful 
 power which he so boldly exercised, of assembling doubts 
 and objections, had tempted him jocosely to assume the title 
 of the v€cf)eX7]yepeTa Zens, the cloud-compelling Jove ; and in a 
 conversation with the ingenious Abb6 (afterwards Cardinal) 
 de Polignac, he freely disclosed his universal Pyrrhonism. 
 " I am most truly (said Bayle) a protestant ; for I protest in- 
 differently against all systems and all sects." ^ 
 
 The academical resentment, which I may possibly have 
 provoked, will prudently spare this plain narrative of my 
 studies, or rather of my idleness ; and of the unfortunate 
 event which shortened the term of my residence at Oxford. 
 But it may be suggested, that my father was unlucky in the 
 choice of a society, and the chance of a tutor.* It will 
 perhaps be asserted, that in the lapse of forty years many 
 improvements have taken place in the college and in the 
 university. I am not unwilling to believe, that some tutors 
 might have been found more active than Dr. Waldegrave, and 
 less contemptible thah Dr. .^ About the same time, 
 
 '^\Dictionnaire kistorique et critique, 1696. English translation in 4 vols., 
 folio, 1710. Gibbon recorded in his Journal in 1762 : "If Bayle wrote his 
 Dictionary to empty the various collections he had made, without any particular 
 design, he could not have chosen a better plan. It permitted hira everything, 
 and obliged him to nothing. By the double freedom of a dictionary and of 
 notes he could pitch on what articles he pleased, and say what he pleased on 
 those articles" {Misc. Works, v., 238. See BosweWs /oknsopt, i., 425).] 
 
 2 [What Gibbon meant by "the false religions" is shown in one of his Me- 
 moirs, where he writes that "Bayle balanced the religions of the earth" 
 [Auto., p. 129).] 
 
 3[" II est rapports dans un de ces dictionnaires historiques, oil la v6rit6 est si 
 souvent n,igl6e avec le mensonge, que le cardinal de Polignac, en passant par 
 Rotterdam, demanda a Bayle s'il 6tait anglican ou luth^rien, ou calviniste, et 
 qu'il r^pondit, Je suis protestant ; car je proteste centre toutes les religions." 
 Voltaire, after giving three reasons to prove this story false, continues : "II est 
 vrai que Bayle avait dit quelquefois ce qu'on lui fait dire : il ajoutait qu'il dtait 
 comme Jupiter assemble-nuages d'Homere " [CEuvres de Voltaire, xlii. , 211).] 
 
 * [" Often," writes Parr, ' ' has it fallen in my way to lament the inconveniences 
 which young men have suffered from a wrong choice of Colleges ; and for a 
 wrong choice I have often been able to account by the partialities of parents 
 who have been at the Universities " (Parr's Works, ii. , 560).] 
 
 5 [Winchester. The next three paragraphs, which appeared in the first 
 edition, were suppressed in the second. In Atito., p. 93, they are wrongly 
 marked as "hitherto unpublished ".] 
 
80 EDWAED GIBBON [1753 
 
 and in the same walk, a Bentham was still treading in the 
 footsteps of a Burton, whose maxims he had adopted, and 
 whose life he had published. The biographer indeed pi'e- 
 ferred the school-logic to the new philosophy, Burgersdicius 
 to Locke ; ^ and the hero appears, in his own writings, a stiff 
 and conceited pedant. Yet even these men, according to the 
 measure of their capacity, might be diligent and useful ; and 
 it is recorded of Burton, that he taught his pupils what he 
 knew ; some Latin, some Greek, some ethics and metaphysics ; 
 referring them to proper masters for the languages and sciences 
 of which he was ignorant.^ At a more recent period, many 
 students have been attracted by the merit and reputation of 
 Sir William Scott, then a tutor in University College, and 
 now conspicuous in the profession of the civil law : my personal 
 acquaintance with that gentleman has inspired me with a just 
 esteem for his abilities and knowledge ; and I am assured 
 that his lectures on history would compose, were they given 
 to the public, a most valuable treatise.^ Under the auspices 
 of the present Archbishop of York, Dr. Markham,* himself an 
 eminent scholar, a more regular discipline has been introduced, 
 as I am told, at Christ Church ; ^ a course of classical and 
 
 1 [Gibbon quotes Edward Bentham's De Vita ei Moribus Johannis Burtoni. 
 Oxon,, 1771. Burton taught Locke. " Burtonus Lockium aliosque recentioris 
 notse Philosophos in Scholas adduxit, comites Aristotele non indignos" 
 (p. 15). I find no mention of Burgersdicius. Perhaps Gibbon refers to Bentham's 
 Reflexions upon Logick, ed. 1755, p. 7, where the author, after saying that " the 
 Logical Theory contained in Mr. Locke's Essay, so far as it goes, generally 
 coincides with that of the Schools," adds that the perusal of the Essay had better 
 " be postponed until a man hath regularly received a competent degree of 
 knowledge from its proper sources ". 
 
 Mr. Shandy was a great logician though he had never ' ' heard one single 
 lecture upon Burgersdicius" (Tristam Shandy, bk. i., ch. 19). Warburton, in 
 a note on " He knew what's what " {Hudibras, part i., canto i. , line. 149) says : 
 " It is a ridicule on Burgersdicius's Quid est quid ? whence came the expression 
 of ' He knows what's what,' to denote a shrewd man".] 
 
 2[Z)e Vita, etc., p. 15.] 
 
 ^ [For the lectures of Scott and Blackstone see Appendix 18.] 
 
 ^ [In the second edition Lord Sheffield changed this into ' ' Under the auspices 
 of the late Deans". In Parr's Works, i. , 322, there is an interesting discussion 
 about the merits of Markham and Hurd as preceptors, between the Prince of 
 Wales, who had been taught by them, and Dr. Parr. For Markham see post, 
 Appendix 7, and for Hurd/05/, pp. 146, 178.] 
 
 5 This was written on the information Mr. Gibbon had received, and the 
 observation he had made, previous to his late residence at Lausanne. During 
 his last visit to England, he had an opportunity of seeing at Sheffield Place 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 81 
 
 philosophical studies is proposed, and even pursued, in that 
 numerous seminary: learning has been made a duty, a pleasure, 
 and even a fashion ; and several young gentlemen do honour 
 to the college in which they have been educated.^ According 
 to the will of the donor, the profit of the second part of Lord 
 Clarendon's History has been applied to the establishment of 
 a riding-school, that the polite exercises might be taught, I 
 know not with what success, in the university.^ The Vinerian 
 professorship is of far more serious importance ; the laws of 
 his country are the first science of an Englishman of rank and 
 fortune, who is called to be a magistrate, and may hope to be 
 a legislator. This judicious institution was coldly entertained 
 by the graver doctors, who complained (I have heard the 
 complaint) that it would take the young people from their 
 books : but Mr. Viner's benefaction is not unprofitable, since 
 it has at least produced the excellent commentaries of Sir 
 William Blackstone.^ 
 
 some young men of the college above alluded to ; he had great satisfaction in 
 conversing with them, made many inquiries respecting their course of study, 
 applauded the discipline of Christ Church, and the liberal attention shown 
 by the Dean, to those whose only recommendation was their merit. Had 
 Mr. Gibbon lived to revise this work, I am sure he would have mentioned the 
 name of Dr. Jackson with the highest commendation. — Sheffield. 
 
 [William Markham was Dean, 1767-77; Lewis Bagot, 1777-83; and Cyril 
 Jackson, 1783-1809. "Jackson assisted largely in framing the Public Examina- 
 tion Statute. He had a wonderful tact in managing that most unmanageable 
 class of undergraduates, Noblemen. When he was walking in Tom Quad- 
 rangle every cap was off the head, even of Tutors and noblemen, while he was 
 insight" {0,07:! s Recollections of Oxford, p. 162). 
 
 " In the Hall I once read the following notice of the day on which the next 
 term was to begin : Jiiniores cujuscunque ordinis, die — , 7nens — , rebus divinis 
 mane intersunto. Cyr. Jackson, Decanus. The words cujuscu?ique ordinis are 
 a memorial of the glory of Jackson. He made no disgraceful tuft-hunting 
 distinctions in favour of noblemen or gentlemen commoners " (H. D. Best's 
 Memorials, p. loi).] 
 
 1 [Dr. Parr justly reproached Gibbon with not inquiring whether Magdalen 
 had not improved. He adds that the Demyships were no longer given upon the 
 recommendation of friends, but after a strict examination, and that ' ' the exercises 
 of the Demies during term were examined by a President [Routh] whose 
 knowledge of the Greek philosophers, and Greek fathers, and of the Greek and 
 Latin language was at least equal to that of Mr. Gibbon" (Parr's Wo7-ks, ii., 
 
 55,5)-] 
 
 2 [In the vain attempt to establish this riding-school Dr. Johnson was 
 interested. The profit derived from the publication was allowed to accumulate. 
 By i860 it amounted to _i^io,ooo. In 1872 it was spent in adding the Clarendon 
 Laboratory to the University Museum {Letters of Dr. Johnson, i. , 309, «.).] 
 
 "*[See Appendix 1.8.] 
 
 6 
 
82 EDWARD GIBBON [i753 
 
 After carrying me to Putney, to the house of his friend Mr. 
 Mallet/ by whose philosophy I was rather scandalised than 
 reclaimed, it was necessary for my father to form a new plan 
 of education, and to devise some method which, if possible, 
 might effect the cure of my spiritual malady. After much 
 debate it was determined, from the advice and personal 
 experience of Mr, Eliot (now Lord Eliot), to fix me, during 
 some years, at Lausanne in Switzerland.^ Mr. Frey, a Swiss 
 gentleman of Basil,^ undertook the conduct of the journey : 
 we left London the 19th of June, crossed the sea from Dover 
 to Calais, travelled post through several provinces of France, 
 by the direct road of St, Quentin, Rheims, Langres, and 
 Besangon, and arrived the 80th of June [1753] at Lausanne, 
 
 1 The author of a Life of Bacon, which has been rated above its value ; of 
 some forgotten poems and plays ; and of the pathetic ballad of William and 
 Margaret. His tenets were deistical ; perhaps a stronger term might have been 
 used. — Sheffield. 
 
 [Gibbon wrote on May 24, 1776 : " His William and Margaret, his only 
 good piece of poetry, is torn from him, and by the evidence of old manuscripts 
 turns out to be the work of the celebrated Andrew Marvell, composed in the 
 year 1670" {Corres., i., 284). Gibbon refers to Edward Thompson's ed. of 
 Marvell, 1776, 4to, 3 vols, (see Gent. Mag., 1776, pp. 355, 559). 
 
 "Sundry attempts," writes Mr. Wheatley, "were made to rob Mallet of 
 the credit of his song. Captain Thompson, the editor of Andrew Marvell's 
 Works, claimed it for Marvell, but this claim was even more ridiculous than 
 those he set up against Addison and Watts " (Percy's Reliques, ed. 1891, iii., 
 
 309)- 
 
 Professor F. J. Child says that " a copy of the date 171 1, with the title 
 
 William and Margaret, an Old Ballad, turns out to be substantially the piece 
 which Mallet published as his own in 1724, Mallet's changes being com- 
 paratively slight. William and Margaret is simply Fair Margaret and Sweet 
 
 William rewritten in what used to be called an elegant style " {Eng. and Scot. 
 Popular Ballads, iii. , 199). 
 
 For Johnson's attack on Mallet as editor of Bolingbroke's Works see 
 Boswell's Johnson, i., 268, and for his criticism of the Life of Bacon see 
 Johnson's Works, viii. , 465. See also /oj/, p. 115.] 
 
 2 [Three years later Eliot married Gibbon's first cousin (ante, p. 21). Eliot 
 had travelled with Lord Chesterfield's son, under the care of the same tutor. 
 Dr. Harte (Boswell's Johnson, iv., 333). They had spent some time at 
 Lausanne (Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, i., 247). 
 
 Chesterfield writing about his godson, who succeeded him in the Earldom, 
 said : "I would take him away from thence [Westminster School] before he is 
 fourteen, and then transport him to Geneva, the soberest and most decent 
 place that I know of in Europe " (Chesterfield's Letters to A. C. Stanhope, ed. 
 1890, p. 50). j 
 
 ^[Gibbon recorded in 1763: " Frey est philosophe, et fort instruit, mais 
 froid et nullement homme d'esprit. II est las de courir le monde avec des jeunes 
 fous" (Misc. Works, 1., 169).] 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE S3 
 
 where I was immediately settled under the roof and tuition 
 of Mr. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister. 
 
 The first marks of my father's displeasure rather astonished 
 than afflicted me : when he threatened to banish, and disown, 
 and disinherit a rebellious son, I cherished a secret hope that 
 he would not be able or willing to effect his menaces ; and 
 the pride of conscience encouraged me to sustain the honour- 
 able and important part which I was now acting. My spirits 
 were raised and kept alive by the rapid motion of my journey, 
 the new and various scenes of the Continent, and the civility 
 of Mr. Frey, a man of sense, who was not ignorant of books or 
 the world. But after he had resigned me into Pavilliard's 
 hands, and I was fixed in my new habitation, I had leisure 
 to contemplate the strange and melancholy prospect before 
 me. My first complaint arose from my ignorance of the 
 language. In my childhood I had once studied the French 
 grammar, and I could imperfectly understand the easy prose 
 of a familiar subject. But when I was thus suddenly cast on 
 a foreign land I found myself deprived of the use of speech 
 and of hearing ; and, during some weeks, incapable not only 
 of enjoying the pleasures of conversation, but even of asking 
 or answering a question in the common intercourse of life. 
 To a home-bred Englishman every object, every custom was 
 offensive ; but the native of any country might have been 
 disgusted with the general aspect of his lodging and enter- 
 tainment. I had now exchanged my elegant apartment in 
 Magdalen College for a narrow, gloomy street, the most 
 unfrequented of an unhandsome town, for an old inconvenient 
 house, and for a small chamber ill-contrived and ill-furnished, 
 which, on the approach of winter, instead of a companionable 
 fire, must be warmed by the dull invisible heat of a stove. ^ 
 
 1 [" In 1753 Pavilliard was living in 17, Rue de la Cit6 derriere, now a police 
 station. It has long vaulted corridors, and in the rear wide galleries, with 
 pillars, commanding a view of the lake. The fapade is somewhat changed " 
 (Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 276, where a view is given of the gallery). In 1754 
 Pavilliard moved to " the parsonage (since pulled down) at the top of the 
 Escalier des Grandes Roches, by the side of the old Hospital, now an Industrial 
 School. It was at the bottom of a narrow court." From the southern 
 
84 EDWAED GIBBON [i753 
 
 From a man 1 was again degraded to the dependence of a 
 schoolboy. Mr. PaviUiard managed my expenses, which had 
 been reduced to a diminutive state : I received a small 
 monthly allowance for my pocket-money ; and helpless and 
 awkward as I have ever been, I no longer enjoyed the indis- 
 pensable comfort of a servant.^ My condition seemed as 
 destitute of hope as it was devoid of pleasure : I was separated 
 for an indefinite, which appeared an infinite term from my 
 native country ; and I had lost all connexion with my Catholic 
 friends. I have since reflected with surprise, that as the 
 Romish clergy of every part of Europe maintain a close 
 correspondence with each other, they never attempted, by 
 letters or messages, to rescue me from the hands of the 
 heretics, or at least to confirm my zeal and constancy in the 
 profession of the faith. Such was my first introduction to 
 Lausanne ; a place where I spent nearly five years with 
 pleasure and profit, which I afterwards revisited without 
 compulsion, and which I have finally selected as the most 
 grateful retreat for the decline of my life. 
 
 But it is the peculiar felicity of youth that the most 
 unpleasing objects and events seldom make a deep or lasting 
 impression ; it forgets the past, enjoys the present, and 
 anticipates the future. ^ At the flexible age of sixteen I soon 
 learned to endure, and gradually to adopt, the new forms of 
 
 windows there was " a full view of the city below, with the lake and the 
 mountains of Savoy" [ib., p. 274). 
 
 Gibbon mentions [post, p. 117)" the uncleanly avarice of IVIadame PaviUiard ". 
 " I was almost starved there with cold and hunger," he wrote thirty years later 
 [Misc. Works, ii., 343 ; see also Auto., pp. 131, 230). 
 
 Deyverdun recorded in his Diary in 1754 : " M. PaviUiard, the most honest 
 man in every way that I know ; he is so "honest that he injures his own affairs " 
 (Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 303).] 
 
 1 [" Mr. Gibbon," wrote Malone, "is so exceedingly indolent that he never 
 even pares his nails. His servant, while Gibbon is reading, takes up one of his 
 hands, and when he has performed the operation lays it down, and then 
 manages the other — the patient in the meanwhile scarcely knowing what is 
 going on, and quietly pursuing his studies " (Prior's Malone, p. 382). 
 
 Before he returned home he was allowed a servant. In a letter to Mile. 
 Curchod he speaks of "mon valet" [Le Salon de Madame Necker, par Le 
 Vicomte d'Haussonville, 1882, i. , 41).] 
 
 2 [This paragraph is made of two ; of which the latter runs : ' ' The lively 
 and flexible character of youth forgets," etc. {Auto., pp. 133, 231).] 
 
1753] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 85 
 
 arbitrary manners : the real hardships of my situation were 
 alienated by time. Had I been sent abroad in a more 
 splendid style, such as the fortune and bounty of my father 
 might have supplied, I might have returned home with the 
 same stock of language and science as our countrymen usually 
 import from the Continent. ^ An exile and a prisoner as I 
 was, their example betrayed me into some irregularities of 
 wine, of play, and of idle excursions '^ : but I soon felt the 
 impossibility of associating with them on equal terms ; and 
 after the departure of my first acquaintance, I held a cold 
 and civil correspondence with their successors. This seclusion 
 from English society was attended with the most solid 
 benefits. In the Pays de Vaud, the French language is used 
 with less imperfection than in most of the distant provinces 
 of France : in Pavilliard's family, necessity compelled me to 
 listen and to speak ; and if I was at first disheartened by the 
 apparent slowness, in a few months I was astonished by the 
 rapidity of my progress. My pronunciation was formed by 
 the constant repetition of the same sounds ; the variety of 
 words and idioms, the rules of grammar, and distinctions of 
 genders, were impressed in my memory : ease and freedom 
 were obtained by practice ; correctness and elegance by 
 labour ; and before I was recalled home, French, in which I 
 spontaneously thought, was more familiar than English to my 
 ear, my tongue, and my pen. The first effect of this opening 
 knowledge was the revival of my love of reading, which had 
 been chilled at Oxford ; and I soon turned over, without much 
 choice, almost all the French books in ray tutor's library. 
 Even these amusements were pi'oductive of real advantage : 
 my taste and judgment were now somewhat riper. I was 
 
 ^\_Post, p. i66.] 
 
 2 [Pavilliard wrote to Mrs. Gibbon on Jan. 28, 1755 : ' ' His behaviour has 
 been very regular, and has made no sHps, except that of gaming twice, and 
 losing much more than I desired" (Misc. Works, i., 86). He was swindled 
 of a hundred and ten guineas in two days' play by an Englishman named Gee. 
 from whom he bought a horse, resolving to return to London in hopes of raising 
 the money there. At Geneva Pavilliard overtook him, and brought him back 
 to Lausanne [Carres., i., 3).] 
 
86 EDWARD GIBBON [i75s-55 
 
 introduced to a new mode of style and literature : by the 
 comparison of manners and opinions, my views were enlarged, 
 my prejudices were corrected, and a copious voluntary abstract 
 of the Histoire de I'Eglise et de I' Empire, by le Sueur,^ may be 
 placed in a middle line between my childish and my manly 
 studies. As soon as I was able to converse with the natives, 
 I began to feel some satisfaction in their company ; my 
 awkward timidity was polished and emboldened ; and I 
 frequented^ for the first time^ assemblies of men and women. 
 The acquaintance of the Pavilliards prepared me by degrees 
 for more elegant society. I was received with kindness and 
 indulgence in the best families of Lausanne ^ ; and it was in 
 one of these that I formed an intimate and lasting connection 
 with Mr. Deyverdun, a young man of an amiable temper and 
 excellent understanding.'^ In the arts of fencing and dancing, 
 small indeed was my proficiency ; and some months were idly 
 wasted in the riding-school.'^ My unfitness to bodily exercise 
 reconciled me to a sedentary life, and the horse, the favourite 
 
 1 [' ' Histoire de I' Eglise et de V Empire, etc., par Jean le Sueur k Geneve 1674. 
 It was reprinted with a continuation by Benedict Pictet in 1730-32" [Tlie 
 Decline, ed. Milman, 1854, i., 44, «. ).] 
 
 2 [He wrote to his aunt in 1755 : "I can say upon the whole, without vanity, 
 that though I am the Englishman here who spends the least money, I am he 
 who is the most generally liked " [Corres., i. , 8).] 
 
 3[" In the garrets of La Grotte " (Gibbon's Lausanne house), writes General 
 Read, " I came upon the hitherto unknown portraits of Gibbon and Deyverdun, 
 attached to each other by a ribbon in the form of a bow. In early life Gibbon 
 had red hair. This tint appears through the powder in the picture. His hair 
 preserved at Sheffield Place, cut off after death, is a deep chestnut, the hue that 
 auburn hair often assumes in later life ; it is also coarse, and displays here and 
 there silver lines. A lock in the possession of M. de S^very of Mex, cut off at an 
 early period, confirms the portrait. In the picture the eyes are large and dark 
 and grey, unlike the light orbs painted by Sir Joshua. There is a fine reddish 
 colour in the lips and cheeks ' ' (Hist. Studies, ii. , 360). The two portraits are 
 given as frontispieces to the two volumes. For an account of Deyverdun and 
 his family see ib., ii., 292.] 
 
 ■* [Eliot wrote from Lausanne in 1746 : ' ' The Dancing Master has six 
 shillings a month, the Fencing Master has the same. The Riding Master has 
 three guineas the first month and two afterwards" (Read's Hist. Studies, ii. , 
 271). Gibbon was never, he says, " promoted to the use of stirrups or spurs ' 
 [Atcto., p. 236). He must have learnt to ride in the Militia. When merely a 
 captain, he often ' ' exercised the battalion in the absence of the two field 
 officers". Later on he became Major and Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant 
 [post, p. 168).] 
 
1753-55] MEMOIKS OF MY LIFE 87 
 
 of my countrymen, never contributed to the pleasures of my 
 youth. ^ 
 
 My obligations to the lessons of Mr. Pavilliard, gratitude 
 will not suffer me to forget : he was endowed with a clear 
 head and a warm heart ; his innate benevolence had assuaged 
 the spirit of the church ; he was rational, because he was 
 moderate : in the course of his studies he had acquired a just 
 though superficial knowledge of most branches of literature ; 
 by long practice, he was skilled in the arts of teaching ; and 
 he laboured with assiduous patience to know the character, 
 gain the affection, and open the mind of his English pupil. 
 As soon as we began to understand each other, he gently led 
 me, from a blind and undistinguishing love of reading, into 
 the path of instruction. I consented with pleasure that a 
 portion of the morning hours should be consecrated to a plan 
 of modern history and geography, and to the critical perusal 
 of the French and Latin classics ; and at each step I felt 
 myself invigorated by the habits of application and method. 
 His prudence repressed and dissembled some youthful sallies ; 
 and as soon as I was confirmed in the habits of industry and 
 temperance, he gave the reins into my own hands. His 
 favourable report of my behaviour and progress gradually 
 obtained some latitude of action and expence ; and he wished 
 to alleviate the hardships of my lodging and entertainment. 
 The principles of philosophy were associated with the exam- 
 ples of taste ; and by a singular chance, the book, as well as 
 the man, which contributed the most effectually to my 
 education, has a stronger claim on my gratitude than on my 
 admiration. Mr. De Crousaz, the adversary of Bayle and 
 Pope,2 is not distinguished by lively fancy or profound reflec- 
 
 i[His contempt for the chase he shows in The Decline, iii., 135. After 
 describing Gratian's skill in exercises he continues: "These qualifications, 
 which might be useful to a soldier, were prostituted to the viler purposes of 
 hunting ". In a later passage he writes : " The Caledonian hunt is a picture 
 of savage life (Ovid, Meta., viii.). Thirty or forty heroes were leagued against 
 a hog; the brutes (not the hog) quarrelled with a lady for the head" {ib., iv. , 
 
 310)-] 
 
 2 [It was Pope's Essay on Man that Crousaz attacked. According to 
 Warburton he had trusted Resnel's translation, who often did not understand 
 the English. Thus Pope's lines (i. , 277-78) — 
 
88 EDWARD GIBBON [1753-55 
 
 tion ; and even in his own country, at the end of a few years^ 
 his name and writings are almost obliterated. But his 
 philosophy had been formed in the school of Locke, his 
 divinity in that of Limborch ^ and Le Clerc ; in a long and 
 laborious life, several generations of pupils were taught to 
 think, and even to write ; his lessons rescued the academy of 
 Lausanne from Calvinistic prejudice ; and he had the rare 
 merit of diffusing a more liberal spirit among the clergy and 
 people of the Pays de Vaud. His system of logic, which in 
 the last editions has swelled to six tedious and prolix volumes, 
 may be praised as a clear and methodical abridgment of the 
 art of I'easoning, from our simple ideas to the most complex 
 operations of the human understanding. This system I 
 studied, and meditated, and abstracted, till I have obtained 
 the free command of an universal instrument, which I soon 
 presumed to exercise on my Catholic opinions. Pavilliard 
 was not unmindful that his first task, his most important 
 duty, was to reclaim me from the errors of popery. The 
 intermixture of sects has rendered the Swiss clergy acute and 
 learned on the topics of controversy ; and I have some of his 
 letters in which he celebrates the dexterity of his attack, and 
 
 ' ' As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns 
 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns " 
 are translated : — 
 
 " Dans un homme ignore, sous une humble chaumiere, 
 Que dans le s^raphin, rayonnant de lumiere ". 
 On this Crousaz remarked : " For all that, we sometimes find in persons of 
 the lowest rank a fund of probity and resignation which preserves them from 
 contempt" (Elwin's Pope, ii., 502). Voltaire describes him as " le philosophe 
 le moins philosophe, et le bavard le plus bavard des Allemands " {Giuvres de 
 Voltaii-e, xlvii., 551). He allowed, however, that in one part of his argument he 
 convicted Pope of error {ib.^ x., 125). Crousaz was not a German, but a native 
 of Lausanne. See also Boswell's Johnson, i., 157; v. 80; and Johnson's 
 Works, v., 202; viii., 287, 289.] 
 
 1 [ Gibbon recorded in 1762 : " I resolved to substitute for my leisure hours 
 the BibliotMque of Le Clerc, as an inexhaustible source of amusement and 
 instruction. . . . The second volume contains, pp. 20-51, P. Limborchi 
 Theologia Christiatia. Moderate and judicious, the general character of the 
 Ai"minian divines" {Misc. Works, v., 224, 227). 
 
 Voltaire [CEuvres, xlii., 236), describing Limborch's controversy with a 
 learned rabbi, says : " C'est peut-etre la premiere dispute entre deux th^ologiens 
 dans laquelle on ne se soit pas dit des injures ".] 
 
1753-55] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 89 
 
 my gradual concessions after a firm and well-managed defence. ^ 
 I was willing, and I am now willing, to allow him a handsome 
 share of the honour of my conversion ; yet I must observe, 
 that it was principally effected by my private reflections ^ ; 
 and I still remember my solitary transport at the discovery of 
 a philosophical argument against the doctrine of transubstantia- 
 tion : that the text of scripture, which seems to inculcate the 
 real presence, is attested only by a single sense — our sight ; 
 while the real presence itself is disproved by three of our 
 senses — the sight, the touch, and the taste. -^ The various 
 
 1 M. Pavilliard has described to me the astonishment with which he gazed 
 on Mr. Gibbon standing before him : a thin little figure, with a large head, 
 disputing and urging, with the greatest ability, all the best arguments that had 
 ever been used in favour of popery. Mr. Gibbon many years ago became very 
 fat and corpulent, but he had uncommonly small bones, and was very slight 
 made. — Sheffield. 
 
 [Pavilliard wrote to Gibbon's father on June 26, 1754: " Je croyais de 
 semaine en semaine pouvoir vous annoncer que Monsieur votre fils avait 
 entierement renonc6 aux fausses id^es qu'il avait embrassees ; mais il a fallu 
 disputer le terrain pied a pied, et je n'ai pas trouv^ en lui un homme l^ger, et 
 qui passe rapidement d'un sentiment a un autre. . . . Je dois vous dire encore 
 que, quoique j'ai trouv^ M. votre fils tres ferme dans ses id^es, je I'ai trouv^ 
 raisonnable, qu'il s'est rendu a la lumiere, et qu'il n'est pas, ce qu'on appelle, 
 chicaneur" (Misc. Works, i., 82). 
 
 " Mme Bugnion, who died about 1830 at the age of ninety-one, related to 
 her gi-andchildren that she attended the catechism taught by M. Pavilliard, and 
 that Gibbon was present. The ordinary age of admission for such instruction 
 was from fourteen to sixteen " (Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 276).] 
 
 2 ["Chez Gibbon tout s'etait pass6 dans la tete et dans le champ-clos de la 
 dialectique ; un raisonnement lui avait apport6 son nouveau symbole, et un 
 autre raisonnement le remporta. II pouvait se dire, pour sa propre satisfaction, 
 qu'il ne devait I'un et I'autre changement qu'a sa lecture ou a sa meditation 
 solitaire. Plus tard, quand il se flattait d'etre tout a fait impartial et indifferent 
 sur les croyances, il est permis de supposer que, meme sans se I'avouer, il 
 nourrissait contre la pens^e religieuse une secrete et froide rancune comma 
 envers un adversaire qui vous a un jour atteint au d6faut de la cuirasse, et qui 
 vous a blesse " (Canseries dii Lundi, viii. , 438).] 
 
 ^ [Tillotson had anticipated him in this argument in his Sermons preached 
 upon Several Occasions, ed. 1673, p. 316, where he says: "Supposing the 
 Scripture to be a Divine Revelation, and that these words [This is My Body), 
 if they be in Scripture, must necessarily be taken in the strict and literal sense, 
 I ask now, What greater evidence any man has that these words {This is My 
 Body) are in the Bible than every man has that the bread is not changed in the 
 sacrament? Nay, no man has so much, for we have only the evidence of one 
 sense that these words are in the Bible, but that the bread is not changed we 
 have the concurring testimony of several of our senses." Hume speaks of it as 
 ' ' an argument against the real pj-esence, which is as concise and elegant and 
 strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine so little 
 worthy of a serious reputation" (Hume's Essays, ed. 1770, iii. , 153). Johnson 
 quotes it with approval (Boswell's Johnson, v., 71).] 
 
90 EDWARD GIBBON ] 1753-56 
 
 articles of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream ; and 
 after a full conviction, on Christmas-day, 1754, I received the 
 sacrament in the church of Lausanne. It was here that I 
 suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with implicit 
 belief in the tenets and mysteries, which are adopted by the 
 general consent of Catholics and Protestants.^ 
 
 Such, from my arrival at Lausanne, during the first eighteen 
 or twenty months (July 1753 — March 1755), were my useful 
 studies, the foundation of all my future improvements. But 
 every man who rises above the common level has received two 
 educations : the first frora his teachers ; the second, more 
 personal and important, from himself. He will not, like the 
 fanatics of the last age, define the moment of grace ; but he 
 cannot forget the era of his life, in which his mind has ex- 
 panded to its proper form and dimensions. My worthy tutor 
 had the good sense and modesty to discern how far he could 
 be useful : as soon as he felt that I advanced beyond his speed 
 and measure, he wisely left me to my genius ; and the hours 
 of lesson were soon lost in the voluntary labour of the whole 
 morning, and sometimes of the whole day. The desire of 
 prolonging my time, gradually confirmed the salutary habit 
 of early rising, to which I have always adhered, with some 
 regard to seasons and situations ; but it is happy for my eyes 
 and my health, that my temperate ardour has never been 
 seduced to trespass on the hours of the night. During the 
 last three years of my residence at Lausanne, I may assume 
 the merit of serious and solid application ; but I am tempted 
 to distinguish the last eight months of the year 1755, as the 
 period of the most extraordinary diligence and rapid progress. 
 In my French and Latin translations I adopted an excellent 
 method, which, from my own success, I would recommend to 
 the imitation of students. I chose some classic writer, such 
 as Cicero and Vertot,^ the most approved for purity and 
 
 1 [See Appendix 19.] 
 
 -[It was probably Vertot's Revolutions de la Ripublique Romaine that 
 Gibbon thus treated. See Misc. Works, v., 509, for a criticism of this book, 
 and ib., p. 389, where he describes Vertot as "an author whose works are read 
 with the same pleasure as romances, to which in other respects they bear too 
 
1753-55] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 91 
 
 elegance of style. I translated, for instance, an epistle of 
 Cicero into French ; and after throwing it aside, till the 
 words and phrases were obliterated from my memory, I re- 
 translated my French into such Latin as I could find ; and 
 then compared each sentence of my imperfect version, with 
 the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman orator. A 
 similar experiment was made on several pages of the Revolu- 
 tions of Vertot ; I turned them into Latin, returned them 
 after a sufficient interval into my own French, and again 
 scrutinized the resemblance or dissimilitude of the copy and the 
 original. By degrees I was less ashamed, by degrees I was 
 more satisfied with myself; and I persevered in the practice 
 of these double translations, which filled several books, till I 
 had acquired the knowledge of both idioms, and the command 
 at least of a correct style. ^ This useful exercise of writing 
 was accompanied and succeeded by the more pleasing occupa- 
 tion of reading the best authors. The perusal of the Roman 
 classics was at once my exercise and reward. Dr. Middleton's 
 History, which I then appreciated above its true value, natur- 
 ally directed me to the writings of Cicero. ^ The most perfect 
 editions, that of Olivet,^ which may adorn the shelves of the 
 
 much resemblance". In The Decline, vii., 27, he points out that "Vertot 
 betrays his ignorance in supposing that Othman, a freebooter of the Bithynian 
 hills, could besiege Rhodes by sea and land ".] 
 
 i[" II (Gibbon) se rompit k 6crire correctement tant en franpais qu'en latin, 
 et en acqu^rant une 6gale facility a s'exprimer en diverses langues, il perdit 
 moins une originality d'expression pour laquelle il semblait peu fait, qu'il 
 n'acquit I'^l^gance, la lumiere et la clart^ qui deviendront ses m^rites habituels " 
 {Causeries du Liindi, viii. , 442). In clearness Gibbon sometimes fails, not 
 perhaps in his Autobiography, hvX in his History. His unwillingness to repeat a 
 name, and his aim at effect too often make his meaning doubtful at the first 
 reading.] 
 
 2 [Horace Walpole wrote from Florence on March 25, 1741 : "I wait with 
 some patience to see Dr. Middleton's Tully, as I read the greatest part of it in 
 manuscript ; though indeed that is rather a reason for my being impatient to 
 read the rest. If Tully can receive any additional honour, Dr. Middleton is 
 most capable of giving it " (Walpole's Letters, i., 67. Ante, p. 67).] 
 
 ** [Voltaire, mentioning him in his Siicle de Louis XIV, says : "Son age et 
 son mdrite sont notre excuse de I'avoir plac^, ainsi que le president H^nault, 
 dans une liste ou nous nous ^tions fait une loi de ne parler que des morts " 
 [CEuvres de Voltaire, xvii. , 80). D'Alembert wrote of him to Voltaire : " C'6tait 
 un passable acad^micien, mais un bien mauvais confrere, qui haissait tout le 
 monde, et qui, entre nous, ne vous aimait pas plus qu'un autre" {ib., Ixii., 
 467).] 
 
92 EDWARD GIBBON [1753-55 
 
 rich, that of Ernesti,i which should lie on the table of the 
 learned, were not in my power.^ For the familiar epistles I 
 used the text and English commentary of Bishop Ross ^ ; but 
 my general edition was that of Verburgius, published at 
 Amsterdam in two large volumes in folio, with an indifferent 
 choice of various notes. I read, with application and pleasure, 
 all the epistles, all the orations, and the most important trea- 
 tises of rhetoric and philosophy ; and as I read, I applauded 
 the observation of Quintilian, that every student may judge 
 of his own proficiency, by the satisfaction which he receives 
 from the Roman orator.* I tasted the beauties of language, 
 I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his pre- 
 cepts and examples the public and private sense of a man. 
 Cicero in Latin, and Xenophon ^ in Greek, are indeed the two 
 ancients whom I would first propose to a liberal scholar ; not 
 only for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for the 
 admirable lessons, which may be applied almost to every 
 situation of public and private life. Cicero's epistles may in 
 particular afford the models of every form of correspondence, 
 from the careless effusions of tenderness and friendship, to 
 the well-guarded declaration of discreet and dignified resent- 
 ment. After finishing this great author, a library of eloquence 
 and reason, I formed a more extensive plan of reviewing the 
 Latin classics,*^ under the four divisions of, 1. historians, 2. 
 
 1 [Published in 1737-39.] 
 
 2 [In the second edition Lord Sheffield changed this into ' ' were not within 
 my reach " {Misc. Works, i. , 89).] 
 
 ■^ [John Ross published Cicero's EplstolcB ad Familiares in 1749. He was 
 made Bishop of Exeter in 1778.] 
 
 •*[" Quare non immerito ab hominibus setatis suae regnare in judiciis dictus 
 est, apud posteros vero id consecutus, ut Cicero jam non hominis nomen sed 
 eloquentise habeatur. Hunc igitur spectemus, hoc propositum nobis sit 
 exemplum, ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit " {Inst. Orator., 
 X., i., 112).] 
 
 5 [Post, p. 184.] 
 
 •^Journal, January 1756. I determined to read over the Latin authors in 
 order ; and read this year, Virgil, Sallust, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius 
 Maximus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Quintus Curtius, Justin, Floras, Plautus, 
 Terence, and Lucretius. I also read and meditated Locke upon the Under- 
 standing. — Gibbon. [It was on January 19, 1756, that he formed this de- 
 termination [Alisc. Works, iii. , Preface, p. 4). The record of the year's work 
 must have been made in January, 1757.] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 93 
 
 poetSj 3. orators, and 4. philosophers, in a chronological series, 
 from the days of Plautus and Sallust, to the decline of the 
 language and empire of Rome : and this plan, in the last 
 twenty-seven months of my residence at Lausanne (January 
 1756 — April 1758), I jjear/y accomplished. Nor was this re- 
 view, however rapid, either hasty or superficial. I indulged 
 nayself in a second and even a third perusal of Terence, Virgil, 
 Horace, Tacitus, etc., and studied to imbibe the sense and 
 spirit most congenial to my own. I never suffered a difficult 
 or corrupt passage to escape, till I had viewed it in every light 
 of which it was susceptible : though often disappointed, I 
 always consulted the most learned or ingenious commentators, 
 Torrentius and Dacier on Horace, Catrou ^ and Servius on 
 Virgil, Lipsius on Tacitus, Meziriac on Ovid,^ etc. ; and in 
 the ardour of my inquiries, I embraced a large circle of 
 historical and critical erudition. My abstracts of each book 
 were made in the French language : my observations often 
 branched into particular essays ; and I can still read, without 
 contempt,^ a dissertation of eight folio pages on eight lines 
 (287-294) of the fourth Georgic of Virgil. Mr. Deyverdun, 
 my friend, whose name will be frequently repeated, had joined 
 with equal zeal, though not with equal perseverance, in the 
 same undertaking. To him every thought, every composition 
 was instantly communicated ; with him I enjoyed the benefits 
 of a free conversation on the topics of our common studies.* 
 
 ^["Catrou {Franfois), r6 en 1659, j6suite. II a fait avec le pere Rouill6 
 vingt tomes de V Histoire ro7naine. lis ont cherch^ I'^loquence, et n'ont pas 
 trouv6 la precision " [CEicvres de Voltaire, xvii., 62).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon, in the record of his studies in 1762, says: "I consulted 
 Meziriac's Ovid, in relation to the omens from the flight of birds. From the 
 materials which he laid before me I conceived a much clearer notion of the 
 subject than he had himself" (Misc. U orks, v., 219).] 
 
 ^ [In one of his Memoirs he uses these words very condescendingly. Speak- 
 ing of the Arabian Nights he says : " In my present maturity I can revolve with- 
 out contempt that pleasing medley of Oriental manners and supernatural 
 fictions" {Auto., p. 118). Perhaps Gibbon remembered that Chesterfield, 
 among "the frivolous and idle books" which his son should avoid, had 
 mentioned "the Oriental ravings and extravagancies of the Arabian Nights" 
 {Letters to his So?i, ii., 335). 
 
 For the dissertation on Virgil see Misc. Works, iv. , 446. ] 
 
 * [General Read, who found Gibbon's "diploma as a Master Mason", 
 describes him and Deyverdun as " earnest Masons". Gibbon became a Free- 
 
94 EDWAED GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 But it is scarcely possible for a mind endowed with any 
 active curiosity to be long conversant with the Latin classics, 
 without aspiring to know the Greek originals, whom they 
 celebrate as their masters, and of whom they so warmly 
 recommend the study and imitation ; 
 
 Vos exemplaria Grseca 
 
 Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.^ 
 
 It was now that I regretted the early years which had 
 been wasted in sickness or idleness, or more ^ idle reading ;. 
 that I condemned the perverse method of our schoolmasters, 
 who, by first teaching the mother-language, might descend 
 with so much ease and perspicuity to the origin and etymo- 
 logy of a derivative idiom.^ In the nineteenth year of my 
 age I determined to supply this defect ; and the lessons of 
 Pavilliard again contributed to smooth the entrance of the 
 way, the Greek alphabet, the grammar, and the pronuncia- 
 tion according to the French accent. At my earnest request 
 we presumed to open the Iliad ; and I had the pleasure of 
 beholding, though darkly and through a glass,* the true 
 image of Homer, whom I had long since admired in an 
 English dress. After my tutor had left me to myself, I 
 worked my way through about half the Iliad,- and afterwards 
 interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. 
 
 mason at this time, induced no doubt by his friend and his friend's uncle 
 {Hist. Studies, ii. , 297, 367). That he was " earnest " there is nothing to show, 
 and is inconsistent with his character, unless with the character of his early 
 youth. He never mentions the Society in his writings, so far as I know.] 
 
 ^ [Make the Greek authors your supreme delight, 
 Read them by day, and study them by night. 
 
 (Francis' Horace, De Arte Poefica, 1. 268.)] 
 
 2 |^i0 Lord Sheffield's editions, mere.] 
 
 3 ["The Greek seems to be, in a great measure, a simple, uncompounded 
 language, formed from the primitive jargon of those wandering savages, the 
 ancient Hellenians and Pelasgians. . . . The Latin is a composition of the 
 Greek and of the ancient Tuscan languages" (Adam Smith, Formation of 
 Languages. Theory of Moral Se?itime?its , ed. 1801, ii. , 383). 
 
 While Gibbon was writing his Autobiography, Sir William Jones was teach- 
 ing in India ' ' that no philologer could examine Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin 
 without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which 
 perhaps no longer exists " {Life of Jones, ed. 1815, p. 468).] 
 
 4 [" For now we see through a glass, darkly " (i Co'- . xiii. 12).] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 95 
 
 But my ardour, destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually 
 cooled, and, from the barren task of searching words in a 
 lexicon, I withdrew to the free and familiar conversation of 
 Virgil and Tacitus. Yet in my residence at Lausanne I had 
 laid a solid foundation, which enabled me, in a more pro- 
 pitious season, to prosecute the study of Grecian literature. 
 From a blind idea of the usefulness of such abstract 
 science, my father had been desirous, and even pressing, 
 that I should devote some time to the mathematics ; nor 
 could I refuse to comply with so reasonable a wish. During 
 two winters I attended the private lectures of Monsieur de 
 Traytorrens, who explained the elements of algebra and 
 geometry, as far as the conic sections of the Marquis de 
 THopital,! and appeared satisfied with my diligence and 
 improvement. But as my childish propensity for numbers 
 and calculations was ^totally extinct, ^ I was content to receive 
 the passive impression of my professor's lectures without any 
 active exercise of my own powers. As soon as I understood 
 the principles, I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the 
 mathematics ; ^ nor can I lament that I desisted, before my 
 mind was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so 
 destructive of the finer feelings of moral evidence, which 
 must, however, determine the actions and opinions of our 
 lives.^ I listened with more pleasure to the proposal of 
 studying the law of nature and nations, which was taught 
 in the academy of Lausanne by Mr. Vicat, a professor of 
 some learning and reputation. But instead of attending his 
 public or private course, I preferred in my closet the lessons 
 of his masters, and my own reason. Without being disgusted 
 
 1 [" L'Hospital {Fraiifois, marquis de), n^ en i65i, le premier qui ait 6crit en 
 France sur le calcul invent6 par Newton, qu'il appela les infinimenf fetits ; 
 c'^tait alors un prodige. Mort en 1704 " {CEvvres de Voltaire, xvii., 120).] 
 
 2 \Ante, p. 31.] 
 
 2 [In 1762 he thought of taking up the pursuit again, and consulted ' ' a very 
 able mathematician " about the best course of study {Misc. Works, ii., 44).] 
 
 * [J. S. Mill, writing of the school logic, continues : " The boasted influence 
 of mathematical studies is nothing to it ; for in mathematical processes none of 
 the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur" (Mill's Auto., ed. 1873, p. 
 19)-] 
 
96 EDWAED GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 by Grotius or PufFendorf, I studied in their writings the duties 
 of a man, the rights of a citizen, the theory of justice (it is, 
 alas ! a theory), and the laws of peace and war, which 
 have had some influence on the practice of modern Europe. 
 My fatigues were alleviated by the good sense of their 
 commentator Barbeyrac.^ Locke's Treatise of Government 
 instructed me in the knowledge of Whig principles, which 
 are rather founded in reason than experience, ^ but my delight 
 was in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy 
 of style, and boldness of hypothesis, were powerful to awaken 
 and stimulate the genius of the age. The logic of De Crousaz 
 had prepared me to engage with his master Locke and his 
 antagonist Bayle ^ ; of whom the former may be used as a 
 bridle, and the latter applied as a spur, to the curiosity of 
 a young philosopher. According to the nature of their 
 respective works, the schools of argument and objection, I 
 carefully went through the Essay on Human Understanding, 
 and occasionally consulted the most interesting articles of 
 the Philosophic Dictionary. In the infancy of my reason I 
 turned over, as an idle amusement, the most serious and 
 important treatise : in its maturity, the most trifling per- 
 formance could exercise my taste or judgment, and more 
 than once I have been led by a novel ^ into a deep and 
 
 1 [Gibbon said of reading : " This nourishment is easily converted into 
 poison. Salmasius had read as much as Grotius, perhaps more. But their 
 different modes of reading made the one an enUghtened philosopher, and the 
 other, to speak plainly, a pedant puffed up with an useless erudition " {Misc. 
 
 Works, v., 209). 
 
 " Ce n'est point assur^ment I'ouvrage immense de Grotius, sur le droit pr6- 
 tendu de la guerre et de la paix, qui a rendu les hommes moins f^roces ; ce ne 
 sont pas ses citations de Carn^ade, de Quintilien . . . ; ce n'est point parce 
 qu'apr^s le deluge il fut d^fendu de manger les animaux avec leur ame et leur 
 sang, comme le rapporte Barbeyrac son commentateur. Ce n'est point, en un 
 mot, par tous les argumens profond^ment frivoles de Grotius et de Puffendorf," 
 etc. (CEuvres de Voltaire, xii. , 235).] 
 
 2 [No experience could teach Gibbon. ' ' With many a sincere and silent 
 vote", session after session, he had supported the Tory ministry in the war 
 with our colonies, and had done what he could to bring England to the brink 
 of ruin [post, p. 191).] 
 
 •* {Ante, p. 76.] 
 
 * [Miss Burney recorded of her novel Cecilia, on the authority of Reynolds, 
 that " Gibbon said he read the whole five volumes in a day " (Mme. D'Arblay's 
 Diary, ii. , 196).] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 97 
 
 instructive train of thinking. But I cannot forbear to men- 
 tion three particular books, since they may have remotely 
 contributed to form the historian of the Roman empire. 1. 
 From the Provincial Letters of Pascal, vrhich almost every 
 year I have perused with new pleasure, I learned to manage 
 the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects 
 of ecclesiastical solemnity, ^ 2. The Life of Julian, by the 
 Abbe de la Bleterie,^ first introduced me to the man and 
 the times ; and I should be glad to recover my first essay 
 on the truth of the miracle which stopped the rebuilding 
 of the temple of Jerusalem.^ 3. In Giannone's Civil History 
 of Naples I observed with a critical eye the progress and 
 abuse of sacerdotal power, and the revolutions of Italy in 
 the darker ages.^ This various reading, which I now con- 
 
 1 [In one of his Memoirs he associates Giannone with Pascal as his teacher 
 of irony [Auio., p. 235).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon recorded in his journal in 1764 : " The History of /avian, and the 
 Translation of sofne Works of Julian, by the Abb^ de la Bleterie : admirable 
 in point of erudition, taste, elegance, and I will add, moderation. Julian was 
 a Pagan, but the Abb6 hates only the Jesuits" [Misc. Works, v., 463). 
 Though in The Decline Gibbon often praises him, yet in one passage (ii. , 469) 
 he speaks of his "superstitious complacency," and in another (ib., p. 526) he 
 blames the "political metaphysics " by which "he pronounced that Jovian was 
 not bound to execute his promise". Voltaire writes of him and his Vie^ de 
 Julien: "II n'appartient point a un pretre d'&rire I'histoire ; il faut etre 
 d&int6ress6 sur tout, et un pretre ne Test sur rien " [GEuvres de Voltaire, xlvi., 
 429). Aiming at his style Voltaire says: "On est parvenu jusqu'i rendre 
 Tacite ridicule" [ib., xix., 392). S&e post, p. 306.] 
 
 3 [Gibbon, after describing the miracle, adds in a note : ' ' Dr. Lardner, 
 perhaps alone of the Christian critics, presumes to doubt the truth of this 
 famous miracle. The silence of Jerome would lead to a suspicion that the 
 same story, which was celebrated at a distance, might be despised on the spot 
 [The Decline, ii. , 460).] 
 
 4 ["The subject of ecclesiastical jurisdiction has been involved in a mist of 
 passion, of prejudice, and of interest. Two of the fairest books which have 
 fallen into my hands are the Institutes of Canon Law, by the Abb6 de Fleury, 
 and the Civil History of Naples, by Giannone. Their moderation was the 
 effect of situation as well as of temper. Fleury was a French ecclesiastic, who 
 respected the authority of the parliaments ; Giannone was an Italian lawyer, 
 who dreaded the power of the Church" (The Decline, ii., 322). 
 
 " Giannone est le seul qui ait jet6 quelque jour sur I'origine de la domination 
 supreme affect^e par les papes sur le royaume de Naples. II a rendu en cela 
 un service ^ternel aux rois de ce pays ; et pour recompense, il a €t€ abandonn^ 
 par I'empereur Charles VI, alors roi de Naples, k la persecution des j^suites ; 
 trahi depuis par la plus lache des perfidies, sacrifi6 a la cour de Rome, il a fini 
 sa vie dans la captivit6 " (CEuvres de Voltaire, xxvi. , 80). 
 
 Johnson quotes Giannone's saying to a monk, " who wanted what he called to 
 convert him : ' Tu sei santo, raa tu non sei filosofo ' " (Boswell's Johnson, iv., 3).] 
 
 7 
 
98 EDWARD GIBBON [1856-58 
 
 ducted with discretion, was digested, according to the precept 
 and model of Mr. Locke, into a large common-place book ^ ; 
 a practice, however, which I do not strenuously recommend. 
 The action of the pen will doubtless imiprint an idea on the 
 mind as well as on the paper : but I much question whether 
 the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the 
 waste of time ; and I must agree with Dr. Johnson, (Idler, 
 No. 74) " that what is twice read, is commonly better re- 
 membered, than what is transcribed ".^ 
 
 During two years^ if I forget some boyish excursions of a 
 day or a week, I was fixed at Lausanne ; but at the end of 
 the third summer, my father consented that I should make 
 the tour of Switzerland with Pavilliard : and our short absence 
 of one month (September 21st — October 20th, 1755) was a 
 reward and relaxation of my assiduous studies. The fashion 
 of climbing the mountains and viewing ^ the Glaciers, had not 
 yet been introduced by foreign travellers, who seek the 
 sublime beauties of nature.* But the political face of the 
 country is not less diversified by the forms and spirit of so 
 many various republics, from the jealous government of the 
 fern ^ to the licentious freedom of the manij. I contemplated 
 with pleasure the new prospects of men and m9,nners ; though 
 my conversation with the natives would have been more free 
 
 1 [A New Method of makiiig Common- Place Books, written by the late Learned 
 Mr. John Lock\sic\. Translated from the French. London : 1706. According 
 to the Preface, Locke drew it up when abroad, " and gave it to Le Clerc, 
 who published it in French in the second tome of the BibliotMque Universelle ".] 
 
 2 [Johnson goes on to say : " The true art of memory is the art of attention ". 
 He himself "had written, in the form of Mr. Locke's Common-Place Book, a 
 variety of hints for essays on different subjects " (Boswell's Johnson, i. , 204).] 
 
 3 [In Lord Sheffield's editions, reviewing.] 
 
 ■•[In the Index to the Gentleman's Magazine, from 1731 to 1786, I cannot 
 find a single entry referring to the glaciers or mountains of Switzerland, or to 
 mountain chmbing. It was in 1786 that Mont Blanc was first ascended. In 
 1784 Gibbon wrote : " During the summer Lausanne is possibly, after Spa, one 
 of the most favourite places of general resort. The voyage of Switzerland, 
 the Alps, and the Glaciers is become a fashion" (Corres., ii. , 116; see also 
 post, p. 221).] 
 
 s [Vaud at this time was governed by Berne, and Berne was governed by an 
 aristocracy (post, p. 238). Gibbon, in a letter " probably written about the time 
 of his first leaving Lausanne," attacked Berne's government of Vaud {Misc. 
 Works, ii. , i).] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 99 
 
 and instructive, had I possessed the German, as well as the 
 French language. We passed through most of the principal 
 towns of Switzerland ; Neufchatel, Bienne, Soleurre, Arau, 
 Baden, Zurich, Basil, and Berne. In every place we visited 
 the churches, arsenals, libraries, and all the most eminent 
 persons ; and after my return, I digested my notes in four- 
 teen or fifteen sheets of a French journal, which I despatched 
 to my father, as a proof that my time and his money had not 
 been mis-spent. Had I found this journal among his papers, 
 I might be tempted to select some passages ^ ; but I will not 
 transcribe the printed accounts, and it may be sufficient to 
 notice a remarkable spot, which left a deep and lasting 
 impression on my memory. From Zurich we proceeded to the 
 Benedictine Abbey of Einsidlen, more commonly styled Our 
 Lady of the Hermits. I was astonished by the profuse osten- 
 tation of riches in the poorest corner of Europe ; amidst a 
 savage scene of woods and mountains, a palace appears to 
 have been erected by magic ; and it was erected by the 
 potent magic of religion. ^ A crowd of palmers and votaries 
 was prostrate before the altar. The title and worship of the 
 Mother of God provoked my indignation '^ ; and the lively 
 naked image of superstition suggested to me, as in the same 
 place it had done to Zuinglius, the most pressing argument 
 for the reformation of the Church.* About two years after 
 
 1 [General Read has printed " the greater portion of it ". He found it in the 
 garret of La Grotte [Hist. Studies, ii., 314, 367).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon had said the same in his " Introduction a I'Histoire G6n(^rale de la 
 R^publique des Suisses " [Misc. Works, iii. , 273): " Le contraste de ses 
 batiments magnifiques avec le pays affreux qui les entoure fait naitre I'idee des 
 palais enchantfe, qui paraissaient tout a coup au milieu des d&erts. La magie 
 d' Einsidlen est celle de la superstition, qui lui attire encore de toutes les pro- 
 vinces voisines une foule de pdlerins et d'offrandes. " See also ib., p. 508. 
 
 According to Baedecker [Switzerland, ed. 1893, p. 98), " the pilgrims number 
 about 150,000 annually ". The Abbey is in Schwyz.] 
 
 s [Gibbon, writing of the years a.d. 429-431, says: "The Blessed Virgin 
 Nestorius revered as the mother of Christ, but his ears were offended with the 
 rash and recent title of Mother of God " [The Decline, v., iii).] 
 
 *[ Zuinglius was the parish priest of Einsidlen. So early as 1516 he taught 
 his congregation to seek salvation, not in the Holy Virgin, but in the merit 
 and intercession of Jesus Christ [Histoire de la Reformation de la Suisse, 
 par Abraham Ruchat, 1727, i. , 9, 41, 292). 
 
 Chesterfield wrote to his son, who had visited this place eight years before 
 
 [LofC. 
 
100 EDWARD GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 this tour, I passed at Geneva a useful and agreeable month ; 
 but this excursion, and short visits in the Pays de Vaud, did 
 not materially interrupt my studious and sedentary life at 
 Lausanne. 
 
 My thirst of improvement, and the languid state of science 
 at Lausanne,^ soon prompted me to solicit a literary correspon- 
 dence with several men of learning, whom I had not an 
 opportunity of personally consulting. 1. In the perusal of 
 Livy (xxx., 44), I had been stopped by a sentence in a speech 
 of Hannibal, which cannot be reconciled by any torture with 
 his character or argument. The commentators dissemble, or 
 confess their perplexity. It occurred to me, that the change 
 of a single letter, by substituting oiio instead of odio, might re- 
 store a clear and consistent sense ; but I wished to weigh my 
 emendation in scales less partial than my own. I addressed 
 myself to M. Crevier, the successor of RoUin, and a professor 
 in the university of Paris, who had published a large and 
 valuable edition of Livy. His answer was speedy and polite ; 
 he praised my ingenuity, and adopted my conjecture. ^ 2. I 
 maintained a Latin correspondence, at first anonymous, and 
 afterwards in my own name, with Professor Breitinger of 
 Zurich, the learned editor of a Septuagint .Bible. In our 
 frequent letters we discussed many questions of antiquity, 
 
 Gibbon : "I do not wonder that you were surprised at the credulity and 
 superstition of the Papists at Einsiedlen, and at their absurd stories of their 
 chapel. But remember, at the same time, that errors and mistakes, however 
 gross, in matters of opinion, if they are sincere, are to be pitied, but not 
 punished, nor laughed at" {Letters to his Son, i. , 272).] 
 
 1 [Gibbon, writing of the government of Berne, said: " Indiquez moi 
 quelque ^tablissement vraiment utile que vous deviez au souverain. Mais ne 
 m'indiquez pas I'acad^mie de Lausanne, fondle par des vues de devotion, dans 
 la chaleur d'une reformation, n^glig^e depuis, et toujours acaddmie " {Misc. 
 
 Works, ii. , 17). For "la bibliotheque publique . . . assez piteuse" de Lau- 
 sanne see post, p. 223, n.'\ 
 
 2 [The line as it stood was : ' ' Nee esse in vos odio vestro consultum ab 
 Romanis credatis ". Crevier, in his reply, accepting Gibbon's correction, added 
 to it by changing i?t vos into in his. ' ' Alors la phrase sera completement 
 bonne. Nee esse in his otio vest7-o consultum ab Romanis c7-edatis. ' Ne pensez 
 pas que dans ces mesures que prennent les Romains, pour vous 6ter toutes vos 
 forces, et en vous interdisant la guerre avec I'^tranger, ils aient eu pour objet 
 votre tranquillity et votre repos ' " {Misc. Works, i. , 435). In my copy of 
 Crevier's Livy, Oxford, 1825, the old reading remains.] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 101 
 
 many passages of the Latin classics.^ I proposed my interpre- 
 tations and amendments. His censures, for he did not spare 
 my boldness of conjectui'e, were sharp and strong; and I was 
 encouraged by the consciousness of my strength, when I could 
 stand in free debate against a critic of such eminence and 
 erudition. 3. I corresponded on similar topics with the 
 celebrated Professor Matthew Gesner, of the University of 
 Gottingen ; and he accepted, as courteously as the two former, 
 the invitation of an unknown youth. But his abilities might 
 possibly be decayed ; his elaborate letters were feeble and 
 prolix ; and when I asked his proper direction, the vain old 
 man covered half a sheet of paper with the foolish enumera- 
 tion of his titles and offices.^ 4. These Professors of Paris, 
 Zurich, and Gottingen, were strangers, whom I presumed to 
 address on the credit of their name ; but Mr. Allamand, 
 minister at Bex, was my personal friend, with whom I main- 
 tained a more free and interesting correspondence. He was 
 a miaster of language, of science, and, above all, of dispute ; 
 and his acute and flexible logic could support, with equal 
 address, and perhaps with equal indifference, the adverse sides 
 of every possible question. His spirit was active, but his pen 
 had been indolent. Mr. Allamand had exposed himself to 
 much scandal and reproach, by an anonymous letter (1745) 
 to the Protestants of France,^ in which he labours to persuade 
 them that public worship is the exclusive right and duty of the 
 state, and that their numerous assemblies of dissenters and 
 rebels were not authorised by the law or the gospel. His 
 
 i[Two of Breitinger's letters, written in Latin, are given in Gibbon's Misc. 
 Works, i., 456, 477. In the second, he addresses his correspondent, who was 
 two months short of twenty, as " Praeclarissime ac Nobihssime Vir".] 
 
 2 ["A Monsieur, Monsieur Gesner, Conseiller de la Cour de sa Majesti^ 
 Britannique, Professeur Ordinaire de 1' University de Gottingue, Inspecteur 
 G6n6ral des Ecoles de I'EIectorat de Hanovre, Biblioth^caire de 1' University, 
 Directeur du S^minaire Philologique, President de la Soci^t6 Royale de 
 I'Eloquence Alleraande, et Membre de la Soci6t6 Royale de Sciences de 
 Gottingue, etc." He gave, however, as an alternative, an address of only two 
 lines {ib., i., 514).] 
 
 •* \Lettre sur les assemblies des religionnaires en Languedoc, dcrite a un 
 gentilhoinme protestant de cette province , par M.-D.-L. F.-D.-M., imprimi^e en 
 France sous la fausse indication de Rotterdam, 1745 [Nouv. Biog. Gin.).'\ 
 
102 EDWARD GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 style is aiiimatedj his arguments specious ; and if the papist 
 may seem to lurk under the mask of a protestant, the philo- 
 sopher is concealed under the disguise of a papist. After 
 some trials in France and Holland, which were defeated by 
 his fortune or his character, a genius that might have en- 
 lightened or deluded the world, was buried in a country 
 living, unknown to fame, and discontented with mankind.^ 
 Est sacrificulus in pcigo, et rusticos decipit. As often as private 
 or ecclesiastical business called him to Lausanne, I enjoyed 
 the pleasure and benefit of his conversation, and we were 
 mutually flattered by our attention to each other. Our 
 correspondence, in his absence, chiefly turned on Locke's 
 metaphysics, which he attacked, and I defended ; the origin 
 of ideas, the principles of evidence, and the doctrine of 
 liberty ^ ; 
 
 And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.-' 
 
 By fencing with so skilful a master, I acquired some dexterity 
 in the use of my philosophic weapons ; but I was still the 
 slave of education and prejudice, he had some measures to 
 keep ; and I much suspect that he never showed me the true 
 colours of his secret scepticism. 
 
 Before I was recalled from Switzerland, I had the satisfac- 
 tion of seeing the most extraordinary man of the age ; a poet, 
 an historian, a philosopher, who has filled thirty quartos of 
 prose and verse with his various productions, often excellent, 
 
 i["He was in 1773 appointed to the Chair of Greelc and Ethics in the 
 Academy of Lausanne. He was Rector of the Academy from 1775 to 1778, 
 and died April 3, 1784" (Read's //ist Studies, ii., 135). See ii., p. 141, for 
 his letter to Voltaire from Bex, where he says : " By dint of shining for others 
 I myself am become extinguished ".] 
 
 2 [Two of AUamand's letters are printed in Gibbon's Afisc. Works, i. , 436- 
 455. He ends the second with saying : " II y a longtemps que je soupconne 
 un plan form^ de r^duire le systSme g6n6ral a trois grands empires ; celui des 
 Franfais a I'occident du Rhin, celui d'Autriche k I'orient, et celui des Russes 
 au nord. II n'y en a pourtant rien dans I'Apocalypse. Qu'on partage la 
 terra corame on voudra, pourvu qu'il y soit permis de croire, que ce qui est, 
 est ; et que les contradictoires ne peuvent pas etre vraies en meme temps." 
 
 Milman {The Decline, ed. 1B54, i. , 53) quotes Dugald Stewart as saying 
 {Preface to Encyclop. , ii. , 13) that ' ' these letters may be still read with advantage 
 by many logicians of no small note in the learned world ".] 
 
 '^{Paradise Lost, ii., 561.] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 103 
 
 and always entertaining. Need I add the name of Voltaire ? 
 After forfeiting, by his own misconduct, the friendship of the 
 first of kings, ^ he retired, at the age of sixty, with a plentiful 
 fortune, to a free and beautiful country, and resided two 
 winters (1757 and 1758) in the town or neighbourhood of 
 Lausanne.^ My desire of beholding Voltaire, whom I then 
 rated above his real magnitude,^ was easily gratified. He 
 received me with civility as an English youth ; but I cannot 
 
 1 [In 1752 Voltaire wrote a satire on Maupertuis, President of the Academy 
 of Berlin, under the title of Diatribe du Docteur Akakia. It is said that he read 
 it to Frederick the Great, but promised that it should not be published. 
 According to his own account it was printed without his consent in Holland, 
 whence it rapidly spread — " 30,000 copies sold in Paris". The King did not 
 believe him, and wrote him the following letter : — 
 
 " Votre Efrontrie m'etone, apres ce que vous ven^z de faire et qui est Clair 
 Come le jour vous persist^z au lieu de vous avou6r coupable, ne vous 
 imagin^z pas que vous fer^z Croire que le Noir est blang, quand on ne Voit pas, 
 c'est qu'on ne Veut pas tout Voir, mais si vous poussez L' affaire a bout je ferai 
 tout imprim^r, et Lon vera que si Vos ouvrages Meritent qu'on Vous Erige des 
 Statues votre Conduite vous meriterait des Chaines. 
 
 " L'editeur est Interog^ il a tout Declare." 
 
 Voltaire replied : — 
 
 ' ' Ah mon dieu Sire dans letat ou je suis ! je vous jure encor sur ma vie a la 
 quelle je renonce sans peine que cest une calomnie affireuse. je vous conjure de 
 faire confronter tous mes gens, quoi vous me jugeriez sans entendre, je demande 
 justice, et la mort." From a facsimile of the original of the King's letter and 
 of Voltaire's answer written beneath on the same sheet [CEuvres de Voltaire, 
 xli. , 12). 
 
 Mr. Carlyle in his Friedrich II. (ed. in ten vols, n.d.), vi., 274, reverses the 
 order of the letters, making the King's the answer to Voltaire's. The last 
 sentence he translates : " I demand justice or death ". He refers to CEuvres de 
 Frddiric, xxii. , 302, i.] 
 
 2 [Voltaire wrote in 1754 : " Ce Lausanne est devenu un singulier pays. II 
 est peupl6 d' Anglais et de Franjais philosophes, qui sont venus y chercher de la 
 tranquillity et du soleil. On y parle francais, on y pense a I'anglaise. On me 
 presse tous les jours d'y aller faire un tour " {CEuvres, xlix. , 109).] 
 
 •*["Aug. 28, 1762. I finished the Siicle de Louis XIV. I believe that 
 Voltaire had for this work an advantage which he has seldom enjoyed. When 
 he treats of a distant period, he is not a man to turn over musty monkish 
 writers to instruct himself He follows some compilation, varnishes it over with 
 the magic of his style, and produces a most agreeable, superficial, inaccurate 
 performance. But there the information, both written and oral, lay within his 
 reach, and he seems to have taken great pains to consult it " {Misc. Works, v. , 
 247). 
 
 "He casts a keen and lively glance over the surface of history" {The 
 Decline, v. , 419). " In his way Voltaire was a bigot, an intolerable bigot " {ib., 
 vii., 139). " The pious zeal of Voltaire is excessive, and even ridiculous " {ib., 
 vii., 188). Gibbon had perhaps been slighted by Voltaire. In his Atito., p. 149, 
 he speaks of him as ' ' the envious bard ' ' and attacks the acting of ' ' his fat and 
 ugly niece".] 
 
104 EDWAED GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 boast of any peculiar notice or distinction^ Firgilium vidi 
 tantimi,^ 
 
 The ode which he composed on his first arrival on the 
 banks of the Leman Lake, Maison d'Arisiippe ! Jardin 
 d' Epicure,^ etc. had been imparted as a secret to the gentle- 
 man by whom I was introduced. He allowed me to read it 
 twice ; I knew it by heart ^ ; and as my discretion was not 
 equal to my memory, the author was soon displeased by the 
 circulation of a copy. In writing this trivial anecdote, 1 
 wished to observe whether my memory was impaired, and I 
 have the comfort of finding that every line of the poem is 
 still engraved in fresh and indelible characters. The highest 
 gratification which I derived from Voltaire's residence at 
 Lausanne, was the uncomm.on circumstance of hearing a 
 great poet declaim his own productions on the stage. He 
 had formed a company of gentlemen and ladies, some of 
 whom were not destitute of talents. A decent theatre was 
 fi'amed at Monrepos, a country-house at the end of a suburb ^ ; 
 dresses and scenes were provided at the expense of the actors ; 
 and the author directed the rehearsals with the zeal and 
 attention of paternal love. In two successive winters his 
 tragedies of Zayre, Alzire, Zulime, and his sentimental 
 comedy of the Enfant Prodigue, were played' at the theatre 
 of Monrepos. Voltaire represented the characters best 
 adapted to his years, Lusignan, Alvarez, Benassar, Euphe- 
 
 ' i[Ovid, Tristia, iv. , lo, 51. 
 
 Though Voltaire outhved the pubHcation of the first part of The Decline and 
 Fall by more than two years, Gibbon's name is nowhere mentioned by him — 
 at all events it does not appear in the index of his Works. ] 
 
 '^\_CEuvres de Voltaire, xi. , 174.] 
 
 '''[It contains 122 lines. Dr. Johnson learnt by heart at two readings 
 Hawkesworth's Ode on Life, but it contained only sixty-eight lines — lines more- 
 over of fewer feet than Voltaire's ode {John. Misc., ii., 167).] 
 
 4 [To form the stage ' ' a communication was opened through the house wall 
 and an adjoining hay-loft ; the spectators were within the chateau. During a 
 representation of Zaire, when Lusignan said to Chatillon [Act ii., scene 3] : — 
 
 En quels lieux sommes-nous ? aidez mes faibles yeux ! 
 a caustic Lausannois cried out :— 
 
 Seigneur, c'est le grenier du maitre de ces lieux." 
 
 (Read's Hist. Studies, ii. , 211.) 
 
 Of Voltaire's house " one of the rooms and a portion of the walls are in- 
 cluded in the present mansion" {ib., p. 214).] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 105 
 
 mon. His declamation was fashioned to the pomp and 
 cadence of the old stage ; and he expressed the enthusiasm 
 of poetry, rather than the feelings of nature.^ My ardour, 
 which soon became conspicuous, seldom failed of procuring 
 me a ticket. The habits of pleasure fortified my taste for 
 the French theatre, and that taste has perhaps abated my 
 idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is 
 inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an English- 
 man. ^ The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and 
 theatre, refined, in a visible degree, the manners of Lausanne ; 
 and, however addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the 
 amusements of society. After the representation of Monrepos 
 I sometimes supped with the actors. I was now familiar in 
 some, and acquainted in many houses ; and my evenings were 
 generally devoted to cards and conversation, either in private 
 parties or numerous assemblies. 
 
 I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I 
 approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this 
 word I do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry, 
 without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit 
 of chivalry, and is interwoven with the texture of French 
 manners. I understand bj'^ this passion the union of desire, 
 friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single 
 female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which 
 seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of 
 our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my 
 choice ; and though my love was disappointed of success, I 
 am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a 
 pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of 
 
 ^[Posf,p. 155.] 
 
 2 [Gibbon had Hume and Adam Smith to support him in his taste. Hume 
 wrote of John Home's Douglas : " I am persuaded it will be esteemed the best, 
 and by French critics the only tragedy of our nation " (Burton's Hume, ii. , 17). 
 Adam Smith looked upon Racine's Phtdre as " the finest tragedy, perhaps, that 
 is extant in any language" ( Theory of Moral Sentiments , ed. 1801, i. , 255). 
 
 Gibbon had no idolatry for the genius of Corneille. Of his Attila he says 
 that "it opens with two ridiculous lines" (The Decline, iii., 422). In Attila's 
 death Corneille " describes the irruption of blood in forty bombast lines" {ib., 
 P- 474)-] 
 
106 EDWARD GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues 
 and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her 
 family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had 
 preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her 
 father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of 
 his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and 
 laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Grassy, in the 
 mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county 
 of Burgundy. 1 In the solitude of a sequestered village he 
 bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only 
 daughter. - She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the 
 sciences and languages ; and in her short visits to some 
 relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty,^ and erudition of 
 Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. 
 The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity ; I saw 
 and loved, I found her learned without pedantry, lively in 
 conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners ; and 
 the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and 
 knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted 
 
 ^ Extracts from the Journal. — March, 1757. — I wrote some critical observa- 
 tions upon Plautus. March 8. — I wrote a long dissertation on some lines of 
 Virgil. June. — -I saw Mademoiselle Curchod — Omnia vincit amor, et nos 
 cedamus amoi-i. August.— I went to Grassy, and staid t^Vo days. Sept. 15. — 
 I went to Geneva. Oct. 15. — I came back to Lausanne, having passed through 
 Grassy. Nov. i. — I went to visit M. de Watteville at Loin, and saw Made- 
 moiselle Gurchod in my way through Rolle. Nov. 17. — I went to Grassy, and 
 staid there six days. Jan. 1758. — In the three first months of this year I read 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses, finished the conic sections with M. de Traytorrens, and 
 went as far as the infinite series ; I likewise read Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, 
 and wrote my critical observations upon it. Jan. 23. — I saw Alzire acted by the 
 society at Monrepos. — Gibbon. 
 
 [The Obse?"vations upon Plmitus are given in Misc. IVorks, iv. , 435 ; two 
 Dissertations on Virgil, ib., iv. , 441, 446 (the second of which is mentioned 
 ante, p. 93), and the Observations upon Netvton' s Chronology, ib., iii. , 152. The 
 quotation, Omnia, etc., is from Virgil's Eclogues, x. , 69. 
 
 " Love conquers all, and we must yield to love." 
 
 (Dryden. ) 
 Gibbon mentions De Watteville in a letter to Lord Sheffield about the French 
 invasion of Savoy in 1792 : " M. de Watteville, with whom you dined at my 
 house last year, refused to accept the command of the Swiss succour of Geneva, 
 till it was made his first instruction that he should never, in any case, surrender 
 himself prisoner of war " {Corres., ii., 316).] 
 
 '■^[Gibbon in writing to her said: ''Nature endowed you with a beauty 
 which would soften a tyrant and inflame an anchorite " (Read's Hist. Studies, 
 ii-,334)-] 
 
1756-58] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 107 
 
 me to make her two or three visits at her father's house. I 
 passed some happy days there, in the mountains of Burgundy, 
 and her parents honourably encouraged the connection. In 
 a cahn retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered 
 in her bosom ; she listened to the voice of truth and passion, 
 and I might presume to hope that I had made some impres- 
 sion on a virtuous heart. At Grassy and Lausanne I indulged 
 my dream of felicity : but on my return to England I soon 
 discovered that my father would not hear of this strange 
 alliance, and that without his consent I was myself destitute 
 and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate : 
 I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son ^ ; my wound was 
 insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new 
 life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the 
 tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself,^ and my love 
 subsided in friendship and esteem. The minister of Grassy 
 soon afterwards died ; his stipend died with him : his 
 daughter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young ladies, 
 she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her mother ; 
 but in her lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputa- 
 
 1 [Gibbon's conduct was the reverse of that of the Princess of whom he 
 wrote : " Honoria sighed, yielded to the impulse of nature, and threw herself 
 into the arms of her chamberlain Eugenius " {The Decline, iii., 456). 
 
 For Mile de Curchod see Appendix 20.] 
 
 2 [It is, I believe, to this passage that Miss Holroyd referred when she wrote : 
 " The manner in which he mentions his first love, Mdme Necker, is very flatter- 
 ing ; but even there he cannot help introducing a little sarcasm" [Girlhood, 
 etc. , p. 274). She added : ' ' She had the satisfaction of going out of the world 
 with the knowledge of being his first and only love. Papa sent extracts of the 
 passages where he mentioned her and the Severy family to Severy [post, p. 
 236, n.'\ ; and she had the pleasure of reading them before her death " [ib., 
 p. 288). " There are several love letters of Mme Necker's among Mr. Gibbon's 
 papers " [ib., p. 293). 
 
 As she would have willingly married Gibbon, so was she eager for her 
 daughter to marry Pitt. She wrote to her in 1783 : " Je d^sirais que tu 
 ^pousasses M. Pitt. . . . Tu n'as pas voulu me donner cette satisfaction" 
 (D'Haussonville's Le Salon de Madajne Necker, ii., 56). In 1790 her daughter 
 (then Madame de Stael) wrote at Coppet [post, p. 221) : " Nous poss^dons dans 
 ce chateau M. Gibbon, I'ancien amoureux de ma mere, celui qui voulait 
 I'^pouser. Quand je le vols, je me demande si je serais nde de son union avec 
 ma mere : je me r^ponds que non et qu'il suffisait de mon pere seul pour que je 
 vinsse au monde " {ib., ii., 250). On his death she wrote: " Ce pauvre 
 Gibbon, dont tu m'as entendu parler comme du seul homme qui put attacher 
 ^ la Suisse, est mort en Angleterre. . . . On est dtonn6 de voir p6rir autrement 
 que par la revolution fran9aise " (ib., p. 282).] 
 
108 EDWAED GIBBON [1756-58 
 
 tion, and a dignified behaviour. A rich banker of Paris, a 
 citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to 
 discover and possess this inestimable treasure ; and in the 
 capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations of 
 wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The 
 genius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous 
 station in Europe. In every change of prosperity and disgrace 
 he has I'eclined on the bosom of a faithful friend ; and Made- 
 moiselle Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, 
 and perhaps the legislator, of the French monarchy.^ 
 
 Whatsoever have been the fruits of my education, they 
 must be ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed 
 me at Lausanne. I have sometimes applied to my own fate 
 the verses of Pindar, which remind an Olympic champion that 
 his victory was the consequence of his exile ; and that at home, 
 like a domestic fowl, his days might have rolled away inactive 
 or inglorious. 
 
 . . . ijToi Kal Ted Kev, 
 'EvSofidxas ar aXeKToop, 
 'Xvyy6v(f Trap' Icrria 
 'A/cAer;s Ti^h. KaTed)vWop6'riaei/ iroSd}V • 
 E( fjLT] (TTatTLs avTiaveipa 
 KfCDffias a a/Mepcre irarrpas.^ 
 
 — Olymp. xii. 
 
 1 \_Post, p. 198. On Sept. 3, 1790, Necker " withdrew softly, almost privily. 
 . . . Fifteen months ago we saw him coming, with escort of horse, with sound 
 of clarion and trumpet ; and now, at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs, 
 unescorted, soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive, are 
 not unlike massacring him as a traitor ; the National Assembly, consulted on 
 the matter, gives him free egress as a nullity" (Carlyle's Fi-ench Revolution, 
 ed. 1857, i., 303). 
 
 " I passed four days [in October, 1790] at the castle of Copet with Necker," 
 Gibbon wrote, ' ' and could have wished to have shown him as a warning to any 
 aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of 
 private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable of human beings : the 
 past, the present, and the future are equally odious to him. When I suggested 
 some domestic amusements of books, building, etc. , he answered with a deep 
 tone of despair, ' Dans I'etat ou je suis, je ne puis sentir que le coup de vent 
 qui m'a abattu ' " (Corres., ii., 236).] 
 
 2 Thus, like the crested bird of Mars, at home 
 Engag'd in foul domestic jars. 
 And wasted with intestine wars. 
 Inglorious hadst thou spent thy vig'rous bloom ; 
 Had not sedition's civil broils 
 Expell'd thee from thy native Crete, 
 And driv'n thee with more glorious toils 
 Th' Olympic crown in Pisa's plain to meet. 
 
 (West's P?«a?«n )— Sheffield. 
 
1758] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 109 
 
 If my childish revolt against the religion of my country 
 had not stripped me in time of my academic gown, the five 
 important years, so liberally improved in the studies and 
 conversation of Lausanne, would have been steeped in port 
 and prejudice among the monks of Oxford. Had the fatigue 
 of idleness compelled me to read, the path of learning would 
 not have been enlightened by a ray of philosophic freedom. 
 I should have grown to manhood ignorant of the life and 
 language of Europe,! and my knowledge of the world would 
 have been confined to an English cloister. But my religious 
 error fixed me at Lausanne, in a state of banishment and 
 disgrace. The rigid course of discipline and abstinence, to 
 which I was condemned, invigorated the constitution of my 
 mind and body ; poverty and pride estranged me from my 
 countrymen. One mischief, however, and in their eyes a 
 serious and irreparable mischief, was derived from the success 
 of my Swiss education ; I had ceased to be an Englishman. 
 At the flexible period of youth, from the age of sixteen to 
 twenty-one, my opinions, habits, and sentiments were cast 
 in a foreign raiould ; the faint and distant remembrance of 
 England was almost obliterated ; my native language was 
 grown less familiar ^ ; and I should have cheerfully accepted 
 the offer of a moderate independence on the terms of per- 
 petual exile. By the good sense and temper of Pavilliard 
 my yolk was insensibly lightened : he left me master of my 
 time and actions ; but he could neither change my situation, 
 nor increase my allowance, and with the progress of my years 
 and reason I impatiently sighed for the moment of my deliver- 
 ance. At length, in the spring of the year one thousand 
 seven hundred and fifty-eight, my father signified his per- 
 mission and his pleasure that I should immediately return 
 home. We were then in the midst of a war : the resentment 
 of the French at our taking their ships without a declaration,^ 
 
 1 {^Post, p. 132.] 
 
 2 [From Gallicisms he never wholly " cleared his tongue" — or rather his pen.] 
 <* [In the summer of 1755, though war had not been declared between Eng- 
 land and France, it was actually carried on in the American settlements. The 
 English cruisers began to prey on the French commerce. ' ' Before the end of 
 
110 EDWAED GIBBON [i758 
 
 had rendered that polite nation somewhat peevish and difficult. 
 They denied a passage to English travellers, and the road 
 through Germany was circuitous, toilsome, and perhaps in 
 the neighbourhood of the armies, exposed to some danger. 
 In this perplexity, two Swiss officers of my acquaintance in the 
 Dutch service, who were returning to their garrisons, offered 
 to conduct me through France as one of their companions ; 
 nor did we sufficiently reflect that my borrowed name and 
 regimentals might have been considered, in case of a dis- 
 covery, in a very serious light. ^ I took my leave of Lausanne 
 on the 11th of April, 1758, with a mixture of joy and regret, 
 in the firm resolution of revisiting, as a man, the pei'sons and 
 places which had been so dear to my youth. 2. We travelled 
 slowly, but pleasantly, in a hired coach, over the hills of 
 Franche-compte and the fertile province of Lorraine, and 
 passed, without accident or inquiry, through several fortified 
 towns of the French frontier : from thence we entered the 
 wild Ardennes of the Austrian dutchy of Luxemburg ; and 
 after crossing the Meuse at Liege, we traversed the heaths of 
 Brabant, and reached, on the fifteenth day, our Dutch garrison 
 of Bois le Due. In our passage through Nancy, my eye was 
 gratified by the aspect of a regular and be.autiful city, the 
 work of Stanislaus, who, after the storms of Polish royalty, 
 reposed in the love and gratitude of his new subjects of 
 Lorraine.^ In our halt at Maestri cht I visited Mr. de Beau- 
 
 this year 300 French merchant ships, many of them extremely rich, and 8,000 
 of their sailors were brought into English ports." This was done "under the 
 motive of self-defence, in order to deprive the French Court of the means of 
 making an invasion, with which their Ministers in all the Courts of Europe 
 had menaced England". War was formally declared in March, 1756 
 (Smollett's England, ed. 1800, iii. , 442, 520-21).] 
 
 1 [He would not have been detected by an English accent. " II faut ajouter 
 avec Suard qu'il prononcait avec affectation, et d'un ton de fausset, la langue 
 fran9aise, laquelle il parlait d'ailleurs avec une rare correction et comme un 
 livre" [Causeries du Lundi, viii. , 439).] 
 
 2 [He was thinking of himself and Lausanne in the following passage: 
 "Julian inviolably preserved for Athens that tender regard which seldom fails 
 to arise in a liberal mind, from the recollection of the place where it has 
 discovered and exercised its growing powers " ( The Decline, ii., 255).] 
 
 "* [Stanislaus Leszczynski, the Palatine of Posen, supported by Charles XII. 
 of Sweden, was elected King of Poland in 1704. He abdicated the throne in 
 1709, and in. the end retired to France. In 1725 his daughter married 
 
1758] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 111 
 
 fort, a learned critic, who was known to me by his specious 
 arguments against the five first centuries of the Roman His- 
 tory.^ After dropping my regimental companions, I stepped 
 aside to visit Rotterdam and the Hague. I wished to have 
 observed a country, the monument of fi'eedom and industry ; 
 but my days were numbered, and a longer delay would have 
 been ungraceful. I hastened to embark at the Brill, landed 
 the next day at Harwich,^ and proceeded to London, where 
 my father awaited my arrival. The whole term of my first 
 absence from England was four years ten months and fifteen 
 days. 
 
 In the prayers of the church our personal concerns are 
 judiciously reduced to the threefold distinction of mind, body, 
 and estate.'^ The sentiments of the mind excite and exercise 
 our social sympathy. The review of my moral and literary 
 character is the most interesting to myself and to the public ; 
 and I may expatiate, without reproach, on my private studies ; 
 since they have produced the public writings, which can alone 
 entitle me to the esteem and friendship of my readers. The 
 
 Lewis XV. In 1733 he was a second time proclaimed king, and in 1735 by the 
 Treaty of Vienna he made a second and a final abdication. " He was to enjoy 
 possession of the duchies of Lorraine and Bar, which after his death were to be 
 permanently united to France. In 1737 he was formally put in possession of 
 his new territories. He died in 1766 at the age of eighty-nine" (Poland, by 
 W. R. Morfill, ed. 1893, pp. 199-208). 
 
 Condorcet in his P^ie de Voltaire thus writes of Stanislaus : " Retire en ■■ 
 Lorraine, ah. il n'avait encore que le nom de souverain, il r^parait par ses 
 bienfaits le mal que I'administration franpaise fesait a cette province, 011 le 
 gouvernement paternel de Leopold avait r6par^ un si^cle de devastations et 
 malheurs. . . . Sa maison ^tait celle d'un particulier tres riche ; son ton, celui 
 d'un homme simple et franc qui, n'ayant jamais ^t^ malheureux que parce 
 qu'on avait voulu qu'il fut roi, n'^tait pas 6bloui d'un titre dont il n'avait 
 6prouv6 que les dangers " [CEuvres de Voltaire, Ixiv. , 58).] 
 
 i[" Notre siecle, qui se croit destine a changer les lois en tout genre, a enfante 
 un Pyrrhonisme historique, utile et dangereux. M. de Pouilly, esprit brilliant 
 et superficiel, qui citait plus qu'il ne lisait, douta de la certitude des cinq 
 premiers siecles de Rome ; mais son imagination peu faite pour ces recherches 
 c6da facilement a I'^rudition et a la critique de M. Freret et de I'Abb^ Sallier. 
 M. de Beaufort fit revivre cette controverse, et I'histoire Romaine souffrit beau- 
 coup des attaques d'un ^crivain qui savait douter et qui savait decider" 
 (Gibbon, Misc. Woj-ks, iv. , 40).] 
 
 2[He landed on May 4, 1758 [Auto., p. 241).] 
 
 ^["Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are any 
 ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body or estate" (A Collect or Prayer 
 for all Conditions of Men). '\ 
 
112 EDWARD GIBBON [i758 
 
 experience of the world inculcates a discreet reserve on the 
 subject of our person and estate, and we soon learn that 
 a free disclosure of our riches or poverty would provoke the 
 malice of envy, or encourage the insolence of contempt. 
 
 The only person in England whom I was impatient to see 
 was my aunt Porten, the affectionate guardian of my tender 
 years. I hastened to her house in College-street, West- 
 minster ; and the evening was spent in the eifusions of joy 
 and confidence. It was not without some awe and apprehen- 
 sion that I approached the presence of my father. My 
 infancy, to speak the truth, had been neglected at home ^ ; 
 the severity of his look and language at our last parting still 
 dwelt on my memory ; nor could I form any notion of his 
 character, or my probable reception. They were both more 
 agreeable than I could expect. The domestic discipline of 
 our ancestors has been relaxed by the philosophy and softness 
 of the age ^ ; and if my father remembered that he had 
 trembled before a stern pai'ent,^ it was only to adopt with his 
 own son an opposite mode of behaviour. He received me as 
 a man and a friend ; all constraint was banished at our first 
 interview, and we ever afterwards continued on the same 
 term^s of easy and equal politeness. He applauded the 
 success of my education ; every word and action was ex- 
 pressive of the most cordial affection ; and our lives would 
 have passed without a cloud, if his oeconomy had been equal 
 to his fortune, or if his fortune had been equal to his desires. 
 During my absence he had married his second wife. Miss 
 Dorothea Patton, who was introduced to me with the most 
 
 ^ [In dedicating to his father his Essai (post, p. 127) he speaks of "that truly 
 paternal care which, from the first dawnings of my reason, has always watched 
 over my education, and afforded me every opportunity of improvement " [Misc. 
 Works, iv. , 4). See ante, p. 30, for his mother's neglect of him.] 
 
 2[" When Johnson saw some young ladies in Lincolnshire who were remark- 
 ably well behaved, owing to their mother's strict discipline and severe correc- 
 tion, he exclaimed in one of Shakspeare's lines a little varied, 
 "Rod, I will honour thee for this thy duty." 
 
 (Boswell's /(?/?« J0«, i. , 46.)] 
 
 ■'[Not only his son, but his daughters feared him. " His children trembled 
 in his presence" (Auto., p. 17).] 
 
1758] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 113 
 
 unfavourable prejudice. I considered his second marriage as 
 an act of displeasure, and I was disposed to hate the rival of 
 my mother. But the injustice was in my own fancy,^ and the 
 imaginary monster was an amiable and deserving woman. I 
 could not be mistaken in the first view of her understanding, 
 her knowledge, and the elegant spirit of her conversation : 
 her polite welcome, and her assiduous care to study and 
 gratify my wishes, announced at least that the surface would 
 be smooth ; and my suspicions of art and falsehood were 
 gradually dispelled by the full discovery of her warm and 
 exquisite sensibility.^ After some reserve on my side, our 
 minds associated in confidence and friendship ; and as Mrs, 
 Gibbon had neither children nor the hopes of children, we 
 more easily adopted the tender names and genuine characters 
 of mother and of son. By the indulgence of these parents, I 
 was left at liberty to consult my taste or reason in the choice 
 of place, of company, and of amusements ; and my excursions 
 were bounded only by the limits of the island, and the 
 measure of my income. Some faint efforts were made to pro- 
 cure me the employment of secretary to a foreign embassy ^ ; 
 and I listened to a scheme which would again have trans- 
 ported me to the continent. Mrs. Gibbon, with seeming 
 wisdom, exhorted me to take chambers in the Temple, and 
 devote my leisure to the study of the law, I cannot repent 
 
 1 [The previous two lines are a patchwork from paragraphs in different 
 Memoirs [Auto. , pp. 158, 242), both of which end with the line of Virgil — " Est 
 mihi namque domi pater, est injusta noverca" (Virgil, Eclogues, iii., 33). The 
 omission renders the connection not clear. 
 
 To his father he had written from Lausanne on June 4, 1757 : ' ' Assurez 
 ma chere mere (c'est avec bien du plaisir que je lui donne ce titre) de tous les 
 sentimens que ce nom sacr6 emporte avec lui" (Corres., i. , 12). See also ii>., 
 p. 10, for a similar lie.] 
 
 2 [She gave him trouble by her obstinacy, when he was trying " to disentangle 
 himself from the management of the farm" at Buriton {posi, p. 187). "She 
 refused to yield an iota of her pretensions. . . . She is angry if she is not 
 constantly consulted, and yet takes up everything with such absolute quickness 
 that we all dread to consult her" {Corres., i. , 164). Though he was a most 
 dutiful son, nevertheless, as her life was greatly prolonged, he began to count 
 upon her death. Speaking of her by the name of her residence he wrote in 
 1789: "The decay of the Belvidere must place me in easy circumstance"; 
 and again in 1791 : " As soon as the Belvidere subsides I am rich beyond all 
 my plans of expence at Lausanne" (id., ii. , 196, 232). She outlived him.] 
 
 =* [Post, p. 126.] 
 
114 EDWARD GIBBON [Hbs-Go 
 
 of having neglected her advice. Few men, without the spur 
 of necessity, have resolution to force their way, through the 
 thorns and thickets of that gloomy labyrinth. Nature had 
 not endowed me with the bold and ready eloquence which 
 makes itself heard amidst the tumult of the bar ; and I should 
 probably have been diverted from the labours of literature, 
 without acquiring the fame or fortune of a successful pleader. 
 I had no need to call to my aid the regular duties of a pro- 
 fession ; every day, every hour, was agreeably filled ; nor have 
 I known, like so many of my countrymen, the tediousness of 
 an idle life. 
 
 Of the two years (May 1758 — May 1760) between my 
 return to England and the embodying of the Hampshire 
 militia, I passed about nine months in London, and the 
 remainder in the country. The metropolis aifords many 
 amusements, which are open to all. It is itself an astonish- 
 ing and perpetual spectacle to the curious eye ; and each 
 taste, each sense may be gratified by the variety of objects 
 which will occur in the long circuit of a morning walk. I 
 assiduously frequented the theatres at a very propitious aera 
 of the stage, when a constellation of excellent actors, both in 
 tragedy and comedy, was eclipsed by the meridian brightness 
 of Garrick in the maturity of his judgment, and vigour of his 
 performance. 1 The pleasures of a town-life are within the 
 reach of every man who is regardless of his health, his money, 
 and his company. By the contagion of example I was some- 
 times seduced ; but the better habits, which I had formed at 
 Lausanne, induced me to seek a more elegant and rational 
 society ; and if my search was less easy and successful than I 
 might have hoped, I shall at present impute the failure to the 
 disadvantages of my situation and character. Had the rank 
 and fortune of my parents given them an annual establish- 
 
 1 [In 1754, between Oct. 24 and Nov. 27, in the two theatres of Drury Lane 
 and Covent Garden nine plays of Shakespeare were acted in nineteen perform- 
 ances, besides thirty-seven other plays by different authors — among them 
 Addison, Gibber, Gongreve, Gay, Jonson, Otway, and Rowe (Gent. Mag., 
 1754, p. 532). I cannot find any entry for 1759, the space being taken up 
 by war news and war lists.] 
 
1758-60] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 115 
 
 ment in London, their own house would have introduced me 
 to a numerous and polite circle of acquaintance. But my 
 father's taste had always preferred the highest and the lowest 
 company, for which he was equally qualified ^ ; and after a 
 twelve years' retirement, he was no longer in the memory of the 
 great with whom he had associated. I found myself a stranger 
 in the midst of a vast and unknown city ; and at my entrance 
 into life I was reduced to some dull family parties, and some 
 scattered connections, which were not such as I should have 
 chosen for myself The most useful friends of my father were 
 the Mallets : they received me with civility and kindness at 
 first on his account, and afterwards on ray own ; and (if I may 
 use Lord Chesterfield's words) I was soon domesticated ^ in their 
 house. Mr. Mallet, a name among the English poets, is 
 praised by an unforgiving enemy, for the ease and elegance of 
 his conversation, 3 and his wife was not destitute of wit or 
 learning.^ By his assistance I was introduced to Lady 
 Hervey, the mother of the present Earl of Bristol. Her 
 age and infirmities confined her at home ; her dinners were 
 select ; in the evening her house was open to the best 
 company of both sexes and all nations ; nor was I displeased 
 at her preference and even affectation of the manners, the 
 
 1 [ " My father had always delighted in a club of peers or of farmers, for which 
 he was equally qualified " {Auto., p. 245 ; see post, p. i85).] 
 
 2 [Perhaps Gibbon refers to Chesterfield's letter to his son, dated March 29, 
 1750 (ed. 1774, iii. , 2), where, speaking of a certain house, he says : " Domes- 
 ticate yourself there while you stay at Naples ".] 
 
 s[ " His conversation was easy and elegant. The rest of his character may, 
 without injury to his memory, sink into silence" (Johnson's IVoris, viii. , 468). 
 Johnson, so far as I am aware, was not his personal enemy.] 
 
 * [' ' Mallet's second wife was the daughter of a nobleman's steward, who had 
 a considerable fortune, which she took care to retain in her own hands " (id. , 
 p. 467). The following entry is in TAe Gent. Mag. for 1742, p. 546 : " Oct. 7, 
 1742. David Mallet Esq. Under-Secretary to the Pr. of Wales to Miss Lucy 
 Elstob with ;^io,ooo." I have seen the following entry in Mrs. Piozzi's hand- 
 writing : " D. Mallet married a Miss Elstob — a famous wit and an infidel ". 
 
 " I never," wrote Lord Charlemont, " saw Hume so much disconcerted as 
 by the petulance of Mrs. Mallet. This lady, who was not acquainted with him, 
 meeting him at an assembly boldly accosted him in these words : ' Mr. Hume, 
 give me leave to introduce myself to you ; we deists ought to know each other '. 
 ' Madame,' replied he, ' I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do 
 I desire to be known by that appellation ' " [Life of Charlemo7ii, i. , 235). 
 
 For a curious description of her by Gibbon see Carres., i., 315.] 
 
116 EDWARD GIBBON [i758-6o 
 
 language, and the literature of France.^ But my progress in 
 the English world was in general left to my own efforts, and 
 those efforts were languid and slow. I had not been endowed 
 by art or nature with those happy gifts of confidence and 
 address, which unlock every door and every bosom ; nor 
 would it be reasonable to complain of the just consequences 
 of my sickly childhood, foreign education, and reserved 
 temper. While coaches were rattling through Bond-street, I 
 have passed many a solitary evening in my lodging with my 
 books. My studies were sometimes interrupted by a sigh, 
 which I breathed towards Lausanne ; and on the approach of 
 Spring, I withdrew without reluctance from the noisy and 
 extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation 
 without pleasure. In each of the twenty-five years of my 
 acquaintance with London (1758 — 1783) the prospect grad- 
 ually brightened ; and this unfavourable picture most prpperly 
 belongs to the first period after my return from Switzerland. 
 
 My father's residence in Hampshire, where I have passed 
 many light, and some heavy hours, was at Buriton, near 
 Petersfield, one mile from the Portsmouth road, and at the 
 easy distance of fifty-eight miles from London. ^ An old 
 mansion, in a state of decay, had been converted into the 
 fashion and convenience of a modern house : and if strangers 
 
 i[Lady Hervey was "Molly Lepell ". Gay, in his Mr. Pope's Welcome 
 from Greece, had described her as : — 
 
 " Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell." 
 
 (Warton's Papers Works, ed. 1822, ii. , 354.) 
 Pope, in his Answer to the Following Question of Mrs, How : What is 
 Priidery f had written : — 
 
 " 'Tis an ugly envious Shrew, 
 That rails at dear Lepell and You " 
 
 [ib., ii., 314). 
 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son in 1750 : " Lady Hervey, to my great joy, 
 because to your great advantage, passes all this winter at Paris. She has been 
 bred all her life at Courts, of which she has acquired all the easy good-breeding 
 and pohteness, without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a 
 woman should have, and more than any woman need have ; for she under- 
 stands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely conceals it " (Chesterfield's 
 Letters, iii. , 54).] 
 
 2 The estate and manor of Beriton, otherwise Buriton, were considerable, 
 and were sold a few years ago to Lord Stawell.— Sheffield. [They were sold 
 in 1789 for ;^i6,ooo [Corres., ii. , 189 ; see ante, p. 37).] 
 
1758-60] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 117 
 
 had nothing to see, the inhabitants had little to desire. The 
 spot was not happily chosen, at the end of the village and the 
 bottom of the hill : but the aspect of the adjacent grounds 
 was various and cheerful ; the downs commanded a noble 
 prospect, and the long hanging woods in sight of the house 
 could not perhaps have been improved by art or expence. 
 My father kept in his own hands the whole of the estate, and 
 even rented some additional land ; and whatsoever might be 
 the balance of profit and loss, the farm supplied him with 
 amusement and plenty. The produce maintained a number 
 of men and horses, which were multiplied by the intermixture 
 of domestic and rural servants ; and in the intervals of labour 
 the favourite team, a handsome set of bays or greys, was 
 harnessed to the coach. The oeconomy of the house was 
 regulated by the taste and prudence of Mrs. Gibbon. She 
 prided herself in the elegance of her occasional dinners ; and 
 from the uncleanly avarice of Madame Pavilliard, I was sud- 
 denly transported to the daily neatness and luxury of an 
 English table. Our immediate neighbourhood was rare and 
 rustic ; but from the verge of our hills, as far as Chichester 
 and Goodwood, the western district of Sussex was interspersed 
 with noble seats and hospitable families, with whom we cul- 
 tivated a friendly, and might have enjoyed a very frequent, 
 intercourse. As my stay at Buriton was always voluntary, I 
 was received and dismissed with smiles ; but the comforts of 
 my retirement did not depend on the ordinary pleasures of 
 the country. My father could never inspire me with his love 
 and knowledge of farming. I never handled a gun,^ I seldom 
 mounted an horse ; and my philosophic walks were soon 
 terminated by a shady bench, where I was long detained by 
 the sedentary amusement of reading or meditation.^ At 
 
 1 [" It is the peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence that it asserts the 
 claim of the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the air and the 
 waters" [The Decline, iv. , 485).] 
 
 2 [Sainte-Beuve, after quoting this passage, continues : " Le sentiment de la 
 nature champetre n'est pas (Stranger k. Gibbon ; il y a dans ses Mimoires deux 
 ou trois endroits qui pretent a la reverie : le passage que je viens de citer, par 
 exemple, toute cette page qui nous rend un joli tableau dela vieanglaise, pos^e, 
 
118 EDWARD GIBBON [i758-6o 
 
 home I occupied a pleasant and spacious apartment ; the 
 library on the same floor was soon considered as my particular 
 domain ; and I might say with truth, that I was never less 
 alone than when by myself.^ My sole complaint, which I 
 piously suppressed, arose from the kind restraint imposed on 
 the freedom of my time. By the habit of early rising I always 
 secured a sacred portion of the day, and many scattered 
 moments were stolen and employed by my studious industry. 
 But the family hours of breakfast, of dinner, of tea, and of 
 supper, were regular and long : after breakfast Mrs. Gibbon 
 expected my company in her dressing-room ; after tea my 
 father claimed my conversation and the perusal of the news- 
 papers ; and in the midst of an interesting work I was often 
 called down to receive the visit of some idle neighbours. ^ 
 Their dinners and visits required, in due season, a similar 
 return ; and I dreaded the period of the full moon, which was 
 usually reserved for our more distant excursions. I could not 
 refuse attending my father, in the summer of 1759, to the 
 races at Stockbridge, Reading, and Odiam, where he had 
 entered a horse for the hunter's plate ; and I was not dis- 
 pleased with the sight of our Olympic games, the beauty of 
 
 r^gMe, studieuse ". Sainte-Beuve goes on to refer to the fine passage where the 
 historian laid down his pen as he finished the last lines of his History {post, p. 
 225), and continues : "Mais, dans tons ces passages, c'est encore le studieux 
 chez Gibbon qui goiite la nature" {Causeries, viii., 443).] 
 
 1 [" P. Scipionem, Marce fih, eum qui primus Africanus appellatus est, dicere 
 solitum scripsit Cato, qui fuit ejus fere sequalis, nunquam se minus otiosum esse 
 quam quum otiosus, nee minus solum quam quum solus esset " (Cicero, De 
 Officiis, iii. , i). 
 
 ' ' It was accounted the peculiar of philosophers and wise men to be able to 
 hold themselves in talk. And it was their boast on this account, ' That they 
 were never less alone than when by themselves ' " (Shaftesbury's Characteristicks, 
 ed. 1714, i. , 170).] 
 
 "- [Grote suffered in the same way. At the age of twenty-two he recorded : 
 ' ' My studies have not lately been so regular as they might have been. ... A 
 numerous family [his father's] and the present artificial state of society absolutely 
 imprison me to such an extent that I can enjoy but very little solitude. And it 
 is dull and wretched to the last degree to a mind which has a glimpse of a nobler 
 sphere of action, to witness the total exclusion of intellect which disgraces 
 general conversation" {Life of Grote, ed. 1873, p. 13). A year later he wrote : 
 " I regretted this continual waste of evenings beyond measure, and longed for 
 the time when my house and my hours should be under my command" {ib., 
 p. 20).] 
 
1758-60] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 119 
 
 the spot, the fleetness of the horses, and the gay tumult of the 
 numerous spectators. As soon as the militia business was 
 agitated many days were tediously consumed in meetings of 
 deputy-lieutenants at Petersfield, Alton, and Winchester. ^ In 
 the close of the same year, 1759, Sir Simeon (then Mr.) 
 Stewart attempted an unsuccessful contest for the county of 
 Southampton, against Mr. Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer : 
 a well-known contest, in which Lord Bute's influence was first 
 exerted and censured. ^ Our canvas at Portsmouth and Gosport 
 lasted several days ; but the interruption of my studies was 
 compensated in some degree by the spectacle of English 
 manners, and the acquisition of some practical knowledge. 
 
 If in a more domestic or more dissipated scene my application 
 was somewhat relaxed, the love of knowledge was inflamed 
 and gratified by the command of books ; and I compared the 
 poverty of Lausanne with the plenty of London. My father's 
 study at Buriton was stuffed with much trash of the last 
 
 ^ [Posf, p. 134. Blackstone, writing of the Militia Act of 1757, says : " The 
 general scheme is to discipline a certain number of the inhabitants of every 
 county, chosen by lot for three years, and officered by the Lord Lieutenant, the 
 Deputy Lieutenants, and other principal landholders, under a commission from 
 the Crown " (Commenfaries, ed. 1775, i. , 412). 
 
 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son on Sept. 23, 1757 : " You may remember 
 I said at first, that the popularity would soon be on the side of those who 
 opposed the popular Militia Bill ; and now it appears so with a vengeance in 
 almost every county of England, by the tumults and insurrections of the people, 
 who swear that they will not be inlisted " {Letters to his Son, iv. , 95). In the 
 East Riding of Yorkshire " farmers and country people, out of forty townships, 
 armed with guns, scythes and clubs, rose on account of the Act " [Gent. Mag., 
 1757, p. 431). Two of these rioters were hanged, and four transported for life 
 [ib., 1758, p. 239). In the same Magazine, July, 1759, p. 341, it is stated that, 
 under the threat of a French invasion, "the militia that have been raised 
 and disciplined have been marched to the places of greatest danger".] 
 
 2 [It was a bye-election. Legge, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had 
 provided the funds for Pitt's armaments, resigned his seat for Oxford, so as to 
 stand. Horace Walpole describes this election as "an incident that led to a 
 discovery of some of the secret politics of the Heir-apparent's Court " [Memoirs 
 of George II. , ii. , 399). Burke describes the growth of influence under Bute in 
 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (Burke's Select Works, ed. E. 
 J. Payne, i. , 10). The Gibbons, as Tories, supported Stewart. 
 
 Gray, on April 22, 1760, described a duel between Stewart and the Duke of 
 Bolton : " They met near Mary-le-bone, and the D. , in making a pass, over- 
 reached himself, fell down and hurt his knee ; the other bid him get up, but he 
 could not ; then he bid him ask his life, but he would not ; so he let him alone, 
 and that's all. Mr. Stewart was slightly wounded " (Mitford's Gray's Works, 
 iii,, 238). The Duke was Lord Lieutenant of the county [post, p, 136),] 
 
120 EDWAED GIBBON [i758-6o 
 
 age, with much high church divinity and politics, which have 
 long since gone to their proper place ^ : yet it contained some 
 valuable editions of the classics and the fathers, the choice, 
 as it should seem, of Mr. Law ; and many English publica- 
 tions of the times had been occasionally added. From this 
 slender beginning I have gradually formed a numerous and 
 select library, the foundation of my works, and the best 
 comfort of my life, both at home and abroad. On the receipt 
 of the first quarter, a large share of my allowance was ap- 
 propriated to my literary wants. I cannot forget the joy with 
 which I exchanged a bank-note of twenty pounds for the 
 twenty volumes of the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions ; 
 nor would it have been easy, by any other expenditure of 
 the same sum, to have procured so large and lasting a fund 
 of rational amusement. At a time when I most assiduously 
 frequented this school of ancient literature, I thus expressed 
 my opinion of a learned and various collection, which since 
 the year 1759 has been doubled in magnitude, though not 
 in merit. 2 " Une de ces societes, qui ont mieux immortalise 
 Louis XIV. qu'une ambition souvent pernicieuse aux hommes, 
 commen^ait d^ja ces recherches qui reunissent la justesse de 
 I'esprit, I'amenite et I'erudition : ou Ton voit tant de decou- 
 vertes, et quelquefois, ce qui ne cede qu'a peine aux decou- 
 vertes, une ignorance modeste et savante." ^ The review of 
 my libi'ary must be reserved for the period of its maturity ; 
 but in this place I may allow myself to observe, that I am 
 not conscious of having ever bought a book from a motive 
 
 1 [Gibbon, describing the pillage of the libraries of Constantinople by the 
 Turks, says : " Ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat ; and the 
 same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the 
 whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and 
 literature of ancient Greece" {The Decline, vii. , 198).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon quotes from his Essai sur V Etude de la Littirattire {Misc. Works, 
 iv., 19).] 
 
 3 [" Cette Acad^mie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres est proprement la patrie 
 intellectuelle de Gibbon ; il y habite en id6e, il en etudie les travaux originaux 
 ou solides rendus avec justesse et parfois avec agr^ment ; il en appr^cie les 
 d^couvertes, ' et surtout ce qui ne cede qu'a peine aux d^couvertes, dit-il en 
 veritable Attique, une ignorance viodeste et savante ' " {Causeries du Lundi, viii. , 
 444)0 
 
1758-60] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 121 
 
 of ostentation, that every volume, before it was deposited on 
 the shelf, was either read or sufficiently examined, and that 
 I soon adopted the tolerating maxim of the elder Pliny, 
 " nullum esse librum tam malum ut non ex aliqua parte 
 prodesset ".^ I could not yet find leisure or courage to renew 
 the pursuit of the Greek language, excepting by reading the 
 lessons of the Old and New Testament every Sunday, when 
 I attended the family to church. ^ The series of my Latin 
 authors was less strenuously completed ; but the acquisition, 
 by inheritance or purchase, of the best editions of Cicero, 
 Quintilian, Livy, Tacitus, Ovid, etc., afforded a fair prospect, 
 which I seldom neglected. I persevered in the useful method 
 of abstracts and observations ; and a single example may 
 suffice, of a note which had almost swelled into a work. The 
 solution of a passage of Livy (xxxviii., 38), involved me in 
 the dry and dark treatises of Greaves, Arbuthnot, Hooper, 
 Bernard, Eisenschmidt, Gi'onovius, La Barre, Freret, etc.^ ; and 
 in my French essay (chap. 20), I ridiculously send the reader 
 to my own manuscript remarks on the weights, coins, and 
 measures of the ancients,^ which were abruptly terminated 
 by the militia drum. 
 
 As I am now entering on a more ample field of society and 
 study, I can only hope to avoid a vain and prolix garrulity, 
 by overlooking the vulgar crowd of my acquaintance, and 
 confining myself to such intimate friends among books and 
 men, as are best entitled to my notice by their own merit 
 and reputation, or by the deep impression which they have 
 
 1 [The younger Pliny wrote of his uncle : ' ' Nihil enim legit quod non excer- 
 peret ; dicere etiam solebat nullum esse librum tam malum, ut non aliqua parte 
 prodesset " [Epist., iii. , 5, 10).] 
 
 2 [They commonly went twice to church every Sunday. This reading, with 
 the study that it led to at home, began, or, at all events, increased, his doubts. 
 Towards the end of 1759 he read Grotius's De Veritate Religionis Christianm, 
 and his scepticism was only the more confirmed (^w^., p. 249). 
 
 Grotius was one of the three writers whom Johnson said he ' ' would recom- 
 mend to every man whose faith is yet unsettled" (Boswell's /o/z/zjow, i. , 398. 
 See also ib., i. , 454).] 
 
 ^ [This passage of Livy Gibbon refers to in his Principes des Poids, des 
 Monnaies, etc. {Misc. Works, v. 73). At the beginning of the same essay he 
 gives a brief account of most of these writers (i3. , p. 67).] 
 
 * [" V. mes Rem. MSS. sur les poids, etc., des anciens " (id., iv. , 34).] 
 
122 EDWARD GIBBON [i758-6o 
 
 left on my mind. Yet I will embrace this occasion of re- 
 commending to the young student a practice^ which about 
 this time I myself adopted. After glancing my eye over the 
 design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal till 
 I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved, 
 in a solitary walk, all that I knew or believed, or had thought 
 on the subject of the whole work, or of some particular 
 chapter : I was then qualified to discern how much the 
 author added to my original stock ; and if I was sometimes 
 satisfied by the agreement, I was soinetimes armed by the 
 opposition of our ideas. The favourite companions of my 
 leisure were our English writers since the Revolution : they 
 breathe the spirit of reason and liberty ; and they most 
 seasonably contributed to restore the purity of my own 
 language, which had been corrupted by the long use of a 
 foreign idiom. By the judicious advice of Mr. Mallet, I was 
 directed to the writings of Swift and Addison ; wit and sim- 
 plicity are their common attributes : but the style of Swift 
 is supported by manly original vigour ; that of Addison is 
 adorned by the female graces of elegance and mildness. The 
 old reproach, that no British altars had been raised to the 
 muse of history,! -^^s recently disproved by the first perfor- 
 mances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland 
 and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying, 
 that I was not unworthy to read them : nor will I disguise 
 my different feelings in the repeated perusals. The perfect 
 composition, the nervous language, the well-turned periods 
 of Dr. Robertson, inflamed me to the ambitious hope that 
 I might one day tread in his footsteps : the calm philosophy, 
 the careless, inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often 
 forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of 
 delight and despair.^ 
 
 The design of my first work, the Essay on the Study of 
 Literature, was suggested by a refinement of vanity, the desire 
 of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. 
 
 1 [See Appendix 21.] 2 [/^,^ 22. Post, 195.] 
 
1758-60] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 123 
 
 In France, to which my ideas were confined, the learning and 
 language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic 
 age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscrip- 
 tions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal 
 societies of Paris : the new appellation of Erudits was con- 
 temptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon,i 
 and I was provoked to hear (see M. d'Alembert, Discours 
 preliminaire a l' Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, 
 their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties 
 of the imagination and the judgment. ^ I was ambitious of 
 proving by my own example, as well as by my precepts, that 
 all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed 
 by the study of ancient literature : I began to select and 
 adorn the various proofs and illustrations which had oifered 
 themselves in reading the classics ; and the first pages or 
 chapters of my essay were composed before my departure 
 from Lausanne. The hurry of the journey, and of the first 
 weeks of my English life, suspended all thoughts of serious 
 application : but my object was ever before my eyes ; and no 
 more than ten days, from the first to the eleventh of July, 
 were suffered to elapse after my summer establishment at 
 Buriton. My essay was finished in about six weeks ; and as 
 soon as a fair copy had been transcribed by one of the French 
 prisoners at Petersfield,^ I looked round for a critic and judge 
 of my first performance. A writer can seldom be content 
 
 1 [Gibbon says in his Essay : " Nos beaux-esprits ont senti quels avantages 
 leur reviendraient de I'ignorance de leurs lecteurs. lis ont combM de m^pris 
 les anciens, et ceux qui les 6tudient encore. On a 6t6 k cette dtude le nom de 
 Belles-Lettres, qu'une longue prescription semblait lui avoir consacr^, pour y 
 substituer celui d' Erudition. Nos litterateurs sont devenus des Erudits " (Misc. 
 Works, iv. , 2o).] 
 
 ^ [" La division g^n^rale de nos connaissances, suivant nos trois facultes, a cet 
 avantage, qu'elle pourrait fournir aussi les trois divisions du monde litt^raire, 
 en irudits, philosophes et beaux-esprits. . . . La m^moire est le talent des 
 premiers, la sagacity appartient aux seconds, et les derniers ont I'agr^ment en 
 partage," etc. (CEuvres de D'Alembert, ed. 1805, i. , 242). 
 
 Voltaire writes in his Slide de Louis ^//^(chap. xxxiv.) : " II n'y a pas un 
 ancien philosophe qui serve aujourd'hui [1740] a I'instruction de la jeunesse 
 chez les nations ^clair^es. . . ." {GZuvres, xviii. , 276).] 
 
 ■'[At the end of the following year (1759) a large subscription was raised for 
 cloathing the French prisoners, "who were perishing with cold" (Boswell's 
 Johnson, i., 353, «.).] 
 
124 EDWARD GIBBON [i758-6o 
 
 with the doubtful recompence of solitary approbation ^ ; but a 
 youth ignorant of the world, and of himself, must desire to 
 weigh his talents in some scales less partial than his own : 
 my conduct was natural, my motive laudable, my choice of 
 Dr. Maty judicious and fortunate. By descent and education 
 Dr. Maty, though born in Holland, might be considered as a 
 Frenchman ; but he was fixed in London by the practice of 
 physic, and an office in the British Museum. ^ His reputation 
 was justly founded on the eighteen volumes of the Journal 
 Briiannique, which he had supported, almost alone, with per- 
 severance and success. This humble though useful labour, 
 which had once been dignified by the genius of Bayle and the 
 leai'ning of Le Clerc,^ was not disgraced by the taste, the 
 knowledge, and the judgment of Maty: he exhibits a candid 
 and pleasing view of the state of literature in England during 
 a period of six years (January, 1750 — December, 1755)*; 
 and, far different from his angry son,^ he handles the rod of 
 criticism with the tenderness and reluctance of a parent. 
 
 i["The author himself is the best judge of his own performance" (Post, 
 p. 191).] 
 
 2 [In T/ie Ge7it. Mag. for July, 1756, p. 362, is a list of the staff of the 
 British Museum — one Principal Keeper, three Librarians, of whom Maty was 
 second, and three Assistants. How much science preponderated in the founda- 
 tion is shown by the Keeper and the first two Librarians being Doctors of 
 Medicine. In the Magazine for Dec. , 1758, p. 629, are given the rules for ad- 
 mission, under which visitors long suffered. ] 
 
 •^ [Bayle in 1684 began his Nouvelles de la Rdpublique des Lettres, and Le 
 Clerc in 1686 his Bibliotheque Universelle et Historique.'\ 
 
 ■* [It was a monthly publication in i2mo, published at the Hague. Each 
 volume contained four numbers. Johnson, in 1755, having finished his 
 Dictionary, was thinking of undertaking a Review. "Dr. Adams suggested, 
 that as Dr. Maty had just then finished his BibliotMque Britannique, which 
 was a well-executed work, giving foreigners an account of British publications, 
 he might, with great advantage, assume him as an assistant. ' He (said 
 Johnson), the little black dog! I'd throw him into the Thames'" (Boswell's 
 Johnso?i, i. , 284).] 
 
 '^[Paul Henry Maty, editor of The New Review. Cowper wrote of him in 
 1786 : " I have authentic intelligence of his being a critical character in all its 
 forms, acute, sour, and blunt ; and so incorruptible withal, and so unsusceptible 
 of bias from undue motives, that, as my correspondent informs me, he would not 
 praise his own mother, did he not think she deserved it" (Southey's Cozvper, v., 
 245). Maty reviewed the specimen of the poet's Homer. "His animad- 
 versions," Cowper wrote, "in part appeared to me unjust, and in part ill- 
 natured ; and yet the man himself being an oracle in everybody's account, I 
 apprehended that he had done me much mischief" (ib., p. 309).] 
 
1758-60] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 125 
 
 The author of the Journal Britannique sometimes aspires to the 
 character of a poet and philosopher : his style is pure and 
 elegant ; and in his virtues, or even in his defects, he may be 
 ranked as one of the last disciples of the school of Fontenelle.^ 
 His answer to my first letter was prompt and polite : after a 
 careful examination he returned my manuscript, with some 
 animadversion and much applause ; and when I visited 
 London in the ensuing winter^ we discussed the design and ex- 
 ecution in several free and familiar conversations. In a short 
 excursion to Buriton I reviewed my essay, according to his 
 friendly advice ; and after suppressing a thirds adding a third, 
 and altering a third, I consummated my first labour by a short 
 preface, which is dated February 3, 1759-^ Yet I still shrunk 
 from the press with the terrors of virgin modesty : the manu- 
 script was safely deposited in my desk ; and as my attention 
 was engaged by new objects, the delay might have been pro- 
 longed till I had fulfilled the precept of Horace, " nonumque 
 prematur in annum " ? Father Sirmond, a learned Jesuit, 
 was still more rigid, since he advised a young friend to expect 
 the mature age of fifty, before he gave himself or his writings 
 to the public (Olivet, Histoire de 1' Academic Francaise, tom. 
 ii. p. 143). The counsel was singular; but it is still more 
 singular that it should have been approved by the example 
 of the author. Sirmond was himself fifty-five years of age 
 
 1 [Grimm, recording Fontenelle's death on Feb. ii, 1757, has left an 
 interesting criticism of him and his school. He attributes to him ' ' le m6rite 
 r^el d'avoir rendu le premier la philosophie populaire en France. ... II est 
 vrai que M. de Fontenelle, en nous ^clairant ainsi, a pens6 porter un coup 
 funeste au gout de la nation. Son style, son coloris et sa mani^re d'^crire 
 offrent une vaste carriere au faux bel esprit. . . . Pour juger de la grandeur 
 du peril que nous avons couru, pour sentir combien cette maniere qu'on voulait 
 6tablir 6tait di^testable, on n'a qua lire les copistes de M. de Fontenelle ; rien 
 n'est plus d^plaisant, ni plus insupportable que les ouvrages dont ils ont 
 accabfe le public. . . . Ce grand homme [Voltaire] est venu k point nomm^ 
 pour arrSter les progrte du faux bel esprit" {Mimoires Historiques, etc., ed. 
 1814, i., 334-5).] 
 
 2 [On Dec. 30, 1758, he wrote: "At last Maty and I have downright 
 quarrelled. He behaved so very contemptuously to me" (Corres., i. , 21). 
 They must have been reconciled later on. ] 
 
 ^[De Arie Poetica, 1. 388. 
 
 " Keep your piece nine years." 
 
 (Pope, Prol. Sat, 1. 40.)] 
 
126 EDWAED GIBBON [mo-62 
 
 when he published (in l6l4) his first work, an edition of 
 Sidonius Apollinaris^ with many valuable annotations : (see 
 his life, before the great edition of his works in five volumes 
 folio, Paris, 1696, e Typographia Regia).i 
 
 Two years elapsed in silence : but in the spring of 1 76l I 
 yielded to the authority of a parent, and complied, like a 
 pious son, with the wish of my own heart. '^ My private 
 resolves were influenced by the state of Europe. About this 
 time the belligerent powers had made and accepted overtures 
 of peace ; our English plenipotentiaries were named to assist 
 at the Congress of Augsburg, which never met ^ ; I wished to 
 attend them as a gentleman or a secretary ; and my father 
 fondly believed that the proof of some literary talents might 
 introduce me to public notice, and second the recommenda- 
 tions of my friends. After a last revisal I consulted with 
 Mr. Mallet and Dr. Maty, who approved the design and 
 promoted the execution. Mr. Mallet, after hearing me read 
 my manuscript, received it from my hands, and delivered it 
 into those of Becket, with whom he made an agreement in 
 my name ; an easy agreement : I required only a certain 
 number of copies ^ ; and, without transferring my property, I 
 
 ;— i[" Sirmond {Jacques), jdsuite, n6 vers I'an 1559. L'un des plus savans et 
 des plus aimables homines de son temps. . . . Ses nombreux ouvrages furent 
 trfes estimfe, et sont tr^s peu lus. Mort en 1651" (CEuvres de Voltaire, xvii., 
 168). 
 
 Pattison says of the works of the Jesuits : " ' Learned ' they are entitled to 
 be called by courtesy, for the works of Schott, Sirmond, and Petavius, have 
 all the attributes of learning but one — one, to want which leaves all learning but 
 a tinkling cymbal — that is, the love of truth. The Jesuit scholars introduced 
 into philological research the temper of unveracity which had been from of old 
 the literary habit of their Church. An interested motive lurks beneath each 
 word; the motive of Church patriotism " [Life of Casaubon, ed. 1892, p. 462).] 
 
 2 [In an interleaved copy Gibbon wrote : ' ' Mon p^re voulut me le faire 
 publier I'hiver passd. Ma jeunesse, et un fonds d'orgueil, qui me rend beaucoup 
 plus sensible aux critiques qu'aux 61oges, m'empecherent de goiiter son projet. 
 Mais me trouvant i la campagne avec lui au mois de Mars, il renouvella ses 
 instances d'une maniere si vive que je ne pus m'en d6fendre" {Misc. Works, 
 iv. , I ; se&post, p. 242).] 
 
 ^[" March 7, 1761. We are in the utmost hopes of a peace ; a Congress is 
 agreed upon at Augsbourg. 
 
 "Aug. 17, 1761. In the meantime, adieu peace! France has refused to 
 submit to our terms. They own themselves undone, but depend on the con- 
 tinuation of the war for revenging them — not by arms, but by exhausting us " 
 (Walpole's Letters, iii., 381, 428).] 
 
 *[He received forty (Misc. Works, iv., i).] 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 127 
 
 devolved on the bookseller the charges and profits of the 
 edition. Dr. Maty undertook, in my absence, to correct the 
 sheets : he inserted, without my knowledge, an elegant and 
 flattering epistle to the author ; which is composed, however, 
 with so much art, that, in case of a defeat, his favourable 
 report might have been ascribed to the indulgence of a friend 
 for the rash attempt of a young English gentleman. The work 
 was printed and published, under the title of Essai sur F Etude 
 de la Litterature, k Londres, chez T. Becket et P. A. de 
 Hondt, 1761, in a small volume in duodecimo : my dedication 
 to my father, a proper and pious address, was composed the 
 twenty-eighth of May: Dr. Maty's letter is dated the l6th 
 of June ; and I received the first copy (June 23) at Alresford, 
 two days before I marched with the Hampshire militia. 
 Some weeks afterwards, on the same ground, I presented my 
 book to the late Duke of York,^ who breakfasted in Colonel 
 Pitt's tent. By my father's direction, and Mallet's advice, 
 my literary gifts were distributed to several eminent characters 
 in England and France ; two books were sent to the Count 
 de Caylus,2 and the Duchesse d'Aiguillon,^ at Paris : I had 
 
 1 [The following is from a letter written by a lady in January, 1789 : " Here's 
 two anecdotes of the wise Duke of Cumberland [the brother of George III.] ; 
 one came from Sir Joshua Reynolds himself. The Duchess was sitting for her 
 picture ; the Duke came in, tumbled about the room in his awkward manner, 
 without speaking to Sir Joshua. The Duchess thought it too bad, and 
 whispered to him her opinion ; upon which he came, and leaning on Sir 
 Joshua's chair while he was painting, said, ' What 1 you always begin with the 
 head first, do you ? ' And once, when at his own public day he was told he 
 ought to say something to Mr. Gibbon, 'So,' says he, 'I suppose you are at 
 the old trade again — scribble, scribble, scribble' " (Auckland Corres., ii., 281). 
 
 H. D. Best in his Memorials, p. 68, makes the Duke of Gloucester the hero 
 of the story. When Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline a?id 
 Fall, " he received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as 
 he laid the quarto on the table, ' Another d— d thick, square book ! Always 
 scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?'" 
 
 Horace Walpole, writing in 1760 {Letters, iii., 347), says that " the Duke of 
 York was, as he always is, extremely good-humoured," so that Gibbon's book 
 was, no doubt, kindly received.] 
 
 2 [Voltaire (CEuvres, x., 195) describes Caylus as "c^l^bre par son goM pour 
 les arts. ... II grave lui-meme, et met une expression singuliere dans ses 
 dessins." Gibbon read his Dissertations upon Ancient Painting, etc. (Misc. 
 
 Works, iii., 79 ; v., 214). See post, Appendix 28.] 
 
 3 [' ' Cette dame, surnomm6e la sasur du pot par les philosophes k qui elle 
 donnait k diner, et de qui elle aimait a etre entour^e, ^tait remplie d'esprit, de 
 grace, de beauts " {CEuvres de Voltaire, Ixiii., 57).] 
 
128 EDWARD GIBBON [i 760-62 
 
 reserved twenty copies for my friends at Lausanne, as the 
 first fruits of my education, and a grateful token of my 
 remembrance : and on all these persons I levied an un- 
 avoidable tax of civility and compliment. It is not surprising 
 that a work, of which the style and sentiments were so totally 
 foreign, should have been more successful abroad than at 
 home. I was delighted by the copious extracts, the warm 
 commendations, and the flattering pi'edictions of the Joui*nals 
 of France and Holland: and the next year (1762) a new 
 edition (I believe at Geneva) extended the fame, or at least 
 the circulation of the work. In England it was received with 
 cold indifference, little read, and speedily forgotten : a small 
 impression was slowly dispersed ; the bookseller murmured, 
 and the author (had his feelings been more exquisite) might 
 have wept over the blunders and baldness of the English 
 translation.^ The publication of my History fifteen years 
 afterwards revived the memory of my first performance, and 
 the Essay was eagerly sought in the shops. But I refused 
 the Permission which Becket solicited of reprinting it : the 
 public curiosity was imperfectly satisfied by a pirated copy of 
 the booksellers of Dublin ; and when a copy of the original 
 edition has been discovered in a sale, the primitive value of 
 half-a-crown has risen to the fanciful price of a guinea or 
 thirty shillings.^ 
 
 I have expatiated on the petty circumstances and period of 
 my first publication, a memorable aera in the life of a student, 
 when he ventures to reveal the measure of his mind : his 
 hopes and fears are multiplied by the idea of self-importance, 
 and he believes for a while that the eyes of mankind are 
 fixed on his person and performance. Whatever may be my 
 present reputation, it no longer rests on the merit of this 
 first essay ; and at the end of twenty-eight years I may 
 
 1 [Gibbon recorded on January ii, 1763, just before leaving England: "I 
 went to Becket, paid him his bill (£54), and gave him back his translation. It 
 must be printed, though very indifferent. My comfort is that my misfortune is 
 not an uncommon one" (Misc. Works, i. , 157).] 
 
 2 [I have lately been offered a copy of the original edition for 18s. 6d., and 
 of the translation for 12s.] 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 129 
 
 appreciate ^ my juvenile work with the impartiality, and almost 
 with the indifference of a stranger. In his answer to Lady 
 Hervey, the Count de Caylus admires, or affects to admire, 
 "les livres sans nombre que Mr. Gibbon a lus et tres bien 
 lus ".2 But, alas ! my stock of erudition at that time was 
 scanty and superficial ; and if I allow myself the liberty of 
 naming the Greek masters, my genuine and personal acquaint- 
 ance was confined to the Latin classics. The most serious 
 defect of my Essay is a kind of obscurity and abruptness 
 which always fatigues, and may often elude, the attention of 
 the reader. Instead of a precise and proper definition of the 
 title itself, the sense of the word Litt&rature is loosely and 
 variously applied : a number of remarks and examples, 
 historical, critical, philosophical, are heaped on each other 
 without method or connection ; and if we except some intro- 
 ductory pages, all the remaining chapters might indifferently 
 be reversed or transposed. The obscurity of many passages 
 is often affected, brevis esse lahoro, ohscurus Jio^ ; the desire of 
 expressing perhaps a common idea with sententious and 
 oracular brevity : alas ! how fatal has been the imitation of 
 Montesquieu ! ^ But this obscurity sometimes proceeds from 
 a mixture of light and darkness in the author's mind ; from a 
 partial ray which strikes upon an angle, instead of spreading 
 itself over the surface of an object. After this fair confession 
 I shall presume to say, that the Essay does credit to a young 
 writer of two and twenty years of age, who had read with 
 taste, who thinks with freedom, and who writes in a foreign 
 language with spirit and elegance. The defence of the early 
 History of Rome^ and the new Chronology of Sir Isaac 
 Newton^ form a specious argument. The patriotic and 
 
 '^ {^Appreciate is not in Johnson's Dictionary.'] "^[Misc. Works, ii., 43.] 
 
 '^{De Arte Poeiica, 1. 25. "I strive to be concise, I prove obscure" 
 (Francis).] 
 
 * [Sainte-Beuve says of the Essai : " Le fran9ais est de quelqu'un qui a 
 beaucoup lu Montesquieu et qui I'imite ; c'est du fran9ais correct, mais 
 artificial" {Causeries, viii. , 446). For Dr. Maty's criticism of the French, see 
 post, p. 134.] 
 
 ^{Misc. Works, iv., 40.] ^\_Ib., iv. , 49 ; ante, pp. 45, 63.] 
 
130 EDWAED GIBBON [1760-62 
 
 political design of the Georgics is happily conceived; and 
 any probable conjecture, which tends to raise the dignity of 
 the poet and the poem, deserves to be adopted, without a 
 rigid scrutiny.! Some dawnings of a philosophic spirit 
 enlighten the general remarks on the study of history and of 
 man.2 I am not displeased with the inquiry into the origin 
 and nature of the gods of polytheism,^ which might deserve 
 the illustration of a riper judgment. Upon the whole, I may 
 apply to the first labour of my pen the speech of a far superior 
 artist, when he surveyed the first productions of his pencil. 
 After viewing some portraits which he had painted in his 
 youth, my friend Sir Joshua Reynolds^ acknowledged to me 
 that he was rather humbled than flattered by the comparison 
 with his present works ; and that after so much time and 
 study, he had conceived his improvement to be much greater 
 than he found it to have been. 
 
 At Lausanne I composed the first chapters of my Essay in 
 French, the familiar language of my conversation and studies, 
 in which it was easier for me to write than in my mother 
 tongue. After my return to England I continued the same 
 practice, without any affectation, or design of repudiating (as 
 Dr. Bentley would say) my vernacular idiom.'^ But I should 
 
 1 [Gibbon, after describing how Augustus distributed farms among his 
 soldiers, continues: " Les hardis v6t^rans n'avaient achet6 leurs possessions 
 que par une guerre sanglante, et leurs fr^quens actes de violence montraient 
 assez qu'ils se croyaient toujours les armes k la main. Qu'y avait-il alors de 
 plus assorti k la douce politique d'Auguste, que d'employer les chants har- 
 monieux de son ami pour les r^concilier a leur nouvel 6tat?" {Misc. Works, iv. , 
 P- 35-)] 
 
 2 [In this part of his Essai Gibbon has the following marginal headings ; 
 " L'ESPRIT Philosophique. Pretensions a I'esprit philosophique. Ce qu'il 
 n'est pas. Ce qu'il est. Le secours qu'il pent tirer de la litt^rature. L'histoire 
 est la science des causes et des effets" {id., iv., 57-63). 
 
 ' [On p. 70 of vol. iv. he begins to consider ' ' le paganisme, ce syst^me 
 riant mais absurde".] 
 
 ■* [" Gibbon, who was now [1779] sitting to Sir Joshua, seems to have taken 
 the place formerly filled by Goldsmith, of his companion to places of amuse- 
 ment, masquerades, and ridottos " (Leslie and Taylor's Reynolds, ii., 273 ). See 
 John. Misc., ii., 237, for an imaginary Dialogue between Dr. Johnson and Mr. 
 Gibbon drawn up by Reynolds).] 
 
 5 [" He is defended by the like practice of other writers, who, being Dorians 
 born, repudiated their vernacular idiom for that of the Athenians " (Bentley's 
 Works, ed. 1836, i., 359). Bentley was reproached by one of his critics for all 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 131 
 
 have escaped some Anti-gallican clamour, had I been content 
 with the more natural character of an English author.^ I 
 should have been more consistent had I rejected Mallet's 
 advice, of prefixing an English dedication to a French book ; 
 a confusion of tongues that seemed to accuse the ignorance 
 of my patron. The use of a foreign dialect might be excused 
 by the hope of being employed as a negociator, by the desire 
 of being generally understood on the continent ; but my true 
 motive was doubtless the ambition of new and singular fame, 
 an Englishman claiming a place among the writers of France. 
 The Latin tongue had been consecrated by the service of the 
 church ; it was refined by the imitation of the ancients ; and 
 in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the scholars of Europe 
 enjoyed the advantage, which they have gradually resigned, 
 of conversing and writing in a common and learned idiom. 
 As that idiom was no longer in any country the vulgar speech, 
 they all stood on a level with each other ; yet a citizen of 
 old Rome might have smiled at the best Latinity of the 
 Germans and Britons ; and we may learn from the Ciceronianus 
 of Erasmus, how difficult it was found to steer a middle course 
 between pedantry and barbarism, ^ The Romans themselves 
 had sometimes attempted a more perilous task, of writing 
 in a living language, and appealing to the taste and judgment 
 
 three words. " The words in my book which he excepts against are commenti- 
 tious, repudiate, concede, aliene, vernacular, timid, negoce, putid and idiom ; 
 every one of which were in print before I used them " [ib., preface, p. 54). 
 
 ' ' The histories of all our former wars are transmitted to us in our vernacular 
 idiom, to use the phrase of a great modern critic" (Addison, The Spectator, 
 No. 165).] 
 
 1 [Maty wrote in his Epistle: " Avez-vous pu croire qu'on pardonnerait a 
 un homme n6 pour assister aux assembles tumultueuses du senat, et a la 
 destruction des renards de sa province, des discussions sur ce qu'on pensa, il y 
 a deux mille ans, sur les divinit^s de la Grece, et sur les premiers siecles de 
 Rome ? . . . Vos notes sont savantes, mais qui a Newmarket ou dans le caf6 
 d' Arthur peut les lire? . . . J'ai gard6 pour le dernier le plus grand de vos 
 crimes. Vous etes Anglais, et vous choisissez la langue de vos ennemis. Le 
 vieux Caton fr^mit, et dans son Club Antigallican vous d^nonce, le punch a la 
 main, un ennemi de la patrie " {Misc. Works, iv. , 7-9).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon sums up an interesting criticism on the Ciceronianus by saying 
 that "perhaps the natural conclusion from these various difficulties, where 
 either freedom or correctness must be sacrificed, was, that, instead of that 
 ungrateful labour upon a dead language, it would be better to improve and 
 cultivate the living ones. But this conclusion was too much for the age of 
 Erasmus" {Misc. Works, v., 262).] 
 
132 EDWARD GIBBON [i76o-62 
 
 of the natives. The vanity of Tully was doubly interested in 
 the Greek memoirs of his own consulship ; and if he modestly 
 supposes that some Latinisms might be detected in his style, 
 he is confident of his own skill in the art of Isocrates and 
 Aristotle ; and he requests his friend Atticus to disperse the 
 copies of his work at Athens, and in the other cities of Greece 
 (Ad Atticum, \., 19 ; ii., 1). But it must not be forgotten, that 
 from infancy to manhood Cicero and his contemporaries had 
 read and declaimed, and composed with equal diligence in 
 both languages ; and that he was not allowed to frequent a 
 Latin school till he had imbibed the lessons of the Greek 
 grammarians and rhetoricians. In modern times, the language 
 of France has been diffused by the merit of her writers, the 
 social manners of the natives, the influence of the monarchy, 
 and the exile of the Protestants.^ Several foreigners have 
 seized the opportunity of speaking to Europe in this common 
 dialect, and Germany may plead the authority of Leibnitz 
 and Frederick, of the first of her philosophers, and the 
 greatest of her kings.^ The just pride and laudable prejudice 
 of England has restrained this communication of idioms ; and 
 of all the nations on this side of the Alps, my countrymen are 
 the least practised, and least perfect in the exercise of the 
 French tongue. By Sir William Temple ^ and Lord Chester- 
 
 1 [According to Voltaire ((Euvres, xviii. , 320), in the three years that followed 
 the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685-88) nearly fifty thousand Protestant 
 families left France.] 
 
 2 [Voltaire wrote in 1740 : " La langue franqaise est devenue presque la 
 langue universelle " (ib., xlvii. , 479). In his Slide de Louis XIV. published 
 in 1752, he says of Leibnitz : " C'^tait peut-etre le savant le plus universel de 
 I'Europe. . . . Jamais la correspondance entre les philosophes ne fut plus uni- 
 verselle ; Leibnitz servait a I'animer. On a vu une r^publique litt6raire 6tablie 
 insensiblement dans I'Europe malgr^ les guerres, et malgr^ les religions dif- 
 f^rentes. . . . Les v6ritables savants dans chaque genre ont resserr6 les liens 
 de cette grande soci6t6 des esprits r6pandue partout, et partout inddpendante. 
 Cette correspondance dure encore, elle est une des consolations des maux que 
 Tambition et la politique r^pandent sur la terre " {ib. , xviii., 278). For Gibbon's 
 estimate of Leibnitz see Misc. Works, iii. , 361, 386, 568. " He may be com- 
 pared," Gibbon writes, " to those heroes whose empire has been lost in the 
 ambition of universal conquest " {ib., p. 563). In The Decline (vi. , 444) he calls 
 him " the great Leibnitz, a master of the history of the Middle Ages ".] 
 
 ■" [Swift, in editing Temple's Letters, writes : " I have made some literal 
 amendments, especially in the Latin, French and Spanish " (Temple's Works, 
 ed. 1757, i. , 226). Temple went to France at the age of nineteen, and stayed 
 there two years \j,b., preface, p. 9).] 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 133 
 
 field it was only used on occasions of civility and business,^ 
 and their printed letters will not be quoted as models of 
 composition. Lord Bolingbroke may have published in French 
 a sketch of his Reflections on Exile "^ ; but his reputation now 
 reposes on the address of Voltaire, " Docte sermones utriusque 
 lingUEe " ; ^ and by his English dedication to Queen Caroline/ 
 and his Essay on Epic Poetn/,^ it should seem that Voltaire 
 himself wished to deserve a return of the same compliment. 
 The exception of Count Hamilton cannot fairly be urged ; 
 though an Irishman by birth, he was educated in France from 
 his childhood. Yet I am surprised that a long residence in 
 England, and the habits of domestic conversation, did not 
 affect the ease and purity of his inimitable style ; and I regret 
 the omission of his English verses, which might have afforded 
 an amusing object of comparison.^ I might therefore assume 
 the piimiis ego in patriam, etc. ; "^ but with what success I have 
 
 1 [Chesterfield sometimes wrote to his son in French as a mode of teaching 
 him the language.] 
 
 2 [The Reflections upon Exile, written in France in 1716, are included in 
 their English form in Bolingbroke's Works, ed. 1809, i. , 137. I find no mention 
 of a French version of this essay.] 
 
 3 [In the Discours sur la Trag^die d Mylord Bolingbroke, prefixed to Brutus 
 (1730), Voltaire writes: " Souffrez done queje vous pr&ente Brutus, quoique 
 ^crit dans une autre langue, docte sei-monis \_sic.'\ utriusque linguce, k vous qui me 
 donneriez des le9ons de fran9ais aussi-bien que d'anglais, a vous qui m'appren- 
 driez du moins a rendre a ma langue cette force et cette 6nergie qu'inspire la 
 noble liberty de penser ; car les sentimens vigoureux de I'ame passent toujours 
 dans le langage ; et qui pense fortement, parle de meme " (CEuvres, i. , 309). 
 
 Voltaire applied to Bolingbroke Horace's address to Mascenas, translated 
 by Francis : — 
 
 " The Greek and Roman languages are thine" (Odes, iii., 8, 5).] 
 * [It was prefixed to the fourth edition of La Henriade, published in London 
 in 1728. See CEuvres de Voltaire, viii., 14, where 1726 is given as the date of 
 publication, a year before Caroline became queen.] 
 
 ^ \Essai sur la Podsie Epique (CEuvres de Voltaire, viii., 346). In a note it 
 is stated : " Cet Essai avait d'abord it€ compost en anglais par I'auteur lorsqu'il 
 6tait a Londres, en 1726 ; on le traduisit en franpais a Paris : . . . mais, depuis, 
 I'auteur refondit cet ouvrage en I'^crivant en franpais ". See also ib., p. 424.] 
 
 •> [Ante, p. II, n. 1. " Ses Alinwires du comte de Grammont, son beau-fr^re, 
 sont de tous les livres celui 011 le fonds le plus mince est par6 du style le plus 
 gai, le plus vif et le plus agr^able. C'est le modele d'une conversation enjou^e, 
 plus que le modde d'un livre" (ib., xvii. , 97). 
 
 In the introduction to Sir Walter Scott's edition of the English version the 
 English verses are given.] 
 
 ■* [" Primus ego in patriam mecum (modo vita supersit) 
 Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas." 
 
 (Virgil, Georgica, iii., 10.) 
 " I, first of Romans, shall in triumph come 
 From conquered Greece, and bring her trophies home." 
 
 (Dryden. )] 
 
134 EDWARD GIBBON [i76o-62 
 
 explored this untrodden path must be left to the decision of 
 my French readers. Dr. Maty^ who might himself be ques- 
 tioned as a foreigner, has secured his retreat at my expense. 
 " Je ne crois pas que vous vous piquiez d'etre moins facile a 
 reconnaitre pour un Anglois que Lucullus pour un Romain." 
 My friends at Paris have been more indulgent, they received 
 me as a countryman, or at least as a provincial ; but they were 
 friends and Parisians. ^ The defects which Maty insinuates, 
 " Ces traits saillants, ces figures hardies, ce sacrifice de la regie 
 au sentiment, et de la cadence a la force," ^ are the faults 
 of the youth, rather than of the stranger : and after the long 
 and laborious exercise of my own language, I am conscious 
 that my French style has been ripened and improved. 
 
 I have already hinted, that the publication of my essay was 
 delayed till I had embraced the military profession. I shall 
 now amuse myself with the recollection of an active scene, 
 which bears no affinity to any other period of my studious and 
 social life. 
 
 In the outset of a glorious war, the English people had 
 been defended by the aid of German mercenaries.*^ A national 
 
 1 The copious extracts which were given in the Journal Etranger by Mr. 
 Suard, a judicious critic, must satisfy both the author and the public. I may 
 here observe, that I have never seen in any literary review a tolerable account 
 of my History. The manufacture of journals, at least on the continent, is 
 miserably debased. — Gibbon. 
 
 [Gibbon wanted Suard to translate the Decline {Misc. Works, ii. , 176). He 
 had translated Robertson's Charles V. (Stewart's Robertson, p. 218), and 
 Hume's Concise Account of the Dispute between Mr. Huine and Air. Rousseau 
 (Hume's Letters to Strahan, pp. 92-93). 
 
 " The first time Suard saw Burke, who was at Reynolds's, Johnson touched 
 him on the shoulder and said, ' Le grand Burke ' " [Boswelliana, p. 299). When 
 in 1774 Suard was admitted into the French Academy, Voltaire wrote to him : 
 " Je vais relire votre Discours pour la quatri^me fois " {CEuvres de Voltaire, 
 Ivi., 387). 
 
 " Sallo [Denis de), n6 en 1626 . . . inventeur des journaux. Bayle perfec- 
 tionna ce genre, d6shonore ensuite par quelques journaux que publierent k I'envi 
 des libraires avides, et que des ecrivains obscurs remplirent d'extraits infideles, 
 d'inepties et de mensonges. Enfin on est parvenu jusqu'a faire un trafic public 
 d'^loges et de censures, surtout dans des feuilles p^riodiques ; et la litt^rature a 
 6prouv6 le plus grand avilissement par ces infames manages" [ib., xvii., i5i).] 
 
 2 l^Misc. Works, iv. , 13. See ante, p. 129, n.] 
 
 3 [On March 23, 1756, the King informed Parliament, that, as France 
 threatened an invasion, he had sent for a body of Hessian troops. Both 
 Houses addressed him to send in addition for twelve battalions of his Electoral 
 troops with artillery (/'flr/. Hist., xv., 700-3). "As the fears of an invasion 
 
1760-62] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 135 
 
 militia has been the cry of every patriot since the Revolution ^ ; 
 and this measure, both in parliament and in the field, was 
 supported by the country gentlemen or Tories, who insensibly 
 transferred their loyalty to the house of Hanover : in the 
 language of Mr. Burke, they have changed the idol, but they 
 have preserved the idolatry. ^ In the act of offering our 
 names and receiving our commissions, as major and captain^ 
 in the Hampshire regiment (June 12, 1759), we had not 
 supposed that we should be dragged away, my father from 
 his farm, myself from my books, and condemned, during two 
 years and a half (May 10, 1760 to December 23, 1762), 
 to a wandering life of military servitude. But a weekly or 
 monthly exercise of thirty thousand provincials would have left 
 them useless and ridiculous ; and after the pretence of an in- 
 vasion had vanished, the popularity of Mr. Pitt gave a sanction 
 to the illegal step of keeping them till the end of the war under 
 arms, in constant pay and duty, and at a distance from their 
 respective homes.* When the King's order for our embodying 
 
 subsided in the minds of the people, their antipathy to these foreign auxiliaries 
 emerged. The ministry was execrated for having reduced the nation to such 
 a low circumstance of disgrace as that they should owe their security to German 
 mercenaries. Nothing would have restrained them from violent acts of outrage 
 but the most orderly, modest and inoffensive behaviour by which both the 
 Hanoverians and Hessians were distinguished " (Smollett's England, ed. i8oo, 
 iii-. 49S)-] 
 
 i[See Appendix 23 and ante, p. 119, n.'\ 
 
 2 [Gibbon says that he had heard Burke exclaim this in the House of 
 Commons {Auto., p. 182).] 
 
 ■'' [Men of property only were qualified to act as officers. ' ' The qualification 
 of a major shall be ^^300, and of a captain _^20o per annum, half of which 
 shall be within the county for which they serve" [Gent. Mag., 1762, p. 226).] 
 
 ■*[" They are not compellable to march out of their counties, unless in case 
 of invasion or actual rebellion" (Blackstone's Commentaries, ed. 1775, i. , 412). 
 On May 30, 1759, Pitt communicated a message to the Commons from the 
 King, " in which, in pursuance of the late Act, His Majesty acquainted the 
 House of the imminent danger of an invasion being attempted ; to the end that 
 His Majesty may cause the militia to march as occasion shall require". The 
 Commons rephed : "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, 
 that he will be graciously pleased to give directions to his Lieutenants of the 
 several counties to use their utmost diligence to carry into execution the several 
 Acts of Parliament made for the better ordering the militia forces " (Pari. Hist. , 
 XV., 940). " The threats of an invasion," wrote Burke, "in a great measure 
 executed the Militia Act, which hardly anything else could have put in execu- 
 tion. . . . Such is the effect when power and patriotism unite ; when liberty and 
 order kiss ; and when a nation sits with a happy security under the shade of 
 
136 EDWARD GIBBON [i76o-62 
 
 came down, it was too late to retreat, and too soon to repent. 
 The south battahon of the Hampshire militia was a small 
 independent corps of four hundred and seventy-six, officers and 
 men, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas Worsley.^ 
 who, after a prolix and passionate contest, delivered us from 
 the tyranny of the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Bolton.- 
 My proper station, as first captain, was at the head of my own, 
 and afterwards of the grenadier, company ^ ; but in the 
 absence, or even in the presence, of the two field officers, I 
 was entrusted by my friend and my father with the eifective 
 labour of dictating the orders, and exercising the battalion. 
 With the help of an original journal, I could write the history 
 of my bloodless and inglorious campaigns ; but as these events 
 have lost much of their importance in my own eyes, they shall 
 be dispatched in a few words. From Winchester, the first 
 place of assembly (June 4, 1760), we were removed, at our 
 own request, for the benefit of a foreign education. By the 
 arbitrary, and often capricious, orders of the War-office, the 
 battalion successively marched to the pleasant and hospitable 
 Blandford (June 17); to Hilsea barracks, a seat of disease 
 
 abilities which she has tried, and virtues in which she dares to confide " 
 {^Annual Register, 1759, i. , 7). 
 
 The resolution of the House, whatever effect it had at the time — and it seems 
 to be drawn up ambiguously — must have lost its power when, less than six 
 months later, by Hawke's victory over the French fleet (Nov. 20, 1759) " the 
 long threatened invasion was dissipated" (ib., i. , 53).] 
 
 1 [Gibbon has the following entries in his journal : "Aug. 28, 1762. To-day 
 Sir Thomas came to us to dinner. The Spa has done him a great deal of good, 
 for he looks another man. Pleased to see him, we kept bumperizing till after 
 roll-calling ; Sir Thomas assuring us, every fresh bottle, how infinitely soberer 
 he was grown. 29th. I felt the usual consequence of Sir Thomas's company, 
 and lost a morning because I lost the day before" {Post, Appendix 23. See 
 also Auto., p. 189). 
 
 A militiaman who appeared drunk " at the time of exercise " had " to forfeit 
 ten shillings, or sit an hour in the stocks" (Gent. Mag., T-JSj, p. 303).] 
 
 2 [For his "tyranny" see Auto., p. 183. "July 12, 1765. The Duke of 
 Bolton, the other morning — nobody knows why or wherefore, except that there 
 is a good deal of madness in the blood, sat himself down upon the floor in his 
 dressing-room, and shot himself through the head" (Walpole's Letters, iv. , 
 385). See also ante, p. 119, «.] 
 
 ^[See Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 373, for "An Account of a Week's pay Due 
 to Captain Gibbon's Company of Militia ". The pay of a private was 3s. 5d. a 
 week; of a sergeant 6s. lod.] 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 137 
 
 and discord 1 (September 1) ; to Cranbrook in the weald of 
 Kent (December 11); to the sea-coast of Dover (December 
 27); to Winchester camp (June 25, I76l); to the populous 
 and disorderly town of the Devizes (October 23) ; to 
 Salisbury (February 28, 1762); to our beloved Blandford 
 a second time (March 9) ; and finally, to the fashionable re- 
 sort of Southampton (June 2) ; where the colours were fixed 
 till our final dissolution (December 23). On the beach at 
 Dover we had exercised in sight of the Gallic shores. But 
 the most splendid and useful scene of our life was a four 
 months' encampment on Winchester Down, under the 
 command of the Earl of Effingham.'-^ Our army consisted of 
 the thirty-fourth regiment of foot and six militia corps. The 
 consciousness of our defects was stimulated by friendly 
 emulation. We improved our time and opportunities in 
 morning and evening field-days ; and in the general reviews 
 the South Hampshire were rather a credit than a disgrace to 
 the line. In our subsequent quarters of the Devizes and 
 Blandford, we advanced with a quick step in our military 
 studies ; the ballot of the ensuing summer renewed our vigour 
 and youth ; and had the militia subsisted another year, we 
 might have contested the prize with the most perfect of our 
 brethren. 
 
 1 [These barracks were "within the Portsmouth hnes, a square of low, ill- 
 built huts, where," says Gibbon, " we lost many men by fevers and the small- 
 pox" {Auto., p. 185). Dr. Brocklesby, the physician of Johnson and Burke 
 (Boswell's Johnson, iv. , 173, 338, 399), described the barracks in 1763: 
 ' ' The ceilings are low, and ventilators are wanting. They are worse than any 
 ship kept tolerably clean, as the country adjacent is overflowed twice a day. 
 The small-pox apartments are rooms little more than six feet high, with 
 windows that cannot be opened ; and in these no less than sixteen loathsome 
 bodies were often crowded. These barracks swept off the men like a perpetual 
 pestilence. The windows are not suffered to be open, with a view to keep the 
 men warm, and yet save the expense of fire." "The straw," he adds, "on 
 which men lie in their tents should be aired, and turned three times a week."] 
 
 2 [Horace Walpole, writing just after the coronation of George III. , said that 
 the King complained that "the Heralds were ignorant of their office. Lord 
 Effingham, the Earl Marshal, told him he had taken such care of registering 
 directions, that next coronation would be conducted with the greatest order 
 imaginable. The King was so diverted with iMs flattering speech that he made 
 the Earl repeat it several times" (Walpole's Letters, iii., 445). For a review 
 by his Lordship see post. Appendix 24; for his incapacity — "our drowsy 
 general" Gibbon called him — see Auto., p. 186.] 
 
138 EDWARD GIBBON [1760-62 
 
 The loss of so many busy and idle hours was not compen- 
 sated by any elegant pleasure ; and my temper was insensibly 
 soured by the society of our rustic officers.^ In every state 
 there exists, however, a balance of good and evil. The habits 
 of a sedentary life were usefully broken by the duties of an 
 active profession : in the healthful exei'cise of the field I 
 hunted with a battalion, instead of a pack ; and at that time 
 I was ready, at any hour of the day or night, to fly from 
 quarters to London, from London to quarters, on the slightest 
 call of private or regimental business. But my principal 
 obligation to the militia was the making me an Englishman, 
 and a soldier. After my foreign education, with my reserved 
 temper, I should long have continued a stranger in my native 
 country, had I not been shaken in this various scene of new 
 faces and new friends ; had not experience forced me to feel 
 the characters of our leading men, the state of parties, the 
 forms of office, and the operation of our civil and military 
 system. In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments of 
 the language, and science of tactics, which opened a new 
 field of study and observation. I diligently read, and medi- 
 tated the Memoires Militaires of Quintus Icilius (Mr. Guichardt), 
 the only writer who has united the merits of a professor and 
 a veteran. The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion 
 gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion ; and 
 the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may 
 smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman 
 empire. 2 
 
 ^[Post, p. 168 ; and Auto., p. 189.] 
 
 2 [Gibbon, recording in his journal his study of these Mimoires, continues : 
 " Indeed, my own military knowledge was of some service to me, as I am well 
 acquainted with the modern discipline and exercise of a battalion. So that 
 though much inferior to M. Folard and M. Guichardt, who had seen service, I 
 am a much better judge than Salmasius, Casaubon, or Lipsius, mere scholars 
 who perhaps had never seen a battalion under arms" {Misc. Works, v., 222). 
 " Guichardt's Analysis of the two Campaigns in Spain and Africa is the 
 noblest monument that has ever been raised to the fame of Caesar" (The 
 Decline, ii. , 524). "Alas ! Quintus Icihus is no more" {ib., vi. , 65). 
 
 Carlyle tells how Captain Guichard (not Guichardt) got his names Quintus 
 Icilius and his promotion given him by Frederick the Great. ' ' One night the 
 topic happened to be Pharsalia, and the excellent conduct of a certain centurion 
 of the Tenth Legion. . . . ' A dexterous man, that Quintus Icilius the 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 139 
 
 A youth of any spirit is fired even by the play of arms, and 
 in the first sallies of my enthusiasm I had seriously attempted 
 to embrace the regular profession of a soldier. ^ But this 
 military fever was cooled by the enjoyment of our mimic 
 Bellona, who soon unveiled to my eyes her naked deformity. 
 How often did I sigh for my proper station in society and 
 letters. How often (a proud comparison) did I repeat the 
 complaint of Cicero in the command of a provincial army : 
 " Clitellae bovi sunt impositae. Est incredibile quam me 
 negotii tsedeat. Non habet satis magnum campum ille tibi 
 non ignotus cursus animi ; et industrise meae praeclara opera 
 cessat. Lucem, libros, urbem, domum, vos desidero. Sed 
 feram, ut potero ; sit modo annuum. Si prorogatur, actum 
 est.2 " From a service without danger I might indeed have 
 retired without disgrace ; but as often as I hinted a wish of 
 resigning, my fetters were riveted by the friendly intreaties of 
 the colonel, the parental authority of the major, and my own 
 regard for the honour and welfare of the battalion. When I 
 felt that my personal escape was impracticable, I bowed my 
 neck to the yoke : my servitude was protracted far beyond the 
 
 Centurion ! ' observed Frederick. ' Ah, yes ; but excuse me, your Majesty, his 
 name was Quintus Caecilius,' said Guichard. ' No, it was Icilius,' said the 
 K-ing, positive to his opinion on that small point. . . . Next day, Guichard 
 came with the book" (what "Book" nobody would ever yet tell me), "and 
 putting his finger on the passage, ' See, your Majesty : Quintus Cascilius ! ' 
 extinguished his royal opponent. ' Hm,' answered Frederick ; ' so ? — Well, you 
 shall be Quintus Icilius, at any rate ! ' And straightway had him entered in 
 the Army Books as 'Major Quintus Icilius'" {Frederick the Great, lo vol., 
 ed. n.d. , viii. , 114). Carlyle describes "his new book on the Art Military of 
 the Ancients" as " a solid account of that matter, by the first man who ever 
 understood both war and Greek" [ib., p. 2).] 
 
 1 \^Post, end of Appendix 23. Gibbon's service in the militia seems to have 
 left a stain on his character, when we find him writing of soldiers being " de- 
 graded by the industry of mechanic trades" ( The Decline, ii. , 177).] 
 
 '~\_EpistolcB ad Atticum, v., 15. Gibbon italicised "libros," as an indication 
 that he had changed the word. In the original it is "forum ". He has changed 
 moreover the order of the sentence. The first four words come later on in the 
 letter than the rest of the quotation. The following is W. Heberden's transla- 
 tion of the passage as Cicero wrote it : " It is not to be believed how sick I am 
 of this business. The activity of my mind, with which you are so well acquainted 
 has not a sufficient field to exert itself ; and the notable effect of my industry is 
 lost. ... I want the splendour, the forum, the city, my own home, and you. 
 But I will bear it as I can, provided it be but for one year. . . . The paniers, 
 as they say, have been put on the wrong beast " (Cicero's Letters^ 1825, i., 289).] 
 
140 EDWARD GIBBON [i 760-62 
 
 annual patience of Cicero ; and it was not till after the pre- 
 liminaries of peace ^ that I received my discharge, from the 
 act of government which disembodied the militia.^ 
 
 When I complain of the loss of time, justice to myself and 
 to the militia must throw the greatest part of that reproach on 
 the first seven or eight months, while I was obliged to learn 
 as well as to teach. The dissipation of Blandford, and the 
 disputes of Portsmouth, consumed the hours which were not 
 employed in the field ; and amid the perpetual hurry of an 
 inn, a barrack, or a guard-room, all literary ideas were banished 
 from my mind. After this long fast, the longest which I have 
 ever known, I once more tasted at Dover the pleasures of 
 reading and thinking ; and the hungry appetite with which I 
 opened a volume of Tully's philosophical works is still present 
 to my memory.^ The last review of my Essay before its pub- 
 lication, had prompted me to investigate the nature of the gods ; 
 my inquiries led me to the Histoire Critique du Manich6isme 
 of Beausobre, who discusses many deep questions of Pagan and 
 Christian theology * : and from this rich treasury of facts and 
 opinions, I deduced my own consequences, beyond the holy 
 circle of the author. After this recovery I never relapsed 
 into indolence ; and my example might prove, that in the life 
 most averse to study, some hours may be stolen, some minutes 
 may be snatched. Amidst the tumult of Winchester camp I 
 sometimes thought and read in my tent ; in the more settled 
 
 1 [The preliminaries were signed on Nov. 3, 1762 {Annual Register, 1762, i., 
 S4)-] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 24 for Gibbon's journal.] 
 
 2[" I lost some time," he wrote, " before I could recover my habit of appli- 
 cation" {post, Appendix 23, under date of Jan. 11, 1761).] 
 
 4 [' ' The learned historian [Beausobre] spins with incomparable art the 
 systematic thread of opinion, and transforms himself by turns into the person 
 of a saint, a sage, or an heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive ; he 
 betrays an amiable partiality in favour of the weaker side, and, while he guards 
 against calumny, he does not allow sufficient scope for superstition and 
 fanaticism" {The Decline, v., 97). 
 
 On his death in 1738, Frederick the Great wrote to Voltaire: "Nous 
 venons de perdre ici un des plus grands hommes d'Allemagne. C'est le 
 fameux M. de Beausobre . . . ennemi implacable des j&uites, la meilleure 
 plume de Berlin . . . d'ailleurs sentant quelque faible pour la superstition" 
 {(Euvres de Voltaire, lix. , 256).] 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 141 
 
 quarters of the Devizes, Blandford, and Southampton, I always 
 secured a separate lodging, and the necessary books ; and in 
 the summer of 1762, while the new militia was raising,^ I 
 enjoyed at Buriton two or three months of literary repose. 
 In forming a new plan of study, I hesitated between the 
 mathematics and the Greek language ; both of which I had 
 neglected since my return from Lausanne. I consulted a 
 learned and friendly mathematician, Mr. George Scott, a pupil 
 of de Moivre ^ ; and his map of a country which I have never 
 explored, may perhaps be more serviceable to others.^ As 
 soon as I had given the preference to Greek, the example of 
 Scaliger and my own reason determined me on the choice of 
 Homer, the father of poetry, and the Bible of the ancients : 
 but Scaliger ran through the Iliad in one and twenty days ; * 
 and I was not dissatisfied with my own diligence for perform- 
 ing the same labour in an equal number of weeks. After the 
 first difficulties were surmounted, the language of nature and 
 harmony^ soon became easy and familiar, and each day I 
 sailed upon the ocean with a brisker gale and a more steady 
 course. 
 
 1 [The militia served for three years (G^«?. Mag., 1757, p. 302). They had 
 been raised in the summer of 1759 (ante, p. 135).] 
 
 2 [" De Moivre, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled in England. 
 He revolutionised higher trigonometry by the discovery of the theorem known 
 by his name. . . . His work on the theory of probability surpasses anything 
 done by any other mathematician except Laplace" (Cajori's Hist, of Math. , 
 1894, p. 245).] 
 
 ' [See Misc. Works, ii. , 44. Scott was a Commissioner of Excise. He had 
 been sub-preceptor to the Prince of Wales (George IH.), on Bolingbroke's 
 recommendation. For his clapping Johnson on the back see Boswell's Joknso7i, 
 'in., 117, and Jokn. Misc., i. , 180).] 
 
 ■*[Pattison (Essays, i., 137) describes how Joseph Scaliger, at the age of 
 eighteen, began the study of Greek by enrolling himself in the class of the most 
 renowned Greek scholar in Europe. " A trial of two months opened his eyes, 
 and he understood that to begin one must begin at the beginning. He resolved 
 to shut himself up in his chamber, and become his own teacher. With the aid 
 of a Latin translation he went through Homer in one and twenty days." 
 Pattison adds (p. ig8) that Scaliger does not say whether by Homer he means 
 both the Iliad and Odyssey. For Gibbon's reasons for beginning with Homer 
 see Misc. Works, v., 243.] 
 
 s[In The Decline, vii. , 114, he describes Greek as " a musical and prolific 
 language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstrac- 
 tions of philosophy)".] 
 
142 EDWARD GIBBON [i76o-62 
 
 'Ey 5' hve/xos irprjffev fxeffov Iffriov, aficpl Se KVjxa 
 'Sreiprj ■jTop<pvpeov /jieydX' Jaxe, vrjbs lov(T7]s • 
 'H 5' e&eev Kara Kvjxa dLairpTjcrcrovira KeXevOa.^ 
 
 In the study of a poet who has since become the most in- 
 timate of my friends, I successively applied many passages 
 and fragments of Greek writers ; and among these I shall 
 notice a life of Homer^ in the Opuscula Mythologica of Gale,^ 
 several books of the geography of Strabo,^ and the entire 
 treatise of Longinus, which, from the title and the style, is 
 equally worthy of the epithet of sublime.^ My grammatical 
 skill was improved, my vocabulary was enlarged ; and in the 
 militia I acquired a just and indelible knowledge of the first 
 of languages. On every march, in every journey, Horace was 
 always in my pocket, and often in my hand : but I should not 
 mention his two critical epistles, the amusement of a morning, 
 had they not been accompanied by the elaborate commentary 
 of Dr. Hurd, now Bishop of Worcester.^ On the interesting 
 
 '^[Iliad, i., 481.] 
 
 " Fair wind, and blowing fresh, 
 
 Apollo sent them ; quick they rear'd the mast, 
 Then spread th' unsullied canvas to the gale, 
 And the wind fill'd it. Roar'd the sable flood 
 Around the bark, that ever as she went 
 Dash'd wide the brine, and scudded swift away." 
 
 (Covirper's Home)-.) — Sheffield. 
 '^ [Thomas Gale. Evelyn recorded on Jan. 29, 1683 : "Supped at Sir Joseph 
 Williamson's, where was a select company of our Society [the Royal Society], 
 Sir William Petty, Dr. Gale (that learned schoolmaster of St. Paul's), etc. 
 The conversation was philosophical and cheerful, on divers considerable 
 questions proposed ; as of the hereditary succession of the Roman Emperors " 
 (Evelyn's Diary, ii., 180). Gale was made Dean of York. See Pepys's Diary, 
 ed. 1851, v., 423, for an amusing anecdote about his ghost.] 
 
 "^[Gibbon recorded on Dec. 31, 1763: "I have always been an admirer of 
 Strabo's good sense and variety of knowledge. Antiquity has left us more 
 brilliant performances than his ; but I know of none more solid and more 
 useful" {Misc. WorA's, v., 445).] 
 
 ^[See ii., v., 252-55, 262-69, 273-77, for Gibbon's study and criticism of 
 Longinus in 1762. On Oct. 3 he recorded : " Till now I was acquainted only 
 with two ways of criticising a beautiful passage : the one, to show by an exact 
 anatomy of it the distinct beauties of it, and whence they sprung ; the other, an 
 idle exclamation, or a general encomium, which leaves nothing behind it. 
 Longinus has shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings 
 upon reading it ; and tells them with such energy that he communicates them " 
 (i6., p. 263). See also T/ie Decline, i., 58, 309.] 
 
 ^\Horatii Flacci Episiolrs ad Pisones et Augustum ; with an English Com- 
 tnentary and Notes. Second edition. Cambridge, 1757. Gibbon wrote of 
 
1760-62] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 143 
 
 subjects of composition and imitation of epic and dramatic 
 poetry, I presumed to think for myself; and thirty close- 
 written pages in folio could scarcely comprise my full and free 
 discussion of the sense of the master and the pedantry of the 
 servant. 
 
 After his oracle Dr. Johnson, ^ my friend Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 denies all original genius, any natural propensity of the mind 
 to one art or science rather than another. ^ Without engaging 
 in a metaphysical or rather verbal dispute, I know, by experi- 
 ence, that from my early youth I aspired to the character of 
 an historian.^ While I served in the militia, before and after 
 the publication of my essay, this idea ripened in my mind ; 
 nor can I paint in more lively colours the feelings of the 
 moment, than by transcribing some passages, under their 
 respective dates, from a journal which I kept at that time. 
 
 Buriton, April 14, 1761. 
 
 (In a short excursion from Dover.) 
 
 " Having thought of several subjects for an historical com- 
 position, I chose the expedition of Charles VIII. of France 
 into Italy.* I read two memoirs of Mr. de Foncemagne^ 
 in the Academy of Inscriptions (torn, xvii., pp. 5S^ — 607), and 
 
 Hurd : " I know few writers more deserving of the great, though prostituted, 
 name of critic ; but, hke many critics, he is better quahfied to instruct than to 
 execute. His manner appears to me harsh and affected, and his style clouded 
 with obscure metaphors, and needlessly preplexed with expressions exotic or 
 technical. . . . His discourse upon the several provinces of the drama is a 
 truly critical performance ; I may even say, a truly philosophical one" {Misc. 
 Works, iv., 113, 134). S)&Qpost, pp. 146, 178. 
 
 Boswell wrote a long note on one of Hurd's Notes [Life of Johnson, iii., 74).] 
 
 i["We are both of Dr. Johnson's school," Reynolds wrote to a friend. 
 " He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a 
 great deal of dust" (John. Misc., ii., 227; BossieWs Johnson, i., 245).] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 25.] 
 
 '■^[Ante, p. 43. Gibbon was an exception to Johnson's rule. " Never ask 
 a baby of seven years old," he said, "which way his genius leads him, when we 
 all know that a boy of seven years old has no genius for anything except a 
 peg-top and an apple-pie" [John. Misc., i. , 314).] 
 
 ''["I meditate," Gibbon wrote, "a history of the expedition of Charles 
 Vni. into Italy ; an event which changed the face of Europe" {Atisc. Works, 
 iii., 206). " In five months Charles VIII. traversed affrighted Italy as a con- 
 queror, gave laws to the Florentines and the Pope, was acknowledged King of 
 Naples, and assumed the title of Emperor of the East " {id., p. 51).] 
 
 5 [_Post, p. 153.] 
 
144 EDWARD GIBBON [i762 
 
 abstracted them. I likewise finished this day a dissertation, 
 in which I examine the right of Charles VIII. to the crown 
 of Naples, and the rival claims of the House of Anjou and 
 Arragon : it consists of ten folio pages, besides large notes." ^ 
 
 Buriton, August 4<, 1761. 
 
 (In a week's excursion from Winchester camp.) 
 
 "After having long revolved subjects for my intended 
 historical essay, I renounced my first thought of the ex- 
 pedition of Charles VIII. as too remote from us, and rather an 
 introduction to great events, than great and important in 
 itself. I successively chose and rejected the crusade of 
 Richard the First, the barons' wars against John and Henry 
 III,, the History of Edward the Black Prince, the lives and 
 comparisons of Henry V. and the Emperor Titus, the life of 
 Sir Philip Sidney, or that of the Marquis of Montrose. At 
 length I have fixed on Sir Walter Raleigh for my hero. His 
 eventful story is varied by the characters of the soldier and 
 sailor, the courtier and historian ; and it may afford such a 
 fund of materials as I desire, which have not yet been properly 
 manufactured. At present I cannot attempt the execution of 
 this work. Free leisure, and the opportunity of consulting 
 many books, both printed and manuscript, are as necessary as 
 they are impossible to be attained in my present way of life. 
 However, to acquire a general insight into my subject and 
 resources, I read the life of Sir Walter Raleigh by Dr. Birch, ^ 
 his copious article in the General Dictionary by the same hand, 
 and the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James the First in 
 Hume's History of TLngland!' 
 
 Buriton, Januarx) 1762. 
 
 (In a month's absence from the Devizes.) 
 
 " During this interval of repose, I again turned my thoughts 
 to Sir Walter Raleigh, and looked more closely into my mate- 
 rials. I read the two volumes in quarto of the Bacon Papers, 
 published by Dr. Birch ; the Fragmenta Regalia of Sir Robert 
 
 ^[Misc. Works , ni. , 2o6.] 
 
 2 [See Boswell's Johnson, i., 226, for Johnson's letter to Birch about an auto- 
 graph manuscript of Raleigh's.] 
 
1762] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 145 
 
 Naunton, Mallet's Life of Lord Bacon,^ and the political 
 treatises of that great man in the first volume of his works, 
 with many of his letters in the second ; Sir William Monson's 
 Naval Tracts, and the elaborate Lfe of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 which Mr. Oldys has prefixed to the best edition of his Histor-y 
 of the World.'^ My subject opens upon me, and in general 
 improves upon a nearer prospect." 
 
 Buriton, July 26, 1762. 
 
 (During my summer residence.) 
 
 " I am afraid of being reduced to drop my hero ; but my 
 time has not, however, been lost in the research of his story, 
 and of a memorable aera of our English annals. The Life of 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, by Oldys, is a very poor performance ; a 
 servile panegyric, or flat apology, tediously minute, and com- 
 posed in a dull and affected style. Yet the author was a man 
 of diligence and learning, who had read everything relative to 
 his subject, and whose ample collections are arranged with 
 perspicuity and method. Excepting some anecdotes lately 
 revealed in the Sidney and Bacon Papers,^ I know not what I 
 should be able to add. My ambition (exclusive of the uncer- 
 tain merit of style and sentiment) must be confined to the 
 hope of giving a good abridgment of Oldys. ^ I have even 
 the disappointment of finding some parts of this copious work 
 very dry and barren ; and these parts are unluckily some of 
 the most characteristic : Raleigh's colony of Virginia,, his 
 quarrels with Essex, the true secret of his conspiracy, and. 
 
 1 [Ante, p. 82, n. i.] 
 
 2 [Published in 1736 in 2 vols. , folio.] 
 
 3 [" Letters and Memorials of State, wrote and collected by the Sydneys, etc. ; 
 published by Arthur Collins Esq. ; 2 vols. " [Gent. Mag., 1746, p. 276). 
 
 ' ' Letters, Speeches, Charges, etc. , of Lord Chancellor Bacon ; published by T. 
 Birch, D.D. " [ib., 1762, p. 602).] 
 
 * [A list of Oldys's writings is given in the Gent. Mag., 1784, pp. 161, 272. 
 ' ' He was thrown into the Fleet prison for debt. . . . After his release, such 
 was his affection for the place he left that he constantly spent his evenings in it. 
 He was an excellent picker-up of facts and materials ; but had so little the 
 power of arranging them, or connecting them by intermediate ideas, that he 
 was obliged to discontinue his labours in the Biographia Britannica, and, I 
 have been told, proceeded no further than the letter A " [ib., p. 260 ; see also 
 'QoswelVs Johnson, i., 175).] 
 
 10 
 
146 EDWARD GIBBON [i762 
 
 above all, the detail of his private life, the most essential and 
 important to a biographer. My best resource would be in the 
 circumjacent history of the times, and perhaps in some digres- 
 sions artfully introduced, like the fortunes of the Peripatetic 
 philosophy in the portrait of Lord Bacon. But the reigns of 
 Elizabeth and James the First are the period of English 
 history which has been the most variously illustrated : and 
 what new lights could I reflect on a subject which has exer- 
 cised the accurate industry of Birch,^ the lively and curious 
 acuteness of Walpole,'^ the critical spirit of Hurd,^ the vigorous 
 sense of Mallet and Robertson, and the impartial philosophy of 
 Hume ? Could I even surmount these obstacles, I should 
 shrink with terror from the modern history of England, where 
 every character is a problem, and every reader a friend or an 
 enemy ; where a writer is supposed to hoist a flag of party, 
 and is devoted to damnation by the adverse faction. Such 
 would be my reception at home : and abroad, the historian of 
 Raleigh must encounter an indifference far more bitter than 
 censure or reproach. The events of his life are interesting ; 
 but his character is ambiguous, his actions are obscure, his 
 writings are English, and his fame is confined to the narrow 
 limits of our language and our island. I must embrace a safer 
 and more extensive theme. 
 
 ^ [Boswell's Johnson, i. , i6o, nJ] 
 
 2 [Horace Walpole published in 1758 his Catalogue of Royal and Noble 
 Authors. 
 
 Gibbon, reviewing in 1768 in the Mimoires Britanniques his Historic 
 Doubts on Richard III., says : " Avant lui I'histoire litt^raire, abandonn^e 
 aux manceuvres de la litt^rature, n'avait pr^sent^ que des nomenclatures s^ches, 
 ou des recherches minutieuses et pu^riles. La noblesse savante de M. Walpole 
 a amus6 les gens du monde, et a m6rit6 I'attention des philosophes " (Misc. 
 Works, iii. , 331). In some notes, to which Lord Sheffield assigns the date 
 of 1768 or 1769, Gibbon describes Walpole as " that ingenious trifler," and 
 goes on to criticise " a very puerile reflexion " of his [ib., v., 571).] 
 
 ^[Gibbon refers to Kurd's Moral and Political Dialogues (1759), which are 
 described by Boswell as having ' ' a woefully Whiggish cast ' ' (Boswell's Johnson, 
 iv., 190). It was "these," said George III., "that made Hurd a Bishop" 
 (Parr's Works, i., 312, 323). Parr was told by Porson that "many notable 
 discoveries might be made by comparing the varice lectiones, the clippings and 
 the filings, the softenings and the varnishings of sundry constitutional doctrines, 
 as they crept by little and little into the different successive editions " {ib., iii., 
 369)-] 
 
1762] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 147 
 
 " There is one which 1 should prefer to all others, The Hisioi-y 
 of tlie Liberty of the Siviss,^ of that independence which a brave 
 people rescued from the House of Austria, defended against 
 a Dauphin of France, and finally sealed with the blood of 
 Charles of Burgundy. From such a theme, so full of public 
 spirit, of military glory, of examples of virtue, of lessons of 
 government, the dullest stranger would catch fire ; what 
 might not / hope, whose talents, whatsoever they may be, 
 would be inflamed with the zeal of patriotism. But the 
 materials of this history are inaccessible to me, fast locked 
 in the obscurity of an old barbarous German dialect, of which 
 I am totally ignorant,^ and which I cannot resolve to learn for 
 this sole and peculiar purpose. 
 
 " I have another subject in view, which is the contrast of 
 the former history : the one a poor, warlike, virtuous republic, 
 which emerges into glory and freedom ; the other a common- 
 wealth, soft, opulent, and corrupt ; which, by just degrees, is 
 precipitated from the abuse to the loss of her liberty : both 
 lessons are, perhaps, equally instructive. This second subject 
 is, The History of the Republic of Florence under the House of 
 Medicis : a period of one hundred and fifty years, which rises 
 or descends from the dregs of the Florentine democracy, to 
 the title and dominion of Cosmo de Medicis in the Grand 
 Duchy of Tuscany. I might deduce a chain of revolutions 
 not unworthy of the pen of Vertot ^ ; singular men, and 
 singular events ; the Medicis four times expelled, and as 
 often recalled ; and the Genius of Freedom reluctantly yield- 
 ing to the arms of Charles V. and the policy of Cosmo. The 
 character and fate of Savanarola, and the revival of arts and 
 letters in Italy, will be essentially connected with the eleva- 
 tion of the family and the fall of the republic. The Medicis 
 stirps quasi fataliter nata ad instauranda vel fovenda studia 
 (Lipsius ad Germanos et Gallos, Epist. viii.) were illustrated 
 by the patronage of learning ; and enthusiasm^ was the 
 
 '^[^Post, p. 171.] 
 
 2 [Gibbon never learnt German (post, p. 233).] 
 
 '^^Ante, p. 90.] *U^-' P- 22, «.] 
 
148 EDWARD GIBBON [i763 
 
 most formidable weapon of their adversaries. On this splendid 
 subject I shall most probably fix ; but 7vhe7i, or where, or ho7v 
 will it be executed ? I behold in a dark and doubtful perspec- 
 tive." 
 
 Res alta terra, et caligine mersas.^ 
 
 The youthful habits of the language and manners of France 
 had left in my mind an ardent desire of revisiting the Continent 
 on a larger and more liberal plan. According to the law of 
 custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the 
 education of an English gentleman ^ : my father had consented 
 to my wish, but I was detained above four years by my rash 
 engagement in the militia. I eagerly grasped the first 
 moments of freedom : three or four weeks in Hampshire and 
 London were employed in the preparations of my journey, 
 and the farewell visits of friendship and civility : my last act 
 in town was to applaud Mallet's new tragedy of Elvira ^ ; a 
 post-chaise conveyed me to Dover, the packet to Boulogne, 
 and such was my diligence, that I reached Paris * on the 28th 
 of January, 1763, only thirty-six days after the disbanding of 
 the militia. Two or three years were loosely defined for the 
 term of my absence ; and I was left at liberty to spend that 
 time in such places and in such a manner as was most agree- 
 able to my taste and judgment.^ 
 
 In this first visit I passed three months and a half (January 
 28 — May 9), and a much longer space might have been agree- 
 ably filled, without any intercourse with the natives. At 
 home we are content to move in the daily round of pleasure 
 
 1 [Virgil, ^^neid, vi. , 267.] 
 
 ^[Post, p. 167.] sj^See Appendix 26.] 
 
 * [Horace Walpole, travelling the same journey in 1765, wrote: "From 
 Boulogne to Paris it will cost me near ten guineas ; but then consider, I travel 
 alone, and carry Louis most part of the way in the chaise with me. A'ous 
 autres milords Anglais are not often so frugal" (Walpole's Letters, iv. , 402). 
 Gibbon also travelled alone in a post-chaise (Corres., i. , 27).] 
 
 5 [In addition to the annuity which he enjoyed of ;i^300, ^^1,200 was allowed 
 by his father for "the extraordinaries of his travels" [Auto., pp. 155, 156). 
 " Whilst I was abroad," he wrote, " I spent about ;^700 a year, a sum, which 
 with the unavoidable expences of travelling, barely supports the appearance of 
 an English gentleman" {Corres., i. , 136).] 
 
1763] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 149 
 
 and business ; and a scene which is always present is supposed 
 to be within our knowledge, or at least within our power. 
 But in a foreign country, curiosity is our business and our 
 pleasure ; and the traveller^ conscious of his ignorance, and 
 covetous of his time, is diligent in the search and the view of 
 every object that can deserve his attention. I devoted many 
 hours of the morning to the circuit of Paris and the neighbour- 
 hood, to the visit of churches and palaces conspicuous by their 
 architecture, to the royal manufactures, collections of books 
 and pictures, and all the various treasures of art, of learning, 
 and of luxury.^ An Englishman may hear without reluctance, 
 that in these curious and costly articles Paris is superior to 
 London ; since the opulence of the French capital arises from 
 the defects of its government and religion. In the absence 
 of Louis XIV. and his successors, the Louvre has been left un- 
 finished : but the millions which have been lavished on the 
 sands of Versailles, and the morass of Marli, could not be 
 supplied by the legal allowance of a British king.^ The 
 
 ^ [Horace Walpole wrote from Paris to Gray on Nov. 19, 1765 (^Letters, iv., 
 435) • " The charms of Paris have not the least attraction for me, nor would 
 keep me an hour on their own account. For the city itself, I cannot conceive 
 where my eyes were ; it is the ugliest, beastliest town in the universe."] 
 
 2 [Versailles and Marli, wrote Gibbon, " have been cemented with the blood 
 of the people " [Auto. , p. 263). Voltaire [CEtmres, xxv. , 311) says of Versailles : 
 " II [Louis XIV] d^pensa a ce palais et aux jardins plus de cinq cents millions, 
 qui en font plus de neuf cents de notre espfece actuelle [^36,000,000]. M. le 
 Due de Cr^qui lui disait : ' Sire, vous avez beau faire, vous n'en ferez Jamais 
 qu'un favori sans nitrite.' " Adam Smith points out the harm that was done 
 in another way by Versailles. He instances it as one of those towns, " supported 
 by the constant or occasional residence of a Court, in which the inferior ranks of 
 people being chiefly maintained by the spending of revenue, are in general idle, 
 dissolute, and poor" (IVealtk of Nations, ed. 1811, ii. , 91). Gibbon wrote in 
 1776 of Louis's expenditure on his army and navy : " France still feels that 
 extraordinary effort " [The Decline, i., 18). 
 
 I have seen a copy of The Guardian in which Mrs. Piozzi recorded on the 
 margin of No. loi : ' ' Poor lost Versailles ! Its misfortunes have been prettily 
 celebrated in a popular street ballad of August, 1794, when there was much 
 talk of an invasion from France :— 
 
 ' ' ' No British palace e'er was built 
 
 With poor men's blood or tears, Sir, 
 Like proud Versailles pollute with guilt, 
 
 Which found a lot severe, Sir. 
 Then let them shun our happy shore. 
 
 Or back again we'll bang 'em ; 
 And of their Tree of Liberty 
 
 A gallows make to hang them.' "] 
 
150 EDWARD GIBBON [i763 
 
 splendour of the French nobles is confined to their town 
 residence ; that of the English is more usefully distributed in 
 their country seats ; and we should be astonished at our own 
 riches, if the labours of architecture, the spoils of Italy and 
 Greece, which are now scattered from Inverary ^ to Wilton,^ 
 were accumulated in a few streets between Marybone and 
 Westminster. All superfluous ornament is rejected by the 
 cold frugality of the protestants ; but the catholic superstition, 
 which is always the enemy of reason, is often the parent of the 
 arts. The wealthy communities of priests and monks expend 
 their revenues in stately edifices ; and the parish church of 
 St. Sulpice, one of the noblest structures in Paris, was built 
 and adorned by the private industry of a late cure.^ In this 
 outset, and still more in the sequel of my tour, my eye was 
 amused ; but the pleasing vision cannot be fixed by the pen ; 
 the particular images are darkly seen through the medium of 
 five-and-twenty years, and the narrative of my life must not 
 degenerate into a book of travels. 
 
 But the principal end of my journey was to enjoy the 
 society of a polished and amiable people, in whose favour I 
 was strongly prejudiced,* and to converse with some authors, 
 
 1 [The seat of the Dukes of Argyle. " What I admire here," said Johnson, 
 " is the total defiance of all expence " (Boswell's Johnson, v., 355).] 
 
 2 [The seat of the Earls of Pembroke. "Versailles," wrote Adam Smith, 
 "is an ornament and an honour to France, Stowe and Wilton to England" 
 ( Wealth of Nations, ii., 109).] 
 
 ^ [Voltaire said in an article entitled Des Embellissemens de Paris (1749) : 
 " A qui appartient-il d'embellir la ville, sinon aux habitans qui jouissent dans 
 son sein de tout ce que I'opulence et les plaisirs peuvent prodiguer aux hommes ? 
 . . . Je ne demande autre chose, sinon qu'on veuille avec fermet6. . . . Le 
 c61ebre cur6 de Saint-Sulpice voulut, et il batit, sans aucun fonds, un vaste 
 Edifice" (Q2icvres de Voltaire, xxvi., 162, 170). The cur6, who died in 1750, 
 was J. B. Languet de Gergy (ib., n.). 
 
 Gibbon recorded in his journal on Feb. 21, 1763 : " Nous jetames ensuite un 
 coup-d'ceil sur I'dglise de Saint-Sulpice, dont la fa9ade (le pr^texte et le fruit de 
 tant de lotteries) n'est point encore achev^e " [Misc. Works, i., 160).] 
 
 In The Morning Chronicle, Nov. 25, T793, under date of Paris, Nov. 11, it 
 is reported that ' ' the Sections of Mutius Scsevola and of the Red Cap brought 
 twenty hand carriages full of the precious spoils of the Church of St. Sulpitius. 
 ' That superb Temple,' said the Orator, ' whose gold, marble and brass 
 reproach us with widows' and orphans' tears, shall be shut till the moment of 
 its regeneration, when it shall be dedicated to Reason.' Honourable mention."] 
 
 4 [In 1781 Gibbon described Lewis XVI. as "the absolute monarch of an 
 industrious, wealthy and affectionate people" {The Decline, ii. , 196). "If 
 Julian," he wrote, " could now revisit the capital of France, he might converse 
 
1763] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 151 
 
 whose conversation, as I fondly imagined, must be far more 
 pleasing and instructive than their writings. The moment 
 was happily chosen. At the close of a successful war the 
 British name was respected on the continent. 
 
 Clarum et venerabile nomen 
 Gentibus.^ 
 
 Our opinions, our fashions, even our games, were adopted in 
 France, a ray of national glory illuminated each individual, 
 and every Englishman was supposed to be born a patriot and 
 a philosopher.^ For myself, I carried a personal recommen- 
 dation : my name and my Essay were already known ; the 
 compliment of having written in the French language entitled 
 me to some returns of civility and gratitude. I was considered 
 as a man of letters,^ who wrote for amusement. Before my 
 departure I had obtained from the Duke de Nivernois,^ Lady 
 Hervey,^ the Mallets, Mr. Walpole, etc., many letters of 
 recommendation to their private or literary friends. Of these 
 epistles the reception and success were determined by the 
 
 with men of science and genius, capable of understanding and of instructing a 
 disciple of the Greeks ; he might excuse the lively and graceful follies of a nation, 
 whose martial spirit has never been enervated by the indulgence of luxury ; and 
 he must applaud the perfection of that inestimable art which softens and refines 
 and embellishes the intercourse of social life" {ib., ii., 287). Eleven years later 
 he described France as ' ' that inhospitable land in which a people of slaves is 
 suddenly become a nation of tyrants and cannibals. . . . Our only hope is 
 now in their devouring one another ; they are furious and hungfry monsters " 
 (Misc. Works, ii. , 469, 474).] 
 
 ^[Lucan, ix., 202. For Burke's fine application of these lines to Lord 
 Chatham see E. J. Payne's Burke, i., 144.] 
 
 ^[See Appendix 27.] 
 
 3 [After " letters " follows in the original, " or rather as a gentleman " [Auto. , 
 p. 200). See ib. for his boast how his dress, etc., distinguished him from other 
 authors.] 
 
 ■* [Gibbon wrote of him: "A noble statesman, who has managed weighty 
 and delicate negociations, ingeniously illustrates the political system of Clovis " 
 ( The Decline, iv. , 102). To the Duke he was introduced by Maty. ' ' He 
 received me civilly, but (perhaps through Maty's fault) treated me more as a 
 man of letters than as a man of fashion" [Misc. Works, i., 157). Gibbon, it 
 seems, had something of the same feeling as Congreve, who " disgusted Voltaire 
 by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not as an author, but a 
 gentleman ; to which the Frenchman replied, that if he had been only a gentle- 
 man, he should not have come to visit him " (Johnson's Works, viii., 30),] 
 
 ^[Ante, p. 115.] 
 
152 EDWARD GIBBON [ms 
 
 character and situation of the persons by whom and to whom 
 they were addressed : the seed was sometimes cast on a 
 barren rock, and it sometimes xnultiplied an hundred fold in 
 the production of new shoots^ spreading branches, and 
 exquisite fruit. But upon the whole, I had reason to praise 
 the national urbanity, which from the court has diffused its 
 gentle influence to the shop, the cottage, and the schools. ^ 
 Of the men of genius of the age, Montesquieu and Fontenelle 
 were no more ; Voltaire resided on his own estate near Geneva ; 
 Rousseau in the preceding year had been driven from his 
 hermitage of Montmorency ; ^ and I blush at my having 
 neglected to seek, in this journey, the acquaintance of BufFon.^ 
 Among the men of letters whom I saw, D'Alembert and 
 Diderot held the foremost rank in merit, or at least in fame. 
 I shall content myself with enumerating the well-known 
 names of the Count de Caylus,^ of the Abbe de la Bleterie, 
 Barthelemy, Raynal, Arnaud, of Messieurs de la Condamine, 
 du Clos, de S*^ Palaye, de Bougainville, Caperonnier, de 
 Guignes, Suard, etc., without attempting to discriminate the 
 shades of their characters, or the degrees of our connection. 
 Alone, in a morning visit, I commonly found the artists and 
 authors of Paris less vain, and more reasonable, than in the 
 circles of their equals, with whom they mingle in the houses 
 
 1 [Gibbon recorded in his journal in May, 1763 : ' ' Heureux effet de ce 
 caractere Mger et aimable du Frangais, qui a ^tabli dans Paris una douceur at 
 una liberty dans la soci^t^, inconnuas a I'antiquit^, et encore ignor^es das autras 
 nations" [Misc. Works, i., 163). 
 
 " In general," writes Walpole (Letters, iv. , 413), "the style of conversation 
 is solemn, pedantic, and seldom animated but by a dispute. I was expressing 
 my aversion to disputes. Mr. Hume, who very gratefully admires the tone of 
 Paris, having never known any other tone, said with great surprise, "Why, 
 what do you like, if you hate both disputes and whisk [whist]?"] 
 
 2 [' ' Montmorency is a dirty little town 14 miles from Paris. In the house 
 called L Ermitage, about half a mile off, Rousseau resided " (Murray's Hand- 
 book for France, ed. 1859, p. 22). His Emile, published in 1762, being con- 
 demned by the Parliament of Paris, he fled [CEuvres de Rousseau, ed. 1782, 
 xxiv., 3).] 
 
 ^["The immortal Buffon]" {The Decline, iv. , 243). "Read (it is no un- 
 plaasing task) the incomparable articles of the Horse and the Camel in the 
 Natural History of M. de Bufifon " {ib. , v. , 315 ; see post, p. 199).] 
 
 * [For these eminent men and women see Appendix 28.] 
 
1763] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 153 
 
 of the rich.^ Four days in a week, I had a place, without 
 invitation, at the hospitable tables of Mesdames GeofFrin and 
 du Bocage, of the celebrated Helvetius, and of the Baron 
 d'Olbach. In these symposia the pleasures of the table were 
 improved by lively and liberal conversation ^ ; the company 
 was select, though various and voluntary. 
 
 The society of Madame du Bocage was more soft and 
 moderate than that of her rivals, and the evening con- 
 versations of M. de Foncemagne were supported by the 
 good sense and learning of the principal members of the 
 Academy of Inscriptions. The opera and the Italians I 
 occasionally visited ; but the French theatre, both in tragedy 
 and comedy, was my daily and favourite amusement. Two 
 famous actresses then divided the public applause. For my 
 own part, I preferred the consummate art of the Claron, to 
 the intemperate sallies of the Dumesnil,^ which were extolled 
 by her admirers, as the genuine voice of nature and passion.^ 
 
 i[" Every woman has one or two authors planted in her house, and God 
 knows how they water them" (Walpole's Letters, iv. , 416). "You know in 
 England we read their works, but seldom or never take any notice of authors. 
 We think them sufficiently paid if their books sell, and of course leave them to 
 their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not troubled with their 
 vanity and impertinence" {ib., v., 26).] 
 
 2 [For " the intolerant zeal " of the guests see Auto. , pp. 204, 262.] 
 
 •■'[Horace Walpole wrote two years later: "The Dumesnil is still the 
 Dumesnil, and nothing but curiosity could make me want the Clairon [she had 
 left the stage] " (Walpole's Letters, iv. , 407, 422). In 1779 he wrote : " I cannot 
 think that acting, however perfectly, what others have written is one of the most 
 astonishing talents ; yet I will own as fairly that Mrs. Porter and Mademoiselle 
 Dumesnil have struck me so much as even to reverence them " {ib., vii. , 170). 
 Grimm, in 1790, described Mrs. Siddons as "la Clairon ou la Dumesnil de 
 I'Angleterre " {Mimoires, etc., vii., 405).] 
 
 ''[Here follows a passage in two of the Memoirs {Auto., pp. 205, 263), where 
 he writes that he ' ' reserved for the last the most exquisite blessing of life — a 
 female friend who received me every evening with the smile of confidence and 
 joy". To his step-mother he wrote of her : "She seems to have conceived a 
 real motherly attachment for me " [Corres. , i. , 31k If the attachment that she 
 felt for him was of that nature, why did he record \Auto. , p. 263) : " If her heart 
 was tender, if her passions were warm, decency and gratitude should cast a veil 
 over her frailties " ? Why, we may ask, did he thus raise the veil ? 
 
 In 1766 he wrote to a Lausanne friend [the original spelling is reproduced] : 
 " J'espere, mon cher ami, que vous ne vous etes rejett^ a corps perdu dans la 
 fureur amoureuse. . . . Je ne sai si vous goutez mes principes et la pr^f^rence 
 que je commence a donner au Physique de 1' Amour sur le Moral. A la cour de 
 Cyth^re, comme dans toutes les autres, ne vaut il pas mieux faire des Dupes que 
 de I'etre soi-meme? Cette fagon ramene tot ou tard un homme sens6 mais 
 
154 EDWARD GIBBON [ms 
 
 Fourteen weeks insensibly stole away ; but had I been rich 
 and independent, I should have prolonged, and perhaps have 
 fixed, my residence at Paris. 
 
 Between the expensive style of Paris and of Italy it was 
 prudent to interpose some months of tranquil simplicity ; and 
 at the thoughts of Lausanne I again lived in the pleasures and 
 studies of my early youth. Shaping my course through Dijon 
 and Besan9on, in the last of which places I was kindly enter- 
 tained by my cousin Acton,^ I arrived in the month of May 
 1763 on the banks of the Leman Lake. It had been my 
 intention to pass the Alps in the autumn, but such are the 
 simple attractions of the place, that the year had almost 
 expired before my departure from Lausanne in the ensuing 
 spring. An absence of five years had not made much altera- 
 tion in manners, or even in persons. My old friends, of both 
 sexes, hailed my voluntary return ; the most genuine proof of 
 my attachment. They had been flattered by the present of 
 my book, the produce of their soil ; and the good Pavilliard 
 shed tears of joy as he embraced a pupil, whose literary merit 
 he might fairly impute to his own labours. To my old list I 
 added some new acquaintance, and among the strangers I 
 shall distinguish Prince Lewis of Wirtemberg, the brother of 
 the reigning Duke,^ at whose country-house, near Lausanne, 
 I frequently dined : a wandering meteor, and at length a 
 falling star, his light and ambitious spirit had successively 
 
 honnfite et delicat au commerce des femmes marines. Una femme ne peut 
 jamais mt^connoitre vos vues, et vous n'aurez point la douleur de vous reprocher 
 le malheur d'une jeune personne qui n'est 6t6 trop credule que parcequ'elle vous 
 a trop aim^. Monsieur le Mari (je parle des pays Civilises, et la Suisse com- 
 mence k I'etre) se sent soulag^ d'une partie du fardeau qu'il ne portoit qn'k 
 regret, et ne sait comment t^moigner sa reconnoissance k son bon ami qui veut 
 bien rechercher comme un plaisir ce qu'il lui paraissoit un devoir p6nible " 
 {Read' s I/isi. Studies, ii., 354).] 
 
 ^ {Ante, p. 24 ; Corres. , i. , 37.] 
 
 2 [Voltaire had lent the Duke 80,000 francs, tempted by the high interest. 
 Gibbon wrote in 1768 : " The Duke is ruined, the security worth nothing, and 
 the money vanished ". Three years earlier Voltaire, announcing the sale of his 
 villa, Les Dttices, had written : " J'ai craint de mourir de faim aussi bien que 
 de vieillesse ". In 1778, by the intervention of the King of Prussia, he was paid 
 back ao.ooo francs {(Euvres de Voltaire, liii. , 38 ; Ixi. , 331 ; Gibbon Corres., i., 
 91)-] 
 
176S] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 155 
 
 dropped from the firmament of Prussia, of France, and of 
 Austria ; and his faults, which he styled his misfortunes, had 
 driven him into philosophic exile in the Pays de Vaud. He 
 could now moralize on the vanity of the world, the equality of 
 mankind, and the happiness of a private station. His address 
 was affable and polite, and as he had shone in courts and 
 armies, his memory could supply, and his eloquence could 
 adorn, a copious fund of interesting anecdotes. His first 
 enthusiasm was that of charity and agriculture ; but the sage 
 gradually lapsed in the saint, and Prince Lewis of Wirtemberg 
 is now buried in a hermitage near Mayence, in the last stage 
 of mystic devotion.^ By some ecclesiastical quarrel, Voltaire 
 had been provoked to withdraw himself from Lausanne, and 
 retire to his castle at Ferney,^ where I again visited the poet 
 and the actor, without seeking his more intimate acquaintance, 
 to which I might now have pleaded a better title. But the 
 theatre which he had founded, the actors whom he had 
 formed, survived the loss of their master ^ ; and, recent from 
 Paris, I attended with pleasure at the representation of 
 several tragedies and comedies. I shall not descend to 
 specify particular names and characters ; but I cannot forget 
 a private institution, which will display the innocent freedom 
 
 1 [Gibbon recorded of him : " Je vois qu'il n'a point Torgueil d'un prince 
 Allemand, et I'indignation qu'il faisait paraltre contra un de ses ancetres, qui 
 avait voulu vendre un village pour acheter un cheval, me fait esp^rer qu'il n'en 
 a pas la duret^. Je croirais assez qu'il a toujours un peu manqu^ de prudence 
 et de conduite ; des projets aussi ambitieux que chim^riques dont on 1' accuse, 
 sa vie ambulante, ses querelles avec son frfere, ses dissipations, sa disgrace k 
 la cour de Vienne ; tout contribue i m'en persuader" (Misc. Works, i. , i66). 
 Gibbon adds in a footnote : " V. Le Testament Politique du Marichal de Belle- 
 isle. Ouvrage digne d'un laquais, mais d'un laquais de ministre, qui a entendu 
 beaucoup d'anecdotes curieuses. " Voltaire wrote to the Prince in 1756 : " Un 
 vieux malade, retire sur les bords d'un lac, n'est plus fait pour entretenir 
 un jeune prince guerrier, quelque philosophe que soit ce prince " (CEuvres de 
 Voltaire, Iviii., ii., 31 ; see also ib. for his letters to Voltaire).] 
 
 2 [" II habita d'abord alternativement Monrion, sur le territoire de Lausanne, 
 et les Ddices, sur celui de Geneve (1755-57) ; mais, au bout de quelques anntes 
 (1758), se trouvant trop pres des tracasseries tant politiques que religieuses de la 
 r^publique genevoise, il fit acquisition de Toruney et de Ferney, deux terres du 
 pays de Gex, entre lesquelles il se partageait. II finit par se fixer k Ferney " 
 (Biog. Univ., xlix., 479).] 
 
 ^{Ante, p. 104.] 
 
156 EDWAED GIBBON [1763-64 
 
 of Swiss manners.^ My favourite society had assumed, from 
 the age of its members, the proud denomination of the spring 
 {la society du jjriniems).'^ It consisted of fifteen or twenty 
 young unmarried ladies, of genteel, though not of the very 
 first families ; the eldest perhaps about twenty, all agreeable, 
 several handsome, and two or three of exquisite beauty. At 
 each other's houses they assembled almost every day, without 
 the controul, or even the presence, of a mother or an aunt ; 
 they were trusted to their own prudence, among a crowd of 
 young men of every nation of Europe. They laughed, they 
 sung, they danced, they played at cards, they acted comedies ; 
 but in the midst of this careless gaiety, they respected them- 
 selves, and were respected by the men ; the invisible line 
 between liberty and licentiousness was never transgressed by 
 a gesture, a word, or a look, and their virgin chastity was 
 never sullied by the breath of scandal or suspicion : a singular 
 institution, expressive of the innocent simplicity of Swiss 
 manners. After having tasted the luxury of England and 
 Paris, I could not have returned with satisfaction to the coarse 
 and homely table of Madame Pavilliard ^ ; nor was her husband 
 offended that I now entered myself as a i^emioniiaire, or boarder, 
 in the elegant house of Mr. De Mesery, which may be entitled 
 to a short remembrance, as it has stood above twenty years, 
 perhaps, without a parallel in Europe. The house in which 
 we lodged was spacious and convenient, in the best street, and 
 commanding, from behind, a noble prospect over the country 
 and the Lake. Our table was served with neatness and 
 plenty ; the boarders were select * ; we had the liberty of 
 inviting any guests at a stated price ; and in the summer the 
 scene was occasionally transferred to a pleasant villa, about a 
 
 1 [" Lausanne, Avril 17, 1764. Les femmes sont jolies, et malgr6 leui* 
 grande liberty, elles sont tr^s sages. Tout au plus peuvent-elles ^tre un peu 
 complaisantes, dans I'id^e honnSte, mais incertaine, de prendre un Stranger 
 dans leurs filets" (Misc. Works, i. , 178).] 
 
 2 [General Read found the rules of the society in the garrets of La Grotte 
 [Hist. Studies, ii., 326).] 
 
 °{Anie, pp. 84, 117.] 
 
 ■^ [Gibbon had written, " the boarders were numerous " [Auto. , p. 208). Lord 
 Sheffield made them " select ".] 
 
1763-64] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 157 
 
 league from Lausanne. The characters of Master and Mistress 
 were happily suited to each other, and to their situation. At 
 the age of seventy-five, Madame de Mesery, who has survived 
 her husband, is still a graceful, I had almost said, a handsome 
 woman. She was alike qualified to preside in her kitchen and 
 her drawing-room ; and such was the equal propriety of her 
 conduct, that of two or three hundred foreigners, none ever 
 failed in respect, none could complain of her neglect, and 
 none could ever boast of her favour. Mesery himself, of the 
 noble family of De Crousaz,i was a man of the world, a jovial 
 companion, whose easy manners and natural sallies maintained 
 the cheerfulness of his house. His wit could laugh at his own 
 ignorance : he disguised, by an air of profusion, a strict atten- 
 tion to his interest ; and in this situation he appeared like a 
 nobleman who spent his fortune and entertained his friends. ^ 
 In this agreeable society I resided nearly eleven months (May 
 1763 — April 1764) ; and in this second visit to Lausanne, 
 among a crowd of my English companions, I knew and 
 esteemed Mr. Holroyd (now Lord Sheffield) ; and our mutual 
 attachment was renewed and fortified in the subsequent stages 
 of our Italian journey.^ Our lives are in the power of chance, 
 and a slight variation on either side, in time or place, might 
 have deprived me of a friend, whose activity in the ardour 
 of youth was always prompted by a benevolent heart,* and 
 directed by a strong understanding. 
 
 If my studies at Paris had been confined to the study of 
 the world, three or four months would not have been un- 
 
 ^[Ante, p. 87. Gibbon, writing to Lord Sheffield from Lausanne in 1787, 
 about " a novel entitled Caroline de Lichfield," continues : " The author, who 
 is since married a second time (Madame de Crousaz, now Montolieu), is a 
 charming woman. I was in some danger " [Corres. , ii. , 154 ; post, Appendix 66).] 
 
 2 [" La maison de M. de Misery est charmante ; le caractere franc at 
 g6n6reux du mari, les agr6mens de la femme, une situation d61icieuse, une 
 chere excellente, la compagnie de ses compatriotes, et une liberty parfaite, 
 font aimer ce sejour k tout Anglais. Que je voudrais en trouver un semblable 
 k Londres !" {Alisc. Works, i. , 178.)] 
 
 3 [" Lausanne, Avril 6, 1764. J'ai conju une veritable amiti6 pour Holroyd. 
 II a beaucoup de raison et des sentimens d'honneur, avec un cceur des mieux 
 places {ib., i., 176).] 
 
 4 [He was a strong upholder of the slave trade (post, Appendix 54).] 
 
158 EDWARD GIBBON [1763-64 
 
 profitably spent. My visits, however superficial, to the 
 Academy of Medals ^ and the public libraries, opened a new 
 field of inquiry ; and the view of so many manuscripts of 
 different ages and characters induced me to consult the two 
 great Benedictine works, the Diplomatica of Mabillon,^ and 
 the Palceographia of Montfaucon.^ I studied the theory with- 
 out attaining the practice of the art : nor should I complain 
 of the intricacy of Greek abbreviations and Gothic alphabets, 
 since every day, in a familiar language, I am at a loss to 
 decipher the hieroglyphics of a female note. In a tranquil 
 scene, which revived the memory of my first studies, idleness 
 would have been less pardonable : the public libraries of 
 Lausanne and Geneva liberally supplied me with books ; and 
 if many hours were lost in dissipation,* many more were 
 employed in literary labour. In the country, Horace and 
 Virgil, Juvenal and Ovid, were my assiduous companions : but, 
 in town, I formed and executed a plan of study for the use 
 of my Transalpine expedition : the topography of old Rome, 
 the ancient geography of Italy, and the science of medals. 
 1. I diligently read, almost always with my pen in my hand, 
 the elaborate treatises of Nardini, Donatus, etc., which fill 
 the fourth volume of the Roman Antiquities, of Graevi us. ^ 2. 
 I next undertook and finished the Italia Antiqua of Cluverius, 
 
 1 [" L' Academic des Belles-Lettres, formte d'abord en 1663 de quelques 
 membres de I'Acad^mie Fran9aise, pour transmettre k la post6rit6 par des 
 m^dailles les actions de Louis XIV, devint utile au public d^s qu'elle ne fut 
 plus uniquement occup^e du monarque, et qu'elle s'appliqua aux recherches de 
 I'antiquit^ " etc. (CEuvres de Voltaire, xviii. , 240).] 
 
 2 [" C'est lui qui, ^tant charg6 de montrer le trfeor de Saint-Denis, demanda 
 k. quitter cet emploi, farce qu'il n' aitnait pas a meler la fable avec la viritL II 
 a fait de profondes recherches " (ib., xvii., 122).] 
 
 ^ [" L'un des plus savans antiquaires de I'Europe" {ib., p. 132). "His 
 Library of Manuscripts is almost necessary for every man of letters " (Gibbon, 
 Misc. Works, v., 344).] 
 
 ■^ [" Septembre 21, 1763. Ma reputation baisse ici avec quelque raison." 
 " Septembre 25. J'avais une tr^s belle reputation ici pour les mceurs, mais je 
 vois qu'on commence k me confondre avec mes compatriotes, et k me regarder 
 comme un homme qui aime le vin et le d^sordre " {Misc. Works, i., 170). These 
 excesses he attributed partly " to the habits of the militia " {Auto., p. 208). On 
 Dec. 18, he recorded that he had lost in gambling " une quarantaine de Louis " 
 (Misc. Works, i., 171).] 
 
 s[Seeii., V. ,'313-43.] 
 
1763-64] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 159 
 
 a learned native of Prussia, who had measured, on foot, every 
 spot, and has compiled and digested every passage of the 
 ancient writers. These passages in Greek or Latin authors 
 I perused in the text of Cluverius, in two folio volumes ^ : 
 but I separately read the descriptions of Italy by Strabo,^ 
 Pliny, and Pomponius Mela,^ the Catalogues of the Epic 
 poets,* the Itineraries of Wesseling's Antoninus,^ and the 
 coasting Voyage of Rutilius Numatianus,^ and I studied two 
 kindred subjects in the Mesures Itiner aires of D'Anville,'^ and 
 the copious work of Bergier, Hisioire des grajids Chemins de 
 r Empire Romani.^ From these materials I formed a table of 
 roads and distances reduced to our English measure ^ ; filled 
 a folio common-place book with my collections and remarks 
 on the geography of Italy ^*^ ; and inserted in my journal many 
 long and learned notes on the insulae and populousness of 
 Rome,ii the social war,i2 the passage of the Alps by Hannibal,!^ 
 
 1 \_Misc. Works, v. , 356-427 ; 429-431. " Cluverius," he writes, " is too diffuse. 
 . . . Our men of letters are afraid to encounter two volumes in folio " (ib. , p. 429).] 
 
 2 [Ante, p. 142.] 
 
 3 [Johnson, when in 1763 he accompanied Boswell to Harwich, " had in his 
 pocket Pomponius Mela de Situ Orbis, in which he read occasionally, and 
 seemed very intent upon ancient geography " (Boswell's Johnson, i. , 465).] 
 
 4 [Gibbon in two papers examined these catalogues (Misc. Works, iv. , 327- 
 33S)-] 
 
 »[/3., v., 293.] 
 
 6 [7/5., v., 435-442. Gibbon, censuring Rutilius's "swelling words," con- 
 tinues : " I doubt whether Bellerophonteis sollicitudinibus be ever quoted, except 
 on account of the singularity that two words should compose a pentameter 
 verse" {ib., p. 440). In The Decline {ul, 234) he translates his description of 
 the monks of the Island of Capraria.] 
 
 ■^ [" The master hand of the first of geographers," writes Gibbon of D'Anville 
 [The Decline, v., 450). In another passage he says that " even that ingenious 
 geographer is too fond of supposing new, and perhaps imaginary measures, 
 for the purpose of rendering ancient writers as accurate as himself " (ib. , ii. , 145), 
 D'Anville undertook "four maps of Roman geography of a size and nature 
 suited to the History [ The Decline\" but he never executed them (Misc. Works, 
 ii. , 201).] 
 
 8 [Printed in 1622 (CEuvres de Voltaire, xvii. , 49). Gibbon speaks of " una 
 infinite de digressions aussi belles que savantes dont M. Bergier a rempli son 
 histoire " (Misc. Works, iv., 324).] 
 
 8 [" March 29, 1764. I wrote two pages on the Itineraries and high Roads of 
 the Romans ; and stop short at present with a rich fund of ninety-two folio 
 pages closely written" (ib., v., 475).] 
 
 10 \Ib., iv. , 155-326.] 11 \Ib., v„ 317.] 
 
 12 [/<5., v., 389.] 13[/^., v.. 370.] 
 
160 EDWARD GIBBON [1764-65 
 
 etc. S. After glancing my eye over Addison's agreeable 
 dialogues, 1 I more seriously read the great work of Ezechiel 
 Spanheim de Prcestantia et Usu Numismatum,^ and applied 
 with him the medals of the kings and emperors, the families 
 and colonies, to the illustration of the ancient history. And 
 thus was I armed for my Italian journey.^ 
 
 1 shall advance with rapid brevity in the narrative of this 
 tour, in which somewhat more than a year (April 1764- to 
 May 1765) was agreeably employed. Content with tracing 
 my line of march^ and slightly touching on my personal feel- 
 ings, I shall waive the minute investigation of the scenes 
 which have been viewed by thousands, and described by 
 hundreds of our modern travellers. Rome is the great object 
 of our pilgrimage : and 1st, the journey ; 2nd, the residence ; 
 and 3rd, the return, will form the most proper and perspicuous 
 division. 1 . I climbed Mount Cenis, and descended into the 
 plain of Piedmont, not on the back of an elephant, but on a 
 light osier seat, in the hands of the dextrous and intrepid 
 chairmen of the Alps.* The architecture and government of 
 
 '^[Dialogues on Medals (Addison's Woi-ks, ed. 1862, i. , 255). It was not 
 published till after the author's death [ib., p. 337). " He dwells on the striking 
 connection between the reverses of medals and the descriptions of Latin poets. 
 . . . The passages of the poets are selected with taste ; and the author's 
 reflections are replete with judgment and sagacity" (Gibbon, A4isc. Works, v., 
 455)0 
 
 2 [" April 12, 1764. I re-examined Spanheim's work, which is a real treasury 
 of medallic erudition, a classic book on this science " {ib. , v. , 482). Spanheim 
 gave Bentley his portrait, who bequeathed it to Trinity College, Cambridge 
 (Monk's Bentley, ii. , 442).] 
 
 •^ [" Lausanne, Avril 17, 1764. Je quitte Lausanne avec moins de regret 
 que la premiere fois. . . . Je voyais Lausanne avec les yeux encore novices d'un 
 jeune homme, qui lui devait la partie raisonnable de son existence, et qui jugeait 
 sans objets de comparaison. Aujourd'hui j'y vois une ville mal Mtie, au milieu 
 d'un pays d^licieux, qui jouit de la paix et du repos, et qui les prend pour la 
 liberty" {Misc. Works, \., 178).] 
 
 * [Gray and Horace Walpole crossed Mont Cenis early in November, 1739. 
 "At Lanebourg we were wrapt up in our furs, and seated upon a sort of matted 
 chair without legs, which is carried upon poles in the manner of a bier, and so 
 began to ascend by the help of eight men. It was six miles to the top, where 
 a plain opens itself about as many more in breadth. . . . The descent is six 
 more, but infinitely more steep than the going up ; and here the men perfectly 
 fly down with you. . . . We were but five hours in performing the whole" 
 (Mitford's Gray, ii., 67). " So, as the song says, we are in fair Italy ! I wonder 
 we are ; for on the very highest precipice of Mount Cenis, the devil of discord, 
 in the similitude of sour wine, had got amongst our Alpine savages, and set 
 
1764-65] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 161 
 
 Turin presented the same aspect of tame and tiresome uni- 
 formity : but the court was regulated with decent and splendid 
 ceconomy ^ ; and I was introduced to his Sardinian majesty 
 Charles Emanuel, ^ who, after the incomparable Frederick, 
 held the second rank (proximus longo tamen intervallo ^) 
 among the kings of Europe.* The size and populousness of 
 Milan could not surprise an inhabitant of London : but the 
 fancy is amused by a visit to the Boromean Islands, an en- 
 chanted palace, a work of the fairies in the midst of a lake 
 encomipassed with mountains, and far removed from the 
 haunts of men.^ I was less amused by the marble palaces of 
 Genoa, than by the recent memorials of her deliverance (in 
 
 them a-fighting, with Gray and me in the chairs ; they rushed him by me on 
 a crag, where there was scarce room for a cloven foot. The least slip had 
 tumbled us into such a fog, and such an eternity as we should never have found 
 our way out of again. . . . We had twelve men and nine mules to carry us, 
 our servants, and baggage." The day before, "in broad sunshine," Walpole's 
 little dog had been carried off by a wolf (Walpole's Letters, i. , 28).] 
 
 1 [The day before he was presented at Court he wrote : " Everything follows 
 the example of the Court, which from one of the most polite in Europe is be- 
 come bigoted, gloomy and covetous" (Corres., i. , 56). 
 
 Twenty-five years earlier Horace Walpole had written : ' ' 'Tis really by 
 far one of the prettiest cities I have seen ; not one of your large straggling ones 
 that can afford to have twenty dirty suburbs, but clean and compact, very new 
 and very regular. The King's palace is not of the proudest without, but of the 
 richest within ; painted, gilt, looking-glassed, very costly, but very tawdry ; in 
 short a very popular palace" (Walpole's Letters, i. , 29). 
 
 In Tke Decline (iv. , 501) Gibbon, speaking of "the barbarous practice of 
 wearing arms in the midst of peace," continues : "The historian who considers 
 this circumstance as the test of civilization would disdain the barbarism of an 
 European Court ".] 
 
 2[" The most sociable women I have met with are the King's daughters. I 
 chatted for about a quarter of an hour with them, talked about Lausanne, and 
 grew so very free and easy that I drew my snuff-box, rapped it, took snuff twice 
 (a crime never known before in the presence-chamber), and continued my dis- 
 course in my usual attitude, of my body bent forwards, and my fore-finger 
 stretched out" [Co7-res., i., 58).] 
 
 •^[" Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo." 
 
 (Virgil, ySneid, v., 320.) 
 
 " The next, but though the next, yet far disjoined." 
 
 (Dryden.)] 
 
 4 [Voltaire thus describes Charles Emanuel {CEuvres, xix., 426) : "On avait 
 a redouter en lui un politique et un guerrier ; un prince qui savait bien choisir 
 ses ministres et ses g^n^raux, et qui pouvait se passer d'eux, grand g^n^ral lui- 
 meme et grand ministre".] 
 
 5 [Gibbon improves on the description he gave of these islands in a letter — 
 " which, by the help of some imagination, we conclude to be a very delightful, 
 though not an enchanted place" [Corres., i., 60).] 
 11 
 
162 EDWARD GIBBON [1764-65 
 
 December 1746) from the Austrian tyranny; and I took a 
 military survey of every scene of action within the enclosure 
 of her double walls.^ My steps were detained at Parma and 
 Modena, by the precious relics of the Farnese and Este 
 collections : but, alas ! the far greater part had -^been already 
 transported, by inheritance or purchase, to Naples and 
 Dresden. By the road of Bologna and the Apennine I at 
 last reached Florence, where I reposed from June to 
 September, during the heat of the summer months. In the 
 Gallery, and especially in the Tribune,^ I first acknowledged, 
 at the feet of the Venus of Medicis, that the chisel may dis- 
 pute the pre-eminence with the pencil, a truth in the fine 
 arts which cannot on this side of the Alps be felt or under- 
 stood.^ At home I had taken some lessons of Italian : on 
 the spot I read, with a learned native, the classics of the 
 Tuscan idiom : but the shortness of my time, and the use of 
 the French language prevented my acquiring any facility of 
 speaking ; and I was a silent spectator in the conversations of 
 our envoy, Sir Horace Mann, whose most serious business was 
 that of entertaining the English at his hospitable table.* After 
 leaving Florence I compared the solitude of Pisa with the 
 
 1 [The Austrians, supported by the Piedmontese and a squadron of English 
 ships, took Genoa on Sept. 7, 1746. In December, the people, exasperated by 
 their harsh treatment, rose in a riot and drove them out. " L' Europe vit avec 
 surprise qu'un peuple faible, nourri loin des armes, et qui ni son enceinte de 
 rochers, ni les rois de France, d'Espagne, de Naples, n'avaient pu sauver du 
 joug des Autrichiens, I'eut bris6 sans aucun secours, et eut chass6 ses vainqueurs " 
 ((Euvres de Voltaire, xix. , 164, 168-72). 
 
 Gibbon recorded in his journal how the people formed " un conseil qu'on 
 appellait Assemble du Peuple. . . . Elle rendait ses ordonnances sous peine de 
 la vie, et tenait son bourreau assis sur les degr^s d'une 6glise, et pres d'une 
 potence pour les faire ex^cuter" {Misc. Works, i., 181).] 
 
 2 [The Tribune, or Tribuna, is part of the Galleria degli Uffizi.] 
 
 3 [Gibbon recorded in his journal an interesting criticism of many of the 
 Roman husts (Misc. Wo?'ks, i. , 186-91), which might well be included in the 
 Guide Books to Florence.] 
 
 * [Gibbon recorded on July 29: "Toute la nation dlna chez M. Mann" 
 [Misc. Works, i., 191). 
 
 Gray described Mann in 1739 as ' ' the best and most obliging person in the 
 world" (Mitford's Gi^ay, ii., 79). Horace Walpole, on his way home, began at 
 Calais, in September, 1741, a correspondence with him, which he kept up till 
 Mann's death in 1786. During this long period they never met (Walpole's 
 Letters, i., 71 ; ix., 59).] 
 
1764-65] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 163 
 
 industry of Lucca and Leghorn, and continued my journey 
 through Sienna to Rome^ where I arrived in the beginning of 
 October. 2. My temper is not very susceptible of enthu- 
 siasm ^ ; and the enthusiasm which I do not feel, I have ever 
 scorned to affect. But, at the distance of twenty-five years, 
 I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which 
 agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal 
 dty? After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the 
 ruins of the Forum ^ ; each memorable spot where Romulus 
 siood,'^ or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to 
 my eye ^ ; and several days of intoxication were lost or en- 
 joyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investiga- 
 tion.^ My guide was Mr. Byers, a Scotch antiquary of 
 experience and taste "^ ; but, in the daily labour of eighteen 
 weeks, the powers of attention were sometimes fatigued, till 
 I was myself qualified, in a last review, to select and study 
 the capital works of ancient and modern art. Six weeks were 
 borrowed for my tour of Naples, the most populous of 
 
 1 [For the sense in which this word was generally used see ante, pp. 22, 7i. 2, 
 147. Here Gibbon uses it in the sense which it bears now — defined by Johnson 
 as, " elevation of fancy ; exaltation of ideas".] 
 
 2[" Romulus /Eternae nondum formaverat Urbis 
 McKnia, consorti non habitanda Remo." 
 
 (Tibullus, ii., 5, 23.)] 
 
 s [Gibbon, describing how " amidst the ruins of his country Leo IV. stood 
 erect, like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the 
 fragments of the Roman Forum," adds in a note : " I have borrowed Voltaire's 
 general expression, but the sight of the Forum has furnished me with a more 
 distinct and lively image" [Tke Decline, vi., 41).] 
 
 * [Gibbon refers, I think, to Livy, i., 12, where Romulus, hurried along by 
 his fleeing soldiers, vowed a temple to Jupiter Stator, if the god would stop the 
 flight] 
 
 5[" To the eye of liberal enthusiasm the majesty of ruin restored the image 
 of her ancient prosperity" {The Decline, vii., 132). 
 
 Gray wrote from Rome in 1740 : ' ' Mr. Walpole says our memory sees more 
 than our eyes in this country. Which is extremely true" (Mitford's Gray, ii., 
 III).] 
 
 ^[Gibbon, a day or two after his arrival, wrote: "I am convinced there 
 never, never existed such a nation, and I hope for the happiness of mankind 
 there never will again" {Corres., i., 67).] 
 
 ''[James Byers or Byres. Bishop Percy in 1791 described him as "the 
 Pope's Antiquary at Rome" (Nichols's lllus. of Lit., vii., 719. See also ib., iii. , 
 726). He at one^'time owned the Portland Vase, but he sold it to Sir William 
 Hamilton {Diet, of Nat. Biog.).'\ 
 
164 EDWARD GIBBON [1764-65 
 
 cities/ relative to its size, whose luxurious inhabitants seem to 
 dwell on the confines of paradise and hell-fire. I was presented 
 to the boy-king ^ by our new envoy. Sir William Hamilton ^ ; 
 who, wisely diverting his correspondence from the Secretary 
 of State to the Royal Society and British Museum, has 
 elucidated a country of such inestimable value to the 
 naturalist and antiquarian. On my return, I fondly em- 
 braced, for the last time, the miracles of Rome ; but I de- 
 parted without kissing the feet of Rezzonico (Clement XIII.*), 
 who neither possessed the wit of his predecessor Lambertini,^ 
 nor the virtues of his successor Ganganelli.*' 3. In my 
 
 1 [Gray wrote from Naples : ' ' My wonder still increased upon entering the 
 city, which I think for number of people outdoes both Paris and London" 
 (Mitford's Gray, ii., 114). "That city, the third in Christian Europe, contains 
 more inhabitants (350,000) in a given space than any other spot in the known 
 world" {The Decline, iv. , 308).] 
 
 2 [Ferdinand IV. of Naples, afterwards styled Ferdinand I. of the United 
 Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, born in 1751, died in 1825, after experiencing 
 great alternations of fortune (see the Penny Cyclopcedia, x., 230). Five years 
 after his death his daughter, who had married the Duke of Orleans, became 
 Queen of France. Horace Walpole wrote on Dec. 14, 1767, to Sir Horace 
 Mann {Letters, v., 76) : "So your King of Naples is a madman or an idiot ! 
 And they set aside his eldest brother on the same pretence, to make room for 
 him ! "] 
 
 3 [Horace Walpole wrote to Mann on June 8, 1764 {Letters, iv., 249) : " You 
 have a new neighbour coming to you, Mr. William Hamilton. . . . He is 
 picture-mad, and will ruin himself in virtu-land. His wife is as musical as he 
 is connoisseur, but she is dying of an asthma." His second wife became Lord 
 Nelson's mistress. Lord Holland {Memoirs, ii. , 22) describes him as " a man of 
 mean capacity, but of some cunning and experience".] 
 
 *[" Epitaphe du Pape Clement XIH : — 
 
 " Ci-git des vrais croyans le mufti tdm^raire, 
 Et de tous les Bourbons I'ennemi d^clar^ : 
 De J^sus sur la terre il s'est dit le vicaire ; 
 Je le crois aujourd'hui mal avec son curd" 
 
 ( CEuvres de Voltaire, xii. , 364. ) 
 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son in 1749 : " Remember to be presented to 
 the Pope before you leave Rome, and go through the necessary ceremonies for 
 it, whether of kissing his slipper or . . ." {Letters to his Son, ii. , 222).] 
 
 5 [Benedict XIV. Horace Walpole wrote of him to Mann on Nov. 29, 1756 : 
 ' ' I have always had a great partiality for the good old man : I desire you will 
 tell me any anecdotes or stories of him that you know : I remember some of his 
 sayings with great humour and wit" {Letters, iii. , 49). See also ib., p. 84, for 
 an inscription Walpole wrote behind a bas-relief of the Pope.] 
 
 6 [Clement XIV. ' ' II 6tait r6put6 tres sage et tres circonspect, au-dessus des 
 prt^jug^s nionastiques, et capable de soutenir par sa sagesse le colosse du 
 pontifical, qui semblait menac6 de sa chute. C'est lui qui a enfin aboli la 
 Soci^t^ de J&us par sa bulle de I'ann^e 1773" {CEuvres de Voltaire, xix., 861).] 
 
1764-65] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 165 
 
 pilgrimage from Rome to Loretto I again crossed the 
 Apennine ; from the coast of the Adriatic I traversed a 
 fruitful and populous country, which could alone disprove 
 the paradox of Montesquieu, that modern Italy is a desert.^ 
 Without adopting the exclusive prejudice of the natives I 
 sincerely admire the paintings of the Bologna school. ^ I 
 hastened to escape from the sad solitude of Ferrara, which in 
 the age of Caesar was still more desolate.^ The spectacle of 
 
 1 [Montesquieu in Lettres persanes, No. 113, wrote of Italy : " Quoique tout 
 le monde habite les villes, elles sont entiferement d&ertes et d^peupl^es". He 
 adds : " Apres un calcul aussi exact qu'il peut I'etre dans ces sortes de choses, 
 j'ai trouv6 qu'il y a i peine sur la terre la dixifeme partie des hommes qui y 
 6taient de temps de C6sar ". 
 
 Goldsmith upheld this paradox when, injihis Traveller {}. 133), he said of the 
 Italians : — 
 
 " For wealth was theirs, not far remov'd the date, 
 When commerce proudly flourish' d through the state. 
 
 Till, more unsteady than the southern gale, 
 Commerce on other shores display'd her sail ; 
 While nought remain'd of all that riches gave. 
 But towns unmann'd, and lords without a slave."] 
 
 '^ [It was Horace Walpole's " favourite school " [Letters, ix., 465). Reynolds, 
 describing this school, " of which the first stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi," 
 but which was built by the Caracci, continues: "But the divine part, which 
 addresses itself to the imagination, as possessed by Michael Angelo or Tibaldi, 
 was beyond their grasp ; they formed, however, a most respectable school, a 
 style more on the level, and calculated to please a greater number; and if 
 excellence of this kind is to be valued according to the number, rather than the 
 weight and quality of admirers, it would assume even a higher rank in art" 
 (Reynolds's Works, ed. 1824, ii. , 150). 
 
 ' ' There is no doubt that the Bolognese painters sufficed for the eighteenth 
 century, whose taste indeed they had created. There is equally no doubt that 
 for the nineteenth they are insufficient " (Symonds's Renaissance in Italy, ed. 
 1898, vii., 231). 
 
 We may wonder whether at Bologna Gibbon ate sausages. ' ' The famous 
 Bologna sausages," he writes, " are said to be made of ass flesh " ( The Decli7te, 
 iv., 320). " You may advise me," said Johnson, " to go to live at Bologna to 
 eat sausages. The sausages there are the best in the world ; they lose much by 
 being carried " [^os^NeWs Johnsofi, ii. , 195).] 
 
 2[" In the time of Augustus, and in the middle ages, the whole waste from 
 Aquileia to Ravenna was covered with woods, lakes and morasses " ( The Decline, 
 iv. , 413). An ingenious commentator might have thought that Gibbon referred 
 to Don Caesar, the last of the House of Este who ruled Ferrara. He was de- 
 prived of it, writes Gibbon, by "the ambition and avarice" of Rome. "On 
 January 28, 1598, he evacuated a city in which his ancestors had reigned near 
 four hundred years. . . . Ferrara was left to the solitude and poverty of a 
 provincial town, under the government of priests . . . and within seventeen 
 years after the death of Alphonso II. [1597] a fourth of his capital was already 
 in ruins" {Misc. Works, iii., 462).] 
 
166 EDWARD GIBBON [1764-65 
 
 Venice afforded some hours of astonishment ^ ; the university 
 of Padua is a dying taper ^ : but Verona still boasts her 
 amphitheatre^ and his native Vicenza is adorned by the 
 classic architecture of Palladio ^ : the road of Lombardy and 
 Piedmont (did Montesquieu find them without inhabitants ?) 
 led me back to Milan, Turin, and the passage of Mount Cenis, 
 where I again crossed the Alps in my way to Lyons. 
 
 The use of foreign travel has been often debated as a 
 general question ; but the conclusion must be finally applied 
 to the character and circumstances of each individual. With 
 the education of boys, where or how they may pass over some 
 juvenile years with the least mischief to themselves or others, 
 I have no concern.'* But after supposing the previous 
 
 1 [For a curious omission in the original see A uto. , p. 268. From Venice he 
 wrote : "Of all the towns in Italy I am the least satisfied with Venice ; objects 
 which are only singular without being pleasing produce a momentary surprise, 
 which soon gives way to satiety and disgust" (Corres, i., 75). " The republic 
 of Venice has deserved the least from the gratitude of scholars " { TAe Decline, 
 vii., 128).] 
 
 2 [Evelyn [Diary, ed. 1872, i., 217), who visited it in 1645, described it as 
 "this flourishing and ancient University". Addison ( I'For.^j', i. , 385), nearly 
 sixty years later, wrote of it : " The university is of late much more regular than 
 it was formerly, though it is not yet safe walking the streets after sunset ". 
 Johnson, in his undergraduate days, was overheard saying to himself: " Well, 
 I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning. I'll go and visit 
 the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua. — And 
 I'll mind my business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all block- 
 heads " (Boswell's Johtison, i. , 73).] 
 
 3[" Vicenza is a city . . . full of gentlemen and splendid palaces, to which 
 the famous Palladio, born here, has exceedingly contributed, having been the 
 architect" (Evelyn's Diary, i. , 227).] 
 
 4 [Milton in his tractate Of Education [Works, ed. 1806, i., 284) says: 
 " Nor shall we then need the monsieurs of Paris to take our hopeful youth into 
 their slight and prodigal custodies, and send them over back again transformed 
 into mimics, apes, and kickshows ". 
 
 Gay's moral in The Monkey who had seen the World [Fables, No. xiv.) is : — 
 " Thus the dull lad, too tall for school. 
 With travel finishes the fool ". 
 
 Pope, in the Argument of the fourth Dunciad, brings in " a band of young 
 gentlemen returned from travel with their tutors ; one of whom delivers to the 
 goddess in a polite oration an account of the whole conduct and fruits of their 
 travels ; presenting to her at the same time a young nobleman perfectly ac- 
 complished. She receives him graciously, and indues him with the happy 
 quality of want of shame." 
 
 Fielding in Joseph Andrews (bk. iii. , chap, vii.) describes how the squire 
 " made in three years the tour of Europe, as they term it, and returned home 
 well furnished with French clothes, phrases and servants, with a hearty con- 
 tempt for his own country ; especially what had any savour of the plain spirit 
 and honesty of our ancestors ". 
 
1764-65] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 167 
 
 and indispensable requisites of age, judgment, a competent 
 knowledge of men and books/ and a freedom from domestic 
 prejudices, I will briefly describe the qualifications which I 
 deem most essential to a traveller. He should be endowed 
 with an active, indefatigable vigour of mind and body, which 
 can seize every mode of conveyance, and support, with a 
 careless smile, every hardship of the road, the weather, or 
 the inn. The benefits of foreign travel will correspond with 
 the degrees of these qualifications ^ ; but, in this sketch, 
 those to whom I am known will not accuse me of framing 
 my own panegyric. It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 
 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while 
 the bare- footed fryars were singing vespers in the Temple of 
 Jupiter,^ that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the 
 city first started to my mind.'* But my original plan was 
 circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the 
 empire,^ and though my reading and reflections began to 
 point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several 
 avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the 
 execution of that laborious work. 
 
 I had not totally renounced the southern provinces of 
 France, but the letters which I found at Lyons were ex- 
 Chesterfield thus writes of young travellers : ' ' They set out upon their travels 
 unlicked cubs ; and in their travels they only lick one another, for they seldom 
 go into any other company. . . . They come home, at three or four and 
 twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve's plays) like Dutch 
 skippers from a whale-fishing " {Letters to his Son, ed. 1774, iv., 18). 
 
 "A young man," writes Adam Smith, "commonly returns home more 
 conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any 
 serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well have become 
 in so short a time had he lived at home " ( The Wealth of Naiio?is, bk. v. , chap. i. , 
 ed. 1811, iii., 184. See also ante, p. 148, and Boswell's /o/%«w;«, iii., 458).] 
 
 1 [" Johnson. As the Spanish proverb says, ' He, who would bring home 
 the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it 
 is in travelling ; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring 
 home knowledge ' " (Boswell's Johnson, iii., 302).] 
 
 2 [See Auto., p. 269, for many more " qualifications ".] 
 
 ^ [" The Church and Convent of Araceli, the bare-foot friars of St. Francis, 
 occupy the Temple of Jupiter " ( The Decline, vii. , 226).] 
 
 ■* [See Appendix 29. ] 
 
 ' [" If I prosecute this History, I shall not be unmindful of the decline and 
 fall of the city of Rome ; an interesting object, to which my plan was originally 
 confined" [The Decline, iv., 20).] 
 
168 EDWARD GIBBON [i765 
 
 pressive of some impatience. Rome and Italy had satiated 
 my curious appetite^ and I was now ready to return to the 
 peaceful retreat of my family and books. After a happy 
 fortnight I reluctantly left Paris, embarked at Calais, again 
 landed at Dover, after an interval of two years and five 
 monthsj and hastily drove through the summer dust and 
 solitude of London. On the 25th of June^ 1765, I arrived 
 at my father's house : and ^ the five years and a half between 
 my travels and my father's death (1770) are the portion of 
 my life which I passed with the least enjoyment^ and which 
 I remember with the least satisfaction. ^ Every spring I 
 attended the monthly meeting and exercise of the militia at 
 Southampton ; and by the resignation of my father, and the 
 death of Sir Thomas Worsley,^ I was successively promoted to 
 the rank of major and lieutenant-colonel commandant ; but I 
 was each year more disgusted with the inn, the wine, the com- 
 pany, and the tiresome repetition of annual attendance and daily 
 exercise. At home, the economy of the family and farm still 
 maintained the same creditable appearance. My connection 
 with Mrs. Gibbon was mellowed into a warm and solid attach- 
 ment : my growing years abolished the distance that might yet 
 remain between a parent and a son, and my behaviour satisfied 
 my father, who was proud of the success, however imperfect 
 in his own life-time, of my literary talents. Our solitude 
 was soon and often enlivened by the visit of the friend of 
 my youth, Mr. Deyverdun,^ whose absence from Lausanne I 
 had sincerely lamented. About three years after my first 
 departure, he had emigrated from his native lake to the 
 banks of the Oder in Germany. The res angusta domi,^ the 
 waste of a decent patrimony, by an improvident father, 
 obliged him, like many of his countrymen, to confide in his 
 
 1 [The connection of the two clauses, which is so imperfect, was quite clear 
 in the original. Gibbon wrote : "On the 2Sth of June, 1765, I reached the 
 rural mansion of my parents. . . . After my first (1758) and my second return 
 to England (1765), the forms of the pictures were nearly the same ; but the 
 colours had been darkened by time ; and the five years, etc. " {Auto., p. 271).] 
 
 2 [He surely forgets his " boyish years " {ante, p. 46).] 
 •^\_Ante, p. 136.] *[/<J., p. 86.] 
 5 [Juvenal, Sat., iii., 165.] 
 
1765] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 169 
 
 own industry ; and he was entrusted with the education of a 
 young prince, the grandson of the Margrave of Schavedt, 
 of the Royal Family of Prussia. Our friendship was never 
 cooled, our correspondence was sometimes interrupted ; but I 
 rather wished than hoped to obtain Mr. Deyverdun for the 
 companion of my Italian tour. An unhappy, though honour- 
 able, passion drove him from his German court ; and the 
 attractions of hope and curiosity were fortified by the ex- 
 pectation of my speedy return to England. During four 
 successive summers he passed several weeks or months at 
 Buriton, and our free conversations, on every topic that could 
 interest the heart or understanding, would have reconciled 
 me to a desert or a prison. In the winter months of London 
 my sphere of knowledge and action was somewhat enlarged, 
 by the many new acquaintance which I had contracted in the 
 militia and abroad ; and I must regret, as more than an ac- 
 quaintance, Mr. Godfrey Clarke of Derbyshire, an amiable and 
 worthy young man, who was snatched away by an untimely 
 death. 1 A weekly convivial meeting was established by 
 myself and travellers, under the name of the Roman Club.^ 
 
 The renewal, or perhaps the improvement, of my English 
 life was embittered by the alteration of my own feelings. At 
 the age of twenty-one I was, in my proper station of a youth, 
 delivered from the yoke of education, and delighted with the 
 comparative state of liberty and affluence. My filial obedience 
 was natural and easy ; and in the gay prospect of futurity, my 
 
 1 [He was one of the members for Derbyshire. He died on Dec. 26, 1774 
 (Gent. Mag., 1774, p. 599). On Aug. 7, 1773, Gibbon wrote to Holroyd : 
 ' ' Boodle's and Atwood's are now no more. The last stragglers, and Clarke 
 in the rear of all, are moved away to their several castles ; and I now enjoy 
 in the midst of London a delicious solitude. My library, Kensington Gardens, 
 and a few parties with new acquaintance who are chained to London (among 
 whom I reckon Goldsmith and Sir Joshua Reynolds) fill up my time " [Carres., 
 i., 191).] 
 
 2 The members were Lord Mountstuart (now Marquis of Bute), Colonel 
 Edmonstone, William Weddal, Rev. Mr. Palgrave, Earl of Berkley, Godfrey 
 Clarke (Member for Derbyshire), Holroyd (Lord Sheffield), Major Ridley, 
 Thomas Charles Bigge, Sir William Guize, Sir John Aubrey, the late Earl of 
 Abingdon, Hon. Peregrine Bertie, Rev. Mr. Cleaver, Hon. John Darner, Hon. 
 George Damer (late Earl of Dorchester), Sir Thomas Gascoyne, Sir John Hort, 
 E. Gibbon.— Sheffield, 
 
170 EDWARD GIBBON [i765 
 
 ambition did not extend beyond the enjoyment of my books, 
 my leisure, and my patrimonial estate, undisturbed by the 
 cares of a family and the duties of a profession. But in the 
 militia I was armed with power ; in my travels, I was exempt 
 from controul ; and as I approached, as I gradually passed my 
 thirtieth year, I began to feel the desire of being master in 
 my own house. The most gentle authority will sometimes 
 frown without reason, the most cheerful submission will 
 sometimes murmur without cause ; and such is the law of 
 our imperfect nature, that we must either command or obey ; 
 that our personal liberty is supported by the obsequiousness 
 of our own dependants. While so many of my acquaintance 
 were married or in parliament, or advancing with a rapid step 
 in the various roads of honour and fortune, I stood alone, im- 
 moveable and insignificant ; for after the monthly meeting of 
 1770,^ I had even withdrawn myself from the militia, by the 
 resignation of an empty and barren commission. My temper 
 is not susceptible of envy, and the view of successful merit 
 has always excited my warmest applause. The miseries of a 
 vacant life were never known to a man whose hours were 
 insufficient for the inexhaustible pleasures of study. But I 
 lamented that at the proper age I had not embraced the 
 lucrative pursuits of the law ^ or of trade, the chances of civil 
 office or India adventure, or even the fat slumbers of the 
 church 3 ; and my repentance became more lively as the loss 
 of time was more iri'etrievable. Experience showed me the 
 use of grafting my private consequence on the importance of a 
 great professional body ; the benefits of those firm connections 
 which are cemented by hope and interest, by gratitude and 
 emulation, by the mutual exchange of services and favours. 
 From the emoluments of a profession I might have derived 
 an ample fortune, or a competent income, instead of being 
 
 '^[Pos^, Appendix 24.] ^[Ante, p. 113.] 
 
 3 [Only two or three years before he thus basely lamented, he made the 
 following entry in his journal about an Italian author : " II se plaint k tout 
 moment de sa pauvret6. II connait peu la veritable dignity d'un homme de 
 lettres" [Misc. Works, i. , 192).] 
 
1765] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 171 
 
 stinted to the same narrow allowance, to be increased only 
 by an event which I sincerely deprecated. The progress 
 and the knowledge of our domestic disorders aggravated 
 my anxiety^ and I began to apprehend that I might be 
 left in my old age without the fruits either of industry or in- 
 heritance. 
 
 In the first summer after my return, whilst I enjoyed at 
 Buriton the society of my friend Deyverdun, our daily con- 
 versations expatiated over the field of ancient and modern 
 literature ; and we freely discussed my studies, my first Essay, 
 and my future projects. The Decline and Fall of Rome I still 
 contemplated at an awful distance : but the two historical 
 designs which had balanced my choice were submitted to his 
 taste : and in the parallel between the Revolutions of Florence 
 and Switzerland, our common partiality for a country which 
 was his by birth, and mine by adoption, inclined the scale in 
 favour of the latter. According to the plan, which was soon 
 conceived and digested, I embraced a period of two hundred 
 years, from the association of the three peasants of the Alps 
 to the plenitude and prosperity of the Helvetic body in the 
 sixteenth century. I should have described the deliverance 
 and victory of the Swiss, who have never shed the blood of 
 their tyrants but in a field of battle ^ ; the laws and manners 
 of the confederate states ; the splendid trophies of the 
 Austrian, Burgundian, and Italian wars ; and the wisdom of 
 a nation, which, after some sallies of martial adventure, has 
 been content to guard the blessings of peace with the sword 
 of freedom. 
 
 Manus hasc inimica tyrannis 
 
 Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem. 
 
 My judgment, as well as my enthusiasm, was satisfied with 
 the glorious theme ; and the assistance of Deyverdun seemed 
 to remove an insuperable obstacle. The French or Latin 
 memorials, of which I was not ignorant, are inconsiderable in 
 
 i[As Gibbon did not believe in the story of William Tell [Misc. IVorks, 
 iii., 265), he was justified in passing over Gessler's death.] 
 
172 EDWAED GIBBON [i767 
 
 number and weight ; but in the perfect acquaintance of my 
 friend with the German language, I found the key of a more 
 valuable collection. The most necessary books were procured ; 
 he translated for my use, the folio volume of Schilling, a 
 copious and contemporary relation of the war of Burgundy ; 
 we read and marked the most interesting parts of the great 
 chronicle of Tschudi ; and by his labour, or that of an inferior 
 assistant^ large extracts were made from the History of Lauffer 
 and the Dictionary of Lew : yet such was the distance and 
 delay, that two years elapsed in these preparatory steps ; and 
 it was late in the third summer (1767) before I entered, with 
 these slender materials, on the more agreeable task of 
 composition. A specimen of my History, the first book, was 
 read the following winter in a literary society of foreigners in 
 London ; and as the author was unknown, I listened, without 
 observation, to the free strictures, and unfavourable sentence, 
 of my judges.^ The momentary sensation was painful ; but 
 their condemnation was ratified by my cooler thoughts. I 
 delivered my imperfect sheets to the flames, ^ and for ever 
 renounced a design in which some expense, much labour, and 
 more time had been so vainly consumed. I cannot regret 
 the loss of a slight and superficial essay, for such the work 
 must have been in the hands of a stranger, uninformed by 
 the scholars and statesmen, and remote from the libraries and 
 archives of the Swiss republics. My ancient habits, and the 
 presence of Deyverdun, encouraged me to write in French 
 for the continent of Europe ; but I was conscious myself that 
 my style, above prose and below poetry, degenerated into 
 > a verbose and turgid declamation. Perhaps I may impute 
 ithe failure to the injudicious choice of a foreign language. 
 j Perhaps I may suspect that the language itself is ill adapted 
 
 1 [See Appendix 30.] 
 
 ^He neglected to burn them. He left at Sheffield-Place the introduction, 
 or first book, in forty-three pages folio, written in a very small hand, besides a 
 considerable number of notes. Mr. Hume's opinion, expressed in the letter 
 in the last note [Appendix 30], perhaps may justify the publication of it. — 
 Sheffield. 
 
 [The Introdziction d V Histoire Ginirale de la Kdpublique des Suisses fills 
 ninety pages of vol. iii. of Gibbon's Misc. Works.} 
 
1767] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 173 
 
 to sustain the vigour and dignity of an important narrative. 
 But if France, so rich in literary merit, had produced a great 
 original historian, his genius would have formed and fixed the 
 idiom to the proper tone, the peculiar mode of historical 
 eloquence. 
 
 It was in search of some liberal and lucrative employment 
 that my friend Deyverdun had visited England. His remit- 
 tances from home were scanty and precarious. My purse was 
 always open, but it was often empty ; and I bitterly felt the 
 want of riches and power, which might have enabled me to 
 correct the errors of his fortune. His wishes and qualifica- 
 tions solicited .the station of the travelling governor of some 
 wealthy pupil ; but every vacancy provoked so many eager 
 candidates, that for a long time I struggled without success ; 
 nor was it till after much application that I could even place 
 him as a clerk in the office of the Secretary of State. In 
 a residence of several years he never acquired the just 
 pronunciation and familiar use of the English tongue, but 
 he read our most difficult authors with ease and taste : his 
 critical knowledge of our language and poetry was such as 
 few foreigners have possessed ; and few of our countrymen 
 could enjoy the theatre of Shakspeare and Garrick with 
 more exquisite feeling and discernment. The consciousness 
 of his own strength, and the assurance of my aid, emboldened 
 him to imitate the example of Dr. Maty, whose Journal 
 Britannique ^ was esteemed and regretted ; and to improve 
 his model, by uniting with the transactions of literature a 
 philosophic view of the arts and manners of the British 
 nation. Our Journal for the year 1767, under the title of 
 Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, was soon finished, 
 and sent to the press. ^ For the first article. Lord Lyttelton's 
 History of Henry II., I must own myself responsible ; but the 
 public has ratified my judgment of that voluminous work, in 
 
 1 [Ante, p. 124.] 
 
 2 [It was published in 1768. For an interesting letter by Gibbon about the 
 first number see Misc. Works, ii. , 68.] 
 
174 EDWARD GIBBON [i767 
 
 which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of 
 genius. 1 The next specimen was the choice of my friend, 
 The Bath Guide, a light and whimsical performance, of local, 
 and even verbal, pleasantry. ^ I started at the attempt : he 
 smiled at my fears : his courage was justified by success ; and 
 a master of both languages will applaud the curious felicity 
 with which he has transfused into French prose the spirit, 
 and even the humour, of the English verse. ^ It is not my 
 
 1 [Gibbon, after praising "deux grands hommes," Robertson and Hume, 
 continues: "Nous ne prodiguerons jamais a la grandeur la rteompense des 
 talens : Mylord L. ne doit point pr^tendre k la gloire de ces hommes de g^nie, 
 mais il lui reste les qualit^s d'un bon citoyen, d'un savant tr6s-^clair6, d'un 6cri- 
 vain exact et impartial, at c'est avec plaisir que nous les lui accordons" (P. 29). 
 
 On July 14, 1767, Hume wrote to Adam Smith : ' ' Have you read Lord 
 Lyttelton ? Do you not admire his Whiggery and his Piety ; qualities so useful 
 both for this v^^orld and the next ? " {Huvie MSS. in the Royal Society of Edin- 
 burgh). 
 
 " BoswELL. ' I rather think, Sir, that Toryism prevails in this reign.' John- 
 son. ' I know not why you should think so. Sir. You see your friend Lord 
 Lyttelton, a nobleman, is obliged in his History to write the most vulgar 
 Whiggism ' " (Boswell's /oAraww., ii. , 221). 
 
 Johnson, in his Life of Lyttelton, describes how this History " was published 
 with such anxiety as only vanity can dictate" (Johnson's Works, viii. , 492).] 
 
 2 [ The Nezv Bath Guide, by Christopher Anstey, is in the list of books in the 
 Gent. Mag. for May, 1766, p. 241. Horace Walpole wrote on June 20 {Letters, 
 iv. , 504) : " It stole into the world, and for a fortnight no soul looked into it, 
 concluding its name was its true name. No such thing. It is a set of letters in 
 verse, in all kinds of verses, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally every- 
 thing else ; but so much wit, so much humour, fun 9.nd poetry, so much 
 originality, never met together before. Then the man has a better ear than 
 Dryden or Handel. ... I can say it by heart, though a quarto, and if I had 
 time would write it you down ; for it is not yet reprinted, and not one to be 
 had." 
 
 Gray wrote on Aug. 26 : " Have you read The New Bath Guide ? it is the 
 only thing in fashion, and is a new and original kind of humour " (Mitford's 
 Gray's Works, iv. , 84). 
 
 According to Gary [Lives of the Poets, p. 184), after the second edition was 
 published the author sold the copyright to Dodsley for ^200.] 
 
 '^ [The following is a specimen of the verses and the translation. The hero 
 describes a consultation of doctors over his case (Letter iv.) : — 
 
 " Good doctor, I'm yours — 'tis a fine day for walking — 
 Sad news in the papers — God knows who's to blame ! 
 The colonies seem to be all in a flame — 
 This stamp act, no doubt, might be good for the crown, 
 But I fear 'tis a pill that will never go down — 
 What can Portugal mean ? is she going to stir up 
 Convulsions and heats in the bowels of Europe ? 
 'Twill be fatal if England relapses again. 
 From the ill blood and humours of Europe and Spain." 
 " Bon jour, raon cher Docteur. — Le beau temps pour la promenade. — II y a 
 de bien mauvaises nouvelles dans les papiers — Dieu salt k qui il faut s'en prendre. — 
 Les colonies paraissent toutes dans une inflammation. Get Acte du Timbre 
 
1768-69] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 175 
 
 wish to deny how deeply I was interested in these Memoirs, 
 of which I need not surely be ashamed ; but at the distance 
 of more than twenty years, it would be impossible for me to 
 ascertain the respective shares of the two associates. A long 
 and intimate communication of ideas had cast our sentiments 
 and style in the same mould. In our social labours we com- 
 posed and corrected by turns ; and the praise which I miight 
 honestly bestow, would fall perhaps on some article or passage 
 most properly my own. A second volume (for the year 1768) 
 was published of these Memoirs.^ I will presume to say, 
 that their merit was superior to their reputation ; but it is 
 not less true, that they were productive of more reputation 
 than emolument. They introduced my friend to the protec- 
 tion, and myself to the acquaintance, of the Earl of Chester- 
 field, whose age and infirmities secluded him from the 
 world,^ and of Mr. David Hume, who was under-secretary to 
 the office in which Deyverdun was more humbly employed.^ 
 The former accepted a dedication (April 12, 1769):. ^^d 
 
 peut etre bon, sans doute, pour la Cour, mais je crains qu'on ne puisse jamais 
 leur faire avaler la pillule. — Que fait le Portugal? — Excitera-t-il une fermentation 
 dans les entrailles de 1' Europe ? — L'Angleterre est k la veille d'une rechute fatale : 
 gare les mauvaises humeurs du sang des Bourbons " (P. 33).] 
 
 1 [This volume is not in the British Museum. Lowndes (ed. 1871, p. 886) 
 records the sale of both vols, for £4 19s. and ^6 i6s. 6d. Messrs. H. Sotheran 
 & Co. believe that no copy has ever passed through their hands.] 
 
 2 [On Dec. 25, 1767, Chesterfield wrote : " I have no actual illness nor pain 
 to complain of, but I am as lame of my legs as when you saw me, and must 
 expect to be so for the rest of my life" (Chesterfield's A/wc. Works, ed. 1779, 
 iv. , 316). On March 12, 1768, he wrote: " My deafness deprives me of the 
 only rational pleasure that I can have at my age, which is society ; so that I 
 read my eyes out every day, that I may not hang myself" [Letters to his Son, 
 iv. , 272). One is surprised to find him two years later, cut off as he was from 
 society and in his seventy-sixth year, ordering " four dozen of shirts" [Alisc. 
 
 Works, iv. , 328).] 
 
 3 [In February, 1767, Hume was appointed Under-Secretary of State by 
 the Secretary of State, General Conway. B)^ Conway's resignation in the 
 following January he lost his office (Hume's Letters to Strakan, pp. 103, 115). 
 On Dec. 2, 1766, Hume wrote to the Countess de Boufflers : " A few posts ago 
 I received a very curious letter from a Swiss gentleman who resides in London, 
 but whom I never either saw or heard of before ; his name is Deyverdun, and 
 he calls himself a native of Lausanne. He says that he was extremely surprised 
 to find that Rousseau had accused me of being the author or accomplice of two 
 libels wrote against him. . . . Now the Swiss gentleman tells me that he him- 
 self was the author of them, and gives me leave to publish his letter for that 
 purpose to the whole world " {Private Corres. of Hwne, p. 230). For Rousseau's 
 attack on Hume see Hume's Letters to Strahan, pp. 74-103.] 
 
176 EDWAED GIBBON [i769 
 
 reserved the author for the future education of his successor ^ : 
 the latter enriched the Journal with a reply to Mr. Walpole's 
 Historical Doubts, which he afterwards shaped into the form 
 of a note.^ The materials of the third volume were almost 
 completed, when I recommended Deyverdun as governor to 
 Sir Richard Worsley, a youth, the son of my old Lieutenant- 
 colonel, who was lately deceased.^ They set forwards on 
 
 1 [His cousin, who in March, 1773, succeeded him as fifth earl, was at this 
 time under the tuition of Dr. Dodd, who, eight years later, was hanged for 
 forging the young man's name. In 1772 the youth was at Leipsig with Deyver- 
 dun as his tutor (Chesterfield's Misc. Works, iv. , 208-9). On Sept. 10, 1773, 
 Gibbon wrote to Holroyd : " I forgot to tell you that I have declined the 
 publication of Lord Chesterfield's Letters. The public will see them, and upon 
 the whole I think with pleasure ; but the whole family were strongly bent 
 against it ; and, especially on Deyverdun's account, I deemed it more prudent 
 to avoid making them my personal enemies " {Corres. , i. , 195). For the opposi- 
 tion of the family to the publication see my introduction to Eightee7ith Cenhiry 
 Letters (Johnson and Chestej-Jield) , 189S. 
 
 On April 2, 1774, Gibbon wrote that " Deyverdun had been forced to quit 
 Lord C. , by the little peer's strange behaviour," etc. (Carres., i., 210).] 
 
 " [More than half the article is by Gibbon, who thus concludes : ' ' Les argu- 
 mens de M. Walpole nous avaient ^bloui sans nous convaincre. Les reflexions 
 suivantes nous ont ramen6 au sentiment g^n^ral ; elles sont de M. Hume, qui 
 nous les a communiqu^es avec la permission d'en enrichir nos M6moires " (Misc. 
 Works, iii., 341). 
 
 The "note" is given in Hume's History, ed. 1773, iii., 454. "Nothing," 
 writes Hume of Walpole (ib., p. 460), " can be a stronger proof how ingenious 
 and agreeable that gentleman's pen is, than his being able to make an enquiry 
 concerning a remote point of English antiquities an object of general conversa- 
 tion. The foregoing note has been enlarged on account-of that performance." 
 
 Walpole recorded in his Short Notes of my Life (Letters, Preface, p. 75), 
 under date of May, 1769 : " Mr. David Hume had introduced to me one Diver- 
 dun \sic\ a Swiss in the Secretary's office. This man wrote Mimoires Littirai7'es 
 de la Grande Bretagne ; and Mr. Hume desired I would give him a copy of 
 Lord Herbej-t's Life, that he might insert an extract in his Journal. I did. . . . 
 In this new Journal \_Mimoires, 1768] I found a criticism on my Historic Doubts, 
 with notes by Mr. Hume, to which the critic declared he gave the preference. 
 Mr. Hume had shown me the notes last year in manuscript, but this conduct 
 appeared so paltry, added to Mr. Hume's total silence, that I immediately wrote 
 an answer, not only to these notes, but to other things that had been written 
 against my Doubts. However, as I treated Mr. Hume with the severity he 
 deserved, I resolved not to print this answer, only to show it to him in manu- 
 script, and to leave it behind as an appendix to, and confirmation of, my 
 Historic Doubts."'\ 
 
 3 [.4«fe, p. 168. Gibbon wrote on March 21, 1772 : " Sir Richard Worsley is 
 just come home. I am sorry to see many alterations, and little improvement. 
 From an honest wild English buck, he is grown o. philosopher. Lord Petersfield 
 displeases everybody by the affectation of consequence ; the young baronet 
 disgusts no less by the affectation of wisdom. He speaks in short sentences, 
 quotes Montaigne, seldom smiles, never laughs, drinks only water, professes to 
 command his passions, and intends to marry in five months " (Corres., i. , 153). 
 
 By "Lord Petersfield" Gibbon meant William Jolliffe, the Lord of the 
 Manor (see ib,,. i., 171)-] 
 
1770] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 177 
 
 their travels ; nor did they return to England till some time 
 after my father's death. 
 
 My next publication was an accidental sally of love and 
 resentment ; of my reverence for modest genius, and my 
 aversion for insolent pedantry. The sixth book of the ^Eneid 
 is the most pleasing and perfect composition of Latin poetry. 
 The descent of ^Eneas and the Sibyl to the infernal regions, 
 to the world of spirits, expands an awful and boundless 
 prospect, from the nocturnal gloom of the Cumaean grot, 
 
 Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram,^ 
 
 to the meridian brightness of the Elysian fields ; 
 
 Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit 
 Purpureo ^ 
 
 from the dreams of simple Nature, to the dreams, alas ! of 
 Egyptian theology, and the philosophy of the Greeks. But 
 the final dismission of the hero through the ivory gate, whence 
 
 Falsa ad ccelum mittunt insomnia manes,^ 
 
 seems to dissolve the whole enchantment, and leaves the 
 reader in a state of cold and anxious scepticism. This most 
 lame and impotent conclusion has been variously imputed to 
 the taste or irreligion of Virgil ; but, according to the more 
 elaborate interpretation of Bishop Warburton, the descent to 
 hell is not a false, but a mimic scene ; which represents the 
 initiation of vEneas, in the character of a lawgiver, to the 
 Eleusinian mysteries. This hypothesis, a singular chapter in 
 the Divine Legation of Moses,* had been admitted by many 
 
 ^[^neid, vi., 268. 
 
 " Obscure they went through dreary shades, that led 
 Along the waste dominions of the dead." 
 
 (Dryden.)] 
 ^[^?zetd, vi. , 640. 
 
 ' ' The verdant fields with those of heaven may vie, 
 With ether vested, and a purple sky." 
 
 (Dryden.)] 
 '^l^neid, vi., 896. 
 
 " Through polished ivory pass deluding lies." 
 
 (Dryden.)] 
 4 [Book ii., sect. 4.] 
 
 12 
 
178 EDWAKD GIBBON [i77o 
 
 as true ; it was praised by all as ingenious ; nor had it been 
 exposed, in a space of thirty years, to a fair and critical 
 discussion. The learning and the abilities of the author had 
 raised him to a just eminence ; but he reigned the dictator 
 and tyrant of the world of literature.^ The real merit of 
 Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with 
 which he pronounced his infallible decrees ; in his polemic 
 writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or modera- 
 tion ; and his servile flatterers (see the base and malignant 
 Essay on the Delicacy of Friendship^), exalting the master critic 
 far above Aristotle and Longinus,^ assaulted every modest 
 dissenter who refused to consult the oracle, and to adore the 
 idol.'* In a land of liberty, such despotism must provoke a 
 
 i["The state of authorship," wrote Warburton, "whatever that of nature 
 may be, is certainly a state of war ' ' [Remarks on Several Occasional Rejections, 
 ed. 1744, p. 3). Pope had said before him : " The life of a wit is a warfare upon 
 earth " (Warton's Pope's Works, ed. 1822, i. , 63). 
 
 " When I read Warburton first (said Johnson) and observed his force, and 
 his contempt of mankind, I thought he had driven the world before him ; but I 
 soon found that was not the case ; for Warburton, by extending his abuse, 
 rendered it ineffectual" [^oswelVs Johnson, v., 93). 
 
 Gibbon, after quoting from Procopius an obscene anecdote of Theodora, 
 says : " I have heard that a learned prelate, now deceased, was fond of quoting 
 this passage in conversation " ( The Decline, iv. , 213). I suspect that Warburton 
 is meant from the close juxtaposition of the following note on p. 215 : " ' Let 
 greatness own her, and she's mean no more,' etc. Without Warburton's 
 critical telescope I should never have seen in the general picture of triumphant 
 vice any personal allusion to Theodora." Warburton's note is given in 
 his edition oi Pope's Works, iv. , 309.] 
 
 2 [By Richard Hurd, afterwards Bishop of Worcester. Published anony- 
 mously in 1755. It became scarce and would have remained forgotten, had not 
 Parr reprinted it in 1789, from a MS. copy which, when he was a schoolmaster, 
 he had set two of his boys to make (Johnstone's Parr's Works, i., 291). See 
 ib., p. 307, for the explanation of Parr's enmity, and Boswell's Johnson, iv., 47. 
 Gibbon charges Hurd with " the assassination of Jortin" in this book {Auto., 
 p. 304). For Jortin see Johnson's Letters, ii., 276, and Pattison's Essays, ii., 131. 
 Gibbon had at Lausanne engravings both of Warburton and Hurd (Read's 
 Hist. Studies, ii. , 479). 
 
 In a copy of The Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate to one of his Friends 
 [Warburton to Hurd] Macaulay wrote at the head of the first letter, ' ' Bully to 
 Sneak" (Trevelyan's Macaulay, ed. 1877, ii. , 469).] 
 
 '^ [Gibbon refers to the dedication of Hurd's edition of Horace's Epistle to 
 Augustus. He quotes the passage in his Critical Observations (Misc. Works, 
 iv., 509)-] 
 
 * [Hume VTTOte in 1771 : " Warburton and all his gang, the most scurrilous, 
 arrogant and impudent fellows in the world, have been abusing me in their 
 usual style these twenty years" {Letters to Strahan, p. 200). In his Autobiography 
 Hume says : ' ' Dr. Hurd wrote a pamphlet against my Natural History of 
 
1770] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 179 
 
 general oppositioiij and the zeal of opposition is seldom 
 candid or impartial. A late professor of Oxford (Dr. Lowtji), 
 in a pointed and polished epistle (August 3] , 1765), defended 
 himself, and attacked the Bishop ; and, whatsoever might be 
 the merits of an insignificant controversy, his victory was 
 clearly established by the silent confusion of Warburton and 
 his slaves.^ / too, without any private offence, was ambitious 
 of breaking a lance against the giant's shield ; and in the 
 beginning of the year 1770, my Critical Observations on the 
 Sixth Book of the ^Eneid were sent, without my name, to the 
 press.^ In this short Essay, my first English publication, I 
 aimed my strokes against the person and the hypothesis of 
 Bishop Warburton. I proved, at least to my own satisfaction, 
 that the ancient lawgivers did not invent the mysteries, and 
 that -^neas was never invested with the office of lawgiver : ^ 
 that there is not any argument, any circumstance, which can 
 melt a fable into allegory, or remove the scene from the Lake 
 Avernus to the Temple of Ceres : that such a wild supposition 
 is equally injurious to the poet and the man : that if Virgil 
 was not initiated he could not, if he were, he would not, 
 reveal the secrets of the initiation : that the anathema of 
 Horace (yetabo qui Cereris sacrum vulgarit, etc.) at once attests 
 his own ignorance and the innocence of his friend.^ As the 
 Bishop of Gloucester and his party maintained a discreet 
 silence, my critical disquisition was soon lost among the 
 pamphlets of the day ; but the public coldness was over- 
 
 Religion with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance and scurrility which distin- 
 guish the Warburtonian school " {ib. , preface, p. 28). 
 
 " The secret intentions of Julian are revealed by the late Bishop of Gloucester, 
 the learned and dogmatic Warburton ; who, with the authority of a theologian, 
 prescribes the motives and conduct of the Supreme Being. The discourse 
 entitled Julian is strongly marked with all the peculiarities which are imputed 
 to the Warburtonian school" ^The Decline, ii., 457).] 
 
 ^[Anie, p. 49. "His Majesty then talked of the controversy between 
 Warburton and Lowth, which he seemed to have read, and asked Johnson 
 what he thought of it. Johnson answered, "Warburton has most general, 
 most scholastick learning ; Lowth is the more correct scholar. I do not know 
 which of them calls names best " (Boswell's Johiison, ii., 37).] 
 
 "^^Misc. Works, iv., 467.] 
 
 ^\Ib., iv., 479, 484.] 4 [See Appendix 31.] 
 
180 EDWAED GIBBON [i77o 
 
 balanced to my feelings by the weighty approbation of the 
 last and best editor of Virgil^ Professor Heyne of Gottingen, 
 who acquiesces in my confutation^ and styles the unknown 
 author, doctus . . . et eleganlissimus Britannus?- But I cannot 
 resist the temptation of transcribing the favourable judgment 
 of Mr. Hayley, himself a poet and a scholar ; " An intricate 
 hypothesis, twisted into a long and laboured chain of quota- 
 tion and argument, the Dissertation on the Sixth Book of 
 Virgil, remained some time unrefuted. . . . At length, a 
 superior, but anonymous critic arose, who, in one of the most 
 judicious and spirited essays that our nation has produced, on 
 a point of classical literature, completely overturned this ill- 
 founded edifice, and exposed the arrogance and futility of its 
 assuming architect." ^ He even condescends to justify an 
 acrimony of style, which had been gently blamed by the more 
 unbiassed German ; " Paullo acrius quam velis . . . jjerstnnxit.^" 
 But I cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a 
 man who, with all his faults, was entitled to my esteem ^ ; 
 
 1 [In Heyne's Virgil, Leipsic, 1787, ii. , 804, the unknown author is styled 
 " vir doctus," and p. 821, n., "eleganlissimus Britannus".] 
 
 ^[Hnyley's Poetical Works, ed. 1785, ii., 112.] 
 
 2 The editor of the Warburtonian Tracts, Dr. Parr (p. 192), considers the 
 allegorical interpretation " as completely refuted in a mOst clear, elegant and 
 decisive work of criticism ; which could not, indeed, derive authority from the 
 greatest name ; but to which the greatest name might with propriety have been 
 affixed. —Gibbon. 
 
 [Parr added in a note that "this book is ascribed, and I think with great 
 probability," to Gibbon (Pan-'s Works, iii., 417). For the Warbicrtonian 
 Tracts see Boswell's Johnson, iv. , 47. 
 
 Hayley, after quoting Heyne's remark, continues: "But what lover of 
 poetry, unbiassed by personal connection, can speak of Warburton without 
 some marks of indignation ? . . . He has sullied the page of every poet whom 
 he pretended to illustrate, and frequently degraded the generous profession of 
 criticism into a mean instrument of personal malignity " {ib., p. 116). 
 
 Gray records Warburton's "contemptuous treatment " of Richard Terrick, 
 who was made Bishop of London in 1764. " Now I am talking of Bishops," 
 Gray wrote, " I must tell you that not long ago Bishop Warburton, in a sermon 
 at Court, asserted that all preferments were bestowed on the most illiterate and 
 worthless objects, and in speaking turned himself about, and stared directly at 
 the Bishop of London ; he added, that if any one arose distinguished for merit 
 and learning, there was a combination of dunces to keep him down. I need 
 not tell you that he expected the Bishopric of London himself when Terrick got 
 it " (Mitford's Gray s Works, iv. , 49).] 
 
 *The Divine Legation of Moses is a monument, already crumbling in the 
 dust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind. If Warburton's new 
 argument proved anything, it would be a demonstration against the legislator, 
 
1770-72] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 181 
 
 and I can less forgive, in a personal attack, the cowardly 
 concealment of my name and character. 
 
 In the fifteen years between my Essay on the Study of 
 Literature and the first volume of the Decline and Fall 
 (176I-I776), this criticism on Warburton, and some articles 
 in the Journal, were my sole publications. It is more 
 especially incumbent on me to mark the employment, or 
 to confess the waste of time, from my travels to my fathei-'s 
 death, an interval in which I was not diverted by any pro- 
 fessional duties from the labours and pleasures of a studious 
 life. 1. As soon as I was released from the fruitless task of 
 the Swiss revolutions (1768), I began gradually to advance 
 from the wish to the hope, from the hope to the design, from 
 the design to the execution, of my historical work, of whose 
 limits and extent I had yet a very inadequate notion. The 
 Classics, as low as Tacitus, the younger Pliny, and Juvenal, 
 were my old and familiar companions. I insensibly plunged 
 into the ocean of the Augustan history ; and in the descend- 
 ing series I investigated, with my pen almost always in my 
 hand, the original records, both Greek and Latin, from Dion 
 Cassius to Ammianus Marcellinus,^ from the reign of Trajan 
 
 who left his people without the knowledge of a future state. But some episodes 
 of the work, on the Greek philosophy, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, etc., are 
 entitled to the praise of learning, imagination, and discernment. — Gibbon. 
 
 [Warburton's " new argument " is thus summed up by its author : " Having 
 proved my three principal propositions, 
 
 I. ' That the inculcating the doctrine of a future state of rewards and 
 punishments is necessary to the well-being of society.' 
 
 II. ' That all mankind, especially the most wise and learned nations of 
 antiquity, have concurred in believing and teaching that this doctrine was of 
 such use to civil society.' 
 
 III. ' That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to 
 be found in, nor did make part of the Mosaic Dispensation.' 
 
 The conclusion is that therefore The Law of jMoses is of Divine 
 Origin" (The Divine Legation, ed. 1765, v., 403). 
 
 In Mr. Murray's ed. of the Aido., p. 283, the above note and note 3 on p. 180 
 are assigned to Lord Sheffield. That they are Gibbon's is shown ib., p. 30.15.] 
 
 1 [Gibbon thus mentions him in The Decline, iii. , 122, under the date of A.D. 
 379-382 : " It is not without the most sincere regret that I must now take leave 
 of an accurate and faithful guide, who has composed the history of his own times 
 without indulging the prejudices and passions which usually affect the mind of a 
 contemporary ". 
 
 " Mr. Gibbon shows, it is true, so strong a dislike to Christianity as visibly 
 disqualifies him for that society of which he has created Ammianus Marcellinus 
 president " (Porson's Letters to Travis, ed. 1790, Preface, p. 28).] 
 
182 EDWARD GIBBON [1770-72 
 
 to the last age of the Western Caesars. The subsidiary rays of 
 medals, and inscriptions of geography and chronology, were 
 thrown on their proper objects ^ ; and I applied the collections 
 of Tillemont, whose inimitable accuracy almost assumes the 
 character of genius,^ to fix and arrange within my reach the 
 loose and scattered atoms of historical information. Through 
 the darkness of the middle ages I explored my way in the 
 Annals and Antiquities of Italy of the learned Muratori ^ ; 
 and diligfently compared them with the parallel or transverse 
 lines of Sigonius and MafFei,* Baronius and Pagi,^ till I almost 
 grasped the ruins of Rome in the fourteenth century/ without 
 suspecting that this final chapter must be attained by the 
 labour of six quartos and twenty years. Among the books 
 which I purchased, the Theodosian Code, with the commentary 
 of James Godefroy,'^ must be gratefully remembered. I used 
 
 ^{^Anle, p. i6o.] 
 
 ^IPosf, p. 232. Gibbon does not always speak of him so respectfully. 
 ' ' Tillemont endeavours to pick his way. The patient and sure-footed mule of 
 the Alps may be trusted in the most slippery paths" {TAe Decline, iii., 48). 
 ' ' Tillemont has raked together all the dirt of the Fathers ; an useful scavenger ! " 
 {ib., iii., 153).] 
 
 3 [Muratori, early in the eighteenth century, " reformed the ducal library of 
 Modena. The name of Muratori will be for ever connected with the literature 
 of his country. . . . His numerous writings . . . are impressed with sense and 
 knowledge, with moderation and candour ; he moved in the narrow circle of an 
 Italian priest ; but a desire of freedom, a ray of philosophic light sometimes 
 breaks through his own prejudices and those of his readers. . . . He will not 
 aspire to the fame of historical genius ; his modesty may be content with the solid, 
 though humble praise of an impartial critic and indefatigable compiler " {Misc. 
 Works, iii., 365-7). In The Decline (vii. , 300) Gibbon speaks of him as " my 
 guide and master in the history of Italy ".] 
 
 * [" Even Sigonius too freely copied the classic method of supplying from reason 
 or fancy the deficiency of records" (ib., vii., 224). For the Marquis Maffei's 
 Ve7'ona Illustrata see ib., p. 316.] 
 
 s \Ante, p. 68, n. " Baronius is copious and florid, but he is accused of placing 
 the lies of different ages on the same level of authenticity" {The Decline, iii., 
 389). " Father Pagi, to whom good letters have many obligations, shows (in 
 his Dissertatio Hypafica, p. 368) that he read history like a monk" {Misc. 
 Works, v., 574). For their " angry growl " see The Decline, iv. , 195.] 
 
 s [The last chapter of The Decline, opens with the ' ' Prospect of the Ruins 
 of Rome in the Fifteenth Century ". " In the last days of Pope Eugenius IV. 
 [a.d. 1430] two of his servants, the learned Poggius and a friend, ascended 
 the Capitoline Hill ; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and 
 temples ; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect 
 of desolation."] 
 
 ^[" His mind was balanced by the opposite prejudices of a Civilian and a 
 Protestant" {The Decline, ii. , 319).] 
 
1770-72] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 183 
 
 it (and much I used it) as a work of history, rather than of 
 jurisprudence : but in every light it may be considered as a 
 full and capacious repository of the political state of the 
 empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. As I believed, and 
 as I still believe, that the propagation of the Gospel, and the 
 triumph of the church, are inseparably connected with the 
 decline of the Roman monarchy, ^ I weighed the causes and 
 effects of the revolution, and contrasted the narratives and 
 apologies of the Christians themselves, with the glances of 
 candour or enmity which the Pagans have cast on the rising 
 sects. 2 The Jewish and Heathen testimonies, as they are 
 collected and illustrated by Dr. Lardner,^ directed, without 
 superseding, my search of the originals ; and in an ample 
 dissertation on the miraculous darkness of the passion, I 
 privately drew my conclusions from the silence of an un- 
 believing age.* I have assembled the preparatory studies, 
 
 1 [" As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may 
 hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse, of 
 Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. 
 The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity ; 
 the active virtues of society were discouraged ; and the last remains of military 
 spirit were buried in the cloister," etc. (The Decline, iv., 162). " The monks 
 were more expensive and more numerous than the soldiers of the East " (ib. , 
 iv. , 341). "The disputes of the Trinity were succeeded by those of the 
 Incarnation, alike scandalous to the Church, alike pernicious to the State " 
 [ib. , v., 96). " The verbal disputes of the Oriental sects have shaken the pillars 
 of the Church and State" [ib., v., 106). "The religion of the Greeks could 
 only teach them to suffer and to yield" [ib., vi. , 95). " The schism of Con- 
 stantinople, by alienating her most useful allies, and provoking her most 
 dangerous enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman empire 
 in the East " {ib., vi., 366). " I have described the triumph of barbarism and 
 religion" (ib., vii., 308).] 
 
 2 [For Gibbon's admiration of " the incomparable pliancy of a Polytheist " 
 see The Decline, iii. , 31.] 
 
 3 [Nathaniel Lardner, D.D. , 1688-1768. "The scandalous calumnies of 
 Augustine, Pope Leo, etc. , which Tillemont swallows like a child, and Lardner 
 refutes like a man," etc. ( The Decline, iii. , 154).] 
 
 ^[" Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated 
 province of the Roman empire, was involved in a praeternatural darkness 
 of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the 
 wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an 
 age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the 
 elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the 
 earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious 
 work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, 
 comets, and eclipses which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the 
 one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which 
 the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe " (j,b., ii., 70).] 
 
184 EDWARD GIBBON [i770-72 
 
 directly or indirectly relative to my history ; but, in strict 
 equity, they must be spread beyond this period of my life, over 
 the two summers (1771 and 1772) that elapsed between my 
 father's death and my settlement in London. 2. In a free 
 conversation with books and men, it would be endless to 
 enumerate the names and characters of all who are introduced 
 to our acquaintance ; but in this general acquaintance we may 
 select the degrees of friendship and esteem. According to 
 the wise maxim, Multuvi legere potius quam midta, I reviewed, 
 again and again, the immortal works of the French and 
 English, the Latin and Italian classics. My Greek studies 
 (though less assiduous than I designed) maintained and 
 extended my knowledge of that incomparable idiom. Homer 
 and Xenophon ^ were still my favourite authors ; and I had 
 almost prepared for the press an Essay on the Cyropoedia, 
 which, in my own judgment, is not unhappily laboured. 
 After a certain age, the new publications of merit are the 
 sole food of the many ; and the most austere student will be 
 often tempted to break the line, for the sake of indulging his 
 own curiosity, and of providing the topics of fashionable cur- 
 rency. A more respectable motive may be assigned for the 
 third perusal of Blackstone's Commentaries, and a copious 
 and critical abstract of that English work was my first serious 
 production in my native language.^ 3. My literary leisure 
 was much less complete and independent than it might 
 appear to the eye of a stranger. In the hurry of London 
 I was destitute of books ; in the solitude of Hampshire I was 
 not master of my time. My quiet was gradually disturbed 
 by our domestic anxiety, and I should be ashamed of my 
 unfeeling philosophy, had I found much time or taste for 
 
 ^{Ante, p. 92. Gibbon's praise of Herodotus is comical enough. "He 
 has erected an elegant trophy to his own fame and to that of his country " {ib. , 
 ii-. 145)-] 
 
 2 [In his Remarks on Blackstone's Commentaries Gibbon says (evidently in 
 reference to the second section of the Introduction) : " I have entirely omitted 
 a metaphysical inquiry upon the nature of laws in general, eternal and positive 
 laws, and a number of sublime terms, which I admire as much as I can without 
 understanding them" [Misc. Works, v., 546).] 
 
1770-72] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 185 
 
 study in the last fatal summer (1770) of my father's decay 
 and dissolution. 
 
 The disembodying of the militia at the close of the war 
 (1763) had restored the Major (a new Cincinnatus) to a life of 
 agriculture. His labours were useful, his pleasures innocent, 
 his wishes moderate ; and my father seemed to enjoy the state 
 of happiness which is celebrated by poets and philosophers, 
 as the most agreeable to nature, and the least accessible to 
 fortune. 
 
 Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis 
 (Ut prisca gens mortalium) 
 Paterna rura bubus exercet suis, 
 Solutus omni fcenore.-^ 
 
 But the last indispensable condition, the freedom from debt, 
 was wanting to my fathei''s felicity ; and the vanities of his 
 youth were severely punished by the solicitude and sorrow of 
 his declining age. The first mortgage, on my return from 
 Lausanne (1758), had afforded him a partial and transient 
 relief.^ The annual demand of interest and allowance was a 
 heavy deduction from his income ; the militia was a source of 
 expence, the farm in his hands was not a profitable adventure, 
 he was loaded with the costs and damages of an obsolete law- 
 suit ; and each year multiplied the number, and exhausted 
 the patience, of his creditors. Under these painful circum- 
 stances, I consented to an additional mortgage,^ to the sale of 
 Putney,* and to every sacrifice that could alleviate his dis- 
 
 1 [Horace, Epod., ii. , i. 
 
 " Like the first mortals, blest is he 
 From debts, and usury, and business free, 
 With his own team who ploughs the soil. 
 Which grateful once confessed his father's toil." 
 
 (Francis.)] 
 
 2 [It was a mortgage of /'lo.ooo, raised on an entailed estate ; his son con- 
 senting to break the entail, and the father, in return, settling on him an annuity 
 for life of ;i^30o [Auto., pp. 155, 243, 399; Co)'?'es., i., 69). What Gibbon 
 thought of entails he shows in his chapter on Roman Law. ' ' The simplicity of 
 the civil law was never clouded by the long and intricate entails which confine 
 the happiness and freedom of unborn generations " [The Decline, iv. , 491).] 
 
 ■'[It must have been one of ^^7, 000, as the total of the mortgages left by his 
 father was £17,000 (Auto., p. 290).] 
 
 *[It was sold for _^8,5oo [Carres., i., 105, 107, and Misc. Works, i., 19, «.).] 
 
186 EDWARD GIBBON [i77o-72 
 
 tress. But he was no longer capable of a rational effort^ and 
 his reluctant delays postponed not the evils themselves, but 
 the remedies of those evils [reinedia malorum potius quam mala 
 differehat).^ The pangs of shame, tenderness, and self- 
 reproach, incessantly preyed on his vitals ; his constitution 
 was broken ; he lost his strength and his sight ; the rapid 
 progress of a dropsy admonished him of his end, and he sunk 
 into the grave on the tenth of November, 1770,^ in the sixty- 
 fourth year of his age. A family tradition insinuates that 
 Mr. William Law had drawn his pupil in the light and 
 inconstant character of Flatus,^ who is ever confident, and 
 ever disappointed in the chace of happiness. But these 
 constitutional failings were happily compensated by the 
 virtues of the head and heart, by the warmest sentiments 
 of honour and humanity. His graceful person, polite address, 
 gentle manners, and unaiFected cheerfulness, recommended 
 him to the favour of every company * ; and in the change of 
 times and opinions, his liberal spirit had long since delivered 
 him from the zeal and prejudice of a Tory education. I 
 submitted to the order of Nature ; and my grief was soothed 
 by the conscious satisfaction that I had discharged all the 
 duties of filial piety. ^ 
 
 As soon as I had paid the last solemn duties to my father, 
 
 1 [" Remedia potius malorum quam mala differebat " (Tacitus, Hist, 
 iii., 54). 
 
 To his step-mother he wrote on Jan. 21, 1769 : " For God's sake, for all our 
 sakes, press my father to recollect everything, to look out everything, and to 
 send us everything that he can. All our difficulties proceed from former care- 
 lessness" {Cor res., i. , 97).] 
 
 2 [It was on Nov. 12 his father died (see Corres., i., 117, 122).] 
 
 3 \_A Serious Call, ch. xii. Gibbon's father was Law's pupil when the book 
 was published. The chapter may have been written as a warning to him ; but 
 it is impossible to believe that his character was drawn.] 
 
 '^[Anie, p. 115.] 
 
 5 [Gibbon wrote to Holroyd on April 29, 1767, when his father " was taken 
 dangerously ill " : "I can assure you, my dear Holroyd, that the same event 
 appears in a very different light when the danger is serious and immediate ; or 
 when, in the gaiety of a tavern dinner, we affect an insensibility that would do 
 us no great honour were it real " ( Corres. , i., 86). On April 13, 1774, he wrote of 
 a friend who had lost his father : ' ' Incredible as it sounds to the generality of sons, 
 and as it ought to sound to most fathers, he considered the old gentleman as a 
 friend " [ib., i. , 211).] 
 
1773] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 187 
 
 and obtained, from time and reason, a tolerable composm-e of 
 mind, I began to form the plan of an independent life, most 
 adapted to my circumstances and inclination. Yet so intricate 
 was the net, my efforts were so awkward and feeble, that 
 nearly two years (November, 1770 — October, 1772) were 
 suffered to elapse before I could disentangle myself from the 
 management of the farm,^ and transfer my residence from 
 Buriton to a house in London.^ During this interval I con- 
 tinued to divide my year between town and the country ; but 
 my new situation was brightened by hope ; my stay in London 
 was prolonged into the summer ; and the uniformity of the 
 summer was occasionally broken by visits and excursions at a 
 distance from home. The gratification of my desires (they 
 were not immoderate ^) has been seldom disappointed by the 
 want of money or credit ; my pride was never insulted by the 
 visit of an importunate tradesman ; and any transient anxiety 
 for the past or future has been dispelled by the studious or 
 social occupation of the present hour. My conscience does 
 not accuse me of any act of extravagance or injustice, and the 
 remnant of my estate affords an ample and honourable pro- 
 vision for my declining age. I shall not expatiate on my 
 economical affairs,* which cannot be instructive or amusing to 
 
 ^ [Seventeen years later, when he was trying to sell the estate, he wrote : 
 " What is the difficulty of the title? Will men of sense, in a sensible country, 
 never get rid of the tyranny of lawyers ? more oppressive and ridiculous than 
 even the old yoke of the clergy " (il>., ii. , 200).] 
 
 ^[Gibbon wrote to Holroyd from Buriton in 1772 : " I am just arrived, as 
 well as yourself, at my dii penates, but with very different intention. You will 
 ever remain a bigot to those rustic deities ; I propose to abjure them soon, and 
 to reconcile myself to the Catholic Church of London. ... I am so happy, so 
 exquisitely happy, at feeling so many mountains taken off my shoulders that I 
 can brave your indignation, and even the three-forked lightning of Jupiter him- 
 self " (Corres., i., 155, 165). 
 
 On Feb. 11, 1773, he wrote to his step-mother "from my own house 
 in Bentinck Street [No. 7]" (ib., i., 179). On May 24, 1774, he wrote to 
 Holroyd : " Never pretend to allure me, by painting in odious colours the dust 
 of London. I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Wold, it is to visit 
 you and My lady, and not your Trees" [ib., i., 218).] 
 
 "^["A rational voluptuary adheres with invariable respect to the temperate 
 dictates of nature, and improves the gratifications of sense by social intercourse, 
 endearing connections, and the soft colouring of taste and imagination" [Tlie 
 Decline, i., 146).] 
 
 ^[For a long passage in which he had " expatiated" see Auto., pp. 289-291. 
 At the end of it he consoles himself by the reflection that his "patrimony had 
 been diminished in the enjoyment of life".] 
 
188 EDWARD GIBBON [1773 
 
 the reader. It is a rule of prudence, as well as of politeness, 
 to reserve such confidence for the ear of a private friend, 
 without exposing our situation to the envy or pity of strangers ; 
 for envy is productive of hatred, and pity borders too nearly 
 on contempt. Yet I may believe, and even assert, that in 
 circumstances more indigent or more wealthy, I should never 
 have accomplished the task, or acquired the fame, of an 
 historian ; that my spirit would have been broken by poverty 
 and contempt, and that my industry might have been relaxed 
 in the labour and luxury of a superfluous fortune.^ 
 
 I had now attained the first of earthly blessings, indepen- 
 dence. ^ I was the absolute master of my hours and actions : 
 nor was I deceived in the hope that the establishment of my 
 library in town would allow me to divide the day between 
 study and society. Each year the circle of my acquaintance, 
 the number of my dead and living companions, was enlarged. 
 To a lover of books, the shops and sales of London present 
 irresistible temptations ; and the manufacture of my History 
 required a various and growing stock of materials.^ The 
 
 i[See/(3j^, p. 243, for " the golden mediocrity of my fortune".] 
 
 ^ [See Auto. , p. 306, for a curious omission in the text, where Gibbon describes 
 "the sohd comforts of life," and adds: " These advantages were crowned by 
 the first," etc. 
 
 On May 8, 1762, he recorded in his journal : " I can command all the con- 
 veniences of life, and I can command too that independence (that first earthly 
 blessing) which is hardly to be met with in a higher or lower fortune" [Misc. 
 Works, i. , 147).] 
 
 3 [Gibbon wrote in 1779 : ' ' The greatest city in the world is still destitute of 
 a public library ; and the writer who has undertaken to treat any large historical 
 subject is reduced to the necessity of purchasing, for his private use, a numerous 
 and valuable collection of the books which must form the basis of his work" 
 (Misc. Works, iv., 591). 
 
 In 1792, writing about " the future fate" of his library, he said : " If indeed 
 a true liberal public library existed in London, I might be tempted to enrich 
 the catalogue" (Corres., ii., 301). 
 
 Johnson used to read in the library at the Queen's House (Boswell's Johnson, 
 
 ii-, 33)- 
 
 So early as 1758 rules had been drawn up for the British Museum Library 
 (Gent. Mag., 1758, p. 629). It was increased in 1763 by 30,000 books and tracts 
 of the Civil Wars presented by the King (ib., 1763, p. 576). The restrictions 
 imposed by the rules and by the officials were great. 
 
 Froude, writing of the )'ear 1834, says : " In the British Museum lay con- 
 cealed somewhere 'a collection of French pamphlets' on the Revolution, the 
 completest in the world, which, after six weeks' wrestle with officiality, Carlyle 
 was obhged to find 'inaccessible' to him" (Froude's Carlyle (1795-1835), ed. 
 1882, ii., 450).] 
 
1773] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 189 
 
 militia, my travels, the House of Commons, the fame of an 
 author, contributed to m.ultiply my connections : I was chosen 
 a member of the fashionable clubs ; and, before I left Eng- 
 land in 1783, there were few persons of any eminence in the 
 literary or political world to whom. I was a stranger. ^ It 
 would most assuredly be in my power to amuse the reader 
 with a gallery of portraits and a collection of anecdotes. But 
 I have always condemned the practice of transforming a 
 private memorial into a vehicle of satire or praise. By my 
 own choice I passed in town the greatest part of the year ; 
 but whenever I was desirous of breathing the air of the 
 country, I possessed an hospitable retreat at Sheffield-place 
 in Sussex, in the family of my valuable friend Mr. Holroyd, 
 whose character, under the name of Lord Sheffield, has since 
 been more conspicuous to the public. ^ 
 
 No sooner was I settled in my house and library, than I 
 undertook the composition of the first volume of my History. 
 At the outset all was dark and doubtful ; even the title of the 
 work,3 the true sera of the Decline and Fall of the Empire, 
 the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, 
 and the order of the narrative ; and I was often tempted to 
 cast away the labour of seven years. The style of an author 
 
 ^ [See Appendix 32.] 
 
 2 [A view of Sheffield Place is given in vol. i. of Gibbon's Misc. Works, and 
 a portrait of Lord Sheffield in The Girlhood of M. J. Holroyd, p. 112. On 
 Nov. 27, 1780, Gibbon wrote ' ' to Mrs. Holroyd announcing that Colonel 
 Holroyd was created Lord Sheffield": "Mr. Gibbon presents his respectful 
 compliments to Lady Sheffield, and hopes her Ladyship is in perfect health, as 
 well as the Honble. Miss Holroyd, and the Honble. Miss Louisa Holroyd. 
 Mr. Gibbon has not had the honour of hearing from Lord Sheffield since his 
 Lordship reached Coventry, but supposes that the Election begins this day. 
 Be honest. How does this read? Do you not feel some titillations of vanity ? " 
 {Corres., i. , 392.) 
 
 As Lord Sheffield's was an Irish peerage he could still sit in the House of 
 Commons for any place in Great Britain. ] 
 
 3 [In The Decline, iii. , 268, he mentions ' ' a rough draught of the present 
 History made as early as 1771 ". The first mention of it in his letters is on 
 Sept. 10, 1773, where he speaks of "the prosecution of my great work" 
 (Corres., i., 194). A year later he wrote of a journey to Bath: " It will most 
 wonderfully delay the fall of the Roman Empire" (ii., p. 230). On June 7, 
 1775, he mentions the full title in a letter to his step-mother: " I am just at 
 present engaged in a great Historical Work, no less than a History of the 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. . . . During some years it has been 
 in my thoughts and even under my pen" [id., p. 259).] 
 
190 EDWARD GIBBON [i773 
 
 should be the image of his mind, but the choice and com- 
 mand of language is the fruit of exercise.^ Many experiments 
 were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull 
 chronicle and a rhetorical declamation : three times did I 
 compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, 
 before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect. ^ In the 
 remainder of the way I advanced with a more equal and 
 easy pace ; but the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have 
 been reduced by three successive revisals, fx'om a large volume 
 to their present size ; and they might still be compressed, 
 without any loss of facts or sentiments.^ An opposite fault 
 may be imputed to the concise and superficial narrative of 
 the first reigns from Commodus to Alexander ; a fault of 
 which I have never heard, except from Mr. Hume in his last 
 journey to London.* Such an oracle might have been con- 
 sulted and obeyed with rational devotion ; but I was soon 
 
 ^[An^e, p. I.] 
 
 2 [As to Gibbon's style, much as he sometimes admired it, R. P. [Richard 
 Porson] was wont to remark ' ' that it would be a good exercise for a schoolboy 
 to translate occasionally a page of Gibbon into English " (Porson's Tracts, 
 Preface, p. 46). "In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently 
 dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be 
 rich enough for the noblest ideas. . . . Sometimes in his anxiety to vary his 
 phrase he becomes obscm-e. . . . Sometimes in his attempts at elegance he loses 
 sight of English, and sometimes of sense" (Porson's Letters to Travis, Preface, 
 pp. 28-30). 
 
 Burke, in a letter quoted in Dugald Stewart's Life of Robertson, ed. 1811, p. 
 370, probably having Gibbon mainly in view, criticises " a style which," he 
 says, " daily gains ground amongst us. . . . The tendency of the mode is to 
 establish two very different idioms amongst us, and to introduce a marked dis- 
 tinction between the English that is written and the English that is spoken. . . . 
 From this feigned manner oi falsetto , as I think the musicians call something of 
 the same sort in singing, no one modern historian, Robertson only excepted, is 
 perfectly free. It is assumed, I know, to give dignity and variety to the style. 
 But whatever success the attempt may sometimes have, it is always obtained at 
 the expense of purity, and of the graces that are natural and appropriate to our 
 language." Stewart goes on to say : " I can much more easily reconcile my- 
 self, in a grave and dignified argument, to the dulcia vitia of Tacitus and 
 Gibbon than to that affectation of cant words and allusions which so often 
 debases Mr. Burke's eloquence." 
 
 See also Landor's Imag. Conv., ed. C. G. Crump, iii., 273, and Lander's 
 Works, ed. 1876, viii., 300, for Gibbon's style.] 
 
 3 [See Carres:, \., 264.] 
 
 4 [Hume, who died on Aug. 25, 1776, arrived in London from Edinburgh on 
 IVTay I. He was on his way to Bath, in the vain hope of finding relief there 
 from the illness under which he was sinking {^Letters of Hume to Sirahan, 
 p. 321).] 
 
1774] MEMOmS OF MY LIFE 191 
 
 disgusted with the modest practice of reading the manuscript 
 to my friends. Of such friends some will praise from polite- 
 ness, and some will criticise from vanity. The author himself 
 is the best judge of his own performance ^ ; no one has so 
 deeply meditated on the subject ; no one is so sincerely in- 
 terested in the event. 
 
 By the friendship of Mr. (now Lord) Eliot, who had 
 married my first cousin, ^ I was returned at the general elec- 
 tion for the borough of Liskeard.^ I took my seat at the 
 beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain 
 and Am.erica, and supported with many a sincere and silent 
 vote, the rights, though not, perhaps, the interest, of the 
 mother country .^ After a fleeting illusive hope, prudence 
 condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute.^ 
 I was not armed by Nature and education with the intrepid 
 energy of mind and voice, 
 
 Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis.^ 
 
 Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my 
 
 1 [" As to the friendly critic," Gibbon wrote, "it is very difficult to find one 
 who has leisure, candour, freedom and knowledge sufficient. After all, the 
 public is the best critic " [Carres., i. , 265). 
 
 " 'Tis a question variously disputed whether an author may be allowed as a 
 competent judge of his own works. As to the fabric and contrivance of them 
 certainly he may ; for that is properly the employment of the judgment. . . . 
 But for the ornament of writing . . . as it is properly the child of fancy, so it 
 can receive no measure, or at least but a very imperfect one, of its own excellence 
 or failures from the judgment" (Dryden's Works, ed. 1882, ii. , 418). 
 
 See ante, p. 124.] 
 
 '^[Ante, p. 21.] S[|See Appendix 33.] '^{/b., 34.] 
 
 ■''[On Feb. 25, 1775, he wrote : " I am still a mute ; it is more tremendous 
 than I imagined ; the great speakers fill me with despair, the bad ones with 
 terror" [Corres., i., 251). So early as 1760 he wrote to his father: "I never 
 possessed that gift of speech, the first requisite of an orator, which use and 
 labour may improve, but which Nature alone can bestow. . . . An unexpected 
 objection would disconcert me ; and as I am incapable of explaining to others 
 what I do not thoroughly understand myself, I should be meditating while I 
 ought to be answering " {Misc. Works, ii. , 39). 
 
 See The Quarterly Review, No. 100, p. 282, for Milraan's criticism of Ville- 
 main, ' ' who traces in Gibbon's mute and unambitious parliamentary career the 
 'coldness of his temperament,' and his ' deadness to all lofty and generous 
 emotions' ".] 
 
 6 [Horace, Ars Poet., 1. 82: — 
 
 ' ' Their numerous cadence was for action fit. 
 And form'd to quell the clamours of the pit." 
 
 (Francis.)] 
 
192 EDWARD GIBBON [1775-76 
 
 pen discouraged the trial of my voice.^ But I assisted ^ 
 at the debates of a free assembly ; I listened to the attack 
 and defence of eloquence and reason ; I had a near prospect 
 of the characters, views, and passions of the first men of the 
 age. The cause of government was ably vindicated by Lord 
 North, a statesman of spotless integrity,^ a consummate master 
 of debate, who could wield, with equal dexterity, the arms of 
 reason and ridicule. He was seated on the Treasury-bench 
 between his Attorney and Solicitor General, the two pillars 
 of the law and state,* magis pares quam similes^; and the 
 minister might indulge in a short slumber, "^ whilst he was 
 upholden on either hand by the majestic sense of Thurlow,'^ 
 
 1 A French sketch of Mr. Gibbon's life, written by himself, probably for the 
 use of some foreign journalist or translator, contains no fact not mentioned in 
 his English life. He there describes himself with his usual candour. ' ' Depuis 
 huit ans il a assist^ aux deliberations les plus importantes, mais il ne s'est jamais 
 trouve le courage, ni le talent, de parler dans une assembl^e publique. " This 
 sketch was written before the publication of his three last volumes, as in closing 
 it he says of his History : " Cette entreprise lui demande encore plusieurs ann^es 
 d'une application soutenue ; mais quelqu'en soit le succes, il trouve dans cette 
 application meme un plaisir toujours vari6 et toujours renaissant ". — Sheffield. 
 
 2 [Johnson, in his Dictiofiary, does not give assist in this sense, though a 
 few earlier instances are found. He would probably have censured this 
 "secondary sense" as he censured "the secondary sense of transpire. 'To 
 escape from secrecy to notice ; a sense lately innovated from France without 
 necessity'" ( Bos well's /o/zwww, iii. , 343).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon was fortunate in having such a leader, for "-according to the ex- 
 perience of human nature we may calculate a hundred, nay a thousand chances, 
 against the public virtues of a statesman" {Misc. Works, iii., 394. See fast, 
 p. 228).] 
 
 •*[" With grave 
 Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd 
 A pillar of state." 
 
 [Paradise Lost, ii. , 300. )] 
 
 s["Nam mihi egregie dixisse videtur Servilius Novianus, pares eos magis 
 quam similes" (Quinctilian, Inst. Orat., x. , i). Quoted also by Gibbon {Misc., 
 Works, iv,, 403). 
 
 ' ' Magis pares quam similes has been more than once applied to these two 
 great orators [Fox and Pitt] " (Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party, 
 
 ii-. 39)-] 
 
 15 [Burke, on March 18, 1779, attacking the supineness of ministers, "hoped 
 that government was not dead, but only asleep. At this moment he looked 
 directly at Lord North, who was asleep, and said in the Scripture phrase, 
 ' Brother Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth'. The laugh was loud. Even the 
 noble Lord seemed to enjoy the allusion as heartily as the rest of the House, as 
 soon as he was sufficiently awake to understand the cause of the joke" {Pari. 
 Hist., XX., 327).] 
 
 ■^[Thurlow was made Chancellor in 1778. " Mr. Fox once said, ' I suppose 
 no man was ever so wise as Thurlow looks, for that is impossible'" (Lord 
 Holland's Memoirs, etc., ii. , 6). Lord Holland adds that " his language, his 
 
1776] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 193 
 
 and the skilful eloquence of Wedderbwne.^ From the adverse 
 side of the house an ardent and powerful opposition was 
 supported, by the lively declamation of Barrel the legal 
 acuteness of Dufming,^ the profuse and philosophic fancy of 
 Burke, and the argumentative vehemence of Fox, who in the 
 conduct of a party approved himself equal to the conduct of 
 an empire. By such men every operation of peace and war, 
 every principle of justice or policy, every question of authority 
 and freedom, was attacked and defended * ; and the subject 
 of the momentous contest was the union or separation of 
 Great Britain and America. The eight sessions that I sat 
 in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and 
 most essential virtue of an historian.^ 
 
 The volume of my History, which had been somewhat de- 
 
 manner, his public delivery, and even his conduct were all of a piece with his 
 looks ; all calculated to inspire the world with a high notion of his gravity, 
 learning, or wisdom ; but all assumed for the purpose of concealing the real 
 scantiness of his attainments, the timidity as well as obscurity of his under- 
 standing," etc. 
 
 " No Sir," said Johnson, "it is when you come close to a man in conversa- 
 tion, that you discover what his real abilities are ; to make a speech in a publick 
 assembly is a knack. Now I honour Thurlow, Sir ; Thurlow is a fine fellow ; 
 he fairly puts his mind to yours" (^osvf&W's loknson, iv. , 179. See also ib., 
 iv., 327). Of the " majestic sense" for which he was so famous the following is 
 an instance. In 1788 a deputation of dissenters waited on him to ask him to 
 support the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. ' ' The Chancellor heard 
 them very civilly, and then said, ' Gentlemen, I'm against you, by G — . I am 
 for the Established Church, d-amme ! Not that I have any more regard for 
 the Established Church than for any other church, but because it is established. 
 And if you can get your d — d religion established, I'll be for that too ! ' " (H. C. 
 Robinson's Diary, i. , 378. )] 
 
 ^[Post, p. 206.] 
 
 2 [Gibbon described Barr6 as "an actor equal to Garrick " [Corres., i., 240).] 
 
 "* [John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton. ' ' The fact is well known," said 
 Lord Shelburne, ' ' of Lord Loughborough [Wedderburne] beginning a law argu- 
 ment in the absence of Mr. Dunning, but upon hearing him hem in the course 
 of it, his tone so changed that there was not a doubt in any part of the House 
 of the reason of it" (Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. , 454). His "hem" is ex- 
 plained by Wraxall {Memoirs, ed. 1815, ii. , 42). " His voice was so husky that 
 he lay always under a necessity of involuntarily announcing his intention to 
 address the House some time before he rose, by repeated attempts to clear his 
 throat."] 
 
 * [" The use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the clearest 
 evidence of public freedom " ( The Decline, v. , 321).] 
 
 ^ [Gibbon wrote to Deyverdun on May 20, 1783 : " Vous n'avez pas oubli6 
 que je suis entr6 au Parlement sans patriotisme, sans ambition, et que toutes 
 mes vues se bornaient k la place commode et honnSte d'un Lord of T?-ade" 
 (Corres., ii. , 36).] 
 
 13 
 
194 EDWARD GIBBON [1776 
 
 layed by the novelty and tumult of a first session, was now 
 ready for the press. After the perilous adventure had been 
 declined by my friend Mr. Elmsley,^ I agreed, upon easy 
 terms, with Mr. Thomas Cadell, a respectable bookseller, and 
 Mr. William Strahan, an eminent printer ^ ; and they under- 
 took the care and risk of the publication, which derived more 
 credit from the name of the shop than from that of the author. 
 The last revisal of the proofs was submitted to my vigilance ; 
 and many blemishes of style, which had been invisible in the 
 manuscript, were discovered and corrected in the printed 
 sheet. So moderate were our hopes, that the original im- 
 pression had been stinted to five hundred,^ till the number 
 was doubled, by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan. During 
 this awful interval I was neither elated by the ambition of 
 fame, nor depressed by the apprehension of contempt. My 
 diligence and accuracy were attested by my own conscience. 
 History is the most popular species of writing, since it can 
 adapt itself to the highest or the lowest capacity. I had 
 chosen an illustrious subject. Rome is familiar to the school- 
 boy and the statesman ; and my narrative was deduced from 
 the last period of classical reading. I had likewise flattered 
 myself, that an age of light and liberty would receive, without 
 scandal, an inquiry into the human causes of the progress and 
 establishment of Christianity.^ 
 
 1 [In like manner John Murray " declined the adventure " of publishing two 
 of the most popular histories of this century — Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella 
 and Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic (See Ticknor's Life of Prescoit, ed. 
 1864, p. 103, and Holmes's Memoirs of Motley, ed. 1889, p. 74). For a brief 
 account of Elmsley see Nichols's Lit. Anec, vi. , 440.] 
 
 2 [For an account of Strahan see Hume's Letters to Straha?i, Preface, p. 43, 
 and of Cadell, ib., p. 92. Hume wrote to Strahan on April 8, 1776 : " There 
 will no books of reputation now be printed in London but through your hands 
 and Mr. Cadell's" {ib., p. 314).] 
 
 3 [Wilberforce (Life, ii., 199) records how in 1797, when he was publishing 
 his Practical Christianity , ' ' Cadell said to him : ' You mean to put your name 
 to the work ? Then I think we may venture upon 500 copies. ' Within a few 
 days it was out of print, and within half a year 7,500 copies had been called 
 for."] 
 
 *["Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the 
 Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions 
 of the earth. To this inquiry an obvious but satisfactory answer may be re- 
 turned, that it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and 
 
1T76] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 195 
 
 I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work, 
 without betraying the vanity of the writei*. The first im- 
 pression was exhausted in a few days ; a second and third 
 edition were scarcely adequate to the demand ^ ; and the 
 bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of 
 Dublin. 2 My book was on every table^ and almost on every 
 toilette ; the historian was crowned by the taste or fashion of 
 the day ; nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking 
 of any -profane critic.^ The favour of mankind is most freely 
 bestowed on a new acquaintance of any original merit ; and 
 the mutual surprise of the public and their favourite is pro- 
 ductive of those warm sensibilities, which at a second meeting 
 can no longer be rekindled. If I listened to the music of 
 praise, I was more seriously satisfied with the approbation of 
 my judges.^ The candour of Dr. Robertson embraced his 
 disciple.^ A letter fi-om Mr. Hume overpaid the labour of 
 ten years ; but I have never presumed to accept a place in 
 the triumvirate of British historians.*^ 
 
 to the ruling providence of its great Author. But as truth and reason seldom 
 find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence 
 frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general 
 circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose, we may still 
 be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask, not indeed what were 
 the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the 
 Christian Church" {The Decline, ii. , 2).] 
 
 1 [See Appendix 35.] 
 
 "^{^Post, p. 233. "The natives," wrote Gibbon, "have printed it very 
 well" {Corres, i., 288). Ireland was first brought under the Copyright Act by 
 the 41 Geo. iii. , c. 107. See my editions of Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 176, 
 and of Letters of Johnso?i and Chesterfield, Preface, p. 37. Many of Pope's 
 Poems, which sold in London at a shilling, were to be had in Dublin for a 
 penny (Elwin and Courthope's Pope, vii. , 302). 
 
 "As soon as Gibbon's Autobiography and Miscellaneous Works came out 
 (writes William Maltby), they were eagerly devoured both by Porson and my- 
 self. Neither of us could afford to purchase the quarto edition ; so we bought 
 the Dublin reprint in octavo" (Rogers's Table Talk a?td Porsoniana, p. 303).] 
 
 '^ [Gibbon in his Vindicatioti mentions ' ' those profane critics whose examina- 
 tion always precedes, and sometimes checks, their religious assent" [Misc. 
 Works, iv. , 623).] 
 
 *[" The most grateful incense is the praise which one man of genius bestows 
 on another ; we are sure that he feels the merit that he applauds " (ib. , iii. , 484).] 
 
 5 [See ib., ii. , 200-206, for Robertson's correspondence with Gibbon.] 
 
 '^{^Ante, p. 122. Gibbon cannot have been sincere in writing this. So 
 early as 1761 he had recorded in his journal: "I read Hume's History of 
 England to the reign of Henry VH. , just published, ingenious but superficial" 
 
196 EDWAED GIBBON [i776 
 
 That curious and original letter will amuse the reader, and 
 his gratitude should shield my free communication from the 
 reproach of vanity.^ 
 
 "Edinburgh, 18th March, 1776. 
 
 "Dear Sir, 
 
 ^'As I ran through your volume of history with great 
 avidity and impatience, I cannot forbear discovering some- 
 what of the same impatience in returning you thanks for your 
 agreeable present, and expressing the satisfaction which the 
 performance has given me. Whether I consider the dignity 
 of your style, the depth of your matter, or the extensiveness 
 of your learning, I must regard the work as equally the object 
 of esteem ; and I own that if I had not previously had the 
 happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a performance 
 from an Englishman in our age would have given me some 
 surprise. You may smile at this sentiment ; but as it seems 
 to me that your countrymen, for almost a whole generation, 
 have given themselves up to barbarous and absurd faction, 
 and have totally neglected all polite letters, I no longer ex- 
 pected any valuable production ever to come from them.^ I 
 
 [ib., i. , 139, n.). Soon after the publication of The Decline he wrote: "Our 
 good English people groaned for a long time past at the superiority which 
 Robertson and Hume had acquired, and as national prejudice is kept alive 
 at very little expense they hastened to hoist, by dint of acclamations, their 
 unworthy compatriot to the niche of these great men" (Read's Hist. Studies, 
 ii., 388).] 
 
 1 [Hume wrote to Strahan on Feb. 11, 1776: "I am glad to see my friend 
 Gibbon advertised. I am confident it will be a very good book ; though I am 
 at a loss to conceive where he finds materials for a volume from Trajan to 
 Constantine " (Hume's Letters to Strahan, p. 311). On April 8 he wrote : " Dr. 
 Smith's performance {The Wealth (T/TVa/zow.?] is another excellent work that has 
 come from your press this winter ; but I have ventured to tell him that it re- 
 quires too much thought to be as popular as Mr. Gibbon's" (ib., p. 315).] 
 
 2 [Hume wrote to Strahan on Jan. 30, 1773 : " Considering the treatment I 
 have met with, it would have been very silly for me at my years to continue 
 writing any more ; and still more blamable to warp my principles and senti- 
 ments in conformity to the prejudices of a stupid, factious nation, with whom I 
 am heartily disgusted. ... It is so sunk in stupidity and barbarism and 
 faction that you may as well think of Lapland for an author. The best book 
 that has been written by any Enghshman these thirty years (for Dr. Franklin 
 is an American) is Tristram Shandy, bad as it is" {ib., p. 255). "The treat- 
 ment " he had received was appointment to high offices, a pension of ^^400 a 
 year, and a higher rate of payment for his History than any previous writer had 
 
1776] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 197 
 
 know it will give you pleasure (as it did me) to find that all 
 the men of letters in this place concur in the admiration of 
 your woi'k, and in their anxious desire of your continuing it. 
 
 "When I heard of your undertaking (which was some time 
 ago), I own I was a little curious to see how you would extri- 
 cate yourself from the subject of your two last chapters. I 
 think you have observed a very prudent temperament ; but it 
 was impossible to treat the subject so as not to give grounds 
 of suspicion against you, and you miay expect that a clamour 
 will arise. This, if anything, will retard your success with the 
 public ; for in every other respect your work is calculated to 
 be popular. But among many other marks of decline, the 
 prevalence of superstition in England ^ prognosticates the fall 
 of philosophy and decay of taste ; and though nobody be 
 more capable than you to revive them, you will probably find 
 a struggle in your first advances. 
 
 " I see you entertain a great doubt with regard to the 
 authenticity of the poems of Ossian.'^ You are certainly right 
 in so doing. It is indeed strange that any men of sense could 
 have imagined it possible, that above twenty thousand verses, 
 along with numberless historical facts, could have been pre- 
 served by oral tradition during fifty generations, by the 
 rudest, perhaps, of all the European nations, the most 
 necessitous, the most turbulent, and the most unsettled. 
 Where a supposition is so contrary to common sense, any 
 positive evidence of it ought never to be regarded. Men run 
 with great avidity to give their evidence in favour of what 
 flatters their passions and their national prejudices. You are 
 therefore over and above indulgent to us in speaking of the 
 matter with hesitation. 
 
 ever had {ib., p. 257). In "these thirty years" there had been published 
 Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, Tom Jones and Amelia, the great 
 Dictionary, Tlie Rambler and Rasselas, CoUins's Odes and all Gray's Poems. 
 
 With good reason did Bagehot write: " Half Hume's mind, or more than 
 half, was distorted by his hatred of England and his love of France" [Biog. 
 Studies, i., 252).] 
 
 1 [Hume refers, I believe, to the great Methodist movement. It had been 
 ridiculed five years earlier by Smollett in Humphry Clinker, and three years 
 earlier by Graves in The Spiritual Quixote.~\ 
 
 2 [See Appendix 36.] 
 
198 EDWARD GIBBON [i777 
 
 " I must inform you that we all are very anxious to hear 
 that you have fully collected the materials for your second 
 volume, and that you are even considerably advanced in the 
 composition of it. I speak this more in the name of my 
 friends than in my own ; as I cannot expect to live so long as 
 to see the publication of it. Your ensuing volume will be 
 more delicate than the preceding, but I trust in your prudence 
 for extricating you from the difficulties ; and, in all events, 
 you have courage to despise the clamour of bigots. 
 
 I am, with great regard. 
 Dear Sir, 
 Your most obedient and most humble Servant, 
 David Hume." 
 
 Some weeks afterwards I had the melancholy pleasure of 
 seeing Mr. Hume in his passage through London ; his body 
 feeble, his mind firm. On the 25th of August of the same 
 year (1776) he died, at Edinburgh, the death of a philo- 
 sopher. ^ 
 
 My second excursion to Paris was determined by the 
 pressing invitation of M. and Madame Necker, who had 
 visited England in the preceding summer.^ On my arrival 
 I found M. Necker Director-general of the finances, in the 
 first bloom of power and popularity. His private fortune 
 enabled him to support a liberal establishment, and his wife, 
 whose talents and virtues I had long admired, was admirably 
 qualified to preside in the conversation of her table and 
 
 ^ [For Adam Smith's account of his death see Hume's Letters to Strahan, 
 Preface, p. 34. See also Boswell's Johnson, iii., 153. To call Hume a philo- 
 sopher was indeed high praise, for Gibbon says of one of the Greek Emperors, 
 that ' ' he pronounced with truth that a prince and a philosopher are the two most 
 eminent characters of human society " ( The Decline, vi., 457).] 
 
 2 [" London, May 20, 1776. At present I am very busy with the Neckers. I 
 live with her just as I used to do twenty years ago \_ante, p. 106], laugh at her 
 Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple reasonable Suissesse " {Corres., 
 i. , 282). He arrived in Paris on May 10, 1777, and returned to London on Nov. 
 o,{ib., i., 311, 321). His step-mother, he wrote, "started two very ingenious 
 objections " to his journey. " ist, that I shall be confined, or put to death, by 
 the priests, and 2ndly, that I shall sully my moral character by making love 
 to Necker's wife" (ib., i., 305). For his reassuring reply to Mrs. Gibbon see 
 ib., p. 306.] 
 
1777] MEMOIKS OF MY LIFE 199 
 
 drawing-room. As their friend, I was introduced to the 
 best company of both sexes ; to the foreign ministers of all 
 nations, and to the first names and characters of France ; 
 who distinguished me by such marks of civility and kindness, 
 as gratitude will not suffer me to forget, and modesty will not 
 allow me to enumerate.^ The fashionable suppers often broke 
 into the morning hours ^ ; yet I occasionally consulted the 
 Royal Library, and that of the x\bbey of St. Germain, and in 
 the free use of their books at home I had always reason to 
 praise the liberality of those institutions. The society of men 
 of letters I neither courted nor declined ; but I was happy in 
 the acquaintance of M. de Buffon, who united with a sublime 
 genius the most amiable simplicity of mind and manners. "^ 
 At the table of my old friend, M. de Foncemagne,* I was 
 involved in a dispute with the Abbe de Mably ; and his 
 jealous irascible spirit revenged itself on a work which he was 
 incapable of reading in the original.^ 
 
 As I might be partial in my own cause, I shall transcribe 
 the words of an unknown critic,^ observing only, that this 
 dispute had been preceded by another on the English con- 
 stitution, at the house of the Countess de Froulay, an old 
 Jansenist lady. 
 
 " Vous etiez chez M. de Foncemagne, mon cher Theodon, 
 le jour que M. TAbbe de Mably et M. Gibbon y dinerent en 
 grande compagnie. La conversation roula presque entierement 
 sur I'histoire. L'Abbe etant un profond politique, la tourna 
 sur r administration, quand on fut au dessert : et comme par 
 
 1 [See Appendix 37. ] 
 
 2 [" Paris, June 16, 1777. After decking myself out with silks and silver, the 
 ordinary establishment of coach, lodging, servants, eating and pocket expenses 
 does not exceed sixty pounds per month. Yet I have two footmen in handsome 
 liveries behind my coach, and my apartment is hung with damask " (Co7'res., i., 
 313). 
 
 "Aug. II. To the great admiration of the French, I regularly dine and 
 regularly sup, drink a dish of strong coffee after each meal, and find my stomach 
 a Citizen of the World " {ib. , p. 318).] 
 
 ^[Anie, p. 152.] •* [/i^. , p. 153.] 5 [See Appendix 38.] 
 
 •^["Cette refutation de la Maniere d'icrire I'Hisioire, par rabb6 de 
 Mably, est de M. Gudin de La Brenellerie. . . . C'est au jeune Thtodon, I'un 
 des interlocuteurs de I'Entretien de I'abb^ de Mably, que sont adress^es toutes 
 les critiques que Ton fait sur las principes de son maitre " {Mimoires de Grimm, 
 ed. 1814, vi., 138).] 
 
200 EDWAED GIBBON [i777 
 
 caract^re, par humeui', par I'habitude d'admirer Tite Live, 
 il ne prise que le systeme r6publicain, il se mit a vanter 
 rexcellence des republiques ; bien persuade que le savant 
 Anglois I'approuveroit en tout, et admireroit la profondeur de 
 genie qui avoit fait deviner tous ces avantages k un Francois. 
 Mais M. Gibbon, instruit par 1' experience des in conveniens 
 d'un gouvernement populaire, ne fut point du tout de son 
 avis, et il prit genereusement la defense du gouvernement 
 monarchique. L'Abbe voulut le convaincre par Tite Live, et 
 par quelques argumens tires de Plutarque en faveur des 
 Spartiates. M. Gibbon, doue de la m^moire la plus heureuse, 
 et ayant tous les faits presens k la pensee, domina bientot la 
 conversation ; I'Abbe se facha, il s'emporta, il dit des choses 
 dures ; I'Anglois, conservant le phlegme de son pays, prenoit 
 ses avantages, et pressoit I'Abbe avec d'autant plus de succes 
 que la colore le troubloit de plus en plus. La conversation 
 s'echauffoit, et M. de Foncemagne la rompit en se levant de 
 table, et en passant dans le salon, ou personne ne fut tente 
 de la renouer." (^Supplement a la Matiiere d'ecrire I'Histoire, 
 p. 125, &c.) 
 
 Nearly two years had elapsed between the publication of 
 my first and the commencement of my second volume ; and 
 the causes must be assigned of this long delay. 1. After a 
 short holiday, I indulged my curiosity in some studies of a 
 very different nature, a course of anatomy, which was demon- 
 strated by Doctor Hunter ^ ; and some lessons of chemistry,^ 
 
 1 [In the spring of 1777 Gibbon was attending these lectures two hours every 
 day (Corres., i. , 304). Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. i, 1770 {Letters, vii. , 
 456) : ' ' Dr. Hunter had the impudence t'other day to pour out at his Anatomic 
 lecture a more outrageous Smeltiad than Smelt himself, and imputed all our 
 disgraces and ruin to the Opposition. Burke was present, and said he had 
 heard of Political Aa^ithmetic, but never before of Political Anatomy." 
 
 Leonard Smelt was sub-governor to the Prince of Wales. The Political 
 Arithmetic is the title of a work by Sir William Petty.] 
 
 2 [The study of chemistry was popular at this time. Watson, lecturing at 
 Cambridge (1766-69), had crowded audiences " of persons of all ages and degrees 
 in the University" [Lif^ of BisJiop Watson, i., 46, 53). Dr. Thomas Beddoes 
 " was made Chemistry Reader at Oxford in 1791, attracting, he says, the largest 
 class assembled in Oxford since the thirteenth century" (MacLeane's Pembroke 
 College, p. 392). Chemistry was still in its infancy. Nevertheless Gibbon laments 
 " that it should not yet be reduced to a state oijixity " (Auto., p. 317, «.). He 
 italicises tixity, as he is using a chemical term.] 
 
1778] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 201 
 
 which were delivered by Mr. Higgins. The principles of 
 these sciences, and a taste for books of natural history, 
 contributed to multiply my ideas and images ; and the 
 anatomist and chemist may sometimes track me in their own 
 snow.^ 2. I dived, perhaps too deeply, into the mud of the 
 Ai'ian controversy ; and ntiany days of reading, thinking, and 
 wi'iting were consumed in the pursuit of a phantom.^ 3. It 
 is difficult to arrange, with order and perspicuity, the various 
 transactions of the age of Constantine ; and so much was I 
 displeased with the first essay, that I committed to the flames 
 above fifty sheets. 4. The six months of Paris and pleasure 
 must be deducted from the account. But when I resumed 
 my task I felt my improvement ; I was now master of my 
 style and subject, and while the measure of my daily per- 
 formance was enlarged, I discovered less reason to cancel or 
 correct. It has always been my practice to cast a long 
 paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit 
 it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I 
 had given the last polish to my work.^ Shall I add, that I 
 never found my mind more vigorous, nor my composition 
 more happy, than in the winter hurry of society and parlia- 
 ment ? 
 
 Had I believed that the majority of English readers were 
 so fondly attached even to the name and shadow of Christ- 
 ianity ^ ; had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the 
 
 1 [" He [Ben Jonson] was not only a professed imitator of Horace, but a 
 learned plagiary of all the others ; you track him everywhere in their snow " 
 (Dryden's IVorks, ed. 1892, xv. , 300).] 
 
 2 [In ch. xxi. Horace Walpole {Letters, 'vs.., 127) wrote of a controversy 
 described in ch. xlvii : " So far from being Catholic or heretic, I wished Mr. 
 Gibbon had never heard of Monophysites, Nestorians, or any such fools!" 
 Cardinal Newman, m.\\vi History of my Religious Opinions, ed. 1865, p. 114, 
 tells how in the year 1839 he was " seriously alarmed " by the discovery that he 
 was himself a Monophysite.] 
 
 3 ["Of composition there are different methods. Some employ at once 
 memory and invention, and with little intermediate use of the pen form and 
 polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions only 
 when, in their own opinion, they have completed them " (Johnson's Works, 
 viii., 321 ; see post, pp. 225, 245).] 
 
 ■i [Gibbon had trusted to that "fanatical animosity against Christianity," 
 writes Mackintosh, "which was so prevalent during the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century " {Life of Mackintosh, i., 245). 
 
202 EDWARD GIBBON [i779 
 
 prudent, would feel^ or affect to feel, with such exquisite 
 sensibility ; I might, perhaps, have softened the two invidious 
 chapters, which would create many enemies, and conciliate 
 few friends. But the shaft was shot, the alarm was sounded, 
 and I could only rejoice, that if the voice of our priests was 
 clamorous and bitter, their hands were disarmed from the 
 powers of persecution. I adhered to the wise resolution of 
 trusting myself and my writings to the candour of the public, 
 till Mr. Davies of Oxford presumed to attack, not the faith, 
 but the fidelity, of the historian. ^ My Vindication, expressive 
 of less anger than contempt, amused for a moment the busy 
 and idle metropolis ^ ; and the most rational part of the laity, 
 and even of the clergy, appear to have been satisfied of my 
 innocence and accuracy. I would not print this Vindication 
 in quarto, lest it should be bound and preserved with the 
 History itself.^ At the distance of twelve years, I calmly 
 affirm my judgment of Davies, Chelsum, &c. A victory over 
 such antagonists was a sufficient humiliation.* J^hey, how- 
 ever, were rewarded in this world. Poor Chelsum was indeed 
 neglected ; and I dare not boast the making Dr. Watson a 
 
 " In speaking of the 15th and i6th chapters Grote thought that they had 
 been unfairly condemned, in so far as hostility to Christian tradition went. He 
 regarded these chapters as falling under the legitimate treatment of an historical 
 pen, and nothing further. And had they been written at the present day 
 [1868] far less fuss would have been made about their mischievous tendency " 
 {Life of Gj-ote, ed. 1873, p. 296).] 
 
 1 [For Davies, Chelsum, Watson, Apthorpe, Taylor, Milner, Priestley and 
 White see Appendix 39.] 
 
 2 [For Gibbon's Vindication see Appendix 40.] 
 
 *[His Vindication he thus concludes : " I am impatient to dismiss, and to 
 dismiss For Ever, this odious controversy, with the success of which I cannot 
 surely be elated ; and I have only to request that, as soon as my readers are 
 convinced of my innocence, they would forget my Vindication " [ib. , iv. , 648). 
 
 " Why then, let me ask," writes Parr, " was that Vindication republished 
 by the noble Editor ? " (Parr's Wo7'ks, ii. , 577.)] 
 
 "•[Pattison, in his Essay on Religious Tliought in England, writing of " the 
 supply of evidences [of Christianity] in what for the sake of a name may be 
 called the Georgian period (1750-1830) " continues : " The historical investiga- 
 tion, indeed, of the Origines of Christianity is a study scarcely second in 
 importance to a philosophical arrangement of its doctrines. But for a genuine 
 inquiry of this nature the English writers of the period had neither the taste 
 nor the knowledge. Gibbon alone approached the true difficulties, but met 
 only with opponents, ' victory over whom was a sufficient humiliation ' " (Pat- 
 tison's Essays, ii., 49).] 
 
1779] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 203 
 
 bishop ; he is a prelate of a large mind and liberal spirit : but 
 I enjoyed the pleasure of giving a Royal pension to Mr. Davies, 
 and of collating Dr. Apthorpe to an archiepiscopal living. 
 Their success encouraged the zeal of Taylor the Arian, and 
 Milner the Methodist, with many others, whom it would be 
 difficult to remember, and tedious to rehearse. The list of 
 my adversaries, however, was graced with the more respectable 
 names of Dr. Priestley, Sir David Dalrymple, and Dr. White ; 
 and every polemic, of either university, discharged his sermon 
 or pamphlet against the impenetrable silence of the Roman 
 historian. In his History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Dr. 
 Priestley thi'ew down his two gauntlets to Bishop Hurd and 
 Mr. Gibbon. I declined the challenge in a letter exhorting 
 my opponent to enlighten the world by his philosophical dis- 
 coveries, and to remember that the merit of his predecessor 
 Servetus is now reduced to a single passage, which indicates 
 the smaller circulation of the blood through the lungs, from 
 and to the heart. ^ Instead of listening to this friendly advice, 
 the dauntless philosopher of Birmingham continues to fire 
 away his double battery against those who believe too little, 
 and those who believe too inuch. From my replies he has 
 nothing to hope or fear : but his Socinian shield has re- 
 peatedly been pierced by the spear of the mighty Horsley,^ 
 and his trumpet of sedition ^ may at length awaken the 
 magistrates of a free country. 
 
 1 Astruc de la Structure du Cceur, i. , 'j'j, 79. — Gibbon. [This work is not in the 
 British Museum. C, E. Jordan, in his Histoire d'un Voyage Littiraire, Hague, 
 1735, p. 170, who in 1733 found all Servetus's works in the library of Dr. Mead 
 (Boswell's Johnson, iii. , 355, «.), writes: "On pretend trouver la circulation 
 du sang dans son Restitutio Chi-istianismi ". Jordan, after quoting the 
 passage, says " qu'il ne parait pas, par ce passage, d'une maniere fort claire, 
 qu'il ait connu le secret de la circulation du sang. L'amour que nous avons 
 pour les Anciens fait que nous croions tout trouver chez eux. L'on croit voir 
 le systfeme de la circulation du sang dans Ciceron. Voyez la page iioo De Natura 
 Deorum, de I'^dition de Verburg."] 
 
 -[In the first edition, " by the spear of Horsley " ; in the second, " by the 
 mighty spear of Horsley ". For Horsley see Appendix 41.] 
 
 3 ["When the public peace was distracted by heresy and schism, the sacred 
 orators sounded the trumpet of discord, and perhaps of sedition ' ' ( The Decline, 
 ii. , 327). 
 
 George HI. said of Lord Chatham in 1775 : " When decrepitude or death 
 puts an end to him as a trumpet of sedition," etc. (I have mislaid the 
 reference. )] 
 
204 EDWARD GIBBON [i779 
 
 The profession and rank of Sir David Dalrymple (now a 
 Lord of Session ^) have given a more decent colour to his 
 style. But he scrutinizes each separate passage of the two 
 chapters with the dry minuteness of a special pleader ; and 
 as he is always solicitous to make, he may have succeeded 
 sometimes in finding a flaw.^ In his Annals of Scotland^ 
 he has shown himself a diligent collector and an accurate 
 critic.*^ 
 
 I have praised, and I still praise, the eloquent sermons 
 which were preached in St. Mary's pulpit at Oxford by Dr. 
 White. If he assaulted me with some degree of illiberal 
 acrimony, in such a place, and before such an audience, he 
 was obliged to speak the language of the country. I smiled 
 at a passage in one of his private letters to Mr. Badcock ; 
 "The part where we encounter Gibbon must be brilliant and 
 striking". 
 
 In a sermon preached before the university of Cambridge,* 
 Dr. Edwards complimented a work, "which can perish only 
 with the language itself" ; and esteems the author a formidable 
 enemy. He is, indeed, astonished that more learning and 
 ingenuity has not been shown in the defence of Israel ; that 
 the prelates and dignitaries of the church (alas, good man !) 
 did not vie with each other, whose stone should sink the 
 deepest in the forehead of this Goliah.^ 
 
 " But the force of truth will oblige us to confess, that in 
 the attacks which have been levelled against our sceptical 
 historian, we can discover but slender traces of profound and 
 exquisite erudition, of solid criticism and accurate investiga- 
 tion ; but we are too frequently disgusted by vague and 
 
 1 [The Lords of Session are the Judges of Scotland. Sir David Dalrymple 
 is better known to the readers of Boswell as Lord Hailes.] 
 
 2 [He published in 1786 An hiquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr. 
 Gibbon has assigned for the rapid growth of Christianity.'^ 
 
 •^ [See Boswell's Johnson, iii. , 404, for Johnson's praise of their exactness.] • 
 "1 [ The Jewish and Heathen Rejection of the Christian Miracles. Preached 
 
 before the University of Cambridge, March 7, 1790. By Thomas Edwards, 
 
 LL.D.] 
 
 •5 [Gohath.] 
 
1779] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 205 
 
 inconclusive reasoning ; by unseasonable banter and senseless 
 witticisms ; by imbitbered bigotry and enthusiastic jargon ; 
 by futile cavils and illiberal invectives. Proud and elated by 
 the weakness of his antagonists, he condescends not to handle 
 the sword of controversy." ^ 
 
 Let me frankly own that I was startled at the first discharge 
 of ecclesiastical ordnance ; but as soon as I found that this 
 empty noise was mischievous only in the intention, my fear 
 was converted into indignation ; and every feeling of indigna- 
 tion or curiosity has long since subsided in pure and placid 
 indifference. 2 
 
 The prosecution of my History was soon afterwards checked 
 by another controversy of a very different kind. At the 
 request of the Lord Chancellor,^ and of Lord Weymouth,* 
 then Secretary of State, I vindicated, against the French 
 manifesto,^ the justice of the British arms. The whole 
 correspondence of Lord Stormont,^ our late ambassador at 
 Paris, was submitted to my inspection, and the M^moire 
 Justificatif, which I composed in French, was first approved 
 by the Cabinet Ministers, and then delivered as a State paper 
 to the Courts of Europe.^ The style and manner are praised 
 
 1 [The passage continues : ' ' but darts forth the envenomed shafts of sarcastic 
 ridicule : he approaches indeed the camp, and defies the armies of the living 
 God ; yet he approaches not hke Goliah [Gohath], to call forth a champion, but 
 to insult and triumph over his vanquished enemies" {Monthly Review, Oct. 
 1790, p. 237).] 
 
 2 [For a list of the principal replies to Gibbon see The Declitie, ed. Milman, 
 ed. 1854, i., 107. 
 
 " Mr. Gibbon retained his resentments more stedfastly, and felt them more 
 painfully, than his discretion or his pride would suffer him to acknovs^ledge. 
 The softness of his expressions often gave a sharper edge to the severity of his 
 invectives, and the gaiety of ridicule is often employed by him, not as a check 
 but as a disguise to the fierceness of anger" (Parr's Works, ii., 575).] 
 
 3 [Lord Thurlow. ] ^ [First Marquis of Bath. ] 
 
 5 [A translation of it is published in the Annual Register ior: 1779, i., 390.] 
 
 ^ [On Oct. 27, 1779, he was made Secretary of State. In 1793 he succeeded 
 his uncle as second Earl of Mansfield.] 
 
 ''[Gibbon dates it May, 1779 {Auto., p. 319). It is published in the original 
 in Gibbon's Misc. Works, v. , i, and as a translation in the Annual Register for 
 
 1779. i- . 397)- 
 
 Lord Sheffield writes that Gibbon spoke to him of it "with some pleasure, 
 observing that it had been translated even into the Turkish language" {Misc. 
 Works, preface, p. 19). 
 According to Jeremy Bentham, his friend John Lind "got an order to draw 
 
206 EDWARD GIBBON [i779 
 
 by Beaumarchais himself, who, in his private quarrel, attempted 
 a reply ^ ; but he flatters me, by ascribing the memoir to 
 Lord Stormont '^ ; and the grossness of his invective betrays 
 the loss of temper and of wit ; he acknowledged, that le style 
 ne serait pas sans grace, ni la logique sans jiistesse, etc., if the 
 facts were true which he undertakes to disprove,^ For these 
 facts my credit is not pledged ; I spoke as a lawyer from my 
 brief, but the veracity of Beaumarchais may be estimated 
 from the assertion that France, by the treaty of Paris (1763) 
 was limited to a certain number of ships of war. On the 
 application of the Duke of Choiseul, he was obliged to retract 
 this daring falsehood.* 
 
 Among the honourable connections which I had formed, I 
 may justly be proud of the friendship of Mr. Wedderburne, 
 at that time Attorney-General, who now illustrates the title 
 of Lord Loughborough, and the office of Chief Justice of the 
 Common Pleas. ^^ By his strong recommendation, and the 
 
 up a declaration against the revolted colonies. There were two such declara- 
 tions. Gibbon drew up the other. Lind for his Manifesto got £'e,o a year for 
 each of his sisters. It was not well done" (Bentham's Works, x., 55).] 
 
 1 [Beaumarchais and his partners were charged with despatching to America 
 in January 1777, when we were still at peace with France, nine large ships 
 laden with arms (Gibbon's Misc. Works, v., 18). He gloried in what he had 
 done {(Euvres de Beaumarchais, ed. 1809, v., 20, 24).] 
 
 2[/^., p. 2.] 
 
 ** [Beaumarchais begins by saying that during Lord Stormont's residence at 
 Paris the American deputies, whenever any false report was circulated, used to 
 say : ' ' Ne croyez par cela, Monsieur, cest du Stormotit tout pur" . He continues 
 that the style, " bien qu'un peu trainant dans la traduction, ne manquerait pas 
 de graces, ni la logique de justesse, si I'^crivain," etc. {ib., p. 43).] 
 
 ^[The statement does not appear in his Observations as published in his 
 collected works. Anthony Storer wrote to W. Eden on Nov. 29, 1787 : " The 
 French are now paying for the American war, which Necker told Gibbon had 
 cost them seventy-one millions sterling" [Auckland Corres., i., 449). This 
 waste of treasure hurried on and intensified the French Revolution.] 
 
 5 [He was made Lord Chancellor in 1793, and Earl of Rosslyn in 1801. 
 "I know nothing of Pitt as a war minister," wrote Gibbon in 1793, "but it 
 affords me much satisfaction that the intrepid wisdom of the new Chancellor is 
 introduced into the Cabinet" (Corres., ii. , 371). Horace Walpole [Letters, vii. , 
 506), writing on Jan. 27, 1781, of the new volume of The Decline, says : " There 
 is flattery to the Scots that would choke anything but Scots, who can gobble 
 feathers as readily as thistles. David Hume and Adam Smith are legislators 
 and sages, but the homage is intended for his patron. Lord Loughborough." 
 The references are to The Decline, ii. , 483; iii., 44. See also ib., vi., 311 ; vii., 
 
1780] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 207 
 
 favourable disposition of Lord North, I was appointed one of 
 the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations ^ ; and my 
 private income was enlarged by a clear addition of between 
 seven and eight hundred pounds a year. The fancy of an 
 hostile orator may paint, in the strong colours of ridicule, 
 "the perpetual virtual adjournment, and the unbroken sitting 
 vacation of the Board of Trade ".^ But it must be allowed 
 that our duty was not intolerably severe, and that I enjoyed 
 many days and weeks of repose, without being called away 
 from my library to the office. My acceptance of a place 
 provoked some of the leaders of opposition, with whom I had 
 lived in habits of intimacy ; and I was most unjustly accused 
 of deserting a party, in which I had never enlisted.^ 
 
 The aspect of the next session of parliament was stormy 
 and perilous ; county meetings, petitions, and committees of 
 correspondence, announced the public discontent ^ ; and in- 
 stead of voting with a triumphant majority, the friends of 
 government were often exposed to a struggle, and sometimes 
 to a defeat. The House of Commons adopted Mr. Dunning's 
 motion, " That the influence of the Crown had increased, was 
 
 215. In another passage (vi. , 320) Gibbon describes Loughborough as " a 
 learned Lord, who, with an accurate and discerning eye, has surveyed the 
 philosophic history of law. By his studies posterity might be enriched ; the 
 merit of the orator and the judge can he. felt only by his contemporaries." 
 
 Wedderburne's "skilful eloquence" did much to turn Benjamin Franklin 
 into one of the bitterest enemies of that country which he had been wont to 
 speak of as "home" [Letters of Hume to Strakan, p. 226). Johnson spoke of 
 him and John Home as two Scotchmen whom " Lord Bute had to go on 
 errands for him" (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 354). When the news came to 
 Windsor Castle of his death "the King inquired again and again whether it 
 might not be a false report. When assured that there could be no mistake 
 about it. His Majesty felt free to e.xclaim, 'Then he has not left a greater 
 knave behind him in my dominions'" (Stanhope's Pitt, iv. , 251). For an 
 instance of his knavery see ib., iii. , 264-271. See also ante, p. 193, and post, 
 p. 261, n.'\ 
 
 1 [Gibbon informed his step-mother of the appointment on July 3, 1779 
 (Corres, i. , 366). According to the Pari. Hist. , xviii. , 7 (which must be mistaken), 
 the new writ on his taking office was issued on June 3.] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 42.] °[-^i-, 43-] 
 
 * [" The business of public meetings, of petitions to parliament, and of associa- 
 tions for the redress of grievances, was commenced during the [Christmas] 
 recess." Yorkshire and Middlesex led the way. In each of these counties "a 
 committee of correspondence and association " was appointed. Their example 
 was soon followed by other counties {Annual Register., 1780, L, 85).] 
 
208 EDWAKD GIBBON [i780 
 
 increasing, and ought to be diminished," ^ and Mr. Burke's 
 bill of reform was framed with skill, introduced with eloquence, 
 and supported by numbers. Our late president, the American 
 Secretary of State, very narrowly escaped the sentence of 
 proscription ; but the unfortunate Board of Trade was abolished 
 in the committee by a small majority (207 to 199) of eight 
 votes. The storm, however, blew over for a time ; a large 
 defection of country gentlemen eluded the sanguine hopes of 
 the patriots : the Lords of Trade were revived ; administration 
 recovered their strength and spirit ; and the flames of London, 
 which were kindled by a mischievous madman,^ admonished 
 all thinking men of the danger of an appeal to the people. 
 In the premature dissolution which followed this session of 
 parliament I lost my seat.^ Mr. Elliot was now deeply 
 engaged in the measures of opposition, and the electors 
 
 i[On April 6, 1780 — "a day," wrote Horace Walpole {Letters, vii., 345), 
 "that ought for ever to be a red-lettered day" — Dunning made this motion. 
 It was carried by 233 to 215 {Pari. Hist., xxi. , 340-67). On May 7, 1783, Pitt 
 asserted in the House ' ' that a secret influence of the Crown was sapping the 
 very foundation of liberty by corruption. . . . The House had been base enough 
 to feed the influence that enslaved its members, and thus was at one time the 
 parent and the offspring of corruption " {ib., xxiii. , 830). 
 
 Wilberforce in his Sketch of Pitt lamented that Pitt, when in 1783 he first 
 became Prime Minister, ' ' had not generously resolved to govern his country 
 by principle rather than by influence " {Private Papers of W. Wilberforce, p. 73). 
 For Fox's attack on influence and on Pitt on Dec. 17, 1783, see Pari. Hist., 
 xxiv., 206-20. "For God's ; sake," he said, "strangle us not in the very 
 moment we look for success and triumph by an infamous string of bedchamber 
 janissaries" {ib., p. 220).] 
 
 2 [Lord George Gordon. The riots which bear his name began on June 2, 
 and through the incredible weakness of the Ministers lasted nearly a week 
 (Boswell's Johnson, iii., 428 ; Letters of Johnson, ii., 166). On June 27 Gibbon 
 had the audacity to write : ' ' The measures of government have been seasonable 
 and vigorous " {Corres, i., 382). " Lord North," said the King, "was actuated 
 in every instance by a desire of present ease at the risk of any future difficulty. 
 This he instanced in the American War and in the riots of 1780 " (Russell's Life 
 of Fox, ed. 1866, ii. , 5). 
 
 ' ' It was industriously circulated that the Opposition were the secret authors 
 of the late riots." A nobleman, it was reported, had been killed among the 
 rioters and his body thrown into the Thames to prevent discovery. It was with 
 astonishment that he was beheld in the House of Peers the following winter. 
 " Popular fury seemed the greatest of all possible evils. And administration 
 gathered power from a tumult which appeared to threaten the subversion of all 
 government" {Ann. Reg., 1780, i. , 200; 1781, i. , 137-38, 140).] 
 
 s[The dissolution on Sept. i, 1780, came " like a thunder-clap"* {Anu. Reg.^ 
 1781, i., 141).] 
 
1781] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 209 
 
 of Leskeard are commonly of the same opinion as Mr. 
 Elliot.i 
 
 In this interval of my senatorial life, I published the second 
 and third volumes of the Decline and Fall.^ My ecclesiastical 
 history still breathed the same spirit of freedom ; but Protes- 
 tant zeal is more indifferent to the characters and contro- 
 versies of the fourth and fifth centuries. My obstinate silence 
 had damped the ardour of the polemics. Dr. Watson, the 
 most candid of my adversaries, assured me that he had no 
 thoughts of renewing the attack, and my impartial balance 
 of the virtues and vices of Julian was generally praised.^ 
 This truce was interrupted only by some animadversions of 
 the Catholics of Italy, and by some angry letters from Mr. 
 Travis, who made me personally responsible for condemning, 
 with the best critics, the spurious text of the three heavenly 
 witnesses. 
 
 1 [The electors, it seems probable, were only brought over to his opinion at a 
 cost of ^2,400 each election (Corres., i., 228). 
 
 Mr. W. P. Courtney, writing of the representation of Liskeard, says : " Then 
 [1722] one of the house of Eliot, of Port Eliot, appeared upon the scene, the 
 earliest evidence of a connection which lasted uninterruptedly, though not 
 without an occasional struggle for emancipation, until 1832" {Pari. Representa- 
 tion of Cornwall, p. 258). 
 
 Bentham, who met Eliot at Bowood (Lord Shelburne's seat) in the summer 
 of 1781, described him as " modest enough in his conversation about politics, 
 but desponding. He says he scarce ever looks into a paper, nor dares he, for 
 fear of ill news. . . . He brought in seven members the last time. Gibbon he 
 brought in for private friendship ; though, as it turned out, much to his regret " 
 (Bentham's Works, x. , 96, loi). In the division on Dunning's motion. Gibbon 
 voted with the Government in the minority, while Eliot and Samuel Salt, 
 Gibbon's fellow-member for Liskeard, were in the majority (jPiSsr/. Hist., xxi., 
 368). 
 
 Gibbon had the impudence to write: "Mr. Elliot, actuated, as it should 
 seem, by the Demon of Party, has renounced me " {Corres. , i. , 386). Eliot sup- 
 ported Shelburne and Pitt against the Coalition Ministry [see. fast, p. 214).] 
 
 2 [They were published on March i, 1781 [Co7-res., i., 396). On Feb. i, 1780, 
 Strahan and Cadell published as a frontispiece to the quarto edition an engrav- 
 ing by Hall of Reynolds's portrait of Gibbon, with the superscription : " Edward 
 Gibbon Esqr. born the 8th May, 1737". According to Lord Sheffield, "by 
 far the best likeness of him that exists is that painted by Mr. Warton in 1774, 
 before he became very corpulent " {Misc. Works, Preface, p. 11). For an 
 engraving from it see ib., frontispiece.] 
 
 '^ [Dr. Robertson wrote to him about Julian : " I am much struck with the 
 felicity wherewith you have described that odd infusion of Heathen fanaticism 
 and philosophical coxcombry which mingled with the great qualities of a hero 
 and a genius " {Misc. Works, ii., 250).] 
 
 14 
 
210 EDWARD GIBBON [i78i 
 
 The piety or prudence of my Italian translator has provided 
 an antidote against the poison of his original.^ The 5th and 
 7th volumes are armed with five letters from an anonymous 
 divine to his friends, Foothead and Kirk, two English stu- 
 dents at Rome : and this meritorious service is commended 
 by Monsignore Stonor, a prelate of the same nation, who 
 discovers much venonx in the jiuid and nervous style of 
 Gibbon. 2 The critical essay at the end of the third volume 
 was furnished by the Abbate Nicola Spedalieri, whose zeal 
 has gradually swelled to a more solid confutation in two 
 quarto volumes. — Shall I be excused for not having read 
 them } 
 
 The brutal insolence of Mr. Travis's challenge can only be 
 excused by the absence of learning, judgment, and humanity ; 
 and to that excuse he has the fairest or foulest pretension.^ 
 Compared with Archdeacon Travis, Chelsum and Davies 
 assume the title of respectable enemies. 
 
 The bigoted advocate of popes and monks may be turned 
 over even to the bigots of Oxford ; and the wretched Travis 
 still smarts under the lash of the merciless Porson. I con- 
 sider Mr. Porson's answer to Archdeacon Travis as the most 
 acute and accurate piece of criticism which has appeared 
 since the days of Bentley. His strictures are founded in 
 argument, enriched with learning, and enlivened with wit ; 
 and his adversary neither deserves nor finds any quarter at 
 his hands. The evidence of the three heavenly witnesses 
 would now be rejected in any court of justice : but prejudice 
 is blind, authority is deaf, and our vulgar bibles will ever 
 
 1 [Nine volumes of the Italian translation, to the end of ch. xxxviii., were 
 published at Pisa in 1779-86, A tenth volume was printed, but not published, 
 and was afterwards destroyed (see MS. entry in vol. i. of the copy in the Brit. 
 Mus.). It has Gibbon's bookplate and was bought at Lausanne about 1855. 
 A complete edition was published at Milan in 1821-24. Dean Milman could 
 never get sight of the Italian translation (The Decline, ed. 1854, i. , 109, n.).'] 
 
 2 [On June 12, 1784, Kirk wrote to the anonymous divine : ' ' Monsig. Stonor 
 approves of your having published a precaution, that heedless readers may not 
 be deceived with his fluid and nervous style, and with the fame that he has 
 acquired " (Istoria della Decadenza, etc., ed, 1783, vii., 202),] 
 
 3 [See Appendix 44.] 
 
1781] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 211 
 
 be polluted by this spurious text, " sedet cetermtmque sedehit i." 
 The more learned ecclesiastics will indeed have the seci*et 
 satisfaction of reprobating in the closet what they read in 
 the church. 
 
 I perceived, and without surprise, the coldness and even 
 prejudice of the town ; nor could a whisper escape my ear, 
 that, in the judgment of many readers, my continuation was 
 much inferior to the original attempts.^ An author who can- 
 not ascend will always appear to sink : envy was now pre- 
 pared for my reception, and the zeal of my religious, was 
 fortified by the motive of my political, enemies.^ Bishop 
 Newton, in writing his own life, was at full liberty to declare 
 how much he himself and two eminent brethren were dis- 
 gusted by Mr. G.'s prolixity, tediousness, and affectation. 
 But the old man should not have indulged his zeal in a 
 false and feeble charge against the historian,* who had 
 faithfully and even cautiously rendered Dr. Burnet's ^ meaning 
 by the alternative " of sleep or repose ". That philosophic 
 divine supposes, that, in the period between death and the 
 resurrection, human souls exist without a body, endowed with 
 internal consciousness, but destitute of all active or passive 
 connection with the external world. " Secundum communem 
 dictionem sacrae scripturae, mors dicitur somnus, et morientes 
 dicuntur abdormire, quod innuere mihi videtur statum mortis 
 esse statum quietis, silentii, et depyao-tas " {De Statu Mortuorum, 
 ch. v., p. 98 [ed. 1720, p. 9Q]). 
 
 I was however encouraged by some domestic and foreign 
 
 1 \_^neid, vi., 617. 
 
 " Is fixed by Fate on his eternal chair." 
 
 (Dryden.) 
 For the disappearance of this pollution see Appendix 44]. 
 
 2 [Horace Walpole wrote of the second and third volumes : ' ' Though these 
 volumes are not polished like the first, you see that he is never thinking of his 
 subject, but intending to make his periods worthy of himself. ... I was 
 charmed, as I owned, with the enamel of the first volume, but I am tired by 
 this rhetorical diction, and wish again for Bishop Burnet's And so " (Walpole's 
 Letters, viii. , 15).] 
 
 3 [" The patriots," Gibbon wrote, " wish to damn the work and the author " 
 {Corres., i. , 398).] 
 
 4 [See Appendix 45.] ^ [Thomas Burnet.] 
 
212 EDWARD GIBBON [iTsi 
 
 testimonies of applause ; and the se<;ond and third volumes 
 insensibly rose in sale and reputation to a level with the first. 
 But the public is seldom wrong ; and I am inclined to believe 
 that, especially in the beginning, they are more prolix and 
 less entertaining than the first ; my effoi'ts had not been 
 relaxed by success, and I had rather deviated into the 
 opposite fault of minute and superfluous diligence. On the 
 Continent, my name and writings were slowly diffused ; a 
 French translation of the first volume had disappointed the 
 booksellers of Paris ^ ; and a passage in the third was con- 
 strued as a personal reflection on the reigning monarch. ^ 
 
 Before I could apply for a seat at the general election the 
 list was already full ; but Lord North's promise was sincere, 
 his recommendation was effectual, and I was soon chosen on 
 a vacancy for the borough of Lymington, in Hampshire.^ In 
 the first session of the new parliament, administration stood 
 their ground ; their final overthrow was reserved for the 
 second. The American war had once been the favourite of 
 the country : the pride of England was irritated by the 
 resistance of her colonies, and the executive power was driven 
 
 1 [Gibbon had to pay two guineas and a half postage on the French transla- 
 tion of the first seven chapters sent from Paris ( Corres. ; i. , 296). Johnson was 
 charged £7 los. for a packet by the post from Lisbon ['Rosvf&Ws Johnso7z , iii., 
 22).] 
 
 2 It may not be generally known that Louis XVI. is a great reader, and a 
 reader of English books. On perusing a passage of my History which seems 
 to compare him to Arcadius or Honorius, he expressed his resentment to the 
 
 Prince of B , from whom the intelligence was conveyed to me. I shall 
 
 neither disclaim the allusion, nor examine the likeness ; but the situation of the 
 late King of France excludes all suspicion of flattery ; and I am ready to 
 declare that the concluding observations of my third volume were written before 
 his accession to the throne. — Gibbon. 
 
 [The Memoir in which this note occurs is dated March 2, 1791. By that 
 time Louis XVI. was merely a king in name. He ascended the throne on May 
 10, 1774, nearly seven years before the publication of the third volume. The 
 following is the passage which excited his resentment : " Europe is now divided 
 into twelve powerful, though unequal, kingdoms, three respectable common- 
 wealths, and a variety of smaller, though independent, states : the chances of 
 royal and ministerial talents are multiplied, at least with the number of its 
 rulers ; and a Julian or Semiramis may reign in the North, while Arcadius 
 and Honorius again slumber on the thrones of the House of Bourbon ". In a 
 later edition, as Professor Bury points out. Gibbon altered " House of Bourbon " 
 into " South " [The Decline, iv. , 165, 529). Four pages after this attack on the 
 Bourbons he ended the first half of the History by a compliment to George III.] 
 
 •'[He was chosen at the end of June, 1781 (Corres., ii., i).] 
 
1782] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 213 
 
 by national clamour into the most vigorous and coercive 
 measures.^ But the length of a fruitless contest, the loss of 
 armies, the accumulation of debt and taxes, and the hostile 
 confederacy of France, Spain, and Holland, indisposed the 
 public to the American war, and the persons by whom it was 
 conducted ; the representatives of the people, followed, at a 
 slow distance, the changes of their opinion, and the ministers 
 who refused to bend, were broken by the tempest. As soon 
 as Lord North had lost, or was about to lose, a majority 
 in the House of Commons, he surrendered his office, and 
 retired to a private station, with the tranquil assurance of a 
 clear conscience and a cheerful temper : the old fabric was 
 dissolved, and the posts of government were occupied by the 
 victorious and veteran troops of opposition.^ The Lords of 
 Trade were not immediately dismissed, but the Board itself 
 was abolished by Mr. Burke's bill, which decency had com- 
 pelled the patriots ^ to revive * ; and I was stripped of a con- 
 venient salary, after having enjoyed it about three years. 
 
 So flexible is the title of my History, that the final aera 
 might be fixed at my own choice ; and I long hesitated 
 whether I should be content with the three volumes, the fall 
 of the Western empire, which fulfilled my first engagement 
 with the public. In this interval of suspense, nearly a 
 
 1 [See Appendix 46.] 
 
 - [Grimm [Mdmoires, ed. 1814, v. , 328) points out that in the Rockingham 
 Ministry which followed Lord North's there were four descendants of Henry IV. 
 of France: the Duke of Grafton, Lord Privy Seal ; Charles Fox, Secretary of 
 State ; the Duke of Richmond, Master of the Ordnance; and Admiral Keppel, 
 First Lord of the Admiralty.] 
 
 i* [Gibbon wrote on Jan. 7, 1779: " I do assure you that I have not any 
 claims to the injurious epithet of ' a patriot' " [Con-es., i., 354). For " patriot " 
 see Boswell's /oAwjora, iv. , 87.] 
 
 ^ [This is a placeman's sneer. In the great distress of his country Gibbon had 
 received ;r^7So a year for almost nominal services (Corres., ii., 36). "The 
 annual saving, which would be yearly increasing," effected by Burke's bill was 
 ^72,000; ;^i2,6oo of which was due to the abolition of the Board of Trade 
 {Pari. Hist., xxii., 1412 ; Ajin. Reg., 1782, i., 180; Rockingham Memoirs, ii., 
 399). See also ante, p. 208, and/yj/, p. 215). 
 
 Pitt revived the Board in 1786, putting at the head of it Charles Jenkinson 
 (Lord Hawkesbury, afterwards first Earl of Liverpool), "the King's friend," 
 the leader of " the reptiles who burrow imder the throne," to use Fox's words 
 {Pari. Hist., xxiv., 217). Pitt, however, abolished many sinecures (Stanhope's 
 Pitt, i., 306 ; iv., 416 ; Ann. Reg., 1786, i., 219).] 
 
214 EDWAED GIBBON [i782 
 
 twelvemonth, I returned by a natural impulse to the Greek 
 authors of antiquity ; I read with new pleasure the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey, the Histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and 
 Xenophon, a large portion of the tragic and comic theatre 
 of Athens^ and many interesting dialogues of the Socratic 
 school. Yet in the luxury of freedom I began to wish for 
 the daily task, the active pursuit, which gave a value to every 
 book, and an object to every inquiry ; the preface of a new 
 edition announced my design,^ and I dropped without reluc- 
 tance from the age of Plato to that of Justinian. The original 
 text of Procopius and Agathias ^ supplied the events and even 
 the characters of his reign : but a laborious winter was devoted 
 to the Codes, the Pandects, and the modern interpreters, 
 before I presumed to form an abstract of the civil law,^ My 
 skill was improved by practice, my diligence perhaps was 
 quickened by the loss of office ; and, excepting the last 
 chapter, I had finished the fourth volume before I sought 
 a retreat on the banks of the Leman Lake. 
 
 It is not the purpose of this narrative to expatiate on the 
 public or secret history of the times : the schism which 
 followed the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, the 
 appointment of the Earl of Shelburne, the resignation of 
 Mr. Fox, and his famous coalition with Lord North.* But I 
 may assert, with some degree of assurance, that in their 
 political conflict those great antagonists had never felt any 
 personal animosity to each other,^ that their reconciliation was 
 easy and sincere, and that their friendship has never been 
 clouded by the shadow of suspicion or jealousy. The most 
 violent or venal of their respective followers embraced this 
 
 1 [The preface was dated March i, 1782.] 
 
 2 [For Gibbon's character of Procopius see Tlie Decline, iv., 210, and for 
 ' ' the false and florid rhetoric ' ' that ' ' Agathias lavished ' ' see ib. , iv. , 382. ] 
 
 3 [For this abstract see ii. , ch. 44. In writing the reign of Frederic I. (a.d. 
 1152-go) Gibbon says: "The recent discovery of the Pandects had renewed 
 a science most favourable to despotism " {id. , v. , 303).] 
 
 * [See Appendix 47.] 
 
 5 [" The style of declamation must never be confounded with the genuine 
 sense which respectable enemies entertain of each other^s merits " ( The Decline, 
 v., 116).] 
 
1783] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 215 
 
 fair occasion of revolt, but their alliance still commanded a 
 majority in the House of Commons ; the peace was censured, 
 Lord Shelburne resigned, and the two friends knelt on the 
 same cushion to take the oath of Secretary of State. From a 
 principle of gratitude I adhered to the coalition : my vote 
 was counted in the day of battle, but I was overlooked in 
 the division of the spoil. There were many claimants more 
 deserving and importunate than myself ^ : the Board of Trade 
 could not be restored ; and, while the list of places was 
 curtailed, the number of candidates was doubled.^ An easy 
 dismission to a secure seat at the Board of Customs or Excise 
 was promised on the first vacancy : but the chance was 
 distant and doubtful ^ ; nor could I solicit with much ardour 
 an ignoble servitude, which would have robbed me of the 
 most valuable of my studious hours : at the same time the 
 tumult of London, and the attendance on parliament, were 
 grown more irksome ; and, without some additional income, 
 I could not long or prudently maintain the style of expense 
 to which I was accustomed.^ 
 
 1 [Gibbon, on May 20, 1783, wrote to Deyverdun of Lord North : " Des 
 collegues plus actifs lui enl^vent les morceaux les plus friands, qui sont aussitot 
 d^vorfe par la voracity de leurs cr&tures " (Corres., ii., 37). It never seems 
 to have occurred to him that he was one of Lord North's " creatures". To 
 Dr. Robertson he wrote on Sept. i : "If the means of patronage had not been 
 so strangely reduced by our modern reformers, I am persuaded Lord Lough- 
 borough's constant and liberal kindness would more than satisfy the moderate 
 desires of a philosopher" (Stewart's Robertson, p. 364). On May 28, 1784, he 
 wrote : ' ' The reign of pensions and sinecures is at an end " ( Corres. , ii. , 107). 
 
 " The reign of pensions and sinecures" was not wholly at an end. In 1802 
 the Prime Minister, Addington, bestowed the Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure 
 of p^3,ooo a year, on his own son, a boy of sixteen. Pitt highly approved of the 
 appointment (Stanhope's Pitt, iii., 385). Pitt himself, as Lord Warden of the 
 Cinque Ports, received more than ^^3,000 a year {ib., iii., 341). He pensioned 
 off his mother's housekeeper by a sinecure post of housekeeper of ;^4o, and 
 later on by a better one of about ;i^i.=;o a year {ib., i., 347 ; ii. , 221). On the 
 other hand in the Customs he abolished eighty-five sinecures {ib., iv. , 416).] 
 
 2 [W. Eden wrote to Lord Loughborough on July 24, 1782: "Burke's 
 foolish bill has made it a very difficult task for any set of men either to form 
 or maintain an Administration " {Auckland Corres., i. , 12).] 
 
 •^ [Lord Sheffield wrote to William Eden on June 13, 1783 : " Gibbon and I 
 have been walking about the room, and cannot find any employment we 
 should like in the intended establishment [of the Prince of Wales]. He agrees 
 with me that the place of dancing-master might be one of the most eligible for 
 him, but he rather inclines to be painter, in hopes of succeeding Ramsay [as 
 King's Painter]" {Auckland Co7-res., i., 53).] 
 
 4 [See Appendix 48.] 
 
216 EDWARD GIBBON [i783 
 
 From my early acquaintance with Lausanne I had always 
 cherished a secret wish^ that the school of my youth might 
 become the retreat of my declining age.^ A moderate for- 
 tune would secure the blessings of ease, leisure, and in- 
 dependence : the country, the people, the manners, the 
 language, were congenial to my taste ; and I might indulge 
 the hope of passing some years in the domestic society of a 
 friend. After travelling with several English, ^ Mr. Deyver- 
 dun was now settled at home, in a pleasant habitation, the 
 gift of his deceased aunt ^ : we had long been separated, we 
 had long been silent ; yet in my first letter ^ I exposed, with 
 the most perfect confidence, my situation, my sentiments, 
 and my designs. His immediate answer was a warm and 
 joyful acceptance : the picture of our future life provoked 
 my impatience ; and the terms of arrangement were short 
 and simple, as he possessed the property, and I undertook 
 the expense of our common house. Before I could break my 
 English chain, it was incumbent on me to struggle with the 
 feelings of my heart, the indolence of my temper, and the 
 opinion of the world, which unanimously condemned this 
 voluntary banishment. -^ In the disposal of my effects, the 
 library, a sacred deposit, was alone excepted ^ : as my post- 
 
 1 ["The beauteous and happy country where I am permitted to reside" 
 {T/ie Decline, iv. , 495).] 
 
 2 Sir Richard Worsley, Lord Chesterfield, Broderick Lord Middleton, and 
 Mr. Hume, brother to Sir Abraham. — Gibbon. [See ante, p. 176.] 
 
 ^ [See Read's Hist. Studies, i. , 7 ; ii. , 297.] 
 * [Dated May 20, 1783 [Corres., ii., 35).] 
 
 5 [Lord Sheffield wrote on Aug. 7, 1783 : " Gibbon has baffled all arrange- 
 ments ; possibly you may have heard of a continental scheme. It has annoyed 
 me much ; and of all circumstances the most provoking is that he is right ; a 
 most pleasant opportunity offered. His seat in Parliament is left in my hands. 
 He is here. In short, his plan is such that it was impossible to urge anything 
 against it " {Auckland Corres., i., 56). Lord Sheffield was to find a purchaser 
 of Gibbon's seat for Lymington. Its value depended on the expectation of the 
 duration of the parliament then sitting. The dissolution came before any 
 bargain was completed {Corres., ii. , 81, 93, 99, loi).] 
 
 6 [He sent " two immense cases of books " to Lausanne (Stewart's Robertson, 
 p. 365). On Aug. 18 he wrote : " This morning my books were shipped for 
 Rouen, and will reach Lausanne almost as soon as myself. On Thursday 
 morning the bulk of the library moves from Bentinck Street to Downing Street 
 (Lord Sheffield's) " {Carres., ii., 62). He reached Lausanne on Sept. 27 ; but 
 his books "by some strange neglect" did not reach him till February, 1784 
 {ib., pp. 74, 94, 97).] 
 
1784] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 217 
 
 chaise moved over Westminster-bridge, I bid a long farewell 
 to the " fumum et opes strepitumque Romae ^ ". My journey 
 by the direct road through France ^ was not attended with 
 any accident, and I arrived at Lausanne nearly twenty years 
 after my second departure. Within less than three months 
 the coalition struck on some hidden rocks : had I remained 
 on board, I should have perished in the general shipwreck. 
 Since my establishment at Lausanne, more than seven years 
 have elapsed ; and if every day has not been equally soft and 
 serene, not a day, not a moment, has occurred in which I have 
 repented of my choice. During my absence, a long portion of 
 human life, many changes had happened : my elder acquaint- 
 ance had left the stage ; vii'gins were ripened into matrons, 
 and children were grown to the age of manhood. But the 
 same manners were transmitted from one generation to an- 
 other : my friend alone was an inestimable treasure ; my name 
 was not totally forgotten, and all were ambitious to welcome 
 the arrival of a stranger and the return of a fellow-citizen. 
 The first winter was given to a general embrace, without any 
 nice discrimination of persons and characters. After a more 
 regular settlement, a more accurate survey, I discovered three 
 solid and permanent benefits of my new situation. 1. My 
 personal freedom had been somewhat impaired by the House 
 of Commons and the Board of Trade ; but I was now de- 
 livered from the chain of duty and dependence, from the 
 hopes and fears of political adventure : my sober mind was no 
 longer intoxicated by the fumes of party, and I rejoiced in 
 my escape, as often as I read of the midnight debates which 
 preceded the dissolution of parliament. 2. My English 
 oeconomy had been that of a solitary bachelor, who might 
 afford some occasional dinners. ^ In Switzerland I enjoyed at 
 
 1 [Horace, Odes, iii. , 29, 12. 
 
 " Its crowds, and smoke, and opulence, and noise." 
 
 (Francis.) 
 Gibbon left London on Sept. 15 {Corres., ii. , 71).] 
 
 2 [He went by the road he had travelled to his banishment thirty years 
 earlier [ante, p. 82).] 
 
 3 [Gibbon, writing to Lord Sheffield on Nov. 14, 1783, described him as 
 having "passed the afternoon, the evening, and perhaps the night, without 
 
218 EDWAKD GIBBON [i784 
 
 every meal, at every hour, the free and pleasant conversation 
 of the friend of my youth ; and my daily table was always 
 provided for the reception of one or two extraordinary guests. ^ 
 Our importance in society is less a positive than a relative 
 weight : in London I was lost in the crowd ; I ranked with 
 the first farailies of Lausanne, and my style of prudent ex- 
 pense enabled me to maintain a fair balance of reciprocal 
 civilities. 2 3. Instead of a small house between a street and 
 a stable-yard/ I began to occupy a spacious and convenient 
 mansion, connected on the north side with the city, and open 
 
 sleep or food, stifled in a close room by the heated respiration of six hundred 
 politicians, inflamed by party and passion, and tired of the repetition of dull 
 nonsense, which, in that illustrious assembly, so far outweighs the proportion of 
 reason and eloquence" [Corres., ii., 8o). Six hundred is an exaggeration. 
 There were five hundred and fifty-eight members. In very few divisions four 
 hundred and fifty voted.] 
 
 i["Deyverdun, who is somewhat of an Epicurean philosopher, understands 
 the management of a table, and we frequently invite a guest or two to share our 
 luxurious, but not extravagant, repasts" [ib., ii. , 78). Gibbon sent to London 
 for a set of Wedgwood China, " adequate to a plentiful table". Off this set 
 General Read dined in 1879 at M. de S^very's house at Mex, near Lausanne. 
 "It is still in general use. Gibbon's supply of table-linen was so large in 
 quantity and excellent in quality that his tablecloths and napkins are still in use " 
 [Hist. Studies, ii., 479).] 
 
 2[Deyverdun, in 1783, urging Gibbon to settle at Lausanne, wrote : " Vous 
 serez d'abord I'homme k la mode, et je vols d'ici que vous soutiendrez fort bien 
 ce role, sans vous en ficher, dtit-on un peu vous surfaire. Je sens bien que tu me 
 flattes, mais tu me fais plaisir, est peut-etre le meilleur vers de Destouches " 
 {Corres., ii. , 43). 
 
 Miss Holroyd wrote at Lausanne in 1791 : " It is a proof how much pleasure 
 flattery gives the most sensible people. This is the only advantage this place 
 can have over England for iVIr. Gibbon. However he is so much attached to 
 the place and the people, that he cannot bear the slightest joke about them " 
 [Girlhood of M. J. Holroyd, p. 63). 
 
 Gibbon wrote of a long fit of the gout in 1785 : " In London my confine- 
 ment was sad and solitary ; the many forgot my existence when they saw me 
 no longer at Brookes's. ... I was proud and happy if I could prevail on 
 Elmsley to enliven the dulness of the evening. Here the objects are nearer, 
 and more distinct ; and I myself am an object of much larger magnitude. . . . 
 Enuring three months I have had round my chair a succession of agreeable men 
 and women, who came with a smile and vanished at a nod" [Corres., ii. , 134). 
 
 Malone, one day in 1783, found Dr. Johnson, when confined by illness, 
 roasting apples and reading the History of Birmingham. " These," he said, 
 "are some of the solitary expedients to which we are driven by sickness" 
 (Boswell's /cA^JWz, iv., 218, «.).] 
 
 3 [He spoke very differently of his house (7, Bentinck Street) when he took 
 it. "I am got into the delightful mansion," he wrote to his step-mother. " My 
 own new, clean, comfortable, dear house, which I like better every week I pass 
 in it." "My little palace, which is absolutely the best house in London." 
 " Mine own dear library, and mine own dear parlour" [Corres., i. , 179, 181, 
 183, 269).] 
 
1784] MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 219 
 
 on the south to a beautiful and boundless horizon. ^ A garden 
 of four acres had been laid out by the taste of Mr. Deyverdun : 
 from the garden a rich scenery of meadows and vineyards de- 
 scends to the Leman Lake, and the prospect far beyond the 
 Lake is crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy. ^ My 
 books and my acquaintance had been first united in London ; 
 but this happy position of my library in town and country was 
 finally reserved for Lausanne. Possessed of every comfort in 
 this triple alliance, I could not be tempted to change my 
 habitation with the changes of the seasons.^ 
 
 i[" The chosen part of my library is now arrived, and arranged in a room 
 full as good as that in Bentinck Street, with this difference indeed, that instead 
 of looking on a stone court twelve feet square, I command, from three windows 
 of plate glass, an unbounded prospect of many a league of vineyard, of fields, 
 of wood, of lake, and of mountains" (Corres., ii., ii8). 
 
 Of the sight of his books — one of the most delightful sights to a scholar — he 
 intentionally deprived himself. They were hidden away in ' ' twenty-seven book- 
 cases or closets, each with stout wooden doors and strong keys. He could shut 
 the doors, and then appear to be sitting in a room without a single book " (Read's 
 Hist. Studies, ii. , 493). Johnson's garret-library, with its three-legged elbow 
 chair, would have looked more cheerful.] 
 
 2 [See Corres., ii. , 142, for an interesting passage where he says that Dey- 
 verdun has taught him to ' ' dwell with pleasure on the shape and colour of the 
 leaves, the various hues of the blossoms, and successive progress of vegetation ". 
 Brought up as he had mainly been in the country, it is strange that he required 
 to be taught this lesson when he was past fifty.] 
 
 ■^ [On July 21, 1787, he wrote that in four years he had lain but a single night 
 out of his own bed" {ib., ii. , 156). 
 
 Mr. Samuel Davey, late of 47, Great Russell Street, kindly allowed me to take 
 a copy of the original of Gibbon's bill with his Lausanne tailor for 1784 and 
 part of 1785. The following are some of the items. The charges are I think 
 in florins and sols. A florin was equal to one French livre and a half according 
 to the statement in D'Haussonville's Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. , 232, that 
 Necker paid for Coppet in 1784 " la somme de 500,000 livres argent de France, 
 soit 333,333 florins 6 sols 4 deniers argent de Berne". 
 
 "POUR Mr. GUIBONS. 
 
 Monsieur Guibons doit a Jean Wisard. F.S. 
 
 Pour Fa9on et fournitures d'une Cullotte de velour cramoisi . 2. 10 
 
 Une paire de jartieres rouges i. 
 
 \ Ecarlette pour Col et parements et Col de la redingotte 
 
 grise 3. 
 
 Fourni i dzne [douzaine] \ grands boutons argents . . 3. 
 
 Pour avoir redouble les pans d'une veste, fourni la doublure 
 
 en soy blanche . . . . . . . . . i.io 
 
 Pour Fapon d'un habit de royale ...... 4. 
 
 Fournitures 2. 
 
 5 SM^ [aunes] royale superfine a 8;,^ losls. . . . . 42. lo 
 
 I au^ futaine fine a 25 bald [?] ...... 3. 15 
 
 I dzne \ boutons dor^s a 35 bald [?] 5. 5 
 
 Pour fa9on et fournitures d'une Culotte tricot^e en soy noire . 2.10 
 
 Pour Fafon et fournitures de deux vestes de bazaine ray^ . 4.0."] 
 
220 EDWAED GIBBON [1785-87 
 
 My friends had been kindly apprehensive that I should not 
 be able to exist in a Swiss town at the foot of the Alps, after 
 having so long conversed with the first men of the first cities 
 of the world. 1 Such lofty connections may attract the curious 
 and gratify the vain ; but I am too modest, or too proud to 
 rate miy own value by that of my associates ; and whatsoever 
 may be the fame of learning or genius, experience has shown 
 me that the cheaper qualifications of politeness and good sense 
 are of more useful currency in the commerce of life. By many, 
 conversation is esteemed as a theatre or a school : but after 
 the morning has been occupied by the labours of the library, 
 I wish to unbend rather than to exercise my mind ^ ; and in 
 the interval between tea and supper I am far from disdaining 
 the innocent amusement of a game at cards. ^ Lausanne is 
 peopled by a numerous gentry, whose companionable idleness 
 is seldom disturbed by the pursuits of avarice or ambition * : 
 
 1 [Gibbon wrote to Lady Sheffield on October 22, 1784 : " Whenever I used 
 to hint my design of retiring, that illustrious Baron [Sheffield], after a proper 
 effusion of damned fools, condescended to observe that such an obscure nook in 
 Switzerland might please me in the ignorance of youth, but that after tasting for 
 so many years the various society of Paris and London, I should soon be tired 
 with the dull and uniform round of a provincial town" (Corres., ii., 116).] 
 
 2[" Johnson had all his life habituated himself to consider conversation as a 
 trial of intellectual vigour and skill" (BosweWs Johnson, iv., iii). Nevertheless 
 he said that "that is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, 
 no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments " {id., ii., 359). 
 
 " Those persons," writes Burke, " who creep into the hearts of most people, 
 who are chosen as the companions of their softer hours, and their reliefs from 
 care and anxiety, are never persons of shining qualities, nor strong virtues" 
 (T/ie Subli7ne and Beautiful, ed. 1759, p. 206).] 
 
 3 ["Whist at shillings, or half-crowns, is the game I generally play, and I 
 play three rubbers with pleasure" {Misc. Works, ii., 342). Writing in 1763 on 
 " un Dimanche de Communion " he says : " Point d'affaires, point d'assemblee ; 
 on s'interdit jusqu'au w/z/j-^, si n^cessaire a I'existence d'un Lausannois" {ib., 
 
 i., 171)- 
 
 General Read was shown by M. de S^very ' ' Gibbon's counters at whist — 
 eight pieces of silver of Ludwig [? Ludovic] XV., 1731 " {Hist. Studies, ii., 483). 
 Mr. Samuel Davey showed me a ten of diamonds, on the back of which 
 — on a ground of plain white — was written : — 
 
 ' ' Bon pour Cent Livres 
 k Blondel 
 
 E. Gibbon 
 
 Ce II Mai, 1786.' 
 
 Blondel was Gibbon's valet. See Corres,, ii., 124, 131.] 
 
 ''[Gibbon, in The Decline, i., 222, describes the Pays de Vaud as " a small 
 district on the banks of the Leman Lake, much more distinguished for polite- 
 ness than for industry ".] 
 
1785-87] MEMOmS OF MY LIFE 221 
 
 the women, though confined to a domestic education, are en- 
 dowed for the most part with more taste and knowledge than 
 their husbands and brothers ^ ; but the decent freedom of both 
 sexes is equally remote from the extremes of simplicity and 
 refinement, 2 I shall add as a misfortune rather than a merit, 
 that the situation and beauty of the Pays de Vaud, the long 
 habits of the English,^ the medical reputation of Dr. Tissot,"* 
 and the fashion of viewing the mountains and Glacieis, have 
 opened us on all sides to the incursions of foreigners.^ The 
 visits of Mr. and Madame Necker, of Prince Henry of Prussia, 
 and of Mr. Fox, may form some pleasing exceptions ; but, in 
 general, Lausanne has appeared most agreeable in my eyes, 
 when we have been abandoned to our own society. I had 
 frequently seen Mr, Necker, in the summer of 1784, at a 
 country house near Lausanne, where he composed his 
 Treatise on the Administration of the Finances,*^ I have 
 since, in October 1790, visited him in his present residence, 
 
 i["Il m'a toujours paru qu'^ Lausanne, aussi bien qu'en France, las 
 femmes sont tr^s sup^rieures aux hommes" {Corres., ii. , 46).] 
 
 2 [For the mollifying of the prejudice which, when Gibbon first visited Lau- 
 sanne, " drew a line of separation between the noble and the plebeian families " 
 see Auto., p. 237. " Of the Swiss," wrote Miss Holroyd, "there seems to be 
 but one opinion, they certainly do not possess ' les Graces'" {Girlhood, etc., 
 
 p. 79)-] 
 
 ■*[" Moi qui aimerais Lausanne cent fois da vantage, si j'y pouvais etre le seul 
 de ma nation," he wrote in 1783" [Corres., ii., 38). What he means by "the 
 long habits of the English," if it can be made out, is ill-expressed. In June 
 1784 there were "three-score English at Lausanne". In October he wrote: 
 ' ' A colony of English have taken up the habit of spending their winters at 
 Nice, and their summers in the Pays de Vaud" {ib., ii. , iii, 116).] 
 
 * [Voltaire mentions him in his Epitre a Horace [Qiuvres, xi., 268) ; — 
 " Ainsi, lorsqu'un pauvre homme, au fond de sa chaumifere. 
 En d^pit de Tissot, finissait sa carriiire." 
 
 In a note he describes him as " c^lebre m^decin de Lausanne". 
 
 In an attic in his country-house was found in a heap of waste paper a long 
 letter from Napoleon Bonaparte about the health of his uncle, dated " Ajaccio, 
 April I, 1787," endorsed by Tissot : " Lettre non r^pondue, peu int^ressante " 
 (Read's //zrf. Studies, ii., 198).] 
 
 ^\_Ante, p. 98. In June 1784 there "were forty French at Lausanne". 
 The following October he was walking on his terrace with ' ' a natural son of 
 Lewis XV., the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, and 
 a dozen Counts, Barons, and extraordinary persons, among whom was a natural 
 son of the Empress of Russia" (ib., ii. , iii, 115).] 
 
 ^[^De I' Administration des Finances de la France. 2 torn. 4°. Paris, 1785. 
 A translation by T, Mortimer in 3 vols. 8vo was published in London the same 
 year (Brit, Mus, Cat.).'] 
 
222 EDWAED GIBBON [1785-87 
 
 the castle and barony of Copet, near Geneva.^ Of the 
 merits and measures of that statesman various opinions may 
 be entertained ; but all impartial men must agree in their 
 esteem of his integrity and patriotism. 
 
 In August 1784, Prince Henry of Prussia, in his way to 
 Paris, passed three days at Lausanne. His military conduct 
 has been praised by professional men ; his character has been 
 vilified by the wit and malice of a demon ; but I was flattered 
 by his affability, and entertained by his conversation. ^ 
 
 In his tour of Switzerland (September 1788) Mr. Fox gave 
 me two days of free and private society. He seemed to feel, 
 and even to envy, the happiness of my situation while I ad- 
 mired the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in 
 his attractive character with the softness and simplicity of a 
 child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly 
 exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood.^ 
 
 My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be 
 effected without interrupting the course of my historical 
 labours. The hurry of my departure, the joy of my arrival, 
 the delay of my tools, suspended their progress ; and a full 
 twelvemonth was lost before I could resume the thread of 
 regular and daily industry. A number of books most requisite 
 and least common had been previously selected * ; the aca- 
 
 1 [Necker and his wife had met Gibbon at Geneva. She wrote to him of this 
 meeting : " Je r^unissais dans un mSme lieu . . . une des douces et pures 
 affections de ma jeunesse avec celle qui fait mon sort sur la terre et le rend si 
 digne d'envie. Cette singularity, jointe aux agrdments d'une conversation sans 
 modele, composait pour moi une sorte d'enchantement ; et la connexion du 
 pass6 et du present rendait mes jours semblables k un songe sorti par la porte 
 d'ivoire pour consoler les mortels. Ne voudrez-vous pas nous le faire continuer 
 encore ? " (Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. , 83. ) 
 
 The castle is only a few miles from Grassy, the scene of their early love- 
 making. 
 
 D'Haussonville, describing the castle gate, says: "La solide armature de 
 fer inspirait a mon enfance une terreur respectueuse " {Le Saloti de Madame 
 Necker, i. , 3). One of the flanking towers was built in the thirteenth century. 
 More than a hundred years before Gibbon's visit Bayle had spent eighteen 
 months there as tutor to the owner's children [ib. , ii. , 222-33). From the house 
 could be seen the town of Geneva, which Gibbon described in 1783 as " le 
 triste s^Jour du travail et de la discorde" (Corres., ii., 39).] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 49.] ^ [See Appendix, 50.] 
 
 *[He had with him, he wrote, " more than two thousand volumes, the choice 
 of a chosen library" (Corres., ii., 124).] 
 
1785-87] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 223 
 
 demical library of Lausanne, which I could use as my own, 
 contained at least the fathers and councils ^ ; and I have de- 
 rived some occasional succour from the public collections of 
 Berne ^ and Geneva. The fourth volume was soon terminated 
 by an abstract of the controversies of the Incarnation, which 
 the learned Dr. Prideaux was apprehensive of exposing to pro- 
 fane eyes. It had been the original design of the learned 
 Dean Prideaux ^ to write the history of the ruin of the Eastern 
 Church. In this work it would have been necessary, not only 
 to unravel all those controversies which the Christians made 
 about the hypostatical union, but also to unfold all the niceties 
 and subtle notions which each sect entertained concerning it.^ 
 The pious historian was apprehensive of exposing that in- 
 comprehensible mystery to the cavils and objections of un- 
 believers : and he durst not, " seeing the nature of this book, 
 venture it abroad in so wanton and lewd an age ".^ 
 
 In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire 
 
 1 [To Dey verdun he wrote : ' ' Malheureusement votre bibliothfeque publique, 
 en y ajoutant meme celle de M. de Bochat, est assez piteuse" [ib., ii., 48). 
 Gibbon bequeathed to it 97 learned volumes (Read's Historic Studies, i. , 144).] 
 
 2 [Those from Berne he got by irregular means through a friend at Berne, 
 who wrote : " I lend myself quite willingly to the petty deceit which the managing 
 committee of the Library so well merits" (ib., ii. , 463).] 
 
 2 [In the text Gibbon had written " the learned Dr. Prideaux," and in a note 
 " the learned Dean Prideaux " {Auto. , p. 332). Lord Sheffield by incorporating 
 the note in the text produced the repetition.] 
 
 * [" I have already observed that the disputes of the Trinity were succeeded 
 by those of the Incarnation ; alike scandalous to the Church, alike pernicious to 
 the State, still more minute in their origin, still more durable in their effects " 
 ( TAe Decline, v. , 96). After speaking of the Catholic doctrine of ' ' the sub- 
 stantial, indissoluble and everlasting union of a perfect God with a perfect man," 
 Gibbon goes on to describe the ' ' secret and incurable discord which was cherished 
 between those who were most apprehensive of confounding, and those who were 
 most fearful of separating, the divinity and the humanity of Christ. . . . To 
 escape from each other they wandered through many a dark and devious thicket, 
 till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, 
 who guarded the opposite issues of the theological labyrinth. As soon as they 
 beheld the twilight of sense and heresy they started, measured back their steps, 
 and were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy" {j.b., v., 
 105)-] 
 
 ° See preface to the Z,?/e of Mahomet, p. xxi.- — Gibbon. [Second ed. 1697, 
 Preface, p. 17. The Preface is dated March 15, 169!^. 
 
 ' ' Two professed lives of iVIahomet have been composed by Dr. Prideaux and 
 the Count de Boulainvilliers ; but the adverse wish of finding an impostor or an 
 hero has too often corrupted the learning of the Doctor and the ingenuity of the 
 Count" (The Decline, v., 352).] 
 
224 EDWAED GIBBON [1785-87 
 
 and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive ; and 
 the Greek or Roman historians are checked by the hostile 
 narratives of the barbarians of the East and the West.^ 
 
 It was not till after many designs, and many trials, that I 
 preferred, as I still prefer, the method of grouping my picture 
 by nations ; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is 
 surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and 
 perspicuity. The style of the first volume is, in my opinion, 
 somewhat crude and elaborate ; in the second and third it is 
 I'ipened into ease, correctness, and numbers ^ ; but in the 
 three last I may have been seduced by the facility of my pen, 
 and the constant habit of speaking one language and writing 
 another may have infused some mixture of Gallic idioms. 
 Happily for my eyes, I have always closed my studies with 
 the day, and commonly with the morning ; and a long, but 
 temperate, labour has been accomplished, without fatiguing 
 either the mind or body ; but when I computed the remainder 
 of my time and my task, it was apparent that, according to 
 the season of publication, the delay of a month would be 
 productive of that of a year. I was now straining for the 
 goal, and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed 
 from the social pleasures of Lausanne.^ I could now wish 
 that a pause, an interval, had been allowed for a serious 
 revisal. 
 
 I have presumed to mark the moment of conception ^ : I 
 
 I I have followed the judicious precept of the Abbe de Mably (Maniere 
 d'^crire I'Histoire, p. no), who advises the historian not to dwell too minutely 
 on the decay of the eastern empire ; but to consider the barbarian conquerors 
 as a more worthy subject of his narrative. " Fas est et ab hoste doceri" (Ovid, 
 Meta., iv. , 428). — GiBBON. [For Mably see ante, p. 199. ] 
 
 "^{^Ante, p. 189.] 
 
 '^\_Ante, p. 90. On Jan. 20, 1787, he wrote to Lord Sheffield: "The 
 mornings in winter, and in a country of early dinners, are very concise ; to 
 them, my usual period of study, I now frequently add the evenings, renounce 
 cards and society, refuse the most agreeable evenings, or perhaps make my 
 appearance at a late supper. By this extraordinary industry, which I never 
 practised before, and to which I hope never to be again reduced, I see the last 
 part of my History growing apace under my hands" [Corres., ii. , 151). It 
 must be remembered that he worked all the year round. In four years he ' ' had 
 lain but a single night out of his own bed " {ante, p. 219, «.).] 
 
 ^{Ante, p. 167.] 
 
1787] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 225 
 
 shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It 
 was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, 
 between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last 
 lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. 
 After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, 
 or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the 
 country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, 
 the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected 
 from the waters, and all nature was silent.^ I will not dis- 
 semble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, 
 and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride 
 was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over 
 my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave 
 of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might 
 be the future date of my History, the life of the historian 
 must be short and precarious. ^ I will add two facts, which 
 have seldom occurred in the composition of six, or at least of 
 five quartos.^ 1. My first rough manuscript, without any 
 intermediate copy, has been sent to the press.* 2. Not a 
 sheet has been seen by any human eyes, excepting those of 
 the author and the printer ^ ; the faults and the merits are 
 exclusively my own.^ 
 
 I cannot help recollecting a much more extraordinary fact, 
 
 1 [See Appendix 51.] 
 
 2 [On Feb. 13, 1837, Carlyle thus described to Emerson the completion of 
 his French Revolution : ' ' You, I hope, can have little conception of the feeling 
 with which I wrote the last word of it, one night in early January, when the 
 clock was striking ten, and our frugal Scotch supper coming in ! I did not 
 cry ; nor I did not pray : but could have done both" [Carlyle and Emerso7i 
 Corres., ed. 1883, i., 114).] 
 
 "^•^Ante, pp. 190, 201.] 
 
 ^ [There was only one manuscript of Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Boswell's 
 Johnson, iv. , 36).] 
 
 5 [His friends Batt and Deyverdun had read the first volume, or part of it, 
 in manuscript {Corres., i. , 265).] 
 
 ^ Extract from Mr. Gibbon's Common-place Book. 
 The IVth Volume of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 
 begun March ist, 1782 — ended June 1784. 
 The Vth Volume, begun July 1784— ended May ist, 1786. 
 The Vlth Volume, begun May i8th, 1786 — ended June 27th, 1787. 
 
 These three volumes were sent to press August 15th, 1787, and the whole 
 impression was concluded April following. — Sheffield. 
 
 15 
 
226 EDWARD GIBBON [i787 
 
 which is affirmed of himself by Retif de la Bretonne, a volumi- 
 nous and original writer of French novels. He laboured, and 
 may still labour, in the humble office of corrector to a printing- 
 house ; but this office enabled him to transport an entire 
 volume from his mind to the press ; and his work was given 
 to the public without ever having been written with a pen.^ 
 
 After a quiet residence of four years, during which I had 
 never moved ten miles from Lausanne, it was not without 
 some reluctance and terror, that I undertook, in a journey of 
 two hundred leagues, to cross the mountains and the sea. 
 Yet this formidable adventure was achieved without danger 
 or fatigue ; and at the end of a fortnight I found myself in 
 Lord Sheffield's house and library, safe, happy, and at home.^ 
 The character of my friend (Mr. Holroyd) had recommended 
 him to a seat in parliament for Coventry, the command of a 
 regiment of light dragoons, and an Irish peerage. The sense 
 and spirit of his political writings have decided the public 
 opinion on the great questions of our commercial interest with 
 America and Ireland. 
 
 The sale of his Observations oti the American States was diffu- 
 sive, their effect beneficial ; the Navigation Act, the palladium 
 of Britain, was defended, and perhaps saved,, by his pen ; and 
 he proves, by the weight of fact and argument, that the 
 mother- country may survive and flourish after the loss of 
 America. 3 My friend has never cultivated the arts of com- 
 
 1 [I find no mention of this in the Biog. Univ. (under R^tif ). He is 
 described as " le plus f^cond &rivain de son temps". After his second or 
 third book " il quitta I'imprimerie pour faire des livres". He used to roam 
 the streets at night. " Comme il portait d'habitude une dcritoire dans sa poche, 
 il s'en allait 6crire ce qu'il avait vu soit a la lueur des r^verberes, soit sur les 
 parapets de I'ile Saint-Louis." At one time he was worth 6o,ooo francs ; but 
 being ruined by the Revolution he became a corrector of the press. He died 
 in i8o6. He was a worthless scoundrel and a most licentious writer.] 
 
 2 [In writing to Lord Sheffield just before leaving Lausanne he had called 
 that town his home. " So happy do I feel myself at home [the italics are 
 his], that nothing but the strongest calls of friendship and interest could 
 drag me from hence" \{Corres., ii. , 156). He reached London on Aug. 7, 
 1787, after the post had left, as he informed Lord Sheffield in a letter dated 
 Aug. 8 (ib., p. 157). To his step-mother he wrote on Aug. 9 : " I reached 
 the Adelphi Hotel, Wednesday the 8th instant, after the departure of the post " 
 {ib., p. 158). Apparently he did not wish her to know that he had let a whole 
 day go by without writing to her. ] 
 
 ^[See Appendix 52.] 
 
1787] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 227 
 
 position 1 ; but his materials are copious and correct, and he 
 leaves on his paper the clear impression of an active and 
 vigorous mind. His Observations on the Trade, Mmnifactures, 
 and present State of Ireland, were intended to guide the industry, 
 to correct the prejudices, and to assuage the passions of a 
 country which seemed to forget that she could be free and 
 prosperous only by a friendly connection with Great Britain. 
 The concluding observations are written with so much ease 
 and spirit, that they may be read by those who are the least 
 interested in the subject.^ 
 
 He fell^ (in 1784) with the unpopular coalition; but his 
 merit has been acknowledged at the last general election, 
 1790, by the honourable invitation and free choice of the city 
 of Bristol.^ During the whole time of my residence in Eng- 
 land I was entertained at Sheffield Place and in Downing 
 Street ^ by his hospitable kindness ; and the most pleasant 
 period was that which I passed in the domestic society of the 
 family. In the larger circle of the metropolis I observed the 
 country and the inhabitants with the knowledge, and with- 
 out the prejudices, of an Englishman ; but I rejoiced in the 
 apparent increase of wealth and prosperity, which might be 
 fairly divided between the spirit of the nation and the wisdom 
 of the minister.'' All party-resentment was now lost in oblivion : 
 
 1 [" The subordinate beauties of style and arrangement yon disclaim," Gibbon 
 wrote to him in 1785 {Corres., ii. , 128). In printing this letter Lord Sheffield 
 omitted the words I have italicised [Misc. Works, ii., 378).] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 53.] 
 
 3 It is not obvious from whence he fell ; he never held nor desired any 
 office of emolument whatever, unless his military commissions, and the com- 
 mand of a regiment of light dragoons, which he raised himself, and which 
 was disbanded on the peace in 1783, should be deemed such. — Sheffield. 
 
 [The fall was the loss of his seat for Coventry. Of those who supported 
 the Coalition 159 fell with him — Fox's Martyrs, as they were called.] 
 
 •^ [See Appendix 54. ] 
 
 3 [The preface to the latter half of Tke Decline is dated " Downing Street, 
 May I, 1788 ". On July 2, 1793, Miss Holroyd wrote that Lord Sheffield " had 
 agreed to let Government have his house in Downing Street ' ' ( Gii-lkood, etc. , 
 p. 224).] 
 
 6 [Gibbon wrote about his investments on Dec. 31, 1791 : "The three per 
 cents, are so high, and the country is in such a damned state of prosperity 
 under that fellow Pitt, that it goes against me to purchase at such low interest " 
 (Corres., ii. , 282). They stood at 90 (Ann. Reg., 1791, ii. , no). By March, 
 1792, they had risen to 97. By the end of the year they had fallen to 74 (lb., 
 1792, ii., 152).] 
 
228 EDWARD GIBBON [i787 
 
 since I was no man's rival, no man was my enemy. I felt the 
 dignity of independence, and as I asked no more, I was 
 satisfied with the general civilities of the world. The house 
 in London which I frequented with most pleasure and assi- 
 duity was that of Lord North.^ After the loss of power and 
 of sight,^ he was still happy in himself and his friends ; and 
 my public tribute of gratitude and esteem could no longer be 
 suspected of any interested motive.^ Before my departure 
 from England, I was present at the august spectacle of Mr. 
 Hastings's trial in Westminster Hall. It is not my province 
 to absolve or condemn the Governor of India ; but Mr. 
 Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause ; nor could I 
 hear without emotion the personal compliment which he paid 
 me in the presence of the British nation."^ 
 
 From this display of genius, which blazed four successive 
 days, I shall stoop to a very mechanical circumstance. As I 
 was waiting in the managers' box, I had the curiosity to 
 inquire of the short-hand writer, how many words a ready 
 and rapid orator might pronounce in an hour } From 7,000 
 to 7,500 was his answer. The medium of 7,200 will afford 120 
 words in a minute, and two words in each second. But this 
 computation will only apply to the English language. 
 
 1 [Lord North in 1790 succeeded his father as Earl of Guilford. He died 
 two years later, a little after Reynolds. Gibbon wrote : " Lord Guilford and 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds ! two of the men, and two of the houses in London, on 
 whom I thejmost relied for the comforts of society " (Corres., ii., 311).] 
 
 2 [Lord Sheffield wrote to W. Eden on May 10, 1787 : " Lord North has no 
 hopes ; he says he has no expectations but of darkness. He held up his hand, 
 and said he could not see it. He was, however, pleasant, and with his usual 
 ability took up the questions of the day " (Auckland Corres. , i., 418).] 
 
 3[" Were I ambitious of any other Patron than the Public I would inscribe 
 this work to a Statesman who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfor- 
 tunate administration, had many political opponents, almost without a personal 
 enemy : who has retained in his fall from power many faithful and disinterested 
 friends, and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigour 
 of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper " ( The Decline, Preface 
 to vol. iv. of quarto ed. Ed. Bury, Preface, p. 12. See ante, pp. 192, 214). 
 
 On May 20, 1783, Gibbon had written of him : " Avec beaucoup d' esprit, 
 et des qualit^s tres respectables, notre homme a la d-marche lente et le cceur 
 froid " {Corres., ii. , 37). On Dec. 20 he wrote : " Lord North suffered me to 
 depart without even a civil answer to my letter. Were I capable of hating a 
 man whom it is not easy to hate, I should find myself most amply revenged 
 by the insignificance of the creature in this mighty revolution of India," his 
 own peculiar department (ib. , p. 87).] 
 
 *[See Appendix 55.] 
 
1788] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 229 
 
 As the publication of my three last volumes was the principal 
 object, so it was the first care of my English journey. The 
 previous arrangements with the bookseller and the printer 
 were settled in my passage through London,^ and the proofs, 
 which I returned more correct, were transmitted every post 
 from the press to Sheffield Place. The length of the opera- 
 tion, and the leisure of the country, allowed some time to 
 review my manuscript. Several rare and useful books, the 
 Assises de Jerusalem, ^ Ramusius de Bello C. Pano,^ the Greek 
 Acts of the Synod of Florence,* the Statuta Urbis Romae,^ 
 etc. were procured, and I introduced in their proper places the 
 supplements which they afforded. The impression of the 
 fourth volume had consumed three months. Our common 
 interest required that we should move with a quicker pace ; 
 and Mr. Strahan fulfilled his engagement, which few printers 
 could sustain, of delivering every week three thousand copies 
 of nine sheets. The day of publication was, however, delayed 
 that it might coincide with the fifty-first anniversary of my 
 own birthday ; the double festival was celebrated by a cheer- 
 ful literary dinner at Mr. Cadell's house ^ ; and I seemed to 
 
 1 [Lord Sheffield wrote on August 22, 1787 : " The three quartos will appear 
 in the spring. The Gibbon wrote a note to Cadell, saying he hoped he would 
 think the three younger of equal merit with the elder brothers, and equally valu- 
 able, and thus the bargain was immediately concluded " {Auckland Corres., i. , 
 435)-] 
 
 2 [' ' No sooner had Godfrey of Bouillon accepted the office of supreme 
 magistrate than he solicited the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims, 
 who were the best skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe. From these 
 materials, with the counsel and approbation of the patriarch and barons, of the 
 clergy and laity, Godfrey composed the Assise of Jerusalem, a precious 
 monument of feudal jurisprudence " {The Declbie, vi. , 317).] 
 
 •'[In Lord Sheffield's editions and in the Auto, this is misprinted " de Bello 
 C. Paro ". The book is De bello Constantinopolitano et Imperatoribus Comnenis 
 -per Gallos et Venetos restitutis histoj-ia P. Ra7n?iusii. Editio altera. Venetiis, 
 1634, fol. Brit. Mus. Cat. sub Rannusio, Paolo. See T/ie Decline, vi. , 412, n.\ 
 
 * [Gibbon, after describing the opening of the Council of the Greeks and 
 Latins at Ferrara in 1438, continues: "It was only by the alternative of 
 hunger or dispute that the Greeks could be persuaded to open the first con- 
 ference ; and they yielded with extreme reluctance to attend from Ferrara to 
 Florence the rear of a flying synod " ( The Decline, vii. , 108).] 
 
 ^\Ib., vii., 293.] 
 
 8 [Gibbon was born on April 27, O. S. ; but the birthday was kept accord- 
 ing to the new style, on May 8, 1788. He wrote to Dr. Robertson on March 
 26 : " The important day is now fixed to the eighth of May, and it was chosen 
 
230 EDWAED GIBBON [i788 
 
 blush Avhile they read an elegant compliment from Mr. Hayley, 
 whose poetical talents had more than once been employed in 
 the praise of his friend. Before Mr. Hayley inscribed with 
 my name his epistles on history,^ I was not acquainted with 
 that amiable man and elegant poet. He afterwards thanked 
 me in verse for my second and third volumes ; and in the 
 summer of 1781, the Roman Eagle (a proud title) accepted 
 the invitation of the English Sparrow, who chirped in the 
 groves of Eartham, near Chichester. ^ As most of the former 
 purchasers Avere naturally desirous of completing their sets, 
 the sale of the quarto edition was quick and easy ; and an 
 octavo size ^ was printed, to satisfy at a cheaper rate the public 
 demand. The conclusion of my work was generally read, and 
 variously judged. The style has been exposed to much 
 academical criticism ; a religious clamour was revived, and the 
 reproach of indecency has been loudly echoed by the rigid 
 censors of morals. I never could understand the clamour 
 that has been raised against the indecency of my three last 
 volumes,^ 1. An equal degree of freedom in the former part, 
 especially in the first volume, had passed without reproach. 
 
 by Cadell, as it coincides with the end of the fifty-first year of the author's age. 
 That honest and liberal bookseller has invited me to celebrate the double festival 
 by a dinner at his house" (Stewart's Boberfsoii, p. 366).] 
 
 i[See Appendix 56.] 
 
 2 [Horace Walpole wrote on August 16, 1781 [Letters, viii. , 70) : "I have 
 received from Brighthelmstone a long card in verse, from Mr. Hayley to Mr. 
 Gibbon, inviting Livy to dine with Virgil". 
 
 Cowper, who visited Hayley in August, 1792, thus describes Eartham : " Here 
 we are in the most elegant mansion that I have ever inhabited, and surrounded 
 by the most delightful pleasure grounds that I have ever seen" (Southey's 
 Coauper, vii. , 139). 
 
 "All who knew Haj^ey," writes Southey, " concur in describing his manners 
 as in the highest degree winning, and his conversation as delightful " (//'., iii. , 
 66).] 
 
 2 [In twelve vols. , 1791. One in fourteen vols. Svo had been ptiblished at 
 Basil in 1789 [Brit. Miis. Cat.).'\ 
 
 ■*[In The Gentleman's Magazine, 1788, p. 475, is a "Selection from Mr. 
 Gibbon's learned and entertaining Notes " to the last three volumes. In the next 
 number (p. 599) a correspondent reproaches the editor for ' ' sullying his pages 
 by those filthy extracts from a silly book called T/ie History of the Declension 
 {sic^ and Fall of the Roman Eynpire" . Some months later (p. 1157) another 
 correspondent complains of ' ' your pure pages being for the first time defiled 
 with the filthy rakings of a celebrated historian". This was not the first defile- 
 ment of the magazine. Its early numbers contained verses as grossly indecent 
 as they were dull. ] 
 
1788] MEMOIKS OF MY LIFE 231 
 
 2, I am justified in painting the manners of the times ; the 
 vices of Theodora ^ form an essential feature in the reign and 
 character of Justinian ; and the most naked tale in my history 
 is told by the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton, an instructor of youth ^ 
 [Essay on the Genius atid Writings of Pope, pp. 322-324). 3. 
 My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left 
 in the obscui'ity of a learned language.^ Le Latin dans ses 
 mots brave I'honnitete, says the correct Boileau,* in a country 
 and idiom more scrupulous than our own. Yet, upon the 
 whole, the History of the Decline and Fall seems to have 
 struck root, both at home and abroad, and may, perhaps, a 
 hundred years hence still continue to be abused.^ I am less 
 flattered by Mr. Person's high encomium on the style and 
 spirit of my history, than I am satisfied with his honourable 
 testimony to my attention, diligence, and accuracy ; those 
 humble virtues, which religious zeal had most audaciously 
 denied. The sweetness of his praise is tempered by a reason- 
 able mixture of acid.^ As the book may not be common 
 in England, I shall transcribe my own character from the 
 Bibliotheca Historica of Meuselius, a learned and laborious 
 German. " Summis sevi nostri historicis Gibbonus sine dubio 
 adnumerandus est. Inter Capitolii ruinas stans primum hujus 
 operis scribendi consilium cepit. Florentissimos vitse annos 
 
 i[77?(? Decline, iv. , 212.] 
 2 [Headmaster of Winchester College. 
 
 "Should the licentiousness of the tale be questioned, I may exclaim with 
 poor Sterne, that it is hard if I may not transcribe with caution what a Bishop 
 could write without scruple!" {Tke Decline, vi. , 173.)] 
 
 3 [Gibbon, writing of Theodora, says: "Her murmurs, her pleasures, and 
 her arts must be veiled in the obscurity of a learned language" (Tke Decline, 
 iv. , 213). He is parodied in the Aiiii-Jacobin, No. xxiii. : " For the osculation, 
 or kissing of circles and other curves see Huygens, who has veiled this delicate 
 and inflammatory subject in the decent obscurity of a learned language". 
 
 " Comme Bayle, il [Gibbon] se ddecte (mais toujours en note) a la citation 
 de quelques passages d'une obsc^nitg Erudite et froide, et il les commente avec 
 una 6Mgance recherch^e (voir ce qu'il dit sur Theodora) " (Sainte-Beuve, 
 Causeries, viii., 459).] 
 
 * [" Le Latin dans les mots brave rhonngtet6 : 
 Mais le lecteur Fran9ais veut Stre respect^ : 
 Du moindre sens impur la liberty I'outrage, 
 Si la pudeur des mots n'en adoucit I'image." 
 
 [L'Art Po^iigue, ii. , 175.)] 
 5 [See Appendix 57.] ^[See Appendix 58.] 
 
232 EDWARD GIBBON [i788 
 
 colligendo et laborando eidem impendit. Enatum inde 
 monumentum aere perennius, licet passim appareant sinistre 
 dicta, minus perfecta, veritati non satis consentanea. Videmus 
 quidem ubique fere studium scrutandi veritatemque scribendi 
 maximum : tamen sine Tillemontio ^ duce ubi scilicet hujus 
 historia finitur saepius noster titubat atque hallucinatur. Quod 
 vel maxime fit ubi de rebus Ecclesiasticis vel de juris prudentia 
 Romana (torn, iv.) tradit, et in aliis locis. Attamen naevi hujus 
 generis baud impediunt quo minus operis summam et otKovo/xiav 
 praeclare dispositam, delectum rerum sapientissimum, argutum 
 quoque interdum, dictionemque seu stylum historico aeque ac 
 philosopho dignissimum, et vix a quoque alio Anglo, Humio 
 ac Robertsono haud exceptis praerepto (prcereptum ?) vehe- 
 menter laudemus, atque saeculo nostro de hujusmodi historia 
 gratulemur . . . Gibbonus adversarios cum in turn extra 
 patriam nactus est, quia propagationem religionis Christianae, 
 non, ut vulgo, fieri solet, aut mote Theologorum, sed ut 
 Historicum et Philosophum decet, exposuerat." 
 
 The French, Italian, and German translations have been 
 executed with various success ; but, instead of patronising, 
 I should willingly suppress such imperfect copies, which injure 
 the character, while they propagate the name of the author. 
 The first volume had been feebly, though faithfully, translated 
 into French by M. Le Clerc de Septchenes, a young gentle- 
 man of a studious character and liberal fortune.'^ After his 
 decease the work was continued by two manufacturers of 
 Paris, MM. Desmuniers ^ and Cantwell * : but the former is 
 
 1 [Gibbon records in T/ie Decline, v., 132, under date of A.D. 514: " Here I 
 must take leave for ever of that incomparable guide [Tillemont] — whose bigotry- 
 is overbalanced by the merits of erudition, diligence, veracity, and scrupulous 
 minuteness. He was prevented by death from completing, as he designed, 
 the sixth century of the Church and Empire " (see ante, pp. 182, 183, n.).'\ 
 
 2 [See Appendix 59.] 
 
 •* [Count Jean Nicolas D^meunier. In the summer of 1792 he escaped to 
 America, returning to France in 1796 {Dictionnaire des Parleme7itaires Frangais, 
 1890, p. 332)-] 
 
 * [Andr6 S. M. Cantwel. " Traduttore traditore, disent les Italiens. M. 
 Qu6rard, appliquant cet adage k Cantwel, accuse ce traducteur aussi laborieux 
 qu' inexact des trahisons suivantes de I'anglais [Here follows a list of transla- 
 tions]. Cantwel a travaill6 en collaboration avec Marini6 k la traduction " 
 \Nouv. Biog. Gdn., 1854).] 
 
1788] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 233 
 
 now an active member in the national assembly, and the 
 undertaking languishes in the hands of his associate. The 
 superior merit of the interpreter, or his language, inclines me 
 to prefer the Italian version : but I wish that it were in my power 
 to I'ead the German, which is praised by the best judges. 
 The Irish pirates are at once my friends and my enemies.^ 
 But I cannot be displeased with the too numerous and correct 
 impressions which have been published for the use of the 
 continent at Basil in Switzerland,^ The conquests of our 
 language and literature are not confined to Europe alone, and 
 a writer who succeeds in London is speedily read on the banks 
 of the Delaware and the Ganges,^ 
 
 In the preface of the fourth volume, while I gloried in the 
 name of an Englishman, I announced my approaching return 
 to the neighbourhood of the Lake of Lausanne.^ This last 
 trial confirmed my assurance that I had wisely chosen for my 
 own happiness ; nor did I once, in a year's visit, entertain a 
 wish of settling in my native country. Britain is the free and 
 fortunate island ; but where is the spot in which I could 
 unite the comforts and beauties of my establishment at Lau- 
 sanne ? The tumult of London astonished my eyes and ears ; 
 the amusements of public places were no longer adequate 
 to the trouble ; the clubs and assemblies were filled with new 
 faces and young men ; and our best society, our long and 
 
 1 [An^e, p. 195.] 
 
 2 Of their fourteen octavo volumes, the two last include the whole body of 
 the notes. The public importunity had forced me to remove them from the 
 end of the volume to the bottom of the page ; but I have often repented of my 
 compliance. — Gibbon. 
 
 [Hume, on receiving the present of vol. i., wrote to Strahan : "One is 
 plagued with his notes, according to the present method of printing the book. 
 When a note is announced, you turn to the end of the volume ; and there you 
 often find nothing but the reference to an authority. All these authorities ought 
 only to be printed at the margin or the bottom of the page " {^Letters to Strahan, 
 P- 314)-] 
 
 3[" Boswell's writings," wrote Macaulay, " are read beyond the Mississippi, 
 and under the Southern Cross " {Misc. Writings, ed. 1871, p. 387). The 
 western boundary of literature, which in less than seventy years was thus ex- 
 tended from the Delaware to beyond the Mississippi, would now have to be 
 carried to the shores of the Pacific, while the eastern boundary has already 
 reached Japan.] 
 
 4 [See Appendix 60.] 
 
234 EDWARD GIBBON [i788 
 
 late dinners, would soon have been prejudicial to my health. ^ 
 Without any share in the political wheel, I must be idle and 
 insignificant : yet the most splendid temptations would not 
 have enticed me to engage a second time in the servitude of 
 Parliament or office. At Tunbridge, some weeks after the 
 publication of my History, I reluctantly quitted Lord and 
 Lady Sheffield,^ and, with a young Swiss friend,^ whom I had 
 introduced to the English world, I pursued the road of Dover 
 and Lausanne. My habitation was embellished in my absence, 
 and the last division of books, which followed my steps, in- 
 creased my chosen library to the number of between six and 
 seven thousand volumes.* My seraglio was ample, my choice 
 was free, my appetite was keen. After a full repast on Homer 
 and Aristophanes, I involved myself in the philosophic maze 
 of the writings of Plato, of which the dramatic is, perhaps, 
 more interesting than the argumentative part : but I stepped 
 aside into every path of inquiry which reading or reflection 
 accidentally opened. '^ 
 
 1 [In 1783 he wrote : " La temperance d'un repas Anglais vous permet de 
 gofiter de cinq ou six vins difKrens, at vous ordonne de boire une bouteille de 
 claret aprfe le dessert " [Corres., ii. , 46).] 
 
 2 [Lord Sheffield wrote on July 29, 1788 : " Alas ! we are just returned from 
 attending The Gibbon towards Dover. After passing a year with us at Sheffield 
 Place and Downing Street, he is gone to what he calls home. He has taken 
 with him all his books, and talks of visiting England occasionally. . . . My 
 lady and I accompanied him to Tunbridge Wells, where we passed three days 
 with Lord North" [Atickland Co)-res., ii. , 220). Gibbon is often spoken of as 
 " The Gibbon " or " Le Gibbon ".] 
 
 •^ M. Wilhelm de S^very. —Sheffield. [He came to England in Nov. 1787, 
 and was placed by Gibbon at school to learn English. The youth felt parting 
 with his protector; " mais au plus fort de son abattement, lorsque, pour 
 dernifere consolation, je lui ai propose de retourner a Lausanne, il ra'a r^pondu 
 du ton le plus fier, Plut'it mourir". Gibbon, in writing to his father, spoke of 
 him as " notre fils," " notre enfant ". He left him by his will ^^3,000, and his 
 furniture, plate, etc., at Lausanne [Misc. Wo)-ks, i. , 427 ; ii. , 409, 415, 423, and 
 post, p. 268).] 
 
 * [See Appendix 61.] 
 
 5 [Writing on Oct. 12, 1790, of his endeavour "to find out some occupation 
 more invigorating than mere reading can afford," he continued : " But the 
 remembrance of a servitude of twenty years frightened me from again engaging 
 in a long undertaking which I might probably never finish. It would be better, 
 I thought, to select from the historical monuments of all ages and all nations 
 such subjects as might be treated separately. When these little works, which 
 might be entitled Historical Excursions, amounted to a volume, I would offer 
 
1789] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 235 
 
 Alas ! the joy of my return, and my studious ardour, were 
 soon damped by the melancholy state of my friend Mr. Dey- 
 verdun.i His health and spirits had long suffered a gradual 
 decline, a succession of apoplectic fits announced his dissolu- 
 tion ; and before he expired, those who loved him could not 
 wish for the continuance of his life. The voice of reason 
 might congratulate his deliverance, but the feelings of nature 
 and friendship could be subdued only by time : his amiable 
 chaz'acter was still alive in my remembrance ; each room, 
 each walk, was imprinted with our common footsteps ; and I 
 should blush at my own philosophy, if a long interval of study 
 had not preceded and followed the death of my friend. By 
 his last will he left to me the option of purchasiiag his house 
 and garden, or of possessing them during my life, on the 
 payment either of a stipulated price, or of an easy retribution 
 to his kinsman and heir. I should probably have been 
 tempted by the demon of property, if some legal difficulties 
 had not been started against my title ^ ; a contest would have 
 been vexatious, doubtful, and invidious ; and the heir most 
 gratefully subscribed an agreement, which rendered my life- 
 possession more perfect, and his future condition more advan- 
 
 it to the public ; and the present might be repeated, until either the public or 
 myself were tired " (Afisc. Works, iii. , 354). 
 
 On Jan. 6, 1793, he wrote that he had long thought of writing " the Lives, 
 or rather the Characters, of the most eminent Persons in Arts and Arms, in 
 Church and State, who have flourished in Britain from the reign of Henry VIII. 
 to the present age" {ib., i., 391). 
 
 Four days after his death John Pinkerton wrote to John Nichols : "In July 
 last Mr. Gibbon was pleased to call me in as his coadjutor in a design he 
 meditated of publishing all the early English historians in ten or twelve volumes 
 folio " (Nichols's Lit. Hist., v., 676).] 
 
 i[He died on July 4, 1789. " I fancied," wrote Gibbon, ''that time and 
 reflection had prepared me for the event ; but the habits of three and thirty 
 years' friendship are not so easily broken. The first days, and more especially 
 the first nights, were indeed painful" [Corres., ii., 194). By his will of 1788 
 Gibbon had bequeathed to him the life-interest of ;^4,ooo [Auto., p. 421).] 
 
 2 [" There is a law in this country, as well as in some provinces of France, 
 which is styled le droit de retrait, le retrait lignager, by which the relations of 
 the deceased are entitled to redeem a house or estate at the price for which it 
 has been sold ; and as the sum fixed by poor Deyverdun is much below its 
 known value, a crowd of competitors are beginning to start. The best opinions 
 (for they are divided) are in my favour, that I am not subject to le droit de 
 retrait., since I take, not as a purchaser, but as a legatee " (Carres., ii., 202).] 
 
236 EDWARD GIBBON [1789-93 
 
 tageous.^ Yet I had often revolved the judicious lines in 
 which Pope answers the objections of his long-sighted friend : 
 
 Pity to build without or child [a son] or wife ; 
 Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life : 
 Well, if the use be mine, does [can] it concern one, 
 Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon ? ^ 
 
 The certainty of my tenure has allowed me to lay out a con- 
 siderable sum in improvements and alterations : they have 
 been executed with skill and taste ; and few men of letters, 
 perhaps, in Europe, are so desirably lodged as myself. But I 
 feel, and with the decline of years I shall more painfully feel, 
 that I am alone in Paradise.^ Among the circle of my 
 acquaintance at Lausanne, I have gradually acquired the solid 
 and tender friendship of a respectable family * : the four 
 persons of whom it is composed are all endowed with the 
 virtues best adapted to their age and situation ; and I am en- 
 couraged to love the parents as a brother, and the children as 
 a father. Every day we seek and find the opportunities of 
 meeting : yet even this valuable connection cannot supply the 
 loss of domestic society. 
 
 ^ [Corres., ii., 202.] 
 
 2 [Pope, /mii. Hor. Sat., ii. , 2, 163. "How often," Gibbon wrote, "did 
 I repeat to myself the philosophical lines of Pope, which seem to determine the 
 question !" (Corres., ii. , 195.)] 
 
 *[" July 25, 1789. The prospect before me is a melancholy solitude. . . . 
 I have conceived a romantic idea of educating and adopting Charlotte Porten 
 [his cousin] ; as we descend into the vale of years our infirmities require some 
 domestic female society. Charlotte would be the comfort of my age, and I 
 could reward her care and tenderness with a decent fortune ' ' (id. , ii. , 200). 
 Her mother would not part with her [id., p. 221). 
 
 " May 15, 1790. Since the loss of poor Deyverdun I am alone ; and even 
 in Paradise solitude is painful to a social mind. . . . Some expedient, even the 
 most desperate, must be embraced, to secure the domestic society of a male or 
 female companion" {ib., p. 215). 
 
 "Aug. 7, 1790. Sometimes, in a solitary mood, I have fancied myself 
 married to one or another of those whose society and conversation are the most 
 pleasing to me ; but when I have painted in my fancy all the probable conse- 
 quences of such an union, I have started from my dream, rejoiced in my escape, 
 and ejaculated a thanksgiving that I was still in possession of my natural 
 freedom" {ib., p. 220).] 
 
 * The family of de S6very.— Sheffield. [On Nov. 10, 1792, when the father 
 of the family was dying. Gibbon wrote that his death ' ' would break for ever 
 the most perfect system of domestic happiness, in which I had so large and 
 intimate a share" {Corres., ii., 336). 'S>&e.post, p. 269.] 
 
1789-93] MEMOIKS OF MY LIFE 237 
 
 Within the last two or three years our tranquillity has been 
 clouded by the disorders of France : many families of Lausanne 
 were alarmed and affected by the terrors of an impending 
 bankruptcy ; but the revolution, or rather the dissolution 
 of the kingdom, has been heard and felt in the adjacent 
 lands. 1 
 
 I beg leave to subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on 
 the revolution of France.^ I admire his eloquence, I approve 
 his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost excuse his 
 reverence for church establishments.^ I have sometimes 
 thought of writing a dialogue of the dead, in which Lucian, 
 Erasmus, and Voltaire should mutually acknowledge the 
 danger of exposing an old superstition to the contempt of the 
 blind and fanatic multitude.* 
 
 A swarm of emigrants of both sexes, who escaped from the 
 public ruin, has been attracted by the vicinity, the manners, 
 and the language of Lausanne ; and our narrow habitations in 
 town and country are now occupied by the first names and 
 titles of the departed monarchy. These noble fugitives are 
 entitled to our pity ; they may claim our esteem, but they 
 cannot, in their present state of mind and fortune, much con- 
 
 1 [See Appendix 62.] 
 
 2 [We are reminded of Burke's brother-candidate at Bristol in 1774, who, at 
 the end of one of the orator's speeches, exclaimed earnestly : " I say ditto to 
 Mr. Burke — I say ditto to Mr. Burke " (Prior's Biirke, ed. 1872, p. 152).] 
 
 *[See Appendix 63.] 
 
 * [' ' The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were 
 all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, 
 and by the magistrate as equally useful. . . . We may be well assured that a 
 writer conversant with the world [like Lucian] would never have ventured to 
 expose the gods of his country to public ridicule, had they not already been the 
 objects of secret contempt among the polished and enlightened orders of 
 society" {The Decline, i. , 28, 30). 
 
 ' ' The great and incomprehensible secret of the universe eludes the enquiry 
 of man. Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be permitted to guide ; 
 and every nation seems to consult the dictates of prudence by a faithful attach- 
 ment to those rites and opinions which have received the sanction of ages " (ib., 
 iii., 192). 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, after quoting the passage in the text, continues : " Tous ces 
 retours de Gibbon sont sans doute exclusivement dans un int^ret politique et 
 social, et ses paroles trouvent encore moyen de s'y imprdgner d'un secret m^pris 
 pour ce qu'il ne sent pas. Ne lui demandez pas plus de chaleur ni de sym- 
 pathie pour cet ordre de sentiments ou de v6rit^s ; il a du lettr6 chinois dans sa 
 maniere d'appr^cier les religions " {Catiseries, viii., 433).] 
 
238 EDWAED GIBBON [1789-93 
 
 tribute to our amusement.^ Instead of looking down as calm 
 and idle spectators on the theatre of Europe, our domestic 
 harmony is somewhat embittered by the infusion of party 
 spirit : our ladies and gentlemen assume the character of self- 
 taught politicians ; and the sober dictates of wisdom and ex- 
 perience are silenced by the clamour of the triumphant 
 democratesP' The fanatic missionaries of sedition have scattered 
 the seeds of discontent in our cities and villages, which had 
 flourished above two hundred and fifty years without fearing 
 the approach of war, or feeling the weight of government. 
 Many individuals, and some communities, appear to be in- 
 fested with the Gallic phrenzy, the wild theories of equal and 
 boundless freedom ^ ; but I trust that the body of the people 
 will be faithful to their sovereign and to themselves ; and I 
 am satisfied that the failure or success of a revolt would equally 
 terminate in the ruin of the country. While the aristocracy 
 of Berne protects the happiness, it is superfluous to enquire 
 whether it be founded in the rights of man * ; the economy of 
 
 1 [Miss Holroyd wrote at Lausanne in 1791 : "There is a very pleasant set 
 of French here ; but we live entirely with the Severys and Mr. G.'s set, which 
 is certainly not equally pleasant. The French and Swiss do not take to one 
 another at all. . . . Mr. Gibbon . dislikes the French very much, which is 
 nothing but Swiss prejudice, of which he has imbibed a large quantity " {Girl- 
 hood, etc., pp. 63, 73).] 
 
 2 [' ' Dec. 28, 1791. Praised be the Lord ! we are infested with few foreigners, 
 either French or English. Even our Democrates are more reasonable or more 
 discreet ; it is agreed to waive the subject of politics, and we all seem happy 
 and cordial" [Carres., ii. , 279). 
 
 Romilly describes in 178 1 how the factions had " hurt the society of Geneva. 
 Politics had engrossed what before was given to literature " (Life of Romilly, ed. 
 1840, i., 56).] 
 
 ^ [" In a civilised state every faculty of man is expanded and exercised ; and 
 the great chain of mutual dependence connects and embraces the several 
 members of society. The most numerous portion of it is employed in constant 
 and useful labour. The select few, placed by fortune above that necessity, can, 
 however, fill up their time by the pursuits of interest or glory, by the improve- 
 ment of their estate or of their understanding, by the duties, the pleasures, and 
 even the follies of social life " [The Decline, i. , 221). " The distinctions of ranks 
 and persons is the firmest basis of a mixed and limited government " [ib. , iv. , 470). 
 
 " If you begin to improve the constitution, you may be driven step by step 
 from the disfranchisement of Old Sarum to the King in Newgate, the Lords 
 voted useless, the Bishops abolished, and a House of Commons without articles 
 (sans culottes) " (Cor res., ii. , 347). See also ib., p. 356.] 
 
 *[In 1785 he wrote : " There is nothing pleases me so much in this country 
 as to enjoy all the blessings of a good government without ever talking or think- 
 ing of our governors" (Corres., ii., 131). This doctrine Gibbon enforces in the 
 
1789-93] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 239 
 
 the state is liberally supplied without the aid of taxes ; and 
 the magistrates must reign with prudence and equity, since 
 they are unarmed in the midst of an armed nation. ^ 
 
 The revenue of Berne, excepting some small duties, is de- 
 rived from church lands, tithes, feudal rights, and interest of 
 money. The republic has nearly .500,0001. sterling in the 
 English funds, and the amount of their treasure is unknown 
 to the citizens themselves. For myself (may the omen be 
 averted) I can only declare, that the first stroke of a rebel 
 drum would be the signal of my immediate departure. ^ 
 
 When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I must 
 acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of 
 life. The far greater part of the globe is overspread with 
 barbarism or slavery : in the civilized world, the most numerous 
 class is condemned to ignorance and poverty ^ ; and the double 
 fortune of my birth in a free and enlightened country, in an 
 honourable * and wealthy family, is the lucky chance of an 
 unit against millions.^ The general probability is about three 
 to one, that a new-born infant will not live to complete his 
 fiftieth year.*^ I have now passed that age, and may fairly 
 
 Decline (i. , 78). " If a man," he writes, " were called to fix the period in the 
 history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most 
 happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed 
 from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of 
 the Roman empire was governed by absolute power under the guidance of 
 virtue and wisdom." Nevertheless the historian sees "in the public felicity the 
 latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform 
 government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals 
 of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, 
 the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated " 
 (^^.,p. 56)-] 
 
 1 [See Appendix 64.] 
 
 2 [His departure was caused by the death of Lady Sheffield, ' ' whom I had 
 known," he wrote, "and loved above three and twenty years, and whom I 
 often styled by the endearing name of sister " [Corres., ii. , 378). She died on 
 April 3, 1793 ; the news reached him on April 26. He started on May 9 ; but 
 having to avoid the seat of war, he did not reach England till about June i [ib. , 
 PP- 377 < 379< 3^4)- Fo'^ '^he dangers that he ran seeposi, p. 248.] 
 
 '^ [See Appendix 65.] 
 
 * [His grandfather had dishonoured himself as a South Sea Director (anie, 
 p. 19.] 
 
 ^[Anie, p. 26.] 
 
 6 See Buffon, SufpUment a t Histoire Nahirelle [ed. 1777], tom. vii. [iv.], pp. 
 158-164. Of a given number of new-born infants one half, by the fault of nature 
 or man, is extinguished before the age of puberty and reason. A melancholy 
 calculation ! — Gibbon. [See ante, p. 29.] 
 
240 EDWARD GIBBON [1789-93 
 
 estimate the present value of my existence in the three-fold 
 division of mind, body, and estate. 
 
 1. The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a 
 clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach or remembrance of 
 an unworthy action. 
 
 Hic murus aheneus esto 
 
 Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.^ 
 
 I am endowed with a cheerful temper,^ a moderate sensi- 
 bility, and a natural disposition to repose rather than to 
 activity ^ : some mischievous appetites and habits have per- 
 haps been corrected by philosophy or time. The love of study, 
 a passion which derives fresh vigour from enjoyment, supplies 
 each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent 
 and rational pleasure ^ ; and I am not sensible of any decay 
 of the mental faculties.^ The original soil has been highly 
 improved by cultivation ; but it may be questioned, whether 
 some flowers of fancy, some grateful errors, have not been 
 eradicated with the weeds of prejudice. 2. Since I have 
 
 1 [Horace, Bpis. , i. , i. , 59. 
 
 " Be this thy brazen bulwark of defence, 
 Still to preserve thy conscious innocence, 
 Nor e'er turn pale with guilt." 
 
 (Francis.) 
 For Sir Robert Walpole's misquotation of these lines in the House ("nulli 
 pallescere culpse," he said), and the guinea which he lost to Pulteney by wager- 
 ing that he was right, see Coxe's Walpole, ed. 1798, i., 644.] 
 
 2 [He boasted of his ' ' propensity to view and to enjoy every object in the 
 most favourable light " {Corres. , ii., 88). Perhaps he derived this from his aunt, 
 Miss Porten, who had, he wrote, ' ' a most invaluable happiness of temper, 
 which showed her the agreeable or comfortable side of every object and every 
 situation " {Misc. Works, ii. , 392). 
 
 " His physician. Dr. SchoU," writes General Read, " who died in 1835, al- 
 ways spoke of his ' tranquille, bon et doux ' character. His daughter told me 
 that she had never heard any unkind word or action attributed to Gibbon" 
 (Hist. Studies, ii., 506).] 
 
 3 [Speaking of the love of pleasure and the love of action, he says : " The 
 character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised 
 would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature " ( The Decline, 
 
 ii-, 35)-] 
 
 4 [This pleasure was interrupted by the French Revolution. On Nov. 25, 
 1792, he wrote : " The times will not allow me to read or think " [Corres., ii., 
 
 347)-] 
 
 5 [In the preface to the second half of The Decline (i.. Preface, p. 13) he says : 
 " In the ardent pursuit of truth and knowledge I am not conscious of decay. 
 To an active mind indolence is more painful than labour."] 
 
1789-93] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 241 
 
 escaped from the long perils of my childhood, the serious ad- 
 vice of a physician has seldom been requisite. ^ " The madness 
 of superfluous health " 2 j have never known ; but my tender 
 constitution has been fortified by time, and the inestimable 
 gift of the sound and peaceful slumbers of infancy may be 
 imputed both to the mind and body.^ 3. I have already 
 described the merits of my society and situation ; but these 
 enjoyments would be tasteless or bitter if their possession 
 were not assured by an annual and adequate supply. Accord- 
 ing to the scale of Switzerland, I am a rich man ; and I am 
 indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expense, and 
 my expense is equal to my wishes.* My friend Lord Sheffield 
 has kindly relieved me from the cares to which my taste and 
 temper are most adverse ^ : shall I add, that since the failure 
 of my first wishes, I have never entertained any serious 
 thoughts of a matrimonial connection ? ^ 
 
 I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters, who 
 complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow ; 
 and that their fame (which sometimes is no insupportable 
 weight) affords a poor compensation for envy, censure, and 
 persecution.''^ My own experience, at least, has taught me a 
 
 ^[Posf, p. 258.] 
 
 2 [Pope, Essay on Man, iii. , 3. See ante, p. 42.] 
 
 3 [In July 1785 he wrote : " Good spirits, good appetite, good sleep are my 
 habitual state, and though verging towards fifty I still feel myself a young man " 
 [Corres., ii. , 129). In 1790 his health began to fail. " From Feb. 9 to July i 
 I was not able," he wrote, " to move from my house or chair." In the follow- 
 ing winter he was again confined for several weeks [ii., pp. 221, 233). " The 
 seeds of the gout," he said, ' ' were sown in his constitution by the hard drinking " 
 of his militia days (Auto., p. 189).] 
 
 *[When his estate at Beriton was selling he wrote : " I shall at last attain, 
 what I have always sighed for, a clear and competent income, above my wants 
 and equal to my wishes" [Corres., ii. , 192).] 
 
 5 [The management and sale of his estate. ] 
 
 6 [See Appendix 66.] 
 
 ■^ M. d'Alembert relates, that as he was walking in the gardens of Sans Souci 
 with the King of Prussia, Frederic said to him, " Do you see that old woman, 
 a poor weeder, asleep on that sunny bank? she is probably a more happy being 
 than either of us". The king and the philosopher may speak for themselves ; 
 for my part I do not envy the old woman. — Gibbon. 
 
 [" J'ai toujours m^pris^ la triste philosophic qui veut nous rendre insensibles 
 k la gloire" {Cor7-es., i., 292). 
 
 " I have never affected, indeed I have never understood, the stoical apathy, 
 
 16 
 
242 EDWARD GIBBON [1789-93 
 
 very different lesson : twenty happy years have been animated 
 by the labour of my History ^ ; and its success has given me 
 a name, a rank, a character, in the world, to which I should 
 not otherwise have been entitled. The freedom of my 
 writings has indeed provoked an implacable tribe ; but, as I 
 was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to the 
 buzzing of the hornets : my nerves are not tremblingly alive, 
 and my literary temper is so happily framed, that I am less 
 sensible of pain than of pleasure.^ The rational pride of an 
 author may be offended, rather than flattered, by vague 
 indiscriminate praise ^ ; but he cannot, he should not, be 
 indifferent to the fair testimonies of private and public 
 esteem.* Even his moral sympathy may be gratified by the 
 
 the proud contempt of criticism which some authors have publicly professed. 
 Fame is the motive, it is the rew^ard of our labours ; nor can I easily comprehend 
 how it is possible that we should remain cold and indifferent with regard to the 
 attempts which are made to deprive us of the most valuable object of our 
 possessions, or at least of our hopes" (Misc. Works, iv. , 517). 
 
 He did not always write in this strain. In the Decline, vi. , 341, he describes 
 how Saladin ' ' renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver follies of 
 fame and dominion ". 
 
 " Men," said Johnson, " have a solicitude about fame, and the greater share 
 they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it " (Boswell's Johnson, i. , 451). 
 
 Burke described fame as ." a passion which is the instinct of all great souls " 
 {Payne's Burke, i. , 148). 
 
 Compare the "laudumque immensa cupido" of Virgil (.^i^^^'c^, vi. , 823), 
 and " That last infirmity of noble mind" of Milton [Lyci'das, 1. 71).] 
 
 i[In The Decline, vi., 26, after quoting the Caliph's saying that in a reign 
 of fifty years he had enjoyed but fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness. 
 Gibbon adds in a note : " If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I 
 can speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed 
 the scanty numbers of the Caliph of Spain ; and I shall not scruple to add that 
 many of them are due to the pleasing labour of the present composition ".] 
 
 2[" Every one of Racine's tragedies," writes Dr. Warton, " was attacked by 
 malignant critics. He used to say that these paltry critics gave him more pain 
 than all his applauders had given him pleasure" (Warton's Pope's Works, i., 
 229). This was perhaps true of Pope (Johnson's Works, viii. , 303, 315), and 
 was certainly true of Tennyson. See ante, p. 126, n. 2.] 
 
 3 [' ' The Marquis of Tuscany loved praise and hated flattery ; a nice touch- 
 stone which discriminates vanity from the love of fame " [Alisc. Works, iii. , 406). 
 " Dearest madam," said Johnson to Hannah More, when she kept on flattering 
 him, " consider with yourself what your flattery is worth, before you bestow it 
 so freely" (Boswell's /o/inson, iv., 341).] 
 
 *["Our uncertainty concerning our own merit, and our anxiety to think 
 favourably of it, should together naturally enough make us desirous to know 
 the opinion of other people concerning it ; to be more than ordinarily elevated 
 when that opinion is favourable " (Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, 
 ed. 1801, i., 259).] 
 
1789-93] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 243 
 
 idea, that now, in the present hour, he is imparting some 
 degree of amusement or knowledge to his friends in a distant 
 land : that one day his mind will be familiar to the grand- 
 children of those who are yet unborn.^ I cannot boast of 
 the friendship or favour of princes ; the patronage of English 
 literature has long since been devolved on our booksellers,^ 
 and the measure of their liberality is the least ambiguous test 
 of our common success. Perhaps the golden mediocrity of 
 my fortune ^ has contributed to fortify my application. 
 
 The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more ; and 
 our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may 
 possibly be my last : but the laws of probability, so true in 
 general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen 
 years.* I shall soon enter into the period which, as the most 
 agreeable of my long life, was selected by the judgment and 
 experience of the sage Fontenelle. His choice is approved 
 by the eloquent historian of nature, who fixes our moral 
 happiness to the mature season in which our passions are 
 
 iJn the first of ancient or modern romances (Tom Jones), this proud 
 sentiment, this feast of fancy, is enjoyed by the genius of Fielding. — "Come, 
 bright love of fame, etc., fill my ravished fancy with the hopes of charming ages 
 yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, w^hose grandmother is yet 
 unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real 
 worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall from her sympathetic breast 
 send forth the heaving sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee but to 
 enjoy, nay even to feed on future praise. Comfort me by the [a] solemn 
 assurance, that, when the little parlour in which I sit at this moment [instant] 
 shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those 
 who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see" (Book 
 xiii. , ch. I.) — Gibbon. 
 
 ["A just estimate of greatness, and the assurance of immortal fame, improve 
 our relish for the pleastires of retirement " ( The Decline, i. , 388). See also ib. , ii., 
 19, where Gibbon tells how the sages of Greece and Rome " reflected on the 
 desire of fame, which transported them into future ages far beyond the bounds 
 of death and of the grave ". 
 
 For his earlier praise of Tom Jones, see ante, p. 4.] 
 
 2 ["A man (said Johnson) goes to a bookseller and gets what he can. We 
 have done with patronage" (Boswell's /o/z«jo;^, v., 59). "Andrew Millar [the 
 bookseller]," he said, " is the Maecenas of the age" {ib., i., 287, «.).] 
 
 3["Auream quisquis mediocritatem Diligit," etc. (Horace, Odes, ii., 10., 5. 
 See ante, p. 188. 
 
 Gibbon maintained that "few works of merit and importance had been 
 executed in a garret " (^4 z^^. , p. 292) . Among his contemporaries were Thomson , 
 Fielding, Johnson, Smollett, and Goldsmith, all poor men, and most of them 
 not unacquainted with a garret.] 
 
 *[See/orf, p. 265, and Appendix 67.] 
 
244 EDWARD GIBBON [1789-93 
 
 supposed to be calmed,^ our duties fulfilled, oui- ambition 
 satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basis. 
 In private conversation, that great and amiable man added 
 the weight of his own experience ; and this autumnal felicity 
 might be exemplified in the lives of Voltaire, Hume, and 
 many other men of lettei-s.^ I am far more inclined to embrace 
 than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose 
 any premature decay of the mind or body ; but I must re- 
 luctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, 
 and the failure of hope,^ will always tinge with a browner 
 shade the evening of life. 
 
 The proportion of a part to the whole is the only standard 
 by which we can measure the length of our existence. At 
 the age of twenty, one year is a tenth perhaps of the time 
 which has elapsed within our consciousness and memory : at 
 the age of fifty it is no more than the fortieth, and this 
 relative value continues to decrease till the last sands are 
 shaken by the hand of death. This reasoning may seem 
 metaphysical ; but on a trial it will be found satisfactory and 
 just. The warm desires, the long expectations of youth, are 
 founded on the ignorance of themselves and of the world : 
 they are gradually damped by time and experience, by dis- 
 appointment or possession ; and after the middle season the 
 crowd must be content to remain at the foot of the mountain ; 
 while the few who have climbed the summit aspire to descend 
 or expect to fall. In old age, the consolation of hope is 
 reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new 
 life in their children ; the faith of enthusiasts who sing 
 Hallelujahs above the clouds,"^ and the vanity of authors who 
 presume the immortality of their name and writings.^ 
 
 i[" And calm of mind, all passion spent" (Samson Agonistes, 1. 1758).] 
 
 2 [See Appendix 68.] 
 
 3 [Gibbon describes hope as "the best comfort of our imperfect condition" 
 ( The Decline, i. , 40). ] 
 
 ■* [For the "small nmiiber of the Elect" to whom "this celestial hope is 
 confined " see Auto., p. 349.] 
 
 5 [The whole of this last paragraph Lord Sheffield degraded from the text to 
 a note. 
 
 This conclusion is dated Lausanne, March 2, 1791 (Auto., p. 349). Much 
 however of the Autobiography was written in the years 1792-3 {ib.,- Table 
 of Contents).] 
 
1789-93] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 245 
 
 Lord Sheffield's Continuation of the Memoirs.^ 
 
 Mr. Gibbon's letters in general bear a strong resemblance 
 to the style and turn of his conversation ; the characteristics 
 of which were vivacity, elegance, and precision, with know- 
 ledge astonishingly extensive and correct.^. He never ceased 
 to be instructive and entertaining ; and in general there was 
 a vein of pleasantry in his conversation which prevented its 
 becoming languid, even during a residence of many months 
 with a family in the country. 
 
 It has been supposed that he always arranged what he 
 intended to say, before he spoke ; his quickness in conversa- 
 tion contradicts this notion ^ : but it is very true, that before 
 he sat down to write a note or letter, he completely arranged 
 
 1 [The passages which I am printing from this continuation are taken from 
 Gibbon's Miscellaneous Wo7-ks (i. , 277-8, 329-31, 404-28). The intervals are 
 filled up with correspondence, which can be now much better read in Mr. 
 Rowland E. Prothero's Letters of Edward Gibbon.l 
 
 2 [Miss Holroyd wrote six weeks after his death : " Papa has read us several 
 parts of Mr. Gibbon's Memoirs, written so exactly in the style of his conversa- 
 tion that, while we felt delighted at the beauty of the thoughts and elegance of 
 the language, we could not help feeling a severe pang at the idea we should 
 never hear his instructive and amusing conversation any more " [Girlhood, etc., 
 
 P- 273)- 
 
 " Mr. Gibbon's conversation, though in the highest degree informing, was 
 not externally brilliant. He was by no means fluent of speech ; his articulation 
 was not graceful ; his sentences were evidently laboured, as if he was fearful of 
 committing himself. It was rather pedantic and stiff than easy ; yet by some 
 unaccountable fascination it was always agreeable and impressive " {Ge??f. Mag., 
 1794, P- 178). 
 
 Malone, writing of his death, continued : " He had an immense fund of 
 anecdote and of erudition of various kinds, both ancient and modern ; and had 
 acquired such a facility and elegance of talk that I had always great pleasure in 
 listening to him. The manner and voice, though they were peculiar, and I 
 believe artificial at first, did not at all offend, for they had become so appro- 
 priated as to appear natural " (Hist. MSS. C. 13th Report, App. viii., p. 230). 
 At an earlier date Malone recorded : " Mr. Gibbon is very replete with anec- 
 dotes, and tells them with great happiness and fluency" (Prior's Malone, p. 
 382). Mme. D'Arblay describes his voice as " gentle, but of studied precision 
 of accent " {Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii., 224). On the other hand, according to 
 Garat, quoted by Sainte-Beuve : " Sa voix, qui n'avait que des accens aigus, ne 
 pouvait avoir d' autre moyen d'arriver au coeur que de percer les oreilles " 
 {Causeries, viii., 440).] 
 
 3 [Miss Holroyd wrote of him at Lausanne : "When he opens his mouth 
 (which you know he generally does some time before he has arranged his 
 sentence)," etc. (Girlhood, etc., p. 77).] 
 
246 EDWAED GIBBON [i79i-93 
 
 in his mind what he meant to express. He pursued the same 
 method in respect to other composition ; and he occasionally 
 would walk several times about his apartment before he had 
 rounded a period to his taste. ^ He has pleasantly remarked 
 to me, that it sometimes cost him many a turn before he 
 could throw a sentiment into a form that gratified his own 
 criticism. His systematic habit of arrangement in point of 
 style, assisted, in his instance, by an excellent memory and 
 correct judgment, is much to be recommended to those who 
 aspire to any perfection in writing. 
 
 It may, perhaps, not be quite uninteresting to the readers 
 of these Memoirs, to know that I found Mr. Gibbon at 
 Lausanne ^ in possession of an excellent house ; the view from 
 which, and from the terrace, was so uncommonly beautiful, 
 that even his own pen would with difficulty describe the scene 
 which it commanded. This prospect comprehended every- 
 thing vast and magnificent, which could be furnished by the 
 finest mountains among the Alps, the most extensive view 
 of the Lake of Geneva, with a beautifully varied and culti- 
 vated country, adorned by numerous villas, and picturesque 
 buildings, intermixed with beautiful masses of stately trees. 
 Here my friend received us with an hospitality and kindness 
 which I can never forget. The best apartments of the house 
 were appropriated to our use ; the choicest society of the place 
 was sought for, to enliven our visit, and render every day of it 
 cheerful and agreeable. It was impossible for any man to be 
 more esteemed and admired than Mr. Gibbon was at Lausanne. 
 The preference he had given to that place, in adopting it 
 for a residence, rather than his own country, was felt and 
 acknowledged by all the inhabitants ; and he may have been 
 said almost to have given the law to a set of as willing subjects 
 as any man ever presided over. In return for the deference 
 shown to him, he mixed, without any affectation, in all the 
 society, I mean all the best society, that Lausanne afforded ; 
 he could indeed command it, and was, perhaps, for that reason 
 
 '^[A/iU p. 20I.] -[In the summer of 1791.] 
 
1791-93] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 247 
 
 the more partial to it ; for he often declared that he liked 
 society more as a relaxation from study, than as expecting to 
 derive from it amusement or instruction ; that to books he 
 looked for improvement, not to living persons. But this I con- 
 sidered partly as an answer to my expressions of wonder, that 
 a man who might choose the most various and most generally 
 improved society in the world, namely, in England, should 
 prefer the very limited circle of Lausanne, which he never 
 deserted, but for an occasional visit to M. and Madame 
 Necker. It must not, however, be understood, that in 
 choosing Lausanne for his home, he was insensible to the 
 value of a residence in England : he was not in possession of 
 an income which corresponded with his notions of ease and 
 comfort in his own country. In Switzerland, his fortune was 
 ample. 1 To this consideration of fortune may be added 
 another which also had its weight ; from early youth Mr. 
 Gibbon had contracted a partiality for foreign taste and 
 foreign habits of life, which made him less a stranger abroad 
 than he was, in some respects, in his native country. This 
 arose, perhaps, from having been out of England from his 
 sixteenth to his twenty-first year ; yet, when I came to 
 Lausanne, I found him apparently without relish for French 
 society. During the stay I made with him he renewed his 
 intercourse with the principal French who were at Lausanne ; 
 of whom there happened to be a considerable number, dis- 
 tinguished for rank or talents ; many indeed respectable for 
 both. ... In the social and singularly pleasant months that 
 I passed with Mr. Gibbon, he enjoyed his usual cheerfulness, 
 with good health. After he left England, in 1788, he had 
 had a severe attack, mentioned in one of the foregoing letters,^ 
 of an erysipelas, which at last settled in one of his legs, and 
 left something of a dropsical tendency ; for at this time I first 
 perceived a considerable degree of swelling about the ankle. 
 
 1 [Ante, p. 215.] 
 
 2 Misc. Works, i., 310, 316. — SHEFFIELD. [Corres., ii. , 221, 233. In Misc. 
 Works, i., 310, the date 1790 is wrong. The letter was an answer to Lord 
 Sheffield's of 3rd Jan., 1791.] 
 
248 EDWARD GIBBON [i793 
 
 I must ever regard it as the most endearing proof of his 
 sensibility, and of his possessing the true spirit of friendship, 
 that after having relinquished the thought of his intended 
 visit, he hastened to England, in spite of increasing im- 
 pediments, to soothe me by the most generous sympathy, 
 and to alleviate my domestic affliction ^ ; neither his great 
 corpulency,^ nor his extraordinary bodily infirmities, nor any 
 other consideration, could prevent him a moment from resolv- 
 ing on an undertaking that might have deterred the most 
 active young man. With an alertness by no means natural 
 to him, he, almost immediately, undertook a circuitous journey, 
 along the frontiers of an enemy, worse than savage, within the 
 sound of their cannon, within the range of the light troops of 
 the different armies, and through roads ruined by the enormous 
 machinery of war.^ 
 
 1 [For the death of Lady Sheffield see ante, p. 239, n. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve says of Gibbon's letters to the widower on hearing the sad 
 news : " Quelques lettres meme, les dernieres, ont des accents d'^motion qu'on 
 n'attendrait pas ; celle qu'il 6crit a lord Sheffield a la premiere nouvelle de son 
 malheur, et au moment de partir pour le rejoindre, est belle et touchante ; on 
 dirait presque qu'un &lair de religion y a pass6 '\{Causeries, viii. , 471). 
 
 The following is the passage which touched Sainte-Beuve : ' ' But she is now 
 at rest ; and if there be a future state her mild virtues have surely entitled her to 
 the reward of pure and perfect felicity" {_Co?-res., ii. , 378). 
 
 Lord Sheffield consoled himself by a second wife, and,' on losing her, by a 
 third {Girlhood of M. J. Hoh-oyd, pp. 310, 395, n.)^^ 
 
 2 ["Mr. Gibbon," wrote Mme. D'Arblay, "has cheeks of such prodigious 
 chubbiness that they envelope his nose so completely as to render it in profile 
 absolutely invisible. Yet, with these Brobdignatious cheeks his neat little feet 
 are of a miniature description, and with these, as soon as I turned round, he 
 hastily described a quaint sort of circle with small quick steps, and a dapper gait, 
 as if to mark the alacrity of his approach " {Memoirs of Dr. Burtiey, ii., 224). 
 
 Sainte-Beuve copies the following description of him by Garat, allowing at 
 the same time that it is overcharged : ' ' L'auteur de la grande et superbe 
 Histoire de I' Empire romain avait a peine quatre pieds sept a huit pouces ; le 
 tronc immense de son corps a gros ventre de Silene (^tait pos6 sur cette espece de 
 jambes greles qu'on appelley???/;?^ ; ses pieds assez en dedans pour que la pointe 
 du droit p<it embarrasser sou vent la pointe du gauche, ^taient assez longs et 
 assez larges pour servir de socle k une statue de cinq pieds six pouces. Au 
 milieu de son visage, pas plus gros que le poing, la racine de son nez s'enfonpait 
 dans le crine plus profond^ment que celle du nez d'un Kalmouck, et ses yeux, 
 tres vifs, mais tr6s petits, se perdaient dans les m^mes profondeurs" {Causeries, 
 viii., 440).] 
 
 s [" Frankfort, May 19, 1793. — And here I am in good health and spirits, after 
 one of the easiest, safest, and pleasantest journies which I ever performed in my 
 whole life ; not the appearance of an enemy, and hardly the appearance of a 
 war. Yet I hear, as I am writing, the cannon of the siege of Mayence, at the 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 249 
 
 The readiness with which he engaged in this kind office of 
 friendship, at a time when a selfish spirit might have pleaded 
 a thousand reasons for declining so hazardous a journey, con- 
 spired, with the peculiar charms of his society, to render his 
 arrival a cordial to my mind. I had the satisfaction of finding 
 that his own delicate and precarious health had not suffered 
 in the service of his friend. He arrived in the beginning of 
 June at my house in Downing Street in good health ; and 
 after passing about a month with me there, we settled at 
 Sheffield Place for the remainder of the summer ; where his 
 wit, learning, and cheerful politeness delighted a great variety 
 of characters. 
 
 Although he was inclined to represent his health as better 
 than it really was, his habitual dislike to motion appeared to 
 increase ; his inaptness to exercise confined him to the library 
 and dining-room, and there he joined my friend, Mr. 
 Frederick North,i in pleasant arguments against exercise in 
 general.^ He ridiculed the unsettled and restless disposition 
 
 distance of twenty miles, and long, very long, will it be heard" [Corres., ii., 
 382). 
 
 " Brussels, May, 27, 1793. — This day, between two and three o'clock in the 
 afternoon, I am arrived at this place in excellent preservation. My expedition, 
 which is now drawing to a close, has been a journey of perseverance rather 
 than speed, of some labour since Frankfort, but without the smallest degree of 
 difficulty or danger. As I have every morning been seated in the chaise soon 
 after sun-rise, I propose indulging to-morrow till eleven o'clock, and going that 
 day no farther than Ghent. On Wednesday the 29th instant I shall reach 
 Ostend in good time, just eight days, according to my former reckoning, from 
 Frankfort" [ib., p. 383).] 
 
 1 [Third son of the Prime Minister ; afterwards fifth Earl of Guilford. Lord 
 Sheffield's elder daughter, in the autumn of 1793, thus writes of him and 
 Sylvester Douglas (mentioned below), afterwards Lord Glenbervie : "Mr. 
 Douglas with his Greek and Latin, and Fred North with his Islands of Ithaca 
 and Corfu, have put him [Gibbon] quite in good humour, and they are much 
 more entertaining, having him to draw them out. ... It was impossible to 
 have selected three beaux who could have been more agreeable, whether their 
 conversation was serious or trifling" [Girlhood of M. J. Holroyd, pp. 239, 242).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon after describing his failure in the riding-school [ante, p. 86) con- 
 tinued : " Many precious hours were employed in my closet which, at the same 
 age, are wasted on horseback by the strenuous idleness of my countrymen" 
 [Auio., p. 236). 
 
 On July 2, 1793, Miss Holroyd wrote : " Gibbon is a mortal enemy to any 
 persons taking a walk" [Girlhood, etc., p. 225). 
 
 ' ' Gibbon had been staying some time with Lord Sheffield in the country ; 
 and when he was about to go away, the servants could not find his hat. ' Bless 
 me,' said Gibbon, ' I certainly left it in the hall on my arrival here.' He had 
 
250 EDWARD GIBBON [ms 
 
 that summer, the most uncomfortable, as he said, of all 
 seasons, generally gives to those who have the free use of their 
 limbs. Such arguments were little required to keep society, 
 Mr. Jekyll,! Mr. Douglas, etc., within doors, when his company 
 was only there to be enjoyed ; for neither the fineness of the 
 season, nor the most promising parties of pleasure, could tempt 
 the company of either sex to desert him. 
 
 Those who have enjoyed the society of Mr. Gibbon will 
 agree Avith me, that his conversation was still more captivating 
 than his writings. Perhaps no man ever divided time more 
 fairly between literary labour and social enjoyment ; and hence, 
 probably he derived his peculiar excellence of making his very 
 extensive knowledge contribute, in the highest degree, to the 
 use or pleasure of those with whom he conversed. He united, 
 in the happiest manner imaginable, two characters which are 
 not often found in the same person, the profound scholar 
 and the peculiarly agreeable companion. . . . 
 
 Excepting a visit to Lord Egremont ^ and Mr. Hayley,^ 
 whom he particularly esteemed, Mr. Gibbon was not absent 
 from Sheffield Place till the beginning of October, when we 
 
 not stirred out of doors during the whole of the visit" (Rogers's Table-Talk, 
 
 P- "S)- 
 
 His letter showed that he had not, in his latter years, always wholly neglected 
 exercise. At Brighton he wrote in 1781 : "I walk sufSciently morning and 
 evening". At Hampton Court he wrote in 1782: "Every morning I walk a 
 mile or more before breakfast " {Corres., ii., 3, 23).] 
 
 1 [' ' Mr. Jekyll is a great favourite of Mr. G. , which is rather surprising, as 
 the latter does not, in general, show a predilection for those who are less 
 qualified for hearers than orators" [Glrlkood of M. J. Holroyd, p. 253). 
 
 ' ' Jekyll was celebrated for his wit ; but it was of that kind which amuses 
 only for the moment. I remember that when Lady Cork gave a party at 
 which she wore a most enormous plume, Jekyll said, ' She was exactly like a 
 shuttle-cock — all cork and feathers'" (Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 105). For 
 " Jekyll, the wag of law, the scribblers' pride " with " his own book of sarcasms 
 ready made," see The Rolliad, ed. 1799, pp. 219, 221.] 
 
 2 [Horace Walpole (to whose niece Lord Egremont got engaged) wrote of 
 him in 1780 : "He is eight-and-twenty, is handsome, and has between twenty 
 and thirty thousand a year". Three weeks later Walpole wrote: "I must 
 notify the rupture of our great match. Lord Egremont, who proves a most 
 worthless young fellow, and is as weak and irresolute," etc. (Walpole's Letters, 
 vii., 414, 421). 
 
 Gibbon, who in 1775 had found him at Up-Park, " and four score fox-hounds," 
 described him as " civil and sensible " {Corres., i., 247, 249).] 
 
 •^ [Ante, pp. 180, 230. Miss Holroyd wrote on August 2, 1793 : " ' Le grand 
 Gibbon' arrived yesterday from Mr. Hayley's" (Girlhood, etc., p. 227).] 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 251 
 
 were reluctantly obliged to part with him, that he might 
 perform his engagement to Mrs. Gibbon at Bath, the widow of 
 his father, who had early deserved, and invariably retained, 
 his affection.^ From Bath he proceeded to Lord Spencer's at 
 Althorp, a famiily which he always met with uncommon 
 satisfaction.^ He continued in good health during the whole 
 summer, and in excellent spirits (I never knew him enjoy 
 better) ; and when he went from Sheffield Place, little did I 
 imagine it would be the last time I should have the inex- 
 pressible pleasure of seeing him there in full possession of 
 health. 
 
 The few following short letters, though not important in 
 themselves, will fill up this part of the narrative better, and 
 more agreeably, than anything which I can substitute in their 
 place. 
 
 Edward Gibbon, Esq., to the Right Hon. Lord Sheffield. 
 
 October 2, 1793. 
 
 The Cork Street hotel has answered its recommendation ; 
 it is clean, convenient, and quiet. My first evening was 
 passed at home in a very agreeable tete-d-tite with my friend 
 Elmsley.^ Yesterday I dined at Craufurd's * with an excellent 
 set, in which were Pelham ^ and Lord Egremont. I dine 
 
 ^lA>zie, p. 113. On his way to Althorp he passed a night at the Star Inn 
 (now the Clarendon Hotel), Oxford {Carres., ii. , 391).] 
 
 '^[Earl Spencer and his wife stayed a month at Lausanne in 1785. " He is a 
 valuable man," wrote Gibbon, " and where he is familiar, a pleasant companion ; 
 she a charming woman, who, with sense and spirit, has the simplicity and play- 
 fulness of a child " {ib. , ii. , 135). How " valuable " he was he showed later on 
 as First Lord of the Admiralty. Though he was not in office at the time of 
 Nelson's last and greatest victory, nevertheless it might be said of him, the 
 descendant of Marlborough, that with Pitt he 
 
 ' ' bade the conqueror go forth 
 And launched that thunderbolt of war 
 On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar". 
 " She used playfully to call Nelson her bull-dog " {Memoir of Viscount Althorp, 
 p. 20). She had known Johnson (Boswell's Joh?ison, iii. , 425, «.).] 
 
 '^{^.inte, p. 194.] ^{Post, p. 265.] 
 
 5 [Probably Thomas Pelham, afterwards second Earl of Chichester {Corres., 
 ii., 60).] 
 
252 EDWAED GIBBON ims 
 
 to-day with my Portuguese friend, Madame de Sylva,^ at 
 Grenier's ; most probably with Lady Webster,^ whom I met 
 last night at Devonshire-House ; a constant, though late, 
 resort of society. The Duchess ^ is as good, and Lady 
 Elizabeth as seducing as ever. No news whatsoever. You 
 will see in the papers Lord Hervey's memorial. I love vigour, 
 but it is surely a strong measure to tell a gentleman you have 
 resolved to pass the winter in his house.* London is not 
 disagreeable ; yet I shall probably leave it Saturday, If any 
 thing should occur, I will write. Adieu ; ever yours. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 Sunday afternoon I left London and lay at Reading, and 
 Monday in very good time I reached this place, after a very 
 pleasant airing ; and am always so much delighted and im- 
 proved, with this union of ease and motion, that, were not 
 the expense enormous, I would travel every year some hundred 
 miles, more especially in England.^ I passed the day with 
 
 1 [A pretty Portuguese, with whom, according to Miss Holroyd, Gibbon was 
 " desperately in love" (Girlhood, etc., p. 82).] 
 
 2 [In the original, "with the well-washed feet of Lady W. " [Corres., ii., 388). 
 For the explanation of this see The Girlhood of M. J. Holroyd, p. 239. In 1797, 
 being divorced from her husband, she married the third Lord Holland [Annual 
 Register, 1797, ii., 10). She is described in that passage where Macaulay, 
 writing of Holland House, tells how " the last survivors of our generation with 
 peculiar fondness will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique 
 gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace 
 and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room" (Macaulay's Essays, ed. 
 1874, iii., 285).] 
 
 "* [The beautiful Duchess of Devonshire whom Reynolds and Gainsborough 
 painted.] 
 
 "* [Lord Hervey, the English Minister at Florence, in a Memorial published 
 in The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 2, 1793, required that the French Minister 
 should be dismissed, and that all trade with France should cease. The English 
 fleet would enforce obedience, if necessary, and at the same time would protect 
 the Tuscan ships.] 
 
 5[" In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post-chaise. Dr. 
 Johnson said to me, ' Life has not many things better than this ' " (Boswell's 
 Johnson, ii. , 453). 
 
 In Paterson's British Itinerary, ed. 1800, Preface, p. 7, the price of a post- 
 chaise and pair is stated to be nine pence a mile, but in many places two pence, 
 three pence, four pence more. To this was added the government duty of three 
 pence per mile, and the driver's payment of a shilling or eighteen pence for each 
 stage of ten or twelve miles. In addition to this there were turnpike tolls, and 
 the payments to ostlers. In the Penny Cyclopcedia for 1840 (xviii. , 460) the total 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 253 
 
 Mrs. G. yesterday. In mind and conversation she is just the 
 same as twenty years ago. She has spirits, appetite, legs, and 
 eyes, and talks of living till ninety.^ I can say from my 
 heart, Amen.^ We dine at two, and remain together till 
 nine ; but, although we have much to say, I am not sorry that 
 she talks of introducing a third or fourth actor. Lord Spenser 
 expects me about the 20th ; but if I can do it without offence, 
 I shall steal away two or three days sooner, and you shall 
 have advice of my motions. The troubles of Bristol have 
 been serious and bloody. I know not who was in fault ; but 
 I do not like appeasing the mob by the extinction of the toll, 
 and the removal of the Hereford militia, who had done their 
 duty. 3 Adieu. The girls must dance at Tunbridge. What 
 would dear little aunt * say if I was to answer her letter ? 
 Ever yours, etc. 
 
 York House, Bath, October 9, 1793. 
 
 I still follow the old style, though the Convention has 
 abolished the Christian sera, with months, weeks, days, etc.*^ 
 
 To the same. 
 
 York House, Bath, October 13, 1793. 
 
 I AM as ignorant of Bath in general as if I were still at 
 Sheffield. My impatience to get away makes me think it 
 
 cost is given as one shilling and ten pence a mile. As Bath is 107 miles from 
 London the charge for posting alone would, at this rate, have amounted to 
 nearly ;^io. To this must be added the charges of the inns. Gibbon lay one 
 night at Reading, and took two servants with him.] 
 
 1 She was then in her eightieth year. — Sheffield. 
 
 ^[Ante, p. 113, «. 2.] 
 
 •' [The trustees of the bridge tolls, in letting them a year earlier, had given 
 notice that they were to be levied for the last time. Nevertheless they were 
 continued. The mob three days running destroyed the gates ; the militia fired ; 
 "about fifteen persons were killed, and near forty wounded". "The tolls 
 were abandoned ; some of the principal citizens having offered to present to the 
 trustees the sum for which they were let." Nevertheless the mob broke the 
 windows of the Town-House, but dispersed on the arrival of more troops 
 (Ann. Reg., 1793, ii., 4S).] 
 
 4 [Lord Sheffield's sister, Sarah Martha Holroyd, the Aunt "Serena" of 
 The Girlhood of M. J. Holroyd.'] 
 
 5 [On Sept. 20, 1793, the Convention decreed that "the common or vulgar 
 era is abolished" [Ann. Reg., i7g2» "•. 4^)-] 
 
254 EDWARD GIBBON [ms 
 
 better to devote my whole time to Mrs. G.^ ; and dear little 
 aunt, whom I tenderly salute, will excuse me to her two 
 friends, Mrs, Hartley and Preston, if I make little or no use 
 of her kind introduction. A tete-d-tSte of eight or nine hours 
 every day is rather difficult to support ; yet I do assure you, 
 that our conversation flows with more ease and spirit when 
 we are alone, than when any auxiliaries are summoned to our 
 aid. She is indeed a wonderful woman, and I think all her 
 faculties of the mind stronger, and more active, than I have 
 ever known them. I have settled, that ten full days may be 
 sufficient for all the purposes of our interview. I should there- 
 fore depart next Friday, the eighteenth instant, and am indeed 
 expected at Althorpe on the twentieth ; but I may possibly 
 reckon without my host, as I have not yet apprised Mrs. G. of 
 the term of my visit ; and will certainly not quarrel with her 
 for a short delay. Adieu. I must have some political specula- 
 tions. The campaign, at least on our side, seems to be at an 
 end. 2 Ever yours. 
 
 To the same. 
 Althorp Library,^ Tuesday, four o'clock. 
 
 We have so completely exhausted this morning among the 
 first editions of Cicero, that I can mention only my departure 
 hence to-morrow, the sixth instant. I shall lie quietly at 
 Woburn, and reach London in good time Thursday. By the 
 following post I will write somewhat more largely. My stay 
 
 ^ [When he had got away he wrote to her : " I wish that I could have given 
 myself a larger scope for my visit to Bath " (Corj-es. , ii. , 391).] 
 
 2 [The allies under the Duke of York and the Prince of Coburg had been de- 
 feated in the Low Countries" [Ann. Reg., 1793, i. , 273).] 
 
 3 [At Althorp, ' ' in the spacious suite of rooms Lord Spencer placed that 
 splendid collection of books which alone sufficed to give him a reputation 
 throughout Europe. It was estimated to contain forty or fifty thousand 
 volumes, amongst which were the choicest treasures of bibliography." Once, 
 when he was overworked at the Admiralty, his physician "prescribed a day's 
 cessation from business, and a play of Euripides, which treatment was entirely 
 successful" {Me7noir of Viscount Althorp, pp. 15-16). 
 
 The library has been bought by Mrs. John Rylands of Longford Hall, 
 Stretford, and presented by her to the City of Manchester, together with a 
 building worthy of holding it.] 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 255 
 
 in London will depend, partly on my amusement, and your 
 being fixed at Sheffield Place ; unless you think I can be 
 comfortably arranged for a week or two with you at Brighton. 
 The military remarks seem good ; but now to what purpose ? 
 Adieu. I embrace and much rejoice in Louisa's improvement. 
 Lord Ossory ^ was from home at Farning Woods. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 London, Friday, November 8, four o'clock. 
 
 Walpole has just delivered yours, and I hasten the direction, 
 that you may not be at a loss. I will write to-morrow, but I 
 am now fatigued, and rather unwell. ^ Adieu. I have not 
 seen a soul except Elmsley. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 St. James's Street, November 9, 1793. 
 
 As I dropt yesterday the word imwell, I flatter myself that 
 the family would have been a little alarmed by my silence to- 
 day. I am still awkward, though without any suspicions of 
 gout, and have some idea of having recourse to medical advice. 
 Yet I creep out to-day in a chair, to dine with Lord Lucan.^ 
 But as it will be literally my first going down stairs, and as 
 scarcely any one is apprised of my arrival, I know nothing, I 
 have heard nothing, I have nothing to say. My present 
 lodging, a house of Elmsley's is cheerful, convenient, some- 
 what dear, but not so much as a hotel, a species of habitation 
 for which I have not conceived any great affection.^ Had you 
 
 ^ [He was a member of the Literary Club (Boswell's Johnson, i. , 479).] 
 
 2 [Chesterfield wrote on October 8, 1755 : "I am what you call in Ireland, 
 and a very good expression I think it is, unwell" (Chesterfield's Misc. Works, 
 iv. , 263). Unwell is not in Johnson's Dictionary. ] 
 
 ■^ [He was a member of the Literary Club (Boswell's Johnson, i. , 479). He 
 it was who told the story how Johnson said, at the sale of Thrale's brewery : 
 ' ' We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of 
 growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice " [ib. , iv. , 87). ] 
 
 * [This is one of the earliest instances to be found of the use of kolel for inn. 
 Hotel is not in Johnson's Dictionaiy. Gibbon was not of Johnson's opinion 
 when he said : " No, Sir ; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man 
 by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn " (Boswell's 
 Johnson, ii., 452).] 
 
256 EDWARD GIBBON [1793 
 
 been stationaiy at Sheffield, you would have seen me before 
 the twentieth ; for I am tired of rambling, and pant for my 
 home ; that is to say for your house. But whether I shall 
 have courage to brave . . J and a bleak down, time only can 
 discover. Adieu. I wish you back to Sheffield Place. The 
 health of dear Louisa is doubtless the first object ; but I did 
 not expect Brighton after Tunbridge. Whenever dear little 
 aunt is separate from you, I shall certainly write to her ; but 
 at present how is it possible ? Ever yours. 
 
 To the same at Brighton. 
 St. James's Street, November 11, 1793. 
 
 1 MUST at length withdraw the veil before my state of 
 health, though the naked truth may alarm you more than a 
 fit of the gout. Have you never observed, through my iii- 
 expressibles, a large prominency, circa genitalia, which, as it was 
 not at all painful, and very little troublesome, I had strangely 
 neglected for many years ^ .'' But since my departure from 
 Sheffield Place, it has increased (most stupendously), is in- 
 creasing, and ought to be diminished. ^ Yesterday I sent for 
 Farquhar,* who is allowed to be a very skillful surgeon. After 
 
 i[In the original, P. of W. [Corres., ii. , 393). On August 25 Miss Holroyd 
 described a drive across the downs to the Devil's Dyke, near Brighton, to see a 
 field day, where the Prince of Wales commanded the troops. On Nov. i she 
 wrote : "It you like an officer there will be plenty at Brighton, for the Prince's 
 Regt. stays there all the winter. I hope we shall not be too fond of the P. , and 
 then the residence will not be unpleasant, if we find anybody we know " {Girl- 
 hood of M. J. Holroyd, pp. 234, 247). It was her father who was likely to "be 
 too fond of the Prince ". See ib. , p. 228.] 
 
 2 [Soon after Gibbon's death Malone wrote : " He thought, he said, when he 
 was at Althorp last Christmas [he was there in October] the ladies looked a 
 little oddly. The fact is that poor Gibbon, strange as it may seem, imagined 
 himself rather well-looking, and his first motion in a mixed company of ladies 
 and gentlemen was to the fire-place, against which he planted his back, and 
 then, taking out his snuff-box, began to hold forth. In his late unhappy situa- 
 tion it was not easy for the ladies to find out where they could direct their eyes 
 with safety" {Hist. MSS. Com., 13th Report, App. viii. , p. 231).] 
 
 •^[A parody on Dunning's motion {anie, p. 207).] 
 
 ■iNow Sir Walter Farquhar, Baronet.— Sheffield. [There was another 
 Farquhar, "not of the Faculty," whom nevertheless Gibbon advised young 
 S6very to consult (Read's Hist Studies, ii. , 471). See also Girlhood of M. J. 
 Holroyd, pp. 218, 322, 356.] 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 257 
 
 viewing and palping,^ he very seriously desired to call in 
 assistance^ and has examined it again to-day with Mr, Cline, 
 a surgeon, as he says, of the first eminence. ^ They both pro- 
 nounce it a hydrocele (a collection of water), which must be let 
 out by the operation of tapping ; but, from its magnitude and 
 long neglect, they think it a most extraordinary case, and 
 wish to have another surgeon, Dr. Baillie,^ present. If the 
 business should go off smoothly, I shall be delivered from my 
 burthen (it is almost as big as a small child) and walk about 
 in four or five days with a truss. But the medical gentlemen, 
 who never speak quite plain, insinuate to me the possibility 
 of an inflammation, of fever, etc. I am not appalled at the 
 thoughts of the operation, which is fixed for Wednesday next, 
 twelve o'clock ; but it has occurred to me, that you might 
 wish to be present, before and afterwards, till the crisis was 
 past ; and to give you that opportunity, I shall solici : a delay 
 till Thursday, or even Friday. In the meanwhile, I crawl 
 about with some labour, and much indecency, to Devonshire 
 House (where I left all the fine ladies making flannel waist- 
 coats ^) ; Lady Lucan's, etc. Adieu. Varnish the business 
 for the ladies : yet I am afraid it will be public ; — the ad- 
 vantage of being notorious. Ever yours. 
 
 ^[Gibbon anglicises the French /«/j*^r — "toucher avec la main k plusieurs 
 reprises et en pressant l^g^rement" (Littr6). Writing of his proposed retire- 
 ment to Lausanne he said : " Je me suis livr^ au charme d^licieux de con- 
 templer, de sonder, de palper ce bonheur" [Corres., ii. , 50).] 
 
 2 [H. C. Robinson [Diary, ii. , 251) says that when his sister in 1823 consulted 
 Abernethy, finding Cline had seen her, he said : " Why come to me then ? You 
 need not go to any one after him. He is a sound man." 
 
 ' ' Lord Lansdowne told of his having dined with Lord Erskine, just after 
 his recovering from some complaint, of which he had been cui-ed by two 
 leeches ; his launching out in praise of those leeches, and at last starting up and 
 ringing the bell, saying, ' I'll show them to you ' ; the leeches then brought up 
 in a bottle, and sent round the table with the wine. ' I call one of them Cline,' 
 said Lord Erskine, ' and the other Home ' (the great surgeons of the day, Mr. 
 Cline and Sir Everard Home)" {Memoirs of Thomas Moore, ed. 1854, vi., 243).] 
 
 3 [Baillie was the nephew of John and William Hunter, and the brother of 
 Joanna Baillie.] 
 
 ■^For the soldiers in Flanders. — Sheffield. {^The Annual Register, 1793, i., 
 5, speaking of " the rigorous winter which was felt throughout Europe," says 
 that the French levies suffered less, " as they had long been used to a course of 
 living that qualified them to endure almost every species of hardship. From 
 the high price of fuel they were particularly inured to the bearing of cold."] 
 
 17 
 
258 EDWARD GIBBON [i793 
 
 Immediately on receiving the last letter, I went the same 
 day from Brighthelmstone to London, and was agreeably 
 surprised to find that Mr. Gibbon had dined at Lord Lucan's 
 and did not return to his lodgings, where I waited for him till 
 eleven o'clock at night. Those who have seen him within 
 the last eight or ten years, must be surprised to hear that he 
 could doubt, whether his disorder was apparent.^ When he 
 returned to England in 1787, I was greatly alarmed by a pro- 
 digious increase, which I always conceived to proceed from a 
 rupture. I did not understand why he, who had talked with 
 me on every other subject relative to himself and his affairs 
 without reserve, should never in any shape hint at a malady 
 so troublesome ; but on speaking to his valet de chambre, he 
 told me, Mr. Gibbon could not bear the least allusion to that 
 subject, and never would suifer him to notice it. I consulted 
 some medical persons, who with me supposing it to be a 
 rupture, were of opinion that nothing could be done, and said 
 that he surely must have had advice, and of course had taken 
 all necessary precautions. He now talked freely with me 
 about his disorder; which, he said, began in the year I76l ; 
 that he then consulted Mr. Hawkins,^ the surgeon, who did 
 not decide whether it was the beginning o£ a rupture, or an 
 hydrocele ; but he desired to see Mr. Gibbon again when he 
 came to town. Mr. Gibbon, not feeling any pain, nor suffer- 
 ing any inconvenience, as he said, never returned to Mr. 
 Hawkins ; and although the disorder continued to increase 
 gradually, and of late years very much indeed, he never 
 mentioned it to any person, however incredible it may appear, 
 from l76l to November 1793.^ I told him, that I had always 
 
 1 [A fortnight before his death Miss Holroyd wrote : ' ' He seems now to be 
 sensible of the peculiarity of his appearance" {Girlhood, etc., p. 259).] 
 
 2 [Cagsar Hawkins. Horace Walpole, in 1756, describing how Lord Digby 
 was operated on for the stone, says {Letters, iii. , 9) : " He was cut by a new 
 instrument of Hawkins, which reduces an age of torture to but one minute".] 
 
 3 [See ante, p. 240, where Gibbon records : " Since I have escaped from the 
 long perils of my childhood the serious advice of a physician has seldom been 
 requisite ". 
 
 "Mr. Fox had little confidence in medical skill, and less curiosity, even on 
 subjects connected with the health and management of the human body, than 
 on any other. He was consequently very averse to relate symptoms which put 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 259 
 
 supposed there was no doubt of its being a rupture ; his 
 answer was, that he never thought so, and that he, and the 
 surgeons who attended him, were of opinion that it was an 
 hydrocele. It is now certain that it was originally a rupture, 
 and that an hydrocele had lately taken place in the same part ; 
 and it is remarkable that his legs, which had been swelled 
 about the ankle, particularly one of them, since he had the 
 erisipelas in 1790, recovered their former shape, as soon as 
 the water appeared in another part, which did not happen 
 till between the time he left Sheffield Place, in the beginning 
 of October, and his arrival at Althorpe, towards the latter end 
 of that month. On the Thursday following the date of his 
 last letter, Mr. Gibbon was tapped for the first time ; four 
 quarts of a transparent watery fluid were discharged by that 
 operation. Neither inflammation nor fever ensued ; the tumour 
 was diminished to nearly half its size ; the remaining part was a 
 soft ii'regular mass. I had been with him two days before, 
 and I continued with him above a week after the first tapping, 
 during which time he enjoyed his usual spirits ; and the three 
 medical gentlemen who attended him will recollect his 
 pleasantry, even during the operation. He was abroad again 
 in a few days, but the water evidently collecting very fast, it 
 was agreed that a second puncture should be made a fortnight 
 after the first. Knowing that I should be wanted at a meet- 
 ing in the country, he pressed me to attend it, and promised 
 that soon after the second operation was performed he would 
 follow me to Sheffield Place ; but before he arrived I received 
 the two following letters : — 
 
 Mr. Gibbon to Lord Sheffield, at Brighton. 
 
 St. James's Street, Nov. 25, 1793. 
 
 Though Farquhar has promised to write you a line, I con- 
 ceive you may not be sorry to hear directly from me. The 
 
 him to no immediate inconvenience." He never consulted a physician about 
 the earlier symptoms of an illness which two years later carried him off (Lord 
 Holland's Memoirs, etc. , i. , 250). 
 
 Grote "did not regard as of any importance," and so did not show to his 
 doctor, a swelling, which, being neglected, ended his life {Life of Grote, p. 326).] 
 
260 EDWARD GIBBON [ms 
 
 operation of yesterday was much longer, more searching, and 
 more painful than the former ; but it has eased and lightened 
 me to a much greater degree. ^ No inflammation, no fever, 
 a delicious night, leave to go abroad to-morrow, and to go 
 out of town when I please, en attendant the future mea- 
 sures of a radical cure. If you hold your intention of return- 
 ing next Saturday to Sheffield Place, I shall probably join 
 you about the Tuesday following, after having passed two 
 nights at Beckenhami.^ The Devons are going to Bath, and 
 the hospitable Craufurd follows them. I passed a delightful 
 day with Burke ; an odd one with Monsignor Erskine, the 
 Pope's Nuncio. Of public news, you and the papers know 
 more than I do. We seem to have strong sea and land hopes ; 
 nor do I dislike the Royalists having beaten the Sans Culottes, 
 and taken Dol.^ How many minutes will it take to guillotine 
 the seventy-three new members of the Convention, who are 
 now arrested * ? Adieu ; ever yours. 
 
 St. James's-St., Nov. SO, 1793. 
 
 It will not be in my power to reach Sheffield Place quite 
 so soon as I wished and expected. Lord Auckland informs 
 
 1 Three quarts of the same fluid as before were discharged. — Sheffield. 
 
 2 Eden Farm. — Sheffield. [Lord Auckland lived there. Gibbon, in 
 writing to him to propose his visit, said : " I revere Lady Auckland as a second 
 Eve, the mother of nations" {Misc. Works, ii., 495). Lord Sheffield says in 
 a note : "The allusion is to the births of her children in England, America, 
 Ireland, France, Spain and Holland ". The second allusion to Eden Farm and 
 to Lord Auckland's family name of Eden he does not notice.] 
 
 3 [In The Morning Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1793, news is reported from the Jacobins 
 of Dinan that "the inhabitants of Dol have almost all fled to the fort of 
 Chateauneuf and to Saint Malo. We are going to remove to the latter the 
 1,200 English prisoners who are here."] 
 
 * [In the same paper under date of Paris, Nov. 13, Montaut moved that " on 
 the 2ist instant the Committee of General Safety give a report on the 73 
 deputies put in a state of arrest ". Gibbon apparently misunderstood the para- 
 graph, which must refer to the Girondins, who had been arrested many months 
 earlier. " Those seventy-three Secret Protesters, suddenly one day, are reported 
 upon, are decreed accused ; the Convention-doors being ' previously shut,' 
 that none implicated might escape" (Carlyle's French Revolution, ed. 1857, ii., 
 276. See also ib., pp. 254, 262). On Oct. 30, "twenty-one of them were 
 guillotined in thirty-seven minutes, between eleven and twelve in the forenoon " 
 (Ann. Reg., 1793, ii., 51). It was the report of what had been done that was 
 now moved for.] 
 
1793] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 261 
 
 me that he shall be at Lambeth next week, Tuesday, 
 Wednesday, and Thursday. I have therefore agreed to dine 
 at Beckenham on Friday. Saturday will be spent there, and 
 unless some extraordinary temptation should detain me an- 
 other day, you will see me by four o'clock Sunday the ninth 
 of December. I dine to-morrow with the Chancellor at 
 Hampstead,^ and, what I do not like at this time of the year, 
 without a proposal to stay all night. Yet I would not refuse, 
 more especially as I had denied him on a former day. My 
 health is good ; but I shall have a final interview with 
 Farquhar before I leave town. We are still in darkness about 
 Lord Howe and the French ships, but hope seems to pre- 
 ponderate.^ Adieu. Nothing that relates to Louisa can be 
 forgotten. Ever yours. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 St. James's Street, Dec. 6, 1793. 
 16 du mois Frimaire. 
 
 The man tempted me and I did eat^ — and that man is no less than 
 the Chancellor. I dine to-day, as I intended, at Beckenham ; 
 but he recalls me (the third time this week) by a dinner to- 
 morrow (Saturday) with Burke and Windham, which I do not 
 possess sufficient fortitude to resist. Sunday he dismisses me 
 again to the aforesaid Beckenham, but insists on finding me 
 there on Monday, which he will probably do, supposing there 
 should be room and welcome at the Ambassador's.* I shall 
 not therefore arrive at Sheffield till Tuesday, the 1 0th instant, 
 and though you may perceive I do not want society or amuse- 
 ment, I sincerely repine at the delay. You will likewise 
 
 1 [Lord Loughborough {ante, p. 207), whom, at the beginning of the year, 
 Gibbon had congratulated on his appointment as Lord Chancellor (A/wc. Works, 
 ii. , 486). His worthless name and ill-earned titles are preserved at Hampstead 
 in Wedderburne Road, Loughborough Road, and Rosslyn Hill.] 
 
 2 [Six months later Lord Howe gained the great victory of the First of 
 June.] 
 
 2 [" The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat " [Genesis iii. 13).] 
 *[Lord Auckland, Ambassador at the Hague.] 
 
262 EDWARD GIBBON [ms 
 
 derive some comfort from hearing of the spirit and activity 
 of my motions. Farquhar is satisfied, allows m.e to go, and 
 does not think I shall be obliged to precipitate my return. 
 Shall we never have anything more than hopes and rumom's 
 from Lord Howe ? Ever yours. 
 
 Mr. Gibbon generally took the opportunity of passing a 
 night or two with his friend Lord Auckland/ at Eden Farm 
 (ten miles from London), on his passage to Sheffield Place ; 
 and notwithstanding his indisposition, he had lately made an 
 excursion thither from London ; when he was much pleased 
 by meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury,^ of whom he ex- 
 pressed an high opinion. He returned to London, to dine 
 with Lord Loughborough, to meet Mr. Burke, Mr. Windham, 
 and particularly Mr. Pitt, with whom he was not acquainted ; 
 and in his last journey to Sussex, he re- visited Eden Farm, 
 and was much gratified by the opportunity of again seeing, 
 during a whole day, Mr. Pitt, who passed the night there. 
 From Lord Auckland's Mr. Gibbon proceeded to Sheffield 
 Place ; and his discourse was never more brilliant, nor more 
 entertaining, than on his arrival. The parallels which he 
 drew, and the comparisons which he made, between the 
 leading men of this country, were sketched in his best manner, 
 and were infinitely interesting. However, this last visit to 
 Sheffield Place became far different from any he had ever 
 made before. That ready, cheerful, various, and illuminating 
 conversation, which we had before admired in him, was not 
 now always to be found in the library or the dining room. 
 He moved with difficulty, and retired from company sooner 
 than he had been used to do. On the twenty-third of 
 December, his appetite began to fail him. He observed to 
 me, that it was a very bad sign with him when he could not 
 eat his breakfast, which he had done at all times very heartily ; 
 
 1 [George III. described him as "an eternal intriguer" (Stanhope's Fiit, iii. , 
 291).] 
 
 2 [Dr. John Moore, Lord Auckland's brother-in-law (ib., iii., 267). See The 
 Ro Iliad and Probatio7iary Odes, ed. 1799, p. 477, where he is [mentioned in A 
 New Ballad entitled and called Billy Eden.'\ 
 
1794] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 263 
 
 and this seems to have been the strongest expression of 
 apprehension that he was ever observed to utter. A con- 
 siderable degree of fever now made its appearance. Inflam- 
 mation arose, from the weight and the bulk of the tumour. 
 Water again collected very fast, and when the fever went off, 
 he never entirely recovered his appetite even for breakfast. 
 I became very uneasy indeed at his situation towards the end 
 of the month, and thought it necessary to advise him to set 
 out for London. He had before settled his plan to arrive 
 there about the middle of January. I had company in the 
 house, and we expected one of his particular friends ; but he 
 was obliged to sacrifice all social pleasure to the immediate 
 attention which his health required. He went to London on 
 the seventh of January, and the next day I received the 
 following billet ; the last he ever wrote : — 
 
 Edward Gibbon Esq. to Lord Sheffield. 
 
 St. James's Street, four o'clock, Tuesday. 
 
 This date says every thing. I was almost killed between 
 Sheffield Place and East Grinsted, by hard, frozen, long and 
 cross ruts, that would disgrace the approach of an Indian wig- 
 wam. The rest was something less painful ; and I reached 
 this place half dead, but not seriously feverish, or ill. I found 
 a dinner invitation from Lord Lucan ; but what are dinners 
 to me ? I wish they did not know of my departure. I catch 
 the flying post.^ What an effort! Adieu, till Thursday or 
 Friday. 
 
 By his own desire, I did not follow him till Thursday the 
 ninth. I then found him far from well. The tumour more 
 distended than before, inflamed, and ulcerated in several 
 places. Remedies were applied to abate the inflammation ; 
 but it was not thought proper to puncture the tumour for the 
 third time, till Monday the 13th of January, when no less 
 
 ^ [" A post m flying coach, the ordinary designation for a swift stage coach ' 
 (New Eng. Diet., iv., 374).] 
 
264 EDWARD GIBBON [i794 
 
 than six quarts of fluid were discharged. He seemed much 
 relieved by the evacuation. His spirits continued good. He 
 talked, as usual, of passing his time at houses which he had 
 often frequented with great pleasure, the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's, Mr. Craufurd's, Lord Spenser's, Lord Lucan's, Sir 
 Ralph Payne's, and Mr. Batt's ; and when I told him that I 
 should not return to the country, as I had intended, he pressed 
 me to go ; knowing I had an engagement there on public 
 business, he said, "You may be back on Saturday, and I intend 
 to go on Thursday to Devonshire-House". I had not any 
 apprehension that his life was in danger, although I began to 
 fear that he might not be restored to a comfortable state, and 
 that motion would be very troublesome to him ; but he talked 
 of a radical cure. He said, that it was fortunate the disorder 
 had shown itself while he was in England, where he might 
 procure the best assistance ; and if a radical cure could not be 
 obtained before his return to Lausanne, there was an able 
 surgeon at Geneva, who could come to tap him when it should 
 be necessary. 
 
 On Tuesday the fourteenth, when the risk of inflammation 
 and fever from the last operations was supposed to be over, 
 as the medical gentleman who attended him expressed no 
 fears for his life, I went that afternoon part of the way to 
 Sussex, and the following day reached Sheffield Place. The 
 next morning, the sixteenth, I received by the post a good 
 account of Mr. Gibbon, which mentioned also that he hourly 
 gained strength. In the evening came a letter by express, 
 dated noon that day, which acquainted me that Mr. Gibbon 
 had had a violent attack the preceding night, and that it was 
 not probable he could live till I came to him. I reached his 
 lodgings in St. James's Street about midnight, and learned 
 that my friend had expired a quarter before one o'clock that 
 day, the sixteenth of January, 1 794. 
 
 After I left him on Tuesday afternoon the fourteenth, he 
 saw some company, Lady Lucan and Lady Spencer, and 
 thought himself well enough at night to omit the opium 
 draught, which he had been used to take for some time. He 
 
1794] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 265 
 
 slept very indifferently ; before nine the next morning he 
 rose, but could not eat his breakfast. However, he appeared 
 tolerably well, yet complained at times of a pain in his 
 stomach. At one o'clock he received a visit of an hour from 
 Madame de Sylva, and at three, his friend, Mr. Craufurd, 
 of Auchinames (for whom he had mentioned a particular 
 regard), called, and stayed with him till past five o'clock. 
 They talked, as usual, on various subjects ; and twenty hours 
 before his death, Mr. Gibbon happened to fall into a con- 
 versation, not uncommon with him, on the probable duration 
 of his life. He said, that he thought himself a good life for 
 ten, twelve, or perhaps twenty years. ^ About six, he ate the 
 wing of a chicken, and drank three glasses of Madeira. ^ 
 After dinner he became very uneasy and impatient ; com- 
 plained a good deal, and appeared so weak, that his servant 
 was alarmed. Mr. Gibbon had sent to his friend and relation, 
 Mr. Robert Darell,^ whose house was not far distant, desiring 
 to see him, and adding, that he had something particular 
 to say. But, unfortunately, this desired interview never took 
 place. 
 
 During the evening he complained much of his stomach, 
 and of a disposition to vomit. Soon after nine, he took his 
 opium draught, and went to bed. About ten, he complained 
 of much pain, and desired that warm napkins might be 
 applied to his stomach. He almost incessantly expressed a 
 sense of pain till about four o'clock in the morning, when 
 he said he found his stomach much easier. About seven the 
 servant asked, whether he should send for Mr. Farquhar ? he 
 answered no ; that he was as well as he had been the day 
 before. At about half-past eight, he got out of bed, and said 
 
 ^[AnU; p. 243.] 
 
 2[Miss Holroyd wrote on Jan. ii [Girlhood, etc., p. 260) : " The surgeons 
 ordered bark every six hours, and five glasses of Madeira at dinner ". General 
 Read, in 1879, was shown by M. de S6very, in his house at Lausanne (33 Rue 
 de Bourg), " twenty bottles of Gibbon's own Madeira. In 1874 the wine was 
 found to be still in excellent condition " [Hist. Studies, ii., 475).] 
 
 ^\_A7tte, p. 26, n. His brother Edward was one of Gibbon's executors 
 {post, p. 268). One of the Darells Gibbon consulted about his investments 
 {Carres., ii., 376).] 
 
266 EDWARD GIBBON [i794 
 
 he was j^l^s adroit than he had been for three months past, 
 and got into bed again^ without assistance, better than usual. 
 About nine, he said that he would rise. The servant, however, 
 persuaded him to remain in bed till Mr. Farquhar, who was 
 expected at eleven, should come. Till about that hour he 
 spoke with great facility. Mr. Farquhar came at the time 
 appointed, and he was then visibly dying. When the valet de 
 chamhre returned, after attending Mr. Farquhar out of the 
 room, Mr. Gibbon said, " Pourqtioi est-ce que vous me quittez ? " 
 This was about half-past eleven. At twelve, he drank some 
 brandy and water from a teapot, and desired his favourite 
 servant to stay with him. These were the last words he 
 pronounced articulately. To the last he preserved his senses : 
 and when he could no longer speak, his servant having asked 
 a question, he made a sign, to show that he understood him. 
 He was quite tranquil, and did not stir ; his eyes half-shut. 
 About a quarter before one, he ceased to breathe.^ 
 
 The valet de chamh-e observed, that Mr. Gibbon did not, 
 at any time, show the least sign of alarm, or apprehension of 
 death ; and it does not appear that he ever thought himself 
 in danger, unless his desire to speak to Mr, Darell may be 
 considered in that light. 
 
 Perhaps I dwell too long on these minute and melancholy 
 circumstances. Yet the close of such a life can hardly fail 
 to interest every reader ^ ; and I know that the public has 
 received a different and erroneous account of my friend's last 
 hours. 
 
 I can never cease to feel regret that I was not by his side 
 at this awful period : a regret so strong, that I can express 
 it only by borrowing (as Mr. Mason has done on a similar 
 occasion ^) the forcible language of Tacitus : Mihi prceter acer- 
 
 1 [For the surgeon's post-morf em report see Misc. Works, i., 424.] 
 
 2 [Hannah More recorded on Jan. 19, 1794 : " Heard of the death of Mr. 
 Gibbon, the calumniator of the despised Nazarene, the derider of Christianity. 
 Awful dispensation ! He too was ray acquaintance. Lord, I bless Thee, con- 
 sidering how much infidel acquaintance I have had, that my soul never came 
 into their secret ! How many souls have his writings polluted ! Lord preserve 
 others from their contagion ! "] 
 
 ^[Mason's Gray's Works, ed. 1807, ii., 319.] 
 
1794] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 267 
 
 hitatem amici erepti, aiiget mcestitiam quod assidere valeludini, 
 fovere deficientem, satiari vultu, complexu, non contigit.^ It is 
 some consolation to me, that I did not, like Tacitus, by a 
 long absence, anticipate the loss of my friend several years 
 before his decease. Although I had not the mournful grati- 
 fication of being near him on the day he expired, yet during 
 his illness I had not failed to attend him with that assiduity 
 which his genius, his virtues, and, above all, our long un- 
 interrupted, and happy friendship sanctioned and demanded. 
 
 1 [In the original: " Sed mihi filiseque ejus preeter acerbitatem parentis 
 erepti," etc. (Tacitus, Agricola, c. xlv.). "As for me and thy daughter, besides 
 all the bitterness of a father's loss, it increases our sorrow that it was not per- 
 mitted us to watch over thy failing health, to comfort thy weakness, to satisfy 
 ourselves with those looks, those embraces " (Church & Brodribb).] 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 Mr. Gibbon's Will is dated the 1st of October, 1791, just 
 before I left Lausanne ; he distinguishes me, as usual, in the 
 most flattering manner : — 
 
 " I constitute and appoint the Right Honourable John Lord 
 Sheffield, Edward Darell, Esquire, and John Thomas Batt, 
 Esquire, to be the Executors of this my last Will and Testa- 
 ment ; and as the execution of this trust will not be attended 
 with much difficulty or trouble, I shall indulge these gentle- 
 men, in the pleasure of this last disinterested service, without 
 wronging my feelings, or oppressing my heir, by too light or 
 too weighty a testimony of my gratitude. My obligations to 
 the long and active friendship of Lord Sheffield, 1 could never 
 sufficiently repay," ^ 
 
 He then observes, that the Right Hon. Lady Eliot, of Port 
 Eliot, is his nearest relation on the father's side ^ ; but that 
 her three sons are in such prosperous circumstances, that he 
 may well be excused for making the two children of his late 
 uncle, Sir Stanier Porten,^ his heirs ; they being in a very 
 different situation. He bequeaths annuities to two old 
 servants, three thousand pounds, and his furniture, plate, 
 
 1 [" Serena " Holroyd wrote the day after his death : " I have not time to 
 write his own words to account for leaving the executors nothing, though it is 
 expressed well, and we cannot doubt his regard for my brother" \Girlhood, 
 etc., p. 265). 
 
 Lord Sheffield's daughter shows how useful his friendship had been to 
 her father : " He is a particular loss to papa. There is no other person who 
 has half the iniluence that poor man had. The best sense was always guided 
 by the best judgment. ... Of what unspeakable consequence would his cool 
 and unprejudiced advice have been to him at this critical time. . . . Even he 
 could not entirely prevent papa from taking some steps that he thought im- 
 prudent ; but he had power to restrain him in some of his impetuosities ; but 
 this friend gone, who is there who has the least influence over him ? " {Girl/wod, 
 etc., pp. 266, 269.)] 
 
 "^[^Ante, p. 21.] ^[Ante, p. 26, n. 3.] 
 
 (268) 
 
1794] MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE 269 
 
 etc., at Lausanne, to Mr. Wilhelm de Severy ^ ; one hundred 
 guineas to the poor of Lausanne, and fifty guineas each to the 
 following persons : Lady Sheffield and daughters, Maria and 
 Louisa, Madame and Mademoiselle de Severy, the Count de 
 Schomberg,^ Mademoiselle la Chanoinesse de Polier,^ and 
 M. le Ministre Le Vade,* for the purchase of some token 
 which may remind them of a sincere friend.^ 
 
 ^ [Anie, p. 236, n. Gibbon in his will says of him, " whom I wish to style by 
 the endearing name of son " (Read's Hisi. Studies, ii. , 474). The Severy 
 family preserve in their Chateau of Mex " a quantity of Gibbon's letter-paper, 
 with the blotting-paper and quill pens in daily use " (il>. , p. 471). In their house 
 at Lausanne, 33 Rue de Bourg, is " a fine kit-cat of him " {ii>. , p. 474).] 
 
 2 [Gibbon mentions him in 1790 among the French exiles. ' ' He is a man of 
 the world, of letters, and of sufficient age, since in 1753 he succeeded to Marshal 
 Saxe's regiment of Dragoons " (Corres., ii. , 223).] 
 
 3 [Deyverdun mentions some members of this family as among those who, at 
 Lausanne, "font un fonds de bonne compagnie dont on ne se lasse point" 
 {id., ii., 43).] 
 
 4 [He had arranged Gibbon's library {Girlhood, etc., p. 66).] 
 3 [By a will made in 1788 he left his step-mother an annuity of ;^2oo over 
 and above her jointure (Auto., p. 421). In 1769 he had written to his father : 
 ' ' Should Mrs. G. still object to the increase of her jointure, I must leave it as 
 an engagement not of law, but of honour, of gratitude and of inclination " 
 (Gibbon Corres., i., 104). " Serena " Holroyd wrote soon after his death : "She 
 is grieved at not being named in the will. . . . She is, not angry, but affection- 
 ately grieved" (Girlhood, etc., p. 280). 
 
 The original of this will is at the end of the Gibbon MSS. in the British 
 Museum. The signature has been cut out, the gap being skilfully concealed.] 
 
EPITAPH OF EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 The Remains of Mr, Gibbon were deposited in Lord Sheffield's 
 Family Burial-Place, in Fletching, Sussex,^ whereon is in- 
 scribed the following Epitaph, written at my request by a 
 distinguished scholar, the Rev. Dr. Parr ^ : — 
 
 EDVARDUS GIBBON 
 
 CRITICUS ACRI INGENIO ET MULTIPLICI DOCTRINA ORNATUS 
 
 IDEMQUE HISTORICORUM QUI FORTUNAM 
 
 IMPERII ROMANI 
 
 VEL LABENTIS ET INCLINATI VEL EVERSI ET FUNDITUS DELETI 
 
 LITTERIS MANDAVERINT 
 
 OMNIUM FACILE PRINCEPS 
 
 CUJUS IN MORIBUS ERAT MODERATIO ANIMI 
 
 CUM LIBERALI QUADAM SPECIE CONJUNCTA 
 
 IN SERMONE 
 
 MULTA [mULTvE] GRAVITATI COMITAS SUAVITER ADSPERSA 
 
 IN SCRIPTIS 
 
 COPIOSUM SPLENDIDUM 
 
 CONCINNUM ORBE VERBORUM' 
 
 ET SUMMO ARTIFICIO DISTINCTUM 
 
 ORATIONIS GENUS 
 
 RECONDITE EXQUISITJEQUE SENTENTIiE 
 
 ET IN MONUMENTIS [mOMENTIs] RERUM POLITICARUM OBSERVANDIS 
 
 ACUTA ET PERSPtCAX PRUDENTIA 
 
 VIXIT ANNOS LVI MENS. VII DIES XXVIII 
 
 DECESSIT XVII CAL. FEB. ANNO SACRO 
 
 MDCCLXXXXIV 
 
 ET IN HOC MAUSOLEO SEPULTUS EST 
 
 EX VOLUNTATE JOHANNIS DOMINI SHEFFIELD 
 
 QUI AMICO BENE MERENTI ET CONVICTORI HUMANISSIMO 
 
 H. TAB. [d.S.S.] p. C. 
 
 1 ["The funeral was conducted with the greatest simplicity at Mr. Gibbon's 
 desire, only his own servants attending the hearse " {Girlhood, etc., p. 267).] 
 
 2 [Lord Sheffield httle knew the time Parr took over his epitaphs. Writing 
 to him on February ig, 1796, he hoped to include it in the Memoirs, " which," 
 he said, " are likely to be published towards the middle of next month". It 
 
 (270) 
 
MEMOIES OF MY LIFE 271 
 
 was not till October, 1797, that he received it. In his modesty he asked that in 
 the lines referring to himself, ' ' viri praenobilis " and ' ' de suo sumptu," originally 
 inserted, should be omitted. He so little understood the Roman Calendar that 
 he said there was " a mistake in respect to the time of Mr. Gibbon's death. 
 That unhappy event took place on the i6th January, not on the 17th February." 
 In a later letter he wrote : " I am really much edified by what you say on the 
 Roman Calendar. I had never examined that subject with the accuracy you 
 and Mr. Gibbon have done". His family burial-place he described as " orna- 
 mented in the Gothic style " (Parr's Works, viii., 562). 
 
 " Morum simplicitas " was in one draft of the epitaph. Fox, to whom Parr 
 had sent it, wrote in reply : " How far morum simpliciias is a just account of 
 Gibbon may perhaps be doubted. But in these cases we must look for the 
 language rather of partiality than of strict truth " (Parr's Works, viii. , 563). 
 
 " In lapidary inscriptions," said Johnson, "a man is not upon oath" (Boswell's 
 Johnson, ii. , 407). 
 
 The epitaph, as inscribed, contains two errors — one of the two of great im- 
 portance. For " multa gravitati comitas," etc. , read " Multas gravitati comitas," 
 etc., and for "in monumentis," "in momentis". The last line, moreover, as 
 written by Parr, was " H. Tab. D, S. S. P. C." (Parr's Works, iv., 574).] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 1. GENTILITY AND TRADE (p. 9). 
 
 Gibbon, in The Decline, vi., 259, under date of a.d. 1099, says of Peter the 
 Hermit : "He was born of a gentleman's family (for we must now adopt a 
 modern idiom) ". 
 
 "Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger brother of a great family, 
 who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen than thrive in a 
 trade or profession that is beneath their quality. This humour fills several 
 parts of Europe with pride and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading 
 nation like ours that the younger sons, though incapable of any liberal art or 
 profession, may be placed in such a way of life as may perhaps enable them 
 to vie with the best of their family ; accordingly, we find several citizens that 
 were launched into the world with narrow fortunes rising, by an honest 
 industry, to greater estates than those of their elder brothers " (Addison, 
 The Spectator, No. 108). 
 
 Voltaire wrote from England in 1731 : "Le cadet d'un pair du royaume ne 
 d^daigne point le n^goce. My lord Townshend, ministre d 6tat, a un frfere qui 
 ae contente d'etre marchand dans la Cit6. Dans le temps que mylord Oxford 
 gouvernait I'Angleterre, son cadet 6tait facteur h. Alep. . . . Cette 
 coutume, qui pourtant commence trop k se passer, paralt monstrueuse ^ des 
 AUemands entSt^s de leurs quartiers ; ils ne sauraient concevoir que le fils 
 d'un pair d'Angleterre ne soit qu'un riche et puissant bourgeois, au lieu qu'en 
 AUemagne tout est prince" (ffiwwrej de Voltaire, ed. 1819, xxiv., 44). For 
 Nathanael Harley, of Aleppo, see CoUins's Peerage, ed. 1756, iii., 303. 
 Thomas Harley, Lord Mayor of London in 1768, was the son of the third Earl 
 of Oxford. 
 
 "An English merchant," said Johnson, "is a new species of gentleman" 
 (Boswell's Johnson, i., 491, n.). Boswell himself, after stating the claims made 
 for this "new system of gentility," continues: "Such are the specious, but 
 false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, 
 in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. 
 To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with 
 irresistible force, ' Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme '." 
 
 Blackstone {Commenta7ies, ed. 1775, ii., 215) includes among "the incon- 
 veniences that attend the splitting of estates, the inducing younger sons to 
 take up with the business and idleness of a country life, instead of being 
 serviceable to themselves and the public by engaging in mercantile, in mili- 
 tary, in civil, or in ecclesiastical employments ". 
 
 "The merchant is the friend of mankind" {The Decline, v., 324). 
 
 2. WILLIAM LAW (p. 21). 
 
 (a) Law a Nonjuror. 
 
 Law as Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, "being called upon, 
 soon after the accession of George I., to take the oaths prescribed by Act of 
 
 18 (273) 
 
274 APPENDIX 
 
 Parliament, and to sign the Declaration, refused to do so ; in consequence of 
 which he vacated his fellowship " (Law's Serious Call, ed. 1814 ; preface, 
 p. 1). Thomas Hearne, in like manner, was deprived of his post as Second 
 Keeper of the Bodleian (Hearne's Remains, iii., 192). The oaths were those 
 of supremacy by which "the Pope's pretended authority" was renounced, 
 and of abjuration by which any claim of the Pretender was renounced. It 
 had to be taken "by all persons in any oflBce, trust, or employment" 
 (Blackstone's Commentaries, ed. 1775, i., 368). 
 
 Johnson, in his Life of Fenton, describes that poet's "refusing to qualify 
 himself for public employment by the oaths required" as " perverseness of 
 integrity". See also Boswell's Johnson, ii., 321, for his ill opinion of the 
 nonjurors ; and Hearne's Remarks and Collections, ed. C. B. Doble, Preface, 
 p. 6, for Professor Mayor's defence of them. 
 
 Swift advised a Jacobite friend to comply with the law. ' ' For my own 
 part," he wrote, "I do not see any law of God or man forbidding us to give 
 security to the powers that be ; and private men are not to trouble them- 
 selves about titles to Crowns, whatever may be their particular opinions. 
 The abjuration is understood as the law stands ; and, as the law stands, none 
 has title to the Crown but the present possessor" (Swift's Letters to Chet- 
 •mode, p. 87). 
 
 {b) Law's Attacks on the Stage. 
 
 It was in The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments fully 
 Demonstrated that Law attacked the Stage. Gibbon refers to the following 
 passages (pp. 14, 18, 42) : " The Play-House is as certainly the House of the 
 Devil as the Church is the House of God. ... It belongs to the Devil, 
 and is the Place of his Honour. . . . The Place of the Devil's Abode, 
 where he holds his filthy Court of evil Spirits. . . . An Entertainment, 
 where he was at the Head of it ; where the whole of it was in order to his 
 Glory. ... A Place that as certainly belongs to the Devil as the heathen 
 Temples of old, where wanton Hymns were sung to Venus, and drunken 
 Songs to the God of Wine. . . . You must consider that all the Laughter 
 there is not only vain and foolish, but that it is a Laughter amongst Devils, 
 that you are upon profane Ground, and hearing Musick in the very Porch of 
 Hell. " Law went on to maintain that ' ' the Stage never has one innocent 
 play".. 
 
 For John Dennis's argument in defence of the Stage see Overton's Law, 
 p. 38. 
 
 (<:) Law and the Bangoeian Controversy. 
 
 In 1709 "one Hoadley, a pious and judicious divine," in a sermon before 
 the Lord Mayor, maintained ' ' that it was not only lawful, but a duty incum- 
 bent on all men, to resist bad and cruel governors " (Burnet's Hist, of His 
 Own Time, iv., 229). When the House of Commons impeached Sacheverell, 
 an address was voted to the Queen, "that she would be graciously pleased to 
 bestow some dignity in the Church on Mr. Hoadly, for his eminent services 
 both to the Church and State ". She answered "that she would take a proper 
 opportunity to comply with their desires ; which, however, she never did " 
 {Pari. Hist., vi., 808). Soon after the accession of George I. he was rewarded 
 with the Bishopric of Bangor, worth, according to Whiston, £800 a year. He 
 held it "for six entire years," Whiston adds, "without ever seeing that 
 diocese in his life ; to the great scandal of religion " (Life of W. Whiston, 
 ed. 1749, p. 244). In 1717 a sermon and another publication of his were con- 
 demned by a Committee of Convocation. The Government stopped further 
 proceedings by a prorogation. From that date till 1861 Convocation was 
 never allowed to meet as a deliberative body {Johnsonian Miscellanies, ii., 
 369, n., and Boswell's Johnson, i., 464). 
 
APPENDIX 275 
 
 Hoadley was promoted from Bangor, through Hereford and Salisbury, to 
 Winchester, while his brother was made Archbishop of Armagh. "He was 
 preached and wrote against all over the kingdom," said the Nonjuror Hearne, 
 ' ' occasioned chiefly by a penny sermon of his, which, had they let it alone, 
 would have died in a fortnight's time ; to such little beginnings do some men 
 owe their rise" (Hearne's Remains, iii., 157). 
 
 "In 1717 Law wrote his Three Letters to the Bishop of Batigor. . . . 
 Dean Hook said 'they have never been answered, and may indeed be 
 regarded as unanswerable' {Ghuixh Dictionaiy : Art. Bangorian Contro- 
 versy) " (Overton's Law, p. 19). 
 
 In June, 1735, Hoadley published anonymously A Plain Account of the 
 Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord/'s Stipper {Gejit. Mag., 1735, 
 p. 335). In Auto., p. 25, Gibbon has the foUo'oing note on this work : "By 
 the pen of an angel, says Adams (I.A.L., i. c. 17) — I think out of character ". 
 The reference is to Fielding's Joseph Andrews, liber 1, caput 17. Parson 
 Adams says : "If you mean by the clergy some few designing factious men, 
 who have it at heart to establish some favourite schemes at the price of the 
 liberty of mankind, and the very essence of religion, it is not in the power of 
 such persons to decry any book they please ; witness that excellent book 
 called A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament ; a book 
 written (if I may venture on the expression) with the pen of an angel ". 
 
 Law's answer, A Demonstration of the Gross and Fundamental Errors, &c., 
 was published in April, 1737 {Ge?it. Alag., 1737, p. 257). 
 
 {d) Law and "The Fable of the Bees". 
 
 Law's answer was entitled : Remarks upori\p. Late Book entitled the Fable 
 of the Bees, &c., 1724, 80. F. D. Maurice edited it in 1844, at the request of 
 John Sterling, who wrote to him: "The first section is one of the most 
 remarkable philosophical essays I have ever seen in English. You probably 
 know Law as perhaps the most perfect of controversial writers, whether right 
 or wrong in his argument " (Preface, p. 1). 
 
 "Everything, according to Mandeville," wrote Adam Smith, "is luxury 
 which exceeds what is absolutely necessary for the support of human nature, 
 so that there is vice even in the use of a clean shirt, or of a convenient 
 habitation. . . . Though his system, perhaps, never gave occasion to 
 more vice than what would have been without it, at least it taught that vice 
 which arose from other causes to appear with more effrontery, and to avow 
 the corruption of its motives with a profligate audaciousness which had never 
 been heard of before" {Theory of Moral Sentiments, ii., 270, 274). 
 
 Fielding makes Miss Matthews, a woman of loose character, praise "that 
 charming fellow, Mandeville" {Amelia, Bk. iii., ch. 5). 
 
 Gibbon himself shows the influence of Mandeville when he maintains that 
 "luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only 
 means that can correct the unequal distribution of property " ( The Decline, 
 i., 53). See also Boswell's Johnson, iii., 292. 
 
 (e) Law's "Serious Call". 
 
 Johnson, who read the Serious Call at College, said : "I found Law quite 
 an overmatch forme" (Boswell's Johnson, L, 68). "The Serious Call, he 
 said, "was the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language" {ib., ii., 
 122). "William Law, Sir," he said, "wrote the best piece of Paranetick 
 Divinity, but William Law was no reasoner " {ib., iv., 287, n.). Mrs. Thrale, 
 in one of her "studied epistles" {ib., iii., 421), wrote to Johnson : " You used 
 to say you would not trust me with that author upstairs on the dressing-room 
 shelf, yet I now half wish I had never followed any precepts but his" 
 (Piosei Letters, ii., 214). 
 
276 APPENDIX 
 
 Hannah More (Memoirs, ii., 435) recommended the Serious Call to the 
 Earl of Orford (Horace Walpole) and some ladies as "a book that their 
 favourite Mr. Gibbon had highly praised. They have promised to read it ; 
 and I know they will be less afraid of Gibbon's recommendation than of 
 mine ". 
 
 The chapters in which Gibbon said that his two aunts are described are 
 the seventh and eighth. They have the following titles : ' ' How the impru- 
 dent tise of an estate corrzipts all the tempers of the mind, and fills the heart 
 with poor and ridiculous passions, through the whole course of life ; represented 
 in the character of Flavia." ^^ How the wise and pious tcse of an estate naturally 
 carrieih us to great perfection in all the virtues of the Christian life ; repre- 
 sented in the character of Alirauda." The Serious Call was published in 1729, 
 seven years before Mr. Gibbon's death, when Hester Gibbon was twenty -five 
 years old. Nevertheless, Flavia and Miranda are described as having had the 
 management of their estates for twenty years ; so that if Gibbon's aunts 
 resembled them, it must have been by imitation on their part, and not on 
 the part of the author. 
 
 3. GIBBON'S KINSMEN THE ACTONS (p. 24). 
 
 Edward Acton, who was the great-grandson of the second baronet, Sir 
 Walter Acton, by his second son Walter, attended at Besanfon Gibbon's 
 father, who was the great-grandson of the same baronet by his third son 
 Richard. Edward Acton's eldest son, John, "a naval officer in the service 
 of Leopold of Tuscany, was sent for to organise the Neapolitan army and 
 navy. He was made general, then captain-general of the kingdom, and, 
 lastly, premier, or rather sole-minister (for the other ministers were merely 
 his creatures), and in this ofiice he remained many years. His administration 
 was neither so economical nor so wise as that of Tanucci, his predecessor. 
 . . . Yet a considerable degree of liberty of speech, and even of the press, 
 prevailed, and the country was prosperous and the people contented until 
 the French Revolution, of which Naples felt the shock" {Penny Cyclo., x., 
 230). He died in 1811. 
 
 Lord Holland, who visited Naples in January, 1794, saysj that "the 
 suspicious policy of the court, under the guidance of the Queen and General 
 Acton, hacl peopled the prisons with those of their subjects most eminent for 
 birth, manners, or acquirements " {Memoirs of the Whig Party, ed. 1852, 
 i., 55). 
 
 In 1791 General Acton succeeded to the family title as sixth baronet. One 
 of his sons, who was born nine years after the historian's death, became a 
 Cardinal. The present Lord Acton is the General's grandson. 
 
 The General's uncle at Leghorn was Richard Acton. Gibbon, who visited 
 him at Pisa, recorded on 24th September, 1764: "Je plains beaucoup ce 
 pauvre vieillard. A I'&ge de soixante ans, il se trouve abandonn6 de tons les 
 Anglais, pour avoir chang6 de religion ; accabl6 d'inflrmit6, sans esp6rance de 
 revoir son pays, il se fixe parmi un peuple dont il n'a jamais pu ai^prendre la 
 langue" {Misc. Works, i., 195). See also Corres., i., 37. 
 
 4. THE BOROUGH OF PETERSFIELD (p. 25). 
 
 " Edward Gibbon, father [grandfather] of the Gibbon, bought Petersfield 
 in 1719. In 1739 it passed by purchase to the JoUifEe family " (Woodward's 
 Hist, of Hampshire, iii., 320). If the date, 1739, is correct, it was not, as 
 Gibbon says, his grandfather (he died in 1736) who " alienated such important 
 property," but his father. Whoever it was, it was not Petersfield that he 
 possessed, but "a weighty share" in it. The grandfather never represented 
 
APPENDIX 277 
 
 the borough. His son was once member, at the general election of 1735. As 
 Sir W. JoUiffe was the other member (Pari. Hist, ix., 626), he most likely 
 was the co-owner, till by purchase he acquired the entire interest. The 
 Gibbons still retained "the estate and manor of Beriton, otherwise Buriton, 
 near Petersfield" [ante, p. 116). 
 
 The advantage of being the owner of a borough that was "a burgage 
 tenure " is shown in The Probationary Odes, ed. 1799, p. 302, where it is said 
 of "Warren Hastings's wife : — 
 
 " Oh ! Pitt, with awe behold that precious throat, 
 "Whose necklace teems with many a future vote ! 
 Pregnant with Burgage gems each hand she rears." 
 
 Pitt, in his Reform Bill of 1785, proposed to compensate the owners of 
 thirty-six small boroughs, which were to be disfranchised, at the cost (it was 
 said) of £1,000,000 (Pari. Hist., xxv., 442, 445). 
 
 On 11th May, 1820, the freeholders of Petersfield petitioned the House of 
 Commons against the return of Hylton JoUiffe and Baron Hotham. The 
 Mayor, they said, the Bev. J. AYhicher, who acted as Returning Officer, "had 
 been elected at a Court Leet nominated by the Steward of the Court Leet, of 
 which JoUiffe claims to be the Lord, whereas he ought to be elected at such 
 Court Leet by a jury selected by the Bailiff of the Borough ". 
 
 In a later petition, presented on 16th November, 1830, the same complaints 
 were made. The Steward, it was added, was the solicitor of the Lord of the 
 Manor. Freeholders had their votes rejected because "they were not in 
 possession of their title deeds, although they had for several years been in 
 possession of the property for which they claimed to vote, and as evidence of 
 their title had tendered attested copies of the deeds which Hylton JoUiffe and 
 his solicitor refused to produce, though they admitted that they were in his 
 possession as the owner of the largest portion of the property held under the 
 same title". The petitioners added that "the votes of man}^ persons were 
 received who were not the bo?iafide owners of freehold tenements, but merely 
 possessed of estates fraudulently and coUusively conveyed to them by 
 JoUiffe, in order to qualify them to vote". 
 
 The petitioners of 1820 had maintained that " the right of voting is in the 
 Burgesses (being the inhabitants, householders paying scot and lot), and in 
 the freeholders of lands in general, and in freeholders of ancient dwelling- 
 houses or shambles, or dwelling-houses or shambles built upon ancient 
 foundations, within the Borough, not restricted to houses or shambles of 
 burgage tenure ". The Select Committee of the House of Commons reported 
 that ' ' the right of election is in the freeholders of lands or ancient dwelling- 
 houses or shambles, or dwelling-houses or shambles built upon ancient 
 foundations within the Borough, such lands and dwelling-houses being entire 
 ancient tenements ". 
 
 A second committee sitting the following year made a report on 30th May 
 in the same words, with the exception that the last two lines ran " such lands, 
 dwelling houses, and shambles not being restricted to entire ancient tene- 
 ments ". All three committees rejected the petitions, leaving the Lord of the 
 Manor full power to elect whom he pleased. 
 
 Blackstone says [Commentaries, ed. 1775, ii., 82): ""Where the right of 
 election is by burgage tenure, that alone is a proof of the antiquity of the 
 borough. Tenure in burgage therefore, or burgage tenure, is where houses or 
 lands which were formerly the site of houses, in an ancient borough, are held 
 of some lord in common socage, by a certain established rent. " 
 
 5. PHLEDRUS (p. 36). 
 
 Pattison, describing Casaubon's reception in Paris "by the best set in the 
 capital," continues : " This circle of men, a society such as even Paris has not 
 
278 APPENDIX 
 
 been able to produce again, consisted chiefly of members of the bar, or 
 magistrature. Their centre of resort was the house of J. A. de Thou 
 [Thuanus, ante, p. 6], the historian, president of the court of parlement. 
 Their presiding genius had been Pierre Pithou, who was just lost to them by 
 death, 1596 " {Isaac Casaubon, ed. 1892, p. 115). 
 
 Pithou had been a Protestant. "Having escaped almost miraculously 
 from the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, he secured his future safety 
 by turning Papist" (Monk's Life of Bentley, ii., 236). 
 
 Monk [ib., ii., 230) says of Bentley's edition of Phcedrus : "Never did he 
 more expose himself to the attacks of enemies than when, at the suggestion 
 of pique and resentment, he launched this puny and meagre performance into 
 the troubled waters of criticism. ... It terminated his friendship with his 
 old correspondent Burman. This indefatigable scholar had already printed 
 three editions of the Fabulist. He was filled with amazement at the 
 numerous and daring changes of the text." In a fourth edition by reprinting 
 the Epistola Critica, in which Hare had reviewed Bentley's notes, he gave 
 great offence [ib., p. 235). 
 
 "Burman," wrote Gibbon, "was a mere critic, without being (in my 
 opinion) a good one, since a good critic mixst reason well ; and Burman never 
 could reason at all " {Misc. Works, v., 224). Johnson published a brief life of 
 him in The Gent. Mag. for 1742, p. 206 ; reprinted in Johnson's Works, vi., 
 396. See also ante, p. 59. 
 
 6. FAIRY TALE ENGRAVED IN GIBBON'S MEMORY (p. 38). 
 
 The tale is in Hypolitus, Earl of Douglas (London, 1708), a translation of 
 Hypolite, Comte de Duglas, by M. C. La Mothe, Countess d'Aulnoy (Lyon, 
 1699). " The faithful Hypolitus " in pursuit of " the most admirable Julia" 
 arrived at an Abbey, where the Abbess asked him to tell a story. He told 
 how the Russian King, Adolph, losing his way in hunting, arrived at the 
 Cave of the Winds. Zephyrus bore him away to the Isle of Felicity, where 
 he was entertained by the Princess. One day she asked him how long he 
 thought he had been there. "I think it cannot be much less than three 
 months," he replied. She burst out laughing. "Dear Adolph," said she with 
 a very serious air, "you must know it is no less than three hundred years." 
 He was struck with shame at having done no glorious action in all that time, 
 and insisted on leaving her to render himself more worthy of her favours. 
 She gave him a horse which would bear him safely home so long as he did not 
 touch the ground before he reached his own country. In the way lay a cart 
 overthrown, laden with wings of divers shapes and sizes, and by it the carter, 
 a very old man, who called for help. The King alighted, when up sprang the 
 old man, calling out : "At last I have met you. My name is Time. I have 
 been in search of you these three ages. I have worn out all these wings to 
 find you out." At these words he stifled the King. Zephyrus carried his 
 dead body back to the Palace of Felicity. "Since that fatal day nobody has 
 got sight of the Princess " (pp. 176-196). 
 
 7. GIBBON AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL (p. 39). 
 
 Gibbon was not clear as to the earlier dates in his life. The death of his 
 mother he placed both in 1746 and 1747 {Auto., pp. 45, 221, 295). His 
 grandfather Porten's bankruptcy he placed in the spring of 1747 and 1748 
 {ib., pp. 48, 119, 223). In one account it was in February, 1751, that he 
 became Francis's pupil, and in another account in Januar}!-, 1752 {ib., pp. 55, 
 116). Of his time at Westminster School he gives three different accounts. 
 According to the text he entered in January, 1749 ; the date of his departure 
 
APPENDIX 279 
 
 he does not give. In a second memoir he says he passed "two years and a 
 half at the school— from January, 1748, to August, 1750" {Auto., p. 115). In 
 a third account he says : "I continued near two years (from Christmas, 1748, 
 to August, 1750) " (ib., p. 221). He consulted Dr. Vincent, headmaster, in 
 1793, who replied : " From Dr. Nichol's book, which is in my possession, you 
 were entered in January, 1748. It was the same year I was entered myself in 
 the September following. Your age is noticed, as is that of all the others in 
 Dr. N. s book, which makes you nine years old in 1748. . . . Dr. Vincent is 
 sure of his own memory when he asserts that he remembers Mr. Gibbon at 
 Mrs. Porten's house in 1748, as he lived next door" {Misc. Works, ii., 489). 
 In January, 1748, Gibbon was ten. 
 
 Mr. J. Sargeamit, the author of Annals of Westminster School, informs me 
 that " Vincent was a very accurate man ". 
 
 If the earlier dates are correct, it was not the twelfth but the eleventh year 
 of Gibbon's age that was ' ' the most propitious to the growth of his intellectual 
 stature " ; and it was not the loss of three but of four "precious years " that 
 he had to lament {a?ite, p. 43). 
 
 The headmaster's name Gibbon gives correctly in the text — John NicoU ; 
 though elsewhere he writes it Nichols {Auto., pp. 116, 221), as did Cowper 
 and Cumberland. Cowper, who at the age of eighteen left the school not long 
 after Gibbon entered, says of NicoU's preparation of the boys for confirmation : 
 " The old man acquitted himself of this duty like one who had a deep sense of 
 its importance, and I believe most of us were struck by his manner, and 
 affected by his exhortations" (Southey's Cowper, i., 13). 
 
 According to Cumberland, the dramatist {Memoirs, i., 71-2), who left 
 Westminster about three years earlier than Cowper, NicoU "had the art of 
 making his scholars gentlemen ". Cumberland tells how he and some of his 
 schoolfellows one day, escaping from the Abbey service, went and disturbed 
 a meeting of Quakers. They were reported by a monitor. " When my turn 
 came to be called up to the Master, I presume he saw my contrition, when, 
 turning a mild look upon me, he said aloud, ' Erubuit, salva est res ' * ; and 
 sent me back to my seat ". 
 
 Bentham, who entered Westminster about five years after Gibbon, says 
 that a scheme was formed for erecting houses in Dean's Yard for people who 
 wished to send their sons to the school. No tenant was found ' ' except one 
 woman, who was an aunt of Gibbon. The scheme failed ; and when half a 
 dozen houses were built no new funds were forthcoming, and they were either 
 pulled dovm, or were left to decay" (Bentham's Works, x., 29). "The 
 discipline of these houses was supposed to be under the control of one of the 
 masters, who received a fee from the dame. It was sometimes little more 
 than a name. Of the masters some at least were content to act only when 
 the boys interfered with their personal comfort. Perhaps few were like 
 Dodd, the actor's son, who allowed his father to come djrunk from Drury 
 Lane and play his part again to an audience of striplings and infants " (Sar- 
 geaunt's Atinals, etc., p. 159). 
 
 Under Dr. NicoU's successor the school seems to have suffered. According 
 to Bentham " it was a wretched place for instruction. . . . He often spoke of 
 the tyranny and cruelty of the fagging system. ' It was,' he said, 'a horrid 
 despotism. . . . Our great glory was Dr. Markham [the headmaster, after- 
 wards Archbishop of York] . He had a large quantity of classical knowledge. 
 His business was rather in courting the great than in attending to the school. 
 Any excuse served his purpose for deserting his post ' " (Bentham's Works, x., 
 30, 34). 
 
 In 1779 six of the boys were tried at the Quarter Sessions for wounding a 
 man in Dean's Yard. One of them, with a drawn knife in his hand, said, " If 
 you don't kneel down and ask pardon, I will rip you up," which the man was 
 
 * "He blushes ; all is well" (Terence, Adelphi, iv., 5. 9). 
 
280 APPENDIX 
 
 compelled to do to save his life. Four of them were sentenced to a month's 
 imprisonment and £100 fine to be paid among them ; but if they would in 
 court ask the prosecutor's pardon on their knees, as they had compelled him 
 to ask theirs, the court would take off the imprisonment. They absolutely 
 refused asking pardon on their knees. The sentence stood thus for about an 
 hour, when the father of one of the four told the court that his son was 
 elected to Christ College, Oxford, and must go there in a few days or lose 
 his election. On this the court took oflE his imprisonment. This being done 
 some of the magistrates moved that the rest might have their imprisonment 
 taken ofE also. On a division it was carried by nine to seven. Thej^ were 
 then directed to make the prosecutor satisfaction. Their friends paid him 
 £50, and his attorney £20 for the costs {Annual Register, 1779, i., 213). 
 
 Southey, who entered "Westminster in 1788, speaking of the advantages 
 which a day -scholar in every school has over a boarder, says : " He suffers 
 nothing from tyranny, which is carried to excess in schools. . . . Above all, 
 his religious habits, which it is almost impossible to retain at school, are safe. 
 I would gladly send a son to a good school by day ; but rather than board 
 him at the best, I would, at whatever inconvenience, educate him myself " 
 (Southey's Life and Corres., i., 80). 
 
 8. AUTHORS READ BY GIBBON IN HIS BOYHOOD (p. 44). 
 {a) Thomas Hbabne. 
 
 Ductal' Historicus ; or a Short System of Utiiversal History, &c. By Thomas 
 Hearne. Oxford, 1704. 8vo. 2 vols. 
 
 Gibbon, in his Address on our Latin Memorials of the Middle Ages {Misc. 
 Works, iii., 566), says: "The last who has dug deep into the mine was 
 Thomas Hearne, a clerk of Oxford, poor in fortune, and, indeed, poor in 
 imderstanding. His minute and obscure diligence, his voracious and undis- 
 tinguishing appetite, and the coarse vulgarity of his taste and style, have 
 exposed him to the ridicule of idle wits. Yet it cannot be denied that 
 Thomas Hearne has gathered many gleanings of the harvest ; but if his own 
 prefaces are filled with crude and extraneous matter, his editions will be 
 always recommended by their accuracy and use." 
 
 Pope addresses him in The Dunciad (iii., 189) : — 
 
 ' ' To future ages may thy dulness last, 
 As thou preserv'st the dulness of the past." 
 
 Gray's friend, Richard "West, wrote The Reply of Time to Tom Hearne : — 
 
 "Ho ! ho ! cried Time to Thomas Hearne, 
 "Whatever I forget, you learn." 
 
 ("Walpole's Letters, i., 1.) 
 
 {b) Littlbbury's "Herodotus". 
 
 The Egyptian and Grecian History of Herodotus. Translated from the 
 Greek by Isaac Littlebury. 2 vols. 8vo. 1709. — In spite of its lameness it 
 reached a third edition in 1737 {Ge?tt. Mag., 1737, p. 578). 
 
 (i;) Spelman's "Xenophon". 
 
 The Expedition of Cyrus into Persia. Translated, with notes, by Edward 
 Spelman, Esq. London, 1742. 2 vols. 8vo. — Gibbon described it as "one 
 of the most accurate and elegant prose translations that any language has 
 produced " {Misc. Works, v., 587). 
 
APPENDIX 281 
 
 (d) Gordon's "Tacitus". 
 
 The Works of Tacitus. By Thomas Gordon. London, 1728-31. Folio. 
 2 vols. — The second edition, in 4 vols. 8vo, is advertised in The Gent. Mag., 
 1737, p. 320. Mr. Arthur Galton reprinted in 1890 portions of Gordon's 
 translation, to which he prefixed an interesting introduction (London : 
 Walter Scott). 
 
 {e) Peocopius. 
 
 The History of the Warres of the Emperor Justinian. Written in Greek by 
 Procopius, and Englished by H. Holcroft, Knight. London, 1653. — For 
 Gibbon's estimate of Procopius see The Decline, iv., 210. Macaulay, in the 
 opening of his History of £ngla?id, after recounting a ghostly story of one 
 province of our island, continues : ' ' Such were the marvels which an able 
 historian [Procopius] . . . gravely related in the rich and polite Constanti- 
 nople, touching the country in which the founder of Constantinople had 
 assumed the imperial purple ". 
 
 (f) John Speed. 
 
 Speed published in 1611 The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine and 
 The History of Great Britaine under the Conquests of ye Romaiis, Saxons, 
 Danes and Normans. 
 
 {g) Rapin. 
 
 Voltaire, speaking of works of great merit, wrote in 1752: "La nation 
 franpaise est de toutes les nations celle qui a produit le plus de ces ouvrages. 
 Sa langue est devenue la langue de I'Burope : tout y a contribu^ ... les 
 pasteurs calvinistes refugies, qui ont porte 1' eloquence, la m^thode dans les 
 pays Strangers ; . . . un Rapin de Thoyras, qui a donne en franpais la seule 
 bonne histoire d'Arigleterre ' {(Euvres de Voltaire, xviii., 265). 
 
 In The Gent. Mag., 1731, p. 90, is advertised: " The History of England, 
 &c., by M. De Rapin Thoyras {sic\ Done into English by N. Tindal, M.A. 
 Vol. XIV." — There were fifteen volumes in all. Tindal dedicated it to the 
 Prince of Wales, ' ' who was so pleased that he gave him a gold medal worth 
 forty guineas" {Gent. Mag., 1733, p. 357). 
 
 (A) Mezebay. 
 
 M6zeray's Histoire de France was translated by John Bulteel in 1683. 
 To M^zeraj' Sainte-Beuve gives two of his Causeries du Lundi, viii., 194- 
 233. 
 
 Prior wrote some lines in a copy of the History, beginning : — 
 
 ' ' Whate'er thy couutrj^men have done 
 By law and wit, by sword and gun. 
 In thee is faithfully recited." 
 
 (Prior's Poetical Works, ed. 1858, p. 102.) See Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, x., 
 81, for Scott's recitation of them. 
 
 (?) Davila. 
 
 Davila's Historia delle Guerre civili di Prancia was translated by Cotterell 
 and Aylesbury in 1647-48. — "Davila, it is said, was one of John Hampden's 
 favourite writers" (Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1874, i., 442). 
 
 (/) Machiavbl. 
 
 The translation of Machiavel began as early as 1562 (Lowndes's Bibl. 
 Ma?i., p. 1438). 
 
282 APPENDIX 
 
 (i) Fra Paolo Sabpi. 
 
 Gibbon, writing of Fra Paolo Sarpi, says: "Whoever will give himself 
 the trouble, or rather the pleasure, of perusing that incomparable historian," 
 &c. {Afisc. Works, iv., 551). Johnson began to translate his History of the 
 Council of Trent (Boswell's Johnson, i., 135). "He is my favourite modern 
 historian," wrote Macaulay (Life, ed. 1877, ii., 285). 
 
 (/) Archibald Bower. 
 
 Bower's ^wiforjo/^^^ Po/fij was published in 1748-66. 4to. 7 vols. Price, 
 £4 4s. — Gibbon wrote of him in 1764 : ' ' He is a rogue unmasked, who 
 enjoyed for twenty years the favour of the public, because he had quitted a 
 sect [the Jesuits] to which he still secretly adhered, and because he had been 
 a counsellor of the inquisition in the town of Macerata, where an inquisition 
 never existed" {Misc. Works, v., 464). He was one of the writers of the 
 Universal History {3 ohnsov^s, Letters, ii., 433). Goldsmith introduces him in 
 Retaliatioti among the "quacking divines". See also Horace Walpole's 
 Letters, ii., 209, 508. 
 
 (m) Lawrence Eachard. 
 
 Of Eachard's Roman History, 5 vols., 8vo, London, 1707, "Vols. 1, 2 
 only are professedly written by Eachard ; the subsequent vols, purport to 
 be continuations by another hand" (Brit. AIus. Cat.). The continuation 
 was carried down to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. "He stole 
 his Roman History from Dr. Howell's History, without so much as making 
 acknowledgment" (Hearne's Collections, i., 297). 
 
 (n) "William Howell. 
 
 Howell's History of tlie World was published in 1680-85. 
 
 (o) Rev. Simon Ockley. 
 
 Hearne wrote of Ockley in 1706 : " Being naturally inclin'd to ye study of 
 ye Oriental Tongues, he was, when abt 17 years of Age, made Hebrew 
 Lecturer in ye said College [Queen's College, Cambridg«], chiefly because he 
 was poor, and covdd hardly subsist. In ye Arabick Language he is said by 
 some Judges to be ye best skill'd of any Man in England " (Hearne's Collec- 
 tions, i., 245). 
 
 Gibbon, mentioning his History of the Saracens, continues : " Besides our 
 printed authors, he draws his materials from the Arabic MSS. of Oxford, 
 which he would have more deeply searched, had he been confined to the 
 Bodleian Library instead of the City Jail ; a fate how unworthy of the man 
 and of his country " { The Decline, vi., 4). He died in 1720. 
 
 (/) Abulpharagius. 
 
 " Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Historice Arabum of Pocock ! 
 (Oxon., 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text and version are extracted 
 from the Dynasties of Gregory Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards 
 translated" {The Decline, v., 314). See also ib., v., 155, for Gibbon's praise 
 of Abulpharagius as "a poet, physician and historian, a subtle philosopher 
 and a moderate divine ". 
 
 {q) Cbllabius. 
 
 Notitia Orbis Antiqui, sive Geographia Plenior. By Christopher Cellarius. 
 1703-6. 2 vols. — Gibbon, after reading Emmius's Geographical Description 
 of Greece, wrote : "It contributed a good deal to confirm me in the contempt- 
 ible idea I always entertained of Cellarius " {Misc. Works, v., 286). 
 
APPENDIX 283 
 
 {r) Dk. Edwakd Wells. 
 
 An Historical Geography of the Old atid New Testament. By Edward 
 "Wells, D.D. 1708-11. 
 
 {s) Stbauchius. 
 
 Strauchius (^gidius Strauch) published in 1697 Dissertatio historico- 
 chrottologica de epocha muitdi conditi. 
 
 (t) Heivicus. 
 
 Christophorus Helvicus published in 1609 Theatrum Historicum, sive 
 ChronologicE systema novum, &c. 
 
 [u) James Anderson. 
 
 James Anderson's Royal Genealogies ; or the Genealogical Tables of Emperors, 
 Kings and Princes from Adam to these Times was published in 1732. 
 
 {v) Archbishop Usher. 
 
 Annates Veteris et Novi Testamenti, 1650-54. Usher published also an 
 English version. "Usher," said Johnson, "was the great luminary of the 
 Irish Church ; and a greater, he added, no Church could boast of ; at least 
 in modern times" (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 132). 
 
 (w) Dr. Humphrey Pbideaux. 
 
 Tlie Old and New Testament Connected, &c. By Humphrey Prideaux, 
 D.D. London, 1716-18. Fol. 2 vols. — Hearne wrote of him that Dean 
 Aldrich " used to speak slightingly of him, as an unaccurate muddy -headed 
 man " (Hearne's Remains, iii., 157). See ante, p. 223. 
 
 (a") J. J. SCALIGER. 
 
 J. J. Scaliger published his De Emendaiione Temporum in 1583, and his 
 Thesaurus Temporum in 1606. 
 
 {y) Petavius. 
 
 " Denis P^tau, n6 a Orleans, en 1583, j^suite. II a r6form^ la chrono- 
 logic " (ffi^z^rw de Voltaire, xvii., 141). "II se trouve, selon le fr^re P^tau, 
 j^suite, que la famille de No6 avait produit un bi-milliard deux cent 
 quarante-sept milliards deux cent vingt-quatre millions sept cent dix-sept 
 habitants en trois cent ans. Le bon prStre Petau ne savait pas ce que c'est que 
 de fairs des enfans et de les Clever. Comme il y va ! " {lb., xvi., 400.) 
 
 9. GIBBON AT MAGDALEN COLLEGE (p. 49). 
 
 Gibbon, as the College Books show, was the only Gentleman-Commoner 
 who entered in 1752. In 1750, four entered; in 1751, one, and in 1752, 
 before he left, two. In the next two years and a half sixteen entered. 
 The late Rev. J. R. Bloxam, D.D., formerly Fellow of the College, who 
 graduated in 1832, wrote to me on Jan. 22, 1889 : "There was no tradition in 
 my time of the set of rooms which Gibbon occupied. President Routh told 
 Milman that story of Finden, the Fellow which he gives in a note {ante, 
 p. 61, n.^ but he also told him that Gibbon had a great head, always wore 
 black, and came late into Hall. He was admitted as a member of the College 
 on April 2, 1752, and matriculated in the Easter Vacation. His name dis- 
 appears from the Buttery Book on July 4, 1753 ; but his name was not taken 
 
284 APPENDIX 
 
 off the College Books regularly till 1755, when he received back his caution 
 money (£40). Before that time he had joined the Church of Rome, and had 
 left it, of which proceeding the College was probably entirely ignorant. 
 After he had published his Autobiography [this is a mistake, as it was pub- 
 lished after his death], one of the Magdalen Fellows met him in Oxford, and 
 asked him to dine at Magdalen, saying, ' If you come, we will not burn you '. 
 He replied that he would have done so, but that he had an engagement in 
 London at a certain time, and must proceed on his journey thither. There is a 
 book in the Eton College Library, Bishop Hall's Satires, with his name written 
 in it in a boyish hand, ' Edward Gibbon, Gentleman Commoner of Magdalen 
 College, Oxford, May 10, 1753 '. "\¥hen, as Librarian of Magdalen College, I 
 read his taunt that the College had no writers, I commenced a Library of 
 Magdalen authors, and, in addition to many works of authors like Addison, 
 collected about three hundred volumes, for which collection I have still some 
 to be added. His second tutor, whose name he suppresses, was Dr. Thomas 
 Winchester, of whom I have given an account in my Register of Demies, 
 whom old President Routh recollected." 
 
 Dr. Routh was elected President of Magdalen in 1791. He died in Decem- 
 ber, 1854, aged ninety -nine. Gibbon passed a night in Oxford in Oct., 1793 
 {ante, p. 251, n. 1). 
 
 " One unparalleled beauty belonging to this College is the extensive out- 
 let. The Grove seems perfectly adapted to indulge contemplation ; being a 
 pleasant kind of solitude, laid out in walks, and well planted with elms. It 
 has likewise a bowling-green in it, and having some beautiful lawns, feeds 
 about forty head of deer. Beside these walks, there is a very delightful one 
 round a meadow, surrounded by the branches of the Cherwell ; whence it is 
 called the Water-Walk" {A Pocket Companion for Oxford, ed. 1762, p. 31). 
 
 Addison, it seems, had not yet given his name to the long straight walk on 
 the northern side. 
 
 It was as a Gentleman-Commoner that Gibbon received the key of the 
 library. James wrote from Queen's College in his fourth year : "The honour 
 of the key of the library was in consequence of my application to the Doctor. 
 It has, however, many inconveniences ; whenever I want to go in, I am forced 
 to get the butlei''s keys, there being two locks on the door to prevent a sub- 
 scriber's entering without leave" [Letters of Radcliffe an ^ James, p. 165). 
 
 The dreariness of a poor student's lot at Oxford is described in A n Epistle 
 from Oxon to a Friend, published in the same volume as Johnson's Latin 
 version of Pope's Messiah (Husband's Miscellany of Poems, 1731, p. 121). 
 Husband was a Fellow of Pembroke College. The poet writes : — 
 
 "But I, unhappy I, whom cloistered walls 
 Incage, far distant from my native soil. 
 The sport of wanton fortime, live deprived 
 Of every common privilege of life. 
 Nor converse me of entertaining friend. 
 Nor merry tale, nor care-beguiling jest. 
 Nor social catch, nor quavering laugh delight. 
 My gloomy, melancholy, mournful days 
 Pass joyless, doomed for ever to the din 
 Of wrangling, barbarous, unmeaning terms, 
 The pedant's learned jargon, and the plague 
 Of dull, illogical, untutored youth. 
 
 Thirst in my throat, and famine in my bowels, 
 
 I to recess of naked room repair ; 
 
 A garret vile, dark, dark and dismal all 
 
 As night 
 
 No warmth of wood 
 My frozen limbs with crackling blaze revives," 
 
APPENDIX 285 
 
 10. WARBURTON AND LOWTH (p. 49). 
 
 Warburton, in an Appefidix Concerning the Book of Job, published in the 
 fourth edition of The Divine Legation, vol. v., p. 409, attacking Lowth for 
 maintaining that "idolatry was punished under the CEConomy of the 
 Patriarchs, in the families and under the dominion of Abraham, Melchisedec, 
 and Job," continues (p. 414): "But the learned Professor, who has been 
 hardily brought up in the keen atmosphere of wholesome SEVERia?iES, and 
 early taught to distinguish between de facto and de jure, thought it needless 
 to enquire into Facts, when he was secure of the Right. And therefore only 
 slightly and superciliously asks, 'What? was not Abraham, by his very 
 ■princely office to punish Idolatiy ? Were not Melchisedec and Job, and all the 
 heads of Tribes to do the same ? ' Why, no ; and it is well for Religion that 
 they were not. It is for its honour that such a set of persecuting Patriarchs 
 is nowhere to be found but in Sk poetical Prelection.'" 
 
 "To understand," writes Pattison, "the bitterness of this taimt, we must 
 recur to Lowth's peculiar position before the world in 1765. The University 
 of Oxford was committed by all the traditions of seventy years to the 
 principles of High Church and Jacobitism. Convicted of scarcely disguised 
 disaffection to the reigning dynasty, it had been treated by successive 
 ministries with neglect and contempt. Lowth stood forward as the foremost 
 man and representative of this disgraced and semi-outlaw society. To 
 fasten upon him the stigma of being the champion of disloyalty and 
 persecuting principles, the presumed atmosphere in which Lowth had been 
 brought up, would have been a fatal bar to his prospects in the Church. 
 Nothing, therefore, could be more malignant than Warburton's hints, while 
 at the same time nothing could be more unjust ; for though the public and 
 the Government were not yet aware of it, a great change had been working in 
 the opinions and feelings of the University, The old High Church and High 
 Tory party, of which Dr. King was the representative, had been slowly losing 
 in numbers and influence, and a new generation forming in a mould less alien 
 from the general feeling and opinion of England. To this party, which com- 
 prehended the younger and better minds in the University, the doctrines of 
 the old Tory, his Stuart attachments, and his passion for ' wholesome 
 severities ' against Nonconformists, were already distasteful ; and it was of 
 this party that Lowth was the representative. Stung at once by the unfair- 
 ness of the taunt, and by its damning nature, Lowth threw all his force into 
 his reply to it. He distinctly and emphatically repudiates, as he could with 
 truth, the insinuation of intolerance and persecixting tenets. ' I have never 
 omitted any opportunity that fairly offered itself of bearing my testimony 
 against those very principles, and of expressing my abhorrence of them both 
 in public and in private.' And then he turns upon the bishop: 'Pray, my 
 lord, what is it to the purpose where I have been brought up ? . . . Had I 
 not your lordship's example to justify me, I should think it a piece of 
 extreme imj)ertinence to inquire where you were bred. It is commonly said 
 your lordship's education was of that particular kind concerning which it is 
 a remark of that great judge of men and manners. Lord Clarendon, that it 
 particularly disposes them to be proud, insolent, and pragmatical. ' ' Colonel 
 Harrison was the son of a butcher, and had been bred up in the place of a 
 clerk, under a lawyer of good account in those parts ; which kind of educa- 
 tion introduces men into the language and practice of business ; and if it be 
 not resisted by the great ingenuity of the person, inclines young men to more 
 pride than any other kind of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical 
 and insolent." [History of the Rebellion, ed. 1826, vi., 219.] Now, my lord, 
 as you have in your whole behaviour, and in all your writings, remarkably 
 distinguished yourself by your humility, lenity, meekness, forbearance, 
 candour, humanity, civility, decency, good manners, good temper, modera- 
 tion with regard to the opinions of others, and a modest diffidence of your 
 
286 APPENDIX 
 
 own, this unpromising circumstance of your education is so far from being a 
 disgrace to you, that it highly redounds to your praise. For myself, on the 
 contrary, it is well if I can acquit myself of the burden of being responsible 
 for the great advantages which I enjoyed. For, my lord, I was educated in 
 the University of Oxford,' &c. [Letter to Bishop Warburton, &c., ed. 1766, 
 p. 64]" (Pattison's Works, ed. 1889, ii., 140). 
 
 11. HOOKER, CHILLINGWORTH, AND LOCKE (p. 50). 
 
 " I have often heard Mr. Locke say, in reference to his first years spent in 
 the University, " said his friend Ladj"^ Masham, ' ' that he had so small satis- 
 faction there from his studies, as finding very little light brought thereby to 
 his understanding, that he became discontented with his manner of life, and 
 wished his father had rather designed him for anything else than what he 
 was destined to, apprehending that his no greater progress in knowledge 
 proceeded from his not being fitted or capacitated to be a scholar" (Fox 
 Bourne's Life of Locke, ed. 1876, i., 47). 
 
 "The scholastic teaching of Oxford had a large share in forming, by 
 reaction, many of his most characteristic opinions. . . . We can hardly doubt 
 that, if Locke had been brought up in a university where logic and philosophy 
 did not form part of the course, his greatest work would never have been 
 written " (T. Fowler's Locke, ed. 1880, p. 6). 
 
 At Christ Church he long enjoyed a studentship, corresponding to a 
 fellowship at other colleges. In 1684 he was illegally deprived of it by the 
 servile Dean, Bishop Fell, and the Chapter (King's Life of Locke, ed. 1858, 
 pp. 147, 149, 175). King William neglected to restore him. 
 
 By joining Hooker and Chillingworth with Locke, Gibbon seems to imply 
 that they also were ill-used by the University. Hooker's obligations to 
 Oxford are acknowledged by his biographer, who, speaking of his election to 
 a scholarship at [Corpus, says : ' ' And now as he was much encouraged, so 
 now he was perfectly incorporated into this beloved college, which was then 
 noted for an eminent library, strict students, and remarkable scholars ". His 
 Fellowship, which he gained four years later, he lost by his unhappy 
 marriage. ' ' By this marriage the good man was drawn from the tranquillity 
 of his college ; from that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet 
 conversation, into the thorny wilderness of a busy world (Walton's Lives, 
 ed. 1838, pp. 175, 185). 
 
 Chillingworth was first Scholar and next Fellow of Trinity College. 
 Oxford does not seem to have been wanting to him. 
 
 12. FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES (p. 53). 
 
 Adam Smith attacked the Universities of Europe. In France, he says, 
 they suffered from "an arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction". A pro- 
 fessor could gain protection from it, "not by ability or diligence in his 
 profession, but by obsequiousness to the will of his superiors ". "It is 
 observed by Mr. de Voltaire, that Father Porr6e, a Jesuit of no great 
 eminence in the republic of letters, was the only professor they ever had in 
 France whose works were worth the reading. ['Por6e {Charles) . . . du 
 petit nombre de professeurs qui ont eu de la cfl6brit6 chez les gens du 
 monde' {CEuvres de Voltaire, xvii., 142).] . . . The observation of Mr. de 
 Voltaire may be applied, I believe, not only to France, but to all other 
 Roman Catholic countries. We very rarely find in any of them an eminent 
 man of letters who is a professor in an university, except, perhaps, in the 
 professions of law and physic." 
 
APPENDIX 287 
 
 Smith says of "the philosophical education" generally given: "The 
 alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced into the ancient 
 course of philosophy were all meant for the education of ecclesiastics. . . . 
 But the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the casuistry and the 
 ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it, certainly did not 
 render it more for the education of gentlemen, or men of the world, or more 
 likely either to improve the understanding or to mend the heart. This 
 course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the greater part of 
 the universities of Europe" ( Wealth of Nations, ed. 1811, iii., 169, 182, 239). 
 
 Gibbon, in The Decline, vi., 189, describing how at Salerno "a school, 
 the first that arose in the darkness of Europe, was consecrated to the healing 
 art," continues : "The school of medicine has long slept in the name of an 
 imiversity ". 
 
 Five years after Gibbon left Oxford, Blackstone said in his opening lecture 
 on the study of the law : "A fashion has prevailed, especially of late, to 
 transport the growing hopes of this island to foreign universities, in Switzer- 
 land, Germany and Holland ; which, though infinitely inferior to our own in 
 every other consideration, have been looked upon as better nurseries of the 
 civil, or (which is nearly the same) of their own municipal law " (Blackstone's 
 Commentaries, ed. 1775, i., 5). 
 
 13. COLLEGE COMMON ROOMS AND MAGDALEN FELLOWS (p. 57). 
 
 Robert Lloyd, the schoolfellow of Churchill, Cowper, and Warren 
 Hastings, and also of Gibbon, though his senior by four j'ears, thus ridicules 
 the Fellows of Oxford in The North Briton for 30th October, 1762 :— 
 
 " Fellows ! who've soak'd away their knowledge 
 In sleepy residence at College ; 
 Whose lives are like a stagnant pool, 
 Muddy and placid, dull and cool ; 
 Mere drinking, eating ; eating, drinking ; 
 With no impertinence of thiiiking." 
 
 Thomas Warton, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, in The Progress of 
 Disconte?it (1746) describes the feelings of a man who had resigned his fellow- 
 ship for a College living : — 
 
 " Why did I sell my College life 
 (He cries) for benefice and wife ? 
 Return, ye days, when endless pleasure 
 I found in reading or in leisure ; 
 When calm around the Common Room 
 I puflf'd my daily pipe's perfume ; 
 Rode for a stomach, and inspected, 
 At annual bottlings, corks selected ; 
 And din'd untax'd, untroubl'd, under 
 The portrait of our pious Founder." 
 
 (Warton's Poetical Works, ed. 1802, ii., 197.) 
 
 In many of the Colleges the Common Room was open to the commoners 
 as well as to the gentlemen-commoners. In 1776 Dr. Adams, Master of 
 Pembroke College, writes Boswell, "told us that in some of the Colleges, the 
 fellows had excluded the students from social intercourse with them in the 
 common room. Johnson. ' They are in the right, Sir : there can be no real 
 conversation, no fair exertion of mind amongst them, if the young men are 
 by ; for a man who has a character does not choose to stake it in their 
 presence' " (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 443). 
 
288 APPENDIX 
 
 Among "the monks of Magdalen" was George Home, afterwards Bishop 
 of Norwich. He was a man of exemplary character, who at this time was 
 engaged on his Commentary on the Psalms. That only fifteen years later he 
 was elected President seems to show that the majority of the junior Fellows 
 of Gibbon's time were not so degraded as he paints them. G. V. Cox, 
 writing of Oxford in 1794, says that ' ' Dr. Home's name was familiar to me 
 in such phrases as, ' True as George Home, ' ' Sweet-tempered as George 
 Home'" {Recollections of Oxford, ed. 1868, p. 153). "Parr said of him, 'he 
 understood Greek and he loved Hebrew,' meaning, as is interpreted, that he 
 did not understand Hebrew " (H. D. Best's Memorials, p. 62). 
 
 Dr. Waldgrave, Gibbon's first tutor, sent to the College from his country 
 living two manuscript volumes of annotations on Plato, with the inscription : 
 "Dr. Waldgrave to Dr. Home and the College. All Health. January 1, 
 1776. The oblivia vHcb after the death of a Friend, And that Friend, A 
 Wife." At the end he recorded: "The Dialogues are the most illiterate, 
 most inelegant and most insipid repast the mind of man can sit down to. To 
 the Epistles I allow some merit in point of diction." In his epitaph in 
 Washington Church, perhaps composed by himself, it is said that " he came 
 mourning into the world three months after the death of his Father, took 
 gently there what gently came, and left it April 26, 1784, thanking God for 
 the past and hoping humbly through the great Redemption for his future 
 mercies ". 
 
 Another of the monks was Thomas West, D.D., who was once bursar of 
 the College. ' ' It was suggested to him that he ought to get some cattle to 
 eat down the grass of the meadow. He sent for a farmer who, agreeing to 
 put in some stock, asked what he was to paj^ per head per week. ' Pay ? ' 
 said the bursar. ' Do you think Magdalen College is to be under an obliga- 
 tion to such an one as you ? ' " {lb., p. 295.) See ib. for his one vain attempt 
 to visit London. 
 
 H. D. Best, himself a Fellow of Magdalen, wrote of another Fellow : 
 " Here he lived for five and thirty years ; ' he had nothing to do and he did 
 it,' to quote a witticism of George Home" {ib., p. 136). See also Letters of 
 Radcliffe and James, pp. 85, 191. 
 
 The Rev. H. A. Wilson, in his Magdalen College, pp. 222, 244, 249, says 
 that the greater part of the demies were graduates biding their time for a 
 fellowship to fall vacant, to which they would succeed as a matter of course. 
 " Their studies were without the stimulus of rivalry or the interest of com- 
 panionship." The position of gentleman-commoner lasted for a hundred 
 years after Gibbon left the College. There was a reforming party among the 
 Fellows who wished to abolish them, but they could not overcome the opposi- 
 tion of the aged President, Dr. Routh. "Their virtual abolition took place 
 in 1854." 
 
 14, DECLAMATIONS IN HALL (p. 59). 
 
 By the statutes of Pembroke College "all non-graduate scholars and 
 commoners are to declaim publicly in hall on Saturdays after common 
 prayers". Under the Commonwealth "this rule was abrogated from April 
 18, 1651, in order that all might prepare themselves for the Lord's Day" 
 (Macleane's Pembroke College, pp. 189, 231). It was restored later on, for 
 Johnson declaimed (BosweU's Johnson, i., 71, n. 2). James wrote from 
 Queen's College in 1778: "Sanderson [the author of Logicae Artis Com- 
 fendium] is the great oracle next to Ai-istotle, to whose bust the wranglers in 
 the hall seem to pay a more profound reverence than to common sense " 
 {Letters of Radcliffe and James, p. 50). The Provost of the College says in a 
 note on this passage that "it probably refers to the disputations j^erformed 
 as exercises by the students ". In Magdalen College the declamations were 
 
APPENDIX 289 
 
 restored by Routh, who became President in 1791. James Hurdis, a demy 
 of 1782, describing the College at the end of the eighteenth centiiry, says : 
 " All yoimg men of three years' standing, whether gentlemen-commoners or 
 dependent members, are still called upon in their turns to declaim before the 
 whole College, immediately after dinner, while the society and their visitants 
 are yet sitting at their respective tables. Neither is the gentleman-commoner 
 exempted from any other exercise which the College requires of its dependent 
 members " {A Word or Two in Vindication of the University of Oxford and 
 of Magdale?i College in particular from the Posthumous Aspersions of Mr. 
 Gibbon, p. 13). 
 
 Francis Newbery, who entered Trinity College in 1762, describes how the 
 under-graduates in turn, one every day, ' ' recited thirty or forty lines from 
 one of the classics during the clatter of knives and forks and plates in the 
 middle of dinner, the speaker standing in the middle of the hall " {A Bookseller 
 of the Last Century, by C. Welsh, ed. 1885, p. 128). 
 
 15. DISCIPLINE AT OXFORD (p. 66). 
 
 William Scott (afterwards the great Admiralty Judge, Lord Stowell) 
 entered Oxford in 1761 at the age of fifteen. Five years later he wrote to his 
 father about a younger brother: "Send Jack up to me, I can do better for 
 him here". Jack was the future Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Eldon 
 (Twiss's Life of Eldon, ed. 1846, i., 38). William Scott would never have had 
 him sent up to a life of idleness. 
 
 R. L. Edgeworth, in 1761, entered Corpus Christi College as a gentleman- 
 commoner. " I applied assiduously," he wrote, "not only to my studies 
 under my excellent tutor, but also to the perusal of the best English writers. 
 ... I remember with satisfaction the pleasure I then felt from the conscious- 
 ness of intellectual improvement." He speaks highly of his fellow-students 
 {Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth, ed. 1844, p. 55). 
 
 The first Earl of Malmesbury, who entered Merton College in 1763, and 
 resided two years, gives the same account as Gibbon : "The discipline of the 
 University was so lax that a gentleman-commoner was under no restraint, 
 and never called upon to attend either lectures, or chapel, or hall. M}^ tutor, 
 an excellent and worthy man, according to the practice of all tutors at that 
 moment, gave himself no concern about his pupils. I never saw him but 
 during a fortnight ; when I took it into my head to be taught trigonometry " 
 {Diaries of the First Earl of Malmesbury, Preface, p. 11). 
 
 Bentham, who was at Queen's College at the same time, said : "I learnt 
 nothing. I took to reading Greek of my own fancy ; but there was no 
 encouragement. We just went to the foolish lectures of our Tutors to be 
 taught something of logical jargon " (Bentham's Works, x., 41). 
 
 Charles James Fox, who entered Hertford College at Michaelmas, 1764, 
 at the age of fifteen, wi-ote : "I like Oxford well enough; I read there a 
 great deal, and am very fond of mathematics. ... I really think to a man 
 who reads a great deal there cannot be a more agreeable place." His father 
 spoke of his son "studying very hard at Oxford' (Earl Russell's Life of Fox, 
 ed. 1859, i., 6). 
 
 Sir William Jones, entering University College in 1764, was at first as 
 much disappointed as Gibbon ; but "this disgust soon subsided. He found 
 in the University all the means and opportunity of study which he could 
 wish. He perused all the Greek poets and historians of note, and the entire 
 works of Plato and Lucian. He studied Persian, Hebrew, and German. He 
 read the best authors in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. In his twenty- 
 first year he began his De Poesi Asiatica. Seven years after he entered 
 Oxford he sent a friend ' a little Philippic which I wrote against an obscure 
 coxcomb who had the audacity to abuse our University '. When he took his 
 
 19 
 
290 APPENDIX 
 
 Master's Degree he composed an oration 'to display,' among other topics, 
 'the transcendant advantages of the University of Oxford'. He said that 
 ' with the fortune of a peasant he gave himself the education of a prince '. 
 He had been supported at Oxford, first by a scholarship and next by a fellow- 
 ship" (Teignmouth's Life of Sir W. Jones, pp. 39-42, 44, 47, 126, 139). 
 
 John James entered Queen's College in 1778. His father, who had been at 
 the College thirty years earlier, on hearing from his son of " the modes of 
 education there, wrote to a friend: "From the genius of the place, . . . 
 the opportunities of libraries, &c., much may be expected from a lad of spirit 
 — but from tutors, I verily believe, nothing". Two years later he wrote: 
 "Do, my dear Sir, expose to the public the vile impositions practised upon 
 them by these people under the liberal pretence of educating youth " [Letters 
 of Radcliffe and James, pp. 53, 133). 
 
 Southey, who entered Balliol College in 1792, wrote of his College in 1819 : 
 ' ' It has fairly obtained a new character, and is no longer the seat of drunken- 
 ness, raflfery, and indiscipline, as it was in our days" (Southey's Life and 
 Corres., iv., 342). 
 
 Sir James Stephen, who left Cambridge in 1812, wrote in 1851 : " If I had 
 the pen of Edward Gibbon, I could draw from my own experience a picture 
 which would form no unmeet companion for that which he has bequeathed to 
 us of his ediieation at Oxford. The three or four years during which I lived 
 on the banks of the Cam were passed in a very pleasant, though not a very 
 cheap, hotel. But if they had been passed at the Clarendon in Bond Street, 
 I do not think that the exchange would have deprived me of any aids for 
 intellectual discipline, or for acquiring literary or scientific knowledge" 
 (Lectures on the History of France, ed. 1851, i. , Preface, p. 7). 
 
 16. SUBSCRIPTION TO THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES (p. 67). 
 
 ' ' The forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh 
 or a smile by the modern clergy " ( The Decline, vi., 128). 
 
 Jeremy Bentham, when called upon to subscribe to the Articles, was per- 
 plexed by doubts. "Communicating my distress to, some of my fellow- 
 coUegiates I foimd them sharers in it. Upon inquiry it was found that 
 among the Fellows of the College there was one to whose office it belonged, 
 among other things, to remove all scruples. "We repaired to him vsrith fear 
 and trembling. His answer was cold ; and the substance of it was — that it 
 was not for uninformed youths, such as we, to presume to set up our 
 private judgments against a public one, formed by some of the holiest, 
 as well as best and wisest men, that ever lived. I signed ; but by the view 
 I found myself forced to take of the whole business such an impression was 
 made as will never depart from me but with life" (Bentham's Works, x., 37). 
 
 On Feb. 6, 1772, a petition was presented to Parliament for the relief of 
 clergymen and students at the Universities from subscription to the Thirty- 
 Nine Articles. By a majority of 217 to 71 leave to bring up the petition was 
 refused. Fox, "who", to quote Gibbon, "had prepared himself for that 
 holy war by passing twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard, " losing 
 £11,000, supported the majority, and so did Burke {Misc. Works, ii,, 74 ; 
 Pari. Hist., xvii., 245-296 ; "QosweS}^^ Johnson, ii., 150). 
 
 Lord Westbury, in a debate in the House of Lords, in 1863, on the pro- 
 posal to abolish subscriptions to formularies of faith as a qualification for 
 degrees at Oxford, said : ' ' My attention was singularly fixed upon this matter 
 many years ago, when I matriculated at the University at the early age of 
 fourteen. I was told by the Vice-Chancellor, ' You are too young to take the 
 common oath of obedience to the Statutes of the University, but are quite old 
 enough to subscribe the Articles of Religion'" {Life of Lord Westbury, by T. 
 A. Nash, ed. 1888, i., 14). 
 
APPENDIX 291 
 
 It was not till Michaelmas term, 1854, that by Act of Parliament subscrip- 
 tion was no longer required for matriculation and the Bachelor's degree. In 
 1871, by a second Act, the higher degrees were also made free. My old 
 friend and fellow-student, the late Professor John Nichol, of Glasgow 
 University, who would not subscribe the Articles, was thereby debarred from 
 all chance of a fellowship, which should have been the reward of his high 
 attainments (See Memoirs of John Nichol, p. 141). I, too, was debarred for 
 many years from advancing beyond the Bachelor's degree. 
 
 Dr. Edward Bentham, Regius Professor of Divinity, replying to Burke's 
 " illiberal aspersions of the University of Oxford " in his speech on Nov. 2, 
 1773 [Pari. Hist., xviii., 854), had the impudence to write : "Here Philosophy 
 and Theology reciprocally join their assisting powers together, to point out to 
 our ingenuous youth the characteristics that constitute the difference between 
 justice and dishonesty, truth and falsehood, liberty and licentiousness. . . . 
 Here we peruse with sedulous attention the ancient pages of the Grecian and 
 Roman sages. . . . But lest our attention should be so engrossed by a constant 
 application to ancient History as to neglect tliose transactions that are nearer 
 to our times. King George I. has encouraged the study of modern History 
 with a munificence which does honour to Royalty. No wonder then that our 
 excellent mode of education should be viewed with admiration by foreigners, 
 and extort the eulogiums even of the most prejudiced " ( The Honour of the 
 University of Oxford Defended, he, London, n.d., p. 5). 
 
 17. LAWS AGAINST POPERY (p. 73). 
 
 Blackstone, after giving a summary of the laws against Poperj^, continues : 
 "Of which the President Montesquieu observes that they are so rigorous, 
 though not professedly of the sanguinary kind, that they do all the hurt that 
 can possibly be done in cold blood. But in answer to this it may be observed 
 (what foreigners, who only judge from our statute-book, are not fully 
 apprised of) that these laws are seldom exerted to their utmost extent ; and, 
 indeed, if they were, it would be very difficult to excuse them. . . . But if a 
 time should ever arrive, and perhaps it is not very distant, when all fears of a 
 Pretender shall have vanished, and the power and influence of the Pope shall 
 become feeble, ridiculous, and despicable, not only in England, but in every 
 kingdom of Europe, it probably would not then be remiss to review and soften 
 these rigorous edicts ; at least till the civil principles of the Roman Catholics 
 called again upon the legislature to renew them : for it ought not to be left in 
 the breast of every merciless bigot to drag down the vengeance of these 
 occasional laws upon inoffensive, though mistaken, subjects ; in opposition to 
 the lenient inclinations of the civil magistrate, and to the destruction of every 
 principle of toleration and religious liberty" {Comment.,^ p. 57). 
 
 Gibbon, in The Decline, he, vi., 128, «., after referring to Blackstone, con- 
 tinues : "The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the Trinity, 
 would still leave a tolerable scope for persecution, if the national spirit were 
 not more effectual than a hundred statutes ". 
 
 "April 26, 1748. Ireland. — One George Williams was convicted at Wex- 
 ford Assizes for being perverted from the Protestant to the Popish religion, 
 and sentenced to be out of the King's protection, his lands and tenements, 
 goods and chattels, to be forfeited to the King, and his body to remain at the 
 King's pleasure" {Gent. Mag., 1748, p. 186). 
 
 " Oct. 20, 1755. — At the Westminster Quarter Sessions a bill of indictment 
 was found against two Popish priests, who have been lately very busy in 
 making converts" (ib., 1755, p. 473). 
 
 "Aug. 20, 1767. — At the Assizes at Croydon, John Baptist Malony was 
 tried for unlawfully exercising the function of a Popish priest, and admin- 
 istering the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to divers persons, after the 
 
292 APPENDIX 
 
 manner of the Church of Rome, when he was found guilty, and received 
 sentence of perpetual imprisonment " {Gent. Mag., 1767, p. 428). He was set 
 free by the Government in defiance of the law [Pari. Hist., xix., 1139, 1145). 
 See also Boswell's Johnson, iii., 427, n., and Johnson's Letters, i., 401, n. 
 
 It was stated in the House of Commons in 1791 that " in Burn's Ecclesi- 
 astical Law, a book in almost every gentleman's hands, no less than seventy 
 pages were occupied with an enumeration of the penal statutes still in force 
 against Roman Catholics " {Pari. Hist., xxviii., 1262). 
 
 18. LECTURES OF SIR WILLIAM SCOTT AND SIR WILLIAM 
 BLACKSTONE (p. 80). 
 
 {a) Sir William Scott. 
 
 William Scott was Camden Professor of Ancient History from 1774 to 
 1785. He was knighted in 1788 on being made King's Advocate-General. 
 He was made Judge of the High Court of Admiralty in 1798, and was raised 
 to the peerage by the title of Baron Stowell in 1821. 
 
 John James wrote from Queen's College in 1779 that Scott's lectures "are 
 perhaps superior to anything of the kind in point of elegance and erudition. 
 The price of attendance was three guineas. Scott is intimate with Dr. 
 Johnston [Johnson]. He has a good deal of the Doctor's manner. Some- 
 times he copies his faults. . . . Describing the houses of the Athenians he 
 acquainted his audience ' that they had no convenience by which the volatile 
 parts of fire could be conveyed into the open air '. How would a bricklayer 
 stare at being told that he meant no more than that the Athenians had 
 no chimneys ! One great inconvenience attended this constant and studied 
 elevation ; for whenever he popped out a familiar word, for which it was 
 impossible to substitute a synonyme, it came from him Avith as ill a grace as 
 an oath would from a Bishop " {Letters of Radcliffe and James, p. 92). The 
 lectures were never published. Dean Milman saw them in manuscript ( The 
 Decline, ed. Milman, 1854, i., 40). Francis Newbery {ante, p. 289) "attended 
 the annual lectures by Dr. Smith in anatomy and chemistry " {A Bookseller 
 of the Last Centuj-y, p. 128). 
 
 James Harris (first Earl of Malmesbury), who was at Merton College in 
 1764, attended "anatomical lectures, as well as those of Dr. Blackstone". 
 The following year his mother wrote to him : " You are desired not to attend 
 the anatomical lectures this year, as your father has no idea of bringing you 
 up as a surgeon " {Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, ed. 1870, 1, 103, 
 122). 
 
 {h) Sir William Blackstone. 
 
 Charles Viner, who died in 1756, left £12,000 to found a Professorship of 
 Common Law, and such fellowships and scholarships as the fund might 
 support. Blackstone, the first professor, delivered his first lecture in October, 
 1758. The Commentaries were not wholly due to the benefaction. In the 
 Preface he says: "The original plan took its rise in the year 1753; and 
 notwithstanding the novelty of such an attempt in this age and country, and 
 the prejudices usually conceived against any innovations in the established 
 mode of education, he had the satisfaction to find, " etc. 
 
 His successor was Sir Robert Chambers, who retained his oflSce till 1777, 
 three years after he had "gone as a Judge, with six thousand a year, to 
 Bengal" (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 264). He was allowed to retain it "to see 
 whether the climate of India would suit him" {Did. of Nat. Biog.). His 
 Principalship of New Inn Hall he retained till his death in 1803. For a 
 ludicrous story told by his Deputy-Professor, John Scott, see Life of Lord 
 Eldon, ed. 1846, i., 67. 
 
APPENDIX 293 
 
 Among the Vinerian scholars are to be found the names of Sir J. T. 
 Coleridge and Sir Walter Phillimore, Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench ; 
 Lord Chancellor Westbury, Lord Justice Chitty, and Mr. James Bryce. The 
 present Vinerian Law Professor is Mr. A. V. Dicey. 
 
 19. GIBBON'S RECONVERSION (p. 90). 
 
 Gibbon wrote to Miss Porten in February, 1755 : "I have at length good 
 news to tell you ; I am now good Protestant, and am extremely glad of it. I 
 have in all my letters taken notice of the different movements of my mind. 
 Entirely Catholic when I came to Lausanne, wavering long time between the 
 two systems, and at last fixed for the Protestant ; when that conflict was 
 over, I had still another difiSculty. Brought up with all the ideas of the 
 Church of England, I could scarce resolve to Communion vnth Presbyterians, 
 as all the people of this country are. I at last got over it in considering that 
 whatever difference there may be between their churches and ours in the 
 government and discipline, they still regard us as brethren, and profess the 
 same faith as us. Determined, then, in my design, I declared it to the 
 ministers of the town assembled at Mr. Pavilliard's, who, having examined 
 me, approved of it, and permitted me to receive the Communion with them, 
 which I did Christmas Day, from the hands of Mr. Pavilliard, who appeared 
 extremely glad of it. I am so extremely myself, and do assure you feel a joy 
 pure, and the more so as I know it to be not only innocent but laudable 
 (Co /-res., L, 2). "This letter," writes Lord Sheffield, "is cvuious, as it shows 
 in how short a time (not more than a year and a half) he had adopted the 
 idiom of the French language, and lost that of his own" (Afisc. Works, i., 85). 
 
 In Read's I/ist. Studies, ii., 287, is given (unfortunately not in the original) 
 an extract from the Registrc des Sdajices de rAssemhlie pastorale de VEglise de 
 Lausanne, relating Gibbon's conversion and admission to the Communion. 
 Pavilliard testified that "to his great intelligence were added purity of 
 sentiment and regularity of conduct ". 
 
 20. GIBBON'S EARLY LOVE (p. 107). 
 
 Mile. Curchod thus described him : " II a de beaux cheveux, la main jolie, 
 et I'air d'une personne de condition. Sa physionomie est si spirituelle et 
 singuli^re, que je ne connais personne qui lui ressemble. EUe a tant d'expres- 
 sion, qu'on y d^couvre presque toujours quelque chose de nouveau. Ses gestes 
 sont si k propos, qu'ils ajoutent beaucoup k ce qu'il dit. En un mot, c'est une 
 de ces physionomies, si extraordinaires, qu'on ne se lasse presque point de 
 I'examiner, de le peindre et de le contrefaire. II connait les 6gards que Ton 
 doit aux femmes. Sa politesse est ais6e sans etre trop familifere. II danse 
 m^diocrement. En un mot, je lui connais pen des agr^ments qui font le 
 m^rite d'un petit maitre. Son esprit varie prodigieusement. " Here the 
 description breaks off {Le Salon de Madame Necker, i., 35). 
 
 On the famous passage in the text where Gibbon says " I sighed as a lover, 
 I obeyed as a son," he has the following note : "See (Euvres de Rousseau, 
 tom. xxxiii., pp. 88, 89, octavo edition. As an author I shall not appeal from 
 the judgment, or taste, or caprice of Jea?i Jacques : but that extraordinary 
 man, whom I admire and pity, should have been less precipitate in condemn- 
 ing the moral character and conduct of a stranger. " 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, referring to this passage writes: "Gibbon se d^gagea 
 envers mademoiselle Curchod bien plus tard qu'on ne pourrait le supposer, 
 et cinq ans seulement apr^s avoir quitt^ la Suisse. On n'a pas assez 
 remarqu6 que c'est de Gibbon qu'il s agit dans une lettre de Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau k Moxilton, dat6e de Motiers et du 4 juin 1763 : ' Vous me 
 
294 APPENDIX 
 
 donnez pour mademoiselle Curchod, 6crit Jean-Jacques, una commission 
 dont je m'acquitterai mal, pr6cis6ment a cause de mon estime pour elle. 
 Le refroidissement de M. Gibbon me fait mal penser de lui ; j'ai revu son 
 livre {V£ssai siir I'dtude de la littdraiure). II y court apres I'esprit ; il s'y 
 guinde. M. Gibbon n'est point mon homme : je ne puis croire qu'il soit celui 
 de mademoiselle Curchod. Qui ne sent pas son prix n'est pas digne d'elle ; 
 mais qui I'a pu sentir et s'en d^tache est un homme a m^priser.' Gibbon a 
 I'honnStet^ de renvoyer k cette lettre ou les noms 6taient rest^s masques 
 par des initiales" {Causeries du Lundi, viii., 440). 
 
 Gibbon landed in England on 4th May, 1758. It was not till 24th 
 August, 1762, that he broke off the engagement. In May, 1763, Moulton, a 
 Swiss pastor, a frieiid both of Mile. Curchod and Rousseau, wrote to tell her 
 that Rousseau, who was living at Motiers, had heard from a lady at Paris 
 "qu'une foule d' Anglais alloit partir de Paris pour Motiers. Si M. Gibbon, 
 ajoute-t-elle, est du nombre. receves [sic] le bie7i, ca?- c'est un homme cPun 
 trh grmid jnirite et fort insti-uit. Sur cela (pardonnds [sic] le moy, chere 
 Belle) je fis votre histoire k Rousseau, et cette histoire I'int^ressa fort. . . . 
 II me promit que, si Gibbon venoit, il ne maiiqueroit pas de lui parler de 
 vous, et de lui en parler d'une mani^re tres avantageuse." Gibbon did not go 
 to Motiers and so did not see Rousseau. On his arrival at Lausanne she let 
 him know by a letter from Geneva that he was still dear to her. This letter 
 was preserved, but not his answer. Her rejoinder, dated 4th June, 1763, 
 shows that it had given her great pain. Nevertheless she could not have lost 
 all hope, for she asked for his friendship, and offered to provide him with an 
 introduction to Rousseau. She begged him moreover to keep up a corre- 
 spondence with her, and to meet her. He replied : ' ' Mais cette correspondance, 
 mademoiselle, j'en sens tous les agr^ments, mais en meme temps j'en sens 
 tout le danger. Je le confois par rapport k moi, je le crains pour tous les 
 deux. Permettez que le silence m'en dirobe." 
 
 Some weeks later she met him by chance at Ferney, and was treated by 
 him with harshness. On Sept. 21 she wrote to him : ' ' Intimid^e et accabl6e 
 k Fernex par le jeu continuel d'lme gayet^ forc^e et par la duret6 de vos 
 r^ponses, mes Ifevres tremblantes refus^rent absolument de me servir ; vous 
 m assurates en d'autres termes que vous rougissiez pour moi du role que je 
 soutenois ; monsieur, je n'ai jamais su confondre les. droits de riionnStet^ 
 avec ceux de I'amour-propre ". She goes on to remind him that he had asked 
 her to marry him without waiting for his father's consent, and that for love 
 of him she had refused an advantageous offer. In spite of all reports to the 
 contrary she had, she maintained, been faithful to him. She continued : 
 " Oui, je commence a le croire, vous auriez g^mi sur mon existence ; elle pouvait 
 nuire k vos projets de fortune ou d'ambition " [Le Salon de Madame Necker, 
 par le Vicomte d'Haussonville, 1882, i., 57-76). For some letters of his to her 
 written during his first residence in Lausanne see ib., i., 39-53. 
 
 D'Haussonville, to make the matter worse, says that in 1758 ' ' le pere de 
 Gibbon 6tait tr^s 9.g6 ". He was only fifty-one, so that the son could not 
 have counted on an early independence. 
 
 Gibbon's suspicions that she had been looking out for another match are 
 somewhat justified by a letter she wrote to Moulton in 1764, when it seemed 
 likely, but not certain, that Necker would offer to marry her. "Mais, si 
 notre brillante chimere s'^vanouit, j 'Spouse Correvon (c'est le nom de I'avocat 
 d'Yverdon) I'^t^ prochain. II ne cesse de me pers^cuter, et tous mes parens 
 avec lui " {ib., i., 105). At that time, at all events, she had two strings to 
 her bow. 
 
 Over Gibbon a great change had come in his five years' absence. In his first 
 long residence at Lausanne under the pastor's roof his life, so far as we know, 
 had been innocent. " J'avais ime tres belle reputation ici pour les moem's," he 
 wrote soon after his return (ante, p. ,158, w.). In those early days he had not 
 "kept his wing'd affections dipt with crime". The coarse minds and brutal 
 
APPENDIX 295 
 
 habits of his brother-officers in the Militia must have left their taint on him. In 
 Paris, whence he came straight to Lausanne, he had indulged in a guilty love. 
 How deep the corruption had entered he showed in the letter which he wrote 
 three years later [ante, p. 153, n.). During his tour in Italy Mile. Curehod 
 became Mme. Necker. On his way home he saw a great deal of the newly- 
 married couple in their house in Paris, though he says nothing of this in his 
 Autobiography. What he thought of her and what she thought of him is 
 told in the two following letters. On Oct. 31, 1765, he wrote to Holroyd : 
 ' ' The Curehod (Necker) I saw at Paris. She was very fond of me, and the 
 husband particularly civil. Could they insult me more cruelly ? Ask me 
 every evening to supper ; go to bed, and leave me alone with his wife — what 
 an impertinent security ! It is making an old lover of mighty little conse- 
 quence. She is as handsome as ever, and much genteeler ; seems pleased 
 with her fortune rather than proud of it. I was (perhaps indiscreetly enough) 
 exalting Nanette de lUen's good luck and the fortune. ' What fortune ? ' said 
 she, with an air of contempt — ' not above 20,000 livres a year.' I smiled, and 
 she caught herself immediately. ' What airs I give myself in despising 
 20,000 livres a year, who a year ago looked upon 800 as the summit of my 
 wishes ' " [Corres., i., 81). 
 
 A week later she wrote to Mme. de Brenles : " Je ne sais, Madame, si je 
 vous ai dit que j'ai vu Gibbon ; j'ai 6t6 sensible k ce plaisir au-del^ de toute 
 expression, non qu'il me reste aucun sentiment pour un homme qui je crois 
 n'en m^rite gu^re ; mais ma vanity feminine n'a jamais eu un triomphe plus 
 complet et plus honnete. II a rest^ deux semaines a Paris ; je I'ai eu tous les 
 jours chez moi ; il 6tait devenu doux, souple, humble, decent jusqu'i la 
 pudeur ; t^moin perp^tuel de la tendresse de mon mari, de son esprit, et de 
 son enjouement ; admirateur z616 de I'opulence, il me fit remarquer pour la 
 premiere fois celle qui m'entoure, ou du moins jusqu'alors elle n'avait fait sur 
 moi qu'une sensation desagr^able " (Lettres Diverses Recueillies en Suisse, par 
 le Comte F^dor Golowkin, 1821, p. 265). 
 
 ' ' The de Brenles mansion was in front of the door of La Grotte, the home of 
 Deyverdun and Gibbon. It was demolished in January, 1896, some months 
 before La Grotte was destroyed" (Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 312). 
 
 21. ENGLISH HISTORIANS (p. 122). 
 
 (1716.) "Our country, which has produced writers of the first fig-ure in 
 every other kind of work, has been very barren in good historians " 
 (Addison, The Freeholder, No. 35). 
 
 (1734.) Voltaire {CEuvres, xxiv., 137), after speaking of English poets and 
 philosophers, continues : "Pour de bons historiens, je ne leur en connais pas 
 encore ; il a f allu qu'un Franpais [Rapin] ait 6crit leur histoire ". 
 
 (1735.) "Our nation has furnished as ample and as important matter, 
 good and bad, for history, as any nation under the sun ; and yet we must 
 yield the palm in writing history most certainly to the Italians and to the 
 French, and I fear even to the Germans " (Bolingbroke, Works, ed. 1809, 
 iii., 454). 
 
 (1751.) "It is observed that our nation, which has produced so many 
 authors eminent for almost every other species of literary excellence, has 
 been hitherto remarkably barren of historical genius " (Johnson, The 
 Rambler, No. 122). 
 
 (1754.) "It could not perhaps be too much to affirm that Camden's 
 History of Queen Elizabeth is among the best historical productions which 
 have yet been composed by any Englishman. It is well known that the 
 English have not much excelled in that kind of literature " (Hume, History 
 of England, ed. 1773, vi., 195). 
 
 (1755.) "Avec unpen de franchise, et si nous voulons nous rendre une 
 
296 APPENDIX 
 
 justice exacte, il faut mSme convenir que le talent d'historien a disparu avec 
 les anciens, et qa'k un Fran9ais et deux ou trois Italiens pres, les modernes 
 n'ont eu personne qui puisse etre cit6. Plafons Guichardin, Davila, M. de 
 Thou a une distance convenable de Plutarque, de Tite-Live, et de Tacite, et 
 tout le reste des modernes a une distance infinie des premiers " (Baron de 
 Grimm, M ^moires Historiques, &c., ed. 1814, i., 168). 
 
 (1761.) "Our writers had commonly so ill succeeded in history; the 
 Italians, and even the French, had so long continued our acknowledged 
 superiors, that it was almost feared that the British genius, which had so 
 happily displayed itself in every other kind of writing, and had gained the 
 prize in most, yet could not enter the list in this. The historical work Mr. 
 Hume first published discharged our country from this opprobrium " 
 (Burke (?), Annual Register, 1761, ii., 301). 
 
 (1770.) "I believe this is the historical age, and this [the Scotch] the 
 historical nation " (Hume, Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 155). 
 
 (1828.) " The historians of our own comitry are unequalled in depth and 
 precision of reason ; and even in the works of our mere compilers we often 
 meet with speculations beyond the reach of Thucydides or Tacitus " 
 (Macaulay, Misc. Writings, ed. 1871, p. 153). 
 
 (1849.) "The truth is that I admire no historians much except Hero- 
 dotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. Perhaps, in his way, a very peculiar way, 
 I might add Fra Paolo. The modern writers who have most of the great 
 qualities of the ancient masters of history are some memoir writers ; St. 
 Simon for example. There is merit, no doubt, in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, 
 and Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing " (Macaulay, Trevelyan's Life, ed. 1877, 
 ii., 270). 
 
 Condorcet says, in his Life of Voltaire: "Voltaire a I'honneur d'avoir 
 fait, dans la mani^re d'^crire I'histoire, une revolution dont a la v6rit6 
 I'Angleterre a presque seule profits jusqu'ici. Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, 
 Watson [History of Philip //.], peuvent, k quelques 6gards, etre regard^s 
 comme sortis de son ^cole (CEuvres de Voltaire, Ixiv., 90). 
 
 "Hume," said Johnson, "would never have written History, had not 
 Voltaire written it before him. He is an echo of Voltaire " (Boswell's John- 
 son, ii., 53). "Hume's manner," wrote Horace Walpole, "is imitated from 
 Voltaire" (Walpole's Letters, ii., 429). 
 
 22. ROBERTSON AND HUME (p. 122). 
 
 Gibbon wrote to Robertson in 1783: "I will frankly own that my pride 
 is elated as often as I find myself ranked in the triumvirate of British 
 Historians of the present age, and though I feel myself the Lepidus, I con- 
 template with pleasure the superiority of my colleagues " (Dugald Stewart's 
 Life of Robertson, ed. 1811, p. 305). Lepidus was the "slight unmeritable 
 man" joined with Antony and Octavius (Julius Ctzsar, iv., 1., 12). Five 
 years later Gibbon wrote again to Robertson : ' ' The praise which has ever been 
 the most flattering to my ear is to find my name associated with the names 
 of Robertson and Hume ; and provided I can maintain my place in the 
 ti'iumvirate, I am indifferent at what distance I am ranked below my com- 
 panions and masters " (Life of Robertson, ed. 1811, p. 367). In The Decline, 
 vii., 296, he says that " Guicciardini and Machiavel, Fra Paolo, and Davila 
 were justly esteemed the first historians of modern languages, till, in the 
 present age, Scotland arose, to dispute the prize with Italy herself". He 
 thus praises Robertson : ' ' The eloquence of a modern historian has rendered 
 the name of Charles V. so familiar to an English reader " (ib., i., 385). In the 
 Preface to the second half of the History (ib., i., Preface, p. 11) he speaks 
 of him as "a master-artist ". In his Vindication he calls him ' ' the first 
 historian of the present age " (Misc. Works, iv., 516). See also ante, p. 195. 
 
APPENDIX 297 
 
 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son on April IG, 1759 : "There is an History 
 lately come out of the Reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son (no matter 
 by whom) King James, written by one Robertson, a Scotchman, which for 
 clearness, purity, and dignity of style I will not scruple to compare with the 
 best historians extant, not excepting Davila, Guicciardini, and perhaps Livy " 
 [Letters to his Son, iv., 178). 
 
 Johnson reproached Robertson with "verbiage". "If Robertson's style 
 be faulty, he owes it to me ; that is having too many words, and those too 
 big ones" (Bo&vfeW's Johnson, ii., 236; iii., 173). 
 
 Hume he accused of gallicisms. "Why, Sir, his style is not English ; the 
 structure of his sentences is French " (ib., i., 439). "I told Johnson," writes 
 Boswell, "that David Hume had made a short collection of Scotticisms. 
 'I wonder (said he) that he should find them'" (ib., ii., 72). Strahan, the 
 printer. Dr. Beattie tells us, " had corrected the phraseology of both Hume 
 and Robertson " (Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 341 ). Johnson, most likely, 
 had helped Strahan in correcting Robertson (.Johnson's Letters, i., 412). 
 
 Lord Mansfield told Dr. A. Carljde that "when he was reading Hume and 
 Robertson's books he did not think he was reading English " (Dr. A. Carlyle's 
 Auto., p. 516). 
 
 On the other hand Horace Walpole, in 1755, said of Hume's History in its 
 first edition, and not in its later ones, which were cleared of many inaccu- 
 racies of style: "His style, which is the best we have in history, and his 
 manner imitated from Voltaire, are very pleasing " (Walpole's Letters, ii., 
 429). In 1791 he wrote : "As Dr. Robertson has not the genius, penetration, 
 sagacity, and art of Mr. Gibbon, he cannot melt his materials together, and 
 make them elucidate, and even improve and produce, new discoveries ; in 
 short, he cannot, like Mr Gibbon, make an original picture with some bits of 
 Mosaic" [ib., ix., 361). 
 
 Cowper, writing to John Newton in 1783 of "the two most renowned 
 writers of history the present day has seen," continues : "In your style I see 
 no affectation. In every line of theirs I see nothing else. They disgust me 
 always, Robertson with his pomp and his strut, and Gibbon with his finical 
 and French manners " (Southey's Cowper, iv., 291). 
 
 Lord Brougham, whose mother was Robertson's niece, wrote in 1838 : "I 
 have some little knack of narrative, the most difficult by far of all styles, and 
 never yet attained in perfection but by Hume and Livy " (Macvey Napier, 
 Corres., p. 239). 
 
 "Are there not in the Dissertatioti on India, the last of Dr. Robertson's 
 works . . . Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh?" 
 (Macaulay's iiJ^ay-y, ed. 1874, iv., 181.) 
 
 "Hume," writes Bagehot, "is always idiomatic, but his idioms are con- 
 stantly wrong ; many of his best passages are on that account curiously 
 grating and puzzling ; you feel that they are very like what an Englishman 
 would say ; but yet that, after all, somehow or other, they are what he never 
 would say. There is a minute seasoning of imperceptible difference which 
 distracts your attention, and which you are for ever stopping to analyse " 
 [Biog. Studies, i., 272). 
 
 Saint-Beuve, after quoting Gibbon's praise of Hume, continues : " Cette 
 parole est bien celle d'un homme de gofit qui appr^cie X6nophon \ante,^ p. 92]. 
 On a si souvent dans ces derni^res annees d6clar6 David Hume vaincu et 
 surpass^, que je me plais i rappeler un t^moig-nage si vif et si d61icatement 
 rendu" (Causeries, viii., 445). 
 
 Carlyle, in 1818, wrote of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon: "The whole 
 historical triumvirate are abundantly destitute of virtuous feeling — or indeed 
 of any feeling at all " [Early Letters of Carlyle, i., 143). 
 
298 APPENDIX 
 
 23. A STANDING ARMY (p. 135). 
 
 The general dislike of a standing army is shown in Dryden's lines (Pala- 
 mon and Arcite, iii., 671) :■ — 
 
 ' ' Laughed all the powers who f avovu- tyranny, 
 And all the standing army of the sky." 
 
 The following extracts illustrating this dislike I have arranged in order of 
 time : — 
 
 (1707.) "There is not a more disagreeable thought to the people of Great 
 Britain than that of a standing army " (Addison, Works, ed. 1864, iv., 356). 
 
 (1726.) " Above all, he [the King of Brobdingnag] was amazed to hear me 
 talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free 
 people" (Swift, Works, ed. 1883, xi., 159). 
 
 (Undated.) "A standing army in England, whether in time of j)eace or 
 war, is a direct absurdity " {ib., ix., 257). 
 
 (1734.) "It is certain that if ever such men as call themselves friends to 
 the government, but are real enemies of the constitution, prevail, they will 
 make it a capital point of their wicked policy to keep up a standing army " 
 (Lord Bolingbroke, Works, ed. 1809, iii., 164). 
 
 (1735.) Lord Hervey (iMe??toirs, ii., 80), talking in 1735 to Queen Caroline, 
 "who loved troops full as well as the Eang," said that "as a standing army 
 was the thing in the world that was most disliked in this coimtry, so the 
 reduction of any part of it was a measure that always made any Prince more 
 popular than any other he could take ". 
 
 (1742, during the war with Spain.) " April 29. — We had a debate yester- 
 day in the House on a proposal for replacing four thousand men of some that 
 are to be sent abroad, that, in short, we might have fifteen thousand men to 
 guard the Kingdom. This was strongly opposed by the Tories, but we carried 
 it by 280 against 139 " (Horace Walpole, Letters, i., 159). 
 
 (1730-45. ) In the Index to The Gent. Mag. for these years there are fifty 
 entries under the head, "Army, standing, for and against". 
 
 (1757.) "A standing army of mercenary troops always at last begin to look 
 upon themselves as the masters of that country where they are kept up " 
 (Earl Stanhope, Pari. Hist., xv., 710). 
 
 (1757.) " That foreign weed called a standing army. Such an army never 
 was the natural produce of this Idngdom, and while it is under its present 
 regulation, I can hardly call those that belong to it Englishmen " (Duke of 
 Bedford, ib., p. 720). 
 
 (1761.) "It cannot but ofifend everj^ Englishman to see troops of soldiers 
 placed between him and his sovereign " (.Johnson, Works, v., 458). 
 
 (1765.) "Nothing then . . . ought to be more guarded against in a free 
 state than making the military power, when such a one is necessary to be 
 kept on foot, a body too distinct from the people. Like ours, therefore, it 
 should wholly be composed of natural subjects ; it ought only to be enlisted 
 for a short and limited time ; the soldiers also should live intermixed with 
 the people ; no separate camp, no barracks, no inland fortresses should be 
 allowed (Blackstone, Comment., ed. 1775, i., 414). 
 
 (1781.) "The invincible jealousy of military power, which had so long 
 characterised this country, grew familiarised to the aspect of camps and 
 garrisons" (Burke, A7in. Reg., 1781, i., 138). 
 
 24. AN EXTRACT FROM GIBBON'S JOURNAL— LIFE IN THE 
 MILITIA (p. 135). 
 
 Journal, 1761, January 11. — In these seven or eight months of a most 
 disagreeably active life, I have had no studies to set down ; indeed, I hardly 
 
APPENDIX 299 
 
 took a book in my hand the whole time. Tlie first two months at Blandford, 
 I might have done something ; but the novelty of the thing, of which for 
 some time I was so fond as to think of going into the army, our field-days, 
 our dinners abroad, and the drinking and late hours we got into, prevented 
 any serious reflections. From the day we marched from Blandford I had 
 hardly a moment I could call my own, almost continually in motion ; if I 
 was fixed for a day, it was in the guard-room, a barrack, or an inn. Our dis- 
 putes consumed the little time I had left. Every letter, every memorial 
 relative to them fell to my share ; and our evening conferences were used to 
 hear all the morning hours strike. At last I got to Dover, and Sir Thomas 
 [ante, p. 136] left us for two months. The charm was over, I was sick of so 
 hatefiil a service ; I was settled in a comparatively quiet situation. Once more 
 I began to taste the pleasure of thinking. 
 
 Recollecting some thoughts I had formerly had in relation to the system of 
 Paganism, which I intended to make use of in my Essay, I resolved to read 
 Tully de Natura Deorum, and finished it in about a month. I lost some time 
 before I could recover my habit of application. 
 
 October 23. — Our first design was to march through Marlborough ; but 
 finding on inquiry that it was a bad road, and a great way about, we resolved 
 to push for the Devizes in one day, though nearly thirty miles. "We accord- 
 ingly arrived there about three o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 November 2. [This date evidently marks the beginning, and not the end, 
 of a period.] — I have very little to say for this and the following month. 
 Nothing could be more uniform than the life I led there. The little civility 
 of the neighbouring gentlemen gave us no opportunity of dining out ; the time 
 of year did not tempt us to any excursions round the country ; and at first my 
 indolence, and afterwards a violent cold, prevented n\j going over to Bath. 
 I believe in the two months I never dined or lay from quarters. I can there- 
 fore only set down what I did in the literary way. Designing to recover my 
 Greek, which I had somewhat neglected, I set myself to read Homer, and 
 finished the four first books of the Iliad, with Pope's translation and notes ; 
 at the same time, to understand the geography of the Iliad, and particularly 
 the catalogue, I read the books 8th, 9th, 10th, I2th, 13th, and 14th of 
 Strabo, in Casaubon's Latin translation ; I likewise read Hume's History of 
 England to the Reign of Henry the Seventh, just published, ingenious but 
 superficial ; and the Journal des Sfavans for August, September, and 
 October, 1761, with the Bibliotheque des Sciences, &c., from July to October. 
 Both these Journals speak very handsomely of my book. 
 
 December 25, 1761. — When, upon finishing the year, I take a review of 
 what I have done, I am not dissatisfied vnth what I did in it, upon making 
 proper allowances. On the one hand, I could begin nothing before the middle 
 of January. The Deal duty lost me part of February ; although I was at 
 home part of March, and all April, yet electioneering is no friend to the 
 Muses. May, indeed, though dissipated by our sea parties, was pretty quiet ; 
 but June was absolutely lost, upon the march, at Alton, and settling our- 
 selves in camp. The four succeeding months in camp allowed me little leisure 
 and less quiet. November and December were indeed as much my own as 
 any time can be whilst I remain in the militia ; but still it is, at best, not a 
 life for a man of letters. However, in this tumultuous year (besides smaller 
 things which I have set down) I read four books of Homer in Greek, six of 
 Strabo in Latin, Cicero de Natura Deorum, and the great philosophical and 
 theological work of M. de Beausobre : I wrote in the same time a long dis- 
 sertation on the succession of Naples {ante, p. 144] ; reviewed, fitted for the 
 press, and augmented above a fourth, my Bssai sur I'Etude de la Litt^rature 
 {ante, p. 126]. 
 
 In the six weeks I passed at Beriton, as I never stirred from it, every day 
 was like the former. I had neither visits, hunting, or walking. My only 
 resources were myself, my books, and family conversations. — But to me these 
 were great resources. 
 
800 APPENDIX 
 
 April 24, 1762. — I waited upon Colonel Harvey in the morning, to get him 
 to apply for me to be brigade-major to Lord Effingham, as a post I should be 
 very fond of, and for which I am not unfit. Harvey received me with great 
 good nature and candour, told me he was both willing and able to serve me ; 
 that indeed he had already apjjlied to Lord Effingham for Leake, one of his 
 own officers, and though there would be more than one brigade -major, he did 
 not think he could properly recommend two ; but that if I could get some 
 other person to break the ice, he would second it, and believed he should 
 succeed : should that fail, as Leake was in bad circumstances, he believed he 
 could make a compromise with him (this was my desire) to let me do the 
 duty without pay. I went from him to the Mallets, who pro)nised to get Sir 
 Charles Howard to speak to Lord Effingham. 
 
 May 8. — This was my birthday, on which I entered into the twenty -sixth 
 year of my age. This gave me occasion to look a little into myself, and con- 
 sider impartially my good and bad qualities. It appeared to me, upon this 
 inquiry, that my character was virtuous, incapable of a base action, and 
 formed for generous ones ; but that it was proud, violent, and disagreeable in 
 society. These qualities I must endeavour to cultivate, extirpate, or restrain, 
 according to their different tendency. Wit I have none. My imagination is 
 rather strong than pleasing. My memory both capacious and retentive. The 
 shining qualities of my understanding are extensiveness and penetration ; but 
 I want both quickness and exactness. As to my situation in life, though I 
 may sometimes repine at it, it perhaps is the best adapted to my character. 
 I can command all the conveniences of life, and I can command too that 
 independence (that first earthly blessing), which is hardly to be met with in a 
 higher or lower fortune. When I talk of my situation, I must exclude that 
 temporary one, of being in the militia. Though I go through it with spirit 
 and application, it is both unfit for, and unworthy of me. 
 
 August 22. — I went with Ballard to the French church [at Southampton], 
 where I heard a most indiflterent sermon preached by M. . . . A very bad style, 
 a worse pronunciation and action, and a very great vacuity of ideas, composed 
 this excellent performance. Upon the whole, which is preferable, the philo- 
 sophic method of the English, or the rhetoric of the French preachers ? The 
 first (though less glorious) is certainly safer for the preacher. It is difficult for 
 a man to make himself ridiculous, who proposes only to deliver plain sense on 
 a subject he has thoroughly studied. But the instant he discovers the least 
 pretentions towards the sublime, or the pathetic, there is no medium ; we 
 must either admire or laugh : and there are so many various talents requisite 
 to form the character of an orator, that it is more than probable we shall 
 laugh. As to the advantage of the hearer, which ought to be the great con- 
 sideration, the dilemma is much greater. Excepting in some particular cases, 
 where we are blinded by popular prejudices, we are in general so well 
 acquainted with our duty, that it is almost superfluous to convince us of it. 
 It is the heart, and not the head, that holds out ; and it is certainly possible, 
 by a moving eloquence, to rouse the sleeping sentiments of that heart, and 
 incite it to acts of virtue. Unluckily it is not so much acts, as habits of 
 virtue, we should have in view ; and the preacher who is inculcating, with 
 the eloquence of a Bourdaloue, the necessity of a virtuous life, will dismiss 
 his assembly full of emotions, which a variety of other objects, the coldness 
 of our northern constitutions, and no immediate opportunity of exerting their 
 good resolutions, will dissipate in a few moments. 
 
 August 24. — The same reason that carried so many people to the assembly 
 to-night, was what kept me away ; I mean the dancing. 
 
 August 28. — To-day Sir Thomas came to us to dinner. The Spa has done 
 him a great deal of good, for he looks another man. Pleased to see him, we 
 kept bumperising till after roll-calling ; Sir Thomas assuring us, every fresh 
 bottle, how infinitely soberer he was grown. 
 
 August 29. — I felt the usual consequences of Sir Thomas's company, and 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 301 
 
 lost a morning, because I had lost the day before. However, having finished 
 Voltaire, I returned to Le Clerc (I mean for the amusement of my leisure 
 hours) ; and laid aside for some time his Bibliotheque Universelle, to look into 
 the Bibliotheque Choisie, which is by far the better work. 
 
 September 23.- Colonel Wilkes, of the Buckinghamshire Militia, dined 
 with us, and renewed the acquaintance Sir Thomas and myself had begun 
 with him at Reading. I scarcely ever met with a better companion ; he has 
 inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge ; 
 but a thorough profligate in principle as in practice, his life stained with every 
 vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he 
 glories in — for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted. He told 
 us himself, that in this time of public dissension he was resolved to make 
 his fortune. Upon this noble principle he has connected himself closely with 
 Lord Temple and Mr Pitt, commenced a public adversary to Lord Bute, 
 whom he abuses weekly in the North Briton, and other political papers in 
 which he is concerned. This proved a very debauched day : we drank a good 
 deal both after dinner and supper ; and when at last Wilkes had retired. Sir 
 Thomas and some others (of whom I was not one) broke into his room, and 
 made him drink a bottle of claret in bed. 
 
 October 5. — The review, which lasted about three hours, concluded, as 
 usual, with marching by Lord Effingham, by grand divisions. Upon the 
 whole, considering the camp had done both the Winchester and the Gosport 
 duties all the summer, they behaved very well, and made a fine appearance. 
 As they marched by, I had my usual curiosity to count their files. The 
 following is my field return : I think it a curiosity ; I am sure it is more exact 
 than is commonly made to a reviewing general. 
 
 
 
 No. 
 
 of Files. 
 
 No. of Men. 
 
 Establishment. 
 
 Berkshire, 
 
 { 
 
 Grenadiers, 19 
 Battalion, 72 
 
 } 
 
 91 
 
 — 273 
 
 — 560 
 
 W. Essex, 
 
 
 Grenadiers, 15 
 Battalion, 80 
 
 } 
 
 95 
 
 — 285 
 
 — 480 
 
 S. Oldster, 
 
 f 
 I 
 
 Grenadiers, 20 
 Battalion, 84 
 
 \ 
 
 104 
 
 - 312 
 
 — 600 
 
 N. GlSster, 
 
 { 
 
 Grenadiers, 13 
 Battalion, 52 
 
 ] 
 
 65 
 
 — 195 
 
 — 360 
 
 Lancashire, 
 
 / 
 ( 
 
 Grenadiers, 20 
 Battalion, 88 
 
 } 
 
 108 
 
 — 324 
 
 — 800 
 
 Wiltshire, 
 
 { 
 
 Grenadiers, 24 
 Battalion, 120 
 
 1 
 
 144 
 
 — 432 
 
 — 800 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 [, 
 
 607 
 
 1,821 
 
 3,600 
 
 N.B. — The Gosport detachment from the Lancashire consisted of two 
 hundred and fifty men. The Buckinghamshire took the Winchester duty 
 that day. 
 
 So that this camp in England, supposed complete, with only one detach- 
 ment, had under arms, on the day of the grand review, little more than half 
 their establishment. This amazing deficiency (though exemplified in every 
 regiment I have seen) is an extraordinary military phoenomenon : what must 
 it be upon foreign service ? I doubt whether a nominal army of an hundred 
 thousand men often brings fifty into the field. 
 
 Upon our return to Southampton in the evening, we found Sir Thomas 
 Worsley. 
 
 October 21. — One of those impulses, which it is neither very easy nor very 
 necessary to withstand, drew me from Longinus to a very different subject, 
 the Greek Calendar. Last night, when in bed, I was thinking of a disserta- 
 tion of M. de la Nauze upon the Roman calendar, which I read last year. 
 
302 APPENDIX 
 
 This led me to consider what was the Greek, and finding myself very ignorant 
 of it, I determined to read a short, but very excellent abstract of Mr. Dod- 
 well's book de Cyclis, by the famous Dr. Halley. It is only twenty -five pages ; 
 but as I meditated it thoroughly, and verified all the calculations, it was a 
 very good morning's work. 
 
 October 28. — I looked over a new Greek Lexicon which I have just received 
 from London. It is that of Robert Constantino, Lugdun, 1637. It is a very 
 large volume in folio, in two parts, comprising in the whole 1,785 pages. 
 After the great Thesaurus, this is esteemed the best Greek Lexicon. It seems 
 to be so. Of a variety of words for which I looked, I always found an exact 
 definition ; the various senses well distinguished, and properly supported, by 
 the best authorities. However, I still prefer the radical method of Scapula 
 to this alphabetical one. 
 
 December 11. — I have already given an idea of the Gosport duty ; I shall 
 only add a trait which characterises admirably our unthinMng sailors. At a 
 time when they knew that they should infallibly be discharged in a few 
 weeks, numbers, who had considerable wages due to them, were continually 
 jumping over the walls, and risquing the losing of it for a few hours' amuse- 
 ment at Portsmouth. 
 
 December 17. — We fotmd old Captain Meard at Arlesford, with the second 
 division of the fourteenth. He and all his oflBcers supped with us, and made 
 the evening rather a drunken one. 
 
 December 18. — About the same hour our two corps paraded to march off. 
 They, an old corps of regulars, who had been two years quiet in Dover Castle. 
 "We, part of a young body of militia, two-thirds of our men recruits, of four 
 months' standing, two of which they had passed upon very disagreeable duty. 
 Every advantage was on their side, and yet our superiority, both as to 
 appearance and discipline, was so striking, that the most prejudiced regular 
 could not have hesitated a moment. At the end of the town our two com- 
 panies separated ; my father's struck off for Petersfield, whilst I continued 
 my route to Alton ; into which place I marched my company about noon ; 
 two years six months and fifteen days after my first leaving it. I gave the 
 men some beer at roll-calling, which they received with great cheerfulness 
 and decency. I dined and lay at Harrison's, where I was received with that 
 old-fashioned breeding, which is at once so honourable and so troublesome. 
 
 December 23. — Our two companies were disembodied ; mine at Alton, and 
 my father's at Beriton. Smith marched them over from Petersfield : they 
 fired three volleys, lodged the major's colours, delivered up their arms, 
 received their money, partook of a dinner at the major's expense, and then 
 separated with great cheerfulness and regularity. Thus ended the militia ; 
 I may say ended, since our annual assemblies in May are so very precarious, 
 and can be of so little use. However, our Serjeants and drums are still kept 
 up, and quartered at the rendezvous of their company, and the adjutant 
 remains at Southampton in full pay. 
 
 As this was an extraordinary scene of life, in which I was 'engaged above 
 three years and a half from the date of my commission, and above two years 
 and a half from the time of our embodying, I cannot take my leave of it 
 without some few reflections. When I engaged in it, I was totally ignorant 
 of its nature and consequences. I offered, because my father did, without 
 ever imagining that we should be called out, till it was too late to retreat 
 with honour. Indeed, I believe it happens throughout, that our most 
 important actions have been often determined by chance, caprice, or some 
 very inadequate motive. After our embodying, many things contributed to 
 make me support it with great impatience. Our continual disputes with the 
 duke of Bolton ; our unsettled way of life, which hardly allowed me books or 
 leisure for study ; and more than all, the disagreeable society in which I was 
 forced to live. 
 
 After mentioning my sufferings, I must say something of what I found 
 
APPENDIX 303 
 
 agreeable. Now it is over, I can make the separation much better than I 
 could at the time. 1. The unsettled way of life itself had its advantages. 
 The exercise and change of air and of objects amused me, at the same time 
 that it fortiiied my health. 2. A new field of knowledge and amusement 
 opened itself to me ; that of military affairs, which, both in my studies and 
 . travels, will give me e3^es for a new world of things, which before would have 
 passed unheeded. Indeed, in that respect I can hardly help wishing our 
 battalion had continued another year. "We had got a fine set of new men, 
 all our difficulties were over ; we were perfectly well clothed and appointed ; 
 and, from the progress our recruits had already made, we could promise our- 
 selves that we should be one of the best militia corps by next summer ; a 
 circumstance that would have been the more agreeable to me, as I am now 
 established the real acting major of the battalion. But what I value most, 
 is the knowledge it has given me of mankind in general, and of my own 
 country in particular. The general system of our government, the methods 
 of our several oflBces, the departments and powers of their respective oflScers, 
 our provincial and municipal administration, the views of our several parties, 
 the characters, connections, and influence of our principal people, have been 
 impressed on my mind, not by vain theory, but by the indelible lessons of 
 action and experience. I have made a number of valuable acquaintance, and 
 am myself much better known, than (with my reserved character) I should 
 have been in ten years, passing regularly my summers at Bei'iton, and my 
 winters in London. So that the sum of all is, that I am glad the militia has 
 been, and glad that it is no more. 
 
 25. GENIUS (p. 143). 
 
 Dean Barnard, addressing Reynolds, wrote : — 
 
 "Thou say'st not only skill is gained, 
 But genius, too, may be obtained. 
 By studious imitation ". 
 
 (BoswelVs /oknson, iv., 432). 
 
 Reynolds, in his Third Discourse, speaking of "the gusto gra?ide of the 
 Italians, the beaii idial of the French, and the great style, genius, and taste 
 among the English," continues: "It is this intellectual dignity, they say, 
 that ennobles the painter's art, that lays the line between him and the mere 
 mechanic ; and produces those great effects in an instant, which eloquence 
 and poetry, by slow and repeated efforts, are scarcely able to attain. . . . 
 The student examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing of that 
 divine inspiration. . . . He never travelled to Heaven to gather new ideas, 
 and he finds himself possessed of no other qualification than what mere com- 
 mon observation and a plain understanding can confer. Thus he thinks it 
 hopeless to pursue an object which he supposes out of the reach of human 
 industry " (Reynolds's Works, ed. 1824, i., 44). 
 
 According to Northcote (Zz/"? of Reynolds, i., 11), "Sir Joshua regarded 
 ambition as the cause of eminence, but accident as pointing out the means ". 
 This he might have got from Hume as well as from Johnson. "A man's 
 genius," wrote Hume, "is always in the beginning of life as much unknown 
 to himself as to others. ... A noble emulation is the source of every excel- 
 lence " (Hume's Essays, ed. 1770, i., 160). 
 
 Blake attacked Reynolds's Third Discourse. "It is," he wrote, "parti- 
 cularly interesting to blockheads, as it endeavours to prove that there is no 
 such thing as inspiration, and that any man of a plain understanding may, 
 by thieving from others, become a Michael Angelo " (Gilchrist's 5/fl.^e, i., 
 261). Blake misrepresents Reynolds, who would have maintained, with 
 Johnson, that "the true genius is a mind of large general powers, accident- 
 
304 APPENDIX 
 
 ally determined to some particular direction" (Johnson's Works, vii., 1). 
 "I am persuaded," said Johnson, "that had Sir Isaac Newton applied to 
 poetry he would have made a very fine epick poem. I could as easily apply 
 to law as to tragick poetry " (Bos well's Johnson, v., 35). (Newton, by the 
 way, "being asked his opinion of poetry, quoted a sentiment of Barrow, 
 that it was ingenious nonsense" ("Warton's Pope's Works, iii., 177)). Newton, 
 writing about his Treatise on the Solar System, said : "If I have done the 
 public any service this way, it is due to nothing but industry and patient 
 thought" (Bentley's Works, ed. 1836, ii., 203). "I know of no such thing 
 a>s genius," said Hogarth; "genius is nothing but labour and diligence" 
 (Seward's Biographiana, p. 293). 
 Sir Walter Scott, speaking of 
 
 continues :- 
 
 " That secret power by all obeyed," 
 
 " Whether an impulse that has birth 
 Soon as the infant wakes on earth, 
 One with our feelings and our powers, 
 And rather part of us than ours ; 
 Or whether fitlier termed the sway 
 Of habit, formed in early day ; 
 Howe'er derived, its force confest 
 Rules with despotic sway the breast " 
 
 (Marmion, Intro, to Canto iii.). 
 
 26. ELVIRA (p. 148). 
 
 Gibbon recorded on Jan. 19, 1763 : "My father and I went to the Rose, in 
 the passage of the play-house, where we found Mallet, with about thirty 
 friends. We dined together, and went thence into the pit, where we took 
 our places in a body, ready to silence all opposition. However, we had no 
 occasion to exert ourselves. Notwithstanding the malice of party. Mallet's 
 nation [Scotch], connections, and indeed imprudence, we heard nothing but 
 applause. I think it was deserved." Gibbon, who had been calling on the 
 French ambassador, " undressed for the play " (Misc. Works, \., WJ). 
 
 Elvira was brought out at Drury Lane. ' ' The part of Don Pedro was the 
 last new character Gar rick ever acted." According to Davies, he was 
 flattered into accepting the play. Mallet received £1,000, as well as a yearly 
 pension, from the Marlborough family for writing a Life of the great Duke. 
 Not a line of it did he ever write. " ' Do you know, my friend,' he said to 
 Garrick, ' that I have found out a pretty snug niche in it for you ? ' 
 ' Heh ! how ; that for me ! ' said the manager, turning quickly upon him, 
 his eyes sparkling with fire. ' How the devil could you bring me into the 
 history of Marlborough?' 'That's my business,' rejoined Mallet; 'but 
 I tell you I have done it.' 'Well, Mallet, you have the art of surprising 
 your friends in the most unexpected manner ; but why won't you now, who 
 are so well qualified, write something for the stage ? ' " Elvira was pro- 
 duced (Davies s Garrick, ii., 57). Johnson, in his Life of Mallet, tells the same 
 story. 
 
 Had Gibbon stayed a few days longer in London he might have seen the 
 play interrupted by a riot. " On Jan. 25, a paper was dispersed in the 
 taverns and coffee-houses, complaining of the Managers of the Theatres for 
 refusing admittance at the end of the third act for half-price. When Mr. 
 Holland came in to speak the prologue to Elvira ho was hissed off." Garrick 
 could not get a hearing. " The benches wei'e torn up, the glass lustres were 
 
APPENDIX 305 
 
 broken ; about nine the house was cleared, the money being returned." 
 Garrick yielded to the mob {Gent. Mag., 1763, p. 31). The play did not run 
 many nights longer, in spite of Mallet's "acquainting him that he had 
 received forty cards from persons of distinction, all of whom desired to know 
 the reason why his play was stopped" (Davies's Garrick, ii. , 59). "His 
 dramas," writes Johnson, "had their day, a short day, and are forgotten " 
 (Johnson's Works, viii., 466). 
 
 27. L'ANGLOMANIE (p. 151). 
 
 Voltaire begins a letter to the Gazette littiraire, dated Nov. 14, 1764, sur 
 r A nglomanie : " Mille gens, messieurs, s'^l^vent et d^clament contre I'angio- 
 manie : j 'ignore ce qu'ils entendent par ce mot. S'ils veulent parler de la 
 fureur de travestir en modes ridicules quelques usages utiles, de transformer 
 un d^shabill^ commode en un vetement malpropre, de saisir jusqu'i des 
 jeux nationaux pour y mettre des grimaces k la place de la gravity, ils 
 pourraient avoir raison ; mais si par hasard ces d^clamateurs pr6tendaient 
 nous faire un crime du d^sir d'^tudier, d' observer, de philosopher, comme les 
 Anglais, ils auraient certainement bien tort" (CEuvres de Voltaire, xliii., 320). 
 In 1771 he wrote : " Vous savez que tons les gens de lettres apprennent 
 aujourd'hui I'anglais " {ib., Iv., 519). 
 
 Horace "Walpole {Letters, iv., 466) wrote to Gray from Paris on Jan. 25, 
 1766: "The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are dull 
 and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and 
 English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and 
 cheerfulness. " 
 
 Grimm, who visited England for the first time in 1790, was full of admira- 
 tion. He speaks of the well-kept fields, the green hedges, the villages with 
 their neat cottages and shops with an air of abundance and wealth ; the 
 labouring class better clothed, housed, and fed, and steadier in their work 
 than in France. In the inns there is, it is true, a want of napkins, and the 
 porter, small beer, and port wine, are not to a Frenchman's taste ; "mais je 
 ne connais rien dont on se nourrisse mieux, et dont on se lasse moins que du 
 bon beefsteak, des potatoes, du royal plum pudding, et de I'excellent fromage de 
 Chester ". London has not nearly so many magnificent buildings as Paris ; 
 but it makes up for that by the width, regularity, and cleanliness of its 
 streets ; its foot pavements, and the endless succession and variety of its 
 shops ; by the general air of comfort, industry, and activity. The Thames 
 and the docks, with their thousands and thousands of ships from all parts of 
 the world, raise in the mind the noblest idea of the audacity, the power, and 
 the success of man. In the midst of the vast population of London there is 
 order and tranquillity. In Paris, in a single morning, you are likely to come 
 across more confusion, more accidents, and more quarrels than in London in 
 a fortnight. Order is kept by a small body of constables. An Englishman 
 submits to the law, because he loves the law. He has a well-grounded con- 
 fidence in himself. "Chacun dans ce pays, depuis le premier lord jusqu'au 
 dernier coachman, parait savoir plus prScis^ment que partout ailleurs what is 
 fair (ce qui est juste)/' (Grimm's Mimoires, &c., ed. 1814, vii., 391). 
 
 28. GIBBON'S ASSOCIATES IN PARIS IN 1763 (p. 152). 
 
 {a) Count de Caylus. 
 
 Gibbon wrote to his father on Feb. 24, 1763: "You know how much I 
 always built upon the Count de Caylus ; he has not been of the least use to 
 me. With great difficulty I have seen him, and that is all. I do not, how- 
 
 20 
 
306 APPENDIX 
 
 ever, attribute his behaviour to pride, or dislike to me, but solely to the 
 man's general character, which seems to me to be a very odd one " (Misc. 
 Works, ii., 55). For its oddity see ib., i., 163. 
 
 {b) L'Abbb de la Bletebie. 
 
 According to Grirara. [Mdmoires kistorigues, &c., iv., 227), B16terie, though 
 at his death he left more than 20,000 francs, "criait cependant toujours 
 misfere ". When out supping one night, rain coming on, his coach fare was 
 given him. "II mit les 24 sous dans sa poche, et s'en retourna chez lui k 
 pied." See also ante, p. 97. 
 
 [c) L'Abb:^ Bakth:£lemy. 
 
 "L'Abb6 Barth^lemy est fort aimable, et n'a de I'antiquaire qu'une tr^s 
 grande Erudition" (Misc. Works, i., 163). 
 
 (d) L'Abb^ Raynal. 
 
 Gibbon wrote of Raynal in 1783 : " His conversation, which might be very 
 agreeable, is intolerably loud, peremptory, and insolent ; and you would 
 imagine that he alone was the monarch and legislator of the world" (Corres., 
 ii., 75). A year earlier Frederick the Great had written of him: "A la 
 maniere dont il m'a parl6 de la puissance, des ressources et des richesses de 
 tous les peuples du globe, j'ai cru m'entretenir avec la Providence " (Grimm's 
 Carres,, v., 390). "There never was such an impertinent and tiresome old 
 gossip," wrote Horace "Walpole of him (Letters, vi., 444). Johnson put his 
 hands behind his back, when some one brought up Raynal to introduce to 
 him (Boswell's Johnson, iv., 435 ; Jokn. Misc., i., 211). Cowper, after read- 
 ing aloud to Mrs. Unwin the five volumes of his History of ike Establish- 
 ments, &c., of the Etiropeans in the Two Indies, wrote : " He is a true patriot, 
 but then the world is his country. ... If he had not found that religion had 
 undergone a mixture of artifice, perhaps he would have been a Christian " 
 (Southey's Cowper, xv., 44). Romilly, who had read "the eloquent passages 
 in his work with delight," records : " But when I came to talk on these sub- 
 jects with him, he appeared to me so cold and so indififerent about them, that 
 I conceived a very vmfavourable opinion of him " (Life of Romilly, ed. 1840, 
 i., 70). For Gibbon's praise of the same book, see The Decline, ii., 391. He 
 adds, however, that ' ' the total absence of quotations is the unpardonable 
 blemish of his entertaining history" (ib., ii., 312). In this Raynal was not 
 singular. " Villaret quotes nobody, according to the last fashion of the 
 French writers " (ib., vii., 91). 
 
 (e) L'Abbb Arnauld. 
 
 " II nous est tomb^ entre les mains, depuis peu, une r^ponse de M. I'abb^ 
 Arnauld a je ne sais quelle pr6tendue d&onciation de je ne sais quel pr^tendu 
 th^ologien, devant je ne sais quel pr^tendu tribunal. Cette r^ponse m'a paru 
 tr^s sup6rieure 4 tous les ouvrages pol^miques de I'autre Arnauld" (ffie^z^r^j 
 de Voltaire, vii., 78). " L'autre Arnauld was "le grand Arnauld," the 
 Jansenist. 
 
 (/) De la Condamine. 
 
 Gibbon recorded in 1764: "I read M. de la Condamine's Journal of his 
 Travels in Italy. I was pleased to find the heights of several mountains in 
 fathoms, measured by the barometer. They are as follow." He goes on to 
 make some ridiculous entries ; placing the Lake of Geneva and the top of the 
 Pyrenees at the same height above sea level — 1,410 fathoms. He copies also 
 
APPENDIX 307 
 
 the heights of Mont Blanc, and the highest of the Andes, though neither had 
 been ascended. A few days later he re-examined the Journal, and corrected 
 some of these mistakes. The wonder is he ever made them {Misc. Works, 
 v., 477, 479). 
 
 (^) Du Clos. 
 
 Gibbon recorded in 1764 of Du Clos's Consideration sur les Mceurs de ce 
 Sikcle: " The work is in general good; some chapters treating of the con- 
 nection of genius with character are excellent. Du Clos, before he was 
 Secretary of the Academy, had been that of the Coffee-house ; where he 
 carefully treasured up the conversations of men of wit" {Misc. Works, v., 
 472). In a note on Voltaire (Qtuvres, xii., 250) Du Clos is quoted as having 
 said, "qu'il ne connaissait rien de plus m6prisable et de plus m^chant que 
 la canaille de la litt&ature ". 
 
 {h) De Ste Palaye. 
 
 Horace "Walpole [Letters, iv., 332), writing to Dr. Warton of De Sade's 
 Life of Petrarch, continues: "When you read the notes to the second 
 volume, you will grow very impatient for Mons. de Ste Palaye' s promised 
 history of the Troubadours ' ' . 
 
 [i) De Bougainville. 
 
 Gibbon, on Feb. 23, 1763, mentioned Bougainville as a man "que j'ai 
 grande envie de eonnaltre " {Misc. Works, i., 162). He died the following 
 summer. Gibbon writes of his unfinished Mimoire sur la Monarchic des 
 Mides : "La mort, qui I'a enlev6 ^ la soci6t6 et aux lettres, ne permet plus 
 d'esp6rance. Je me propose de suivre ses id^es. Je donnerai quelques coups 
 de crayon au tableau imparfait d'un grand maitre. Ce maitre 6tait mon 
 ami. Je goiite un triste plaisir dans cette occupation qui me retrace si vive- 
 ment tout ce qu'il a €t€, et tout ce qu'il n'est plus " {ib., iii., 58). 
 
 (_/) Cappebonnier. 
 
 Capperonnier was the King's Librarian. Voltaire, in 1768, thanking 
 him for a book he had lent him from " la Biblioth^que royale," continues 
 {(Euvres, liv., 491): "II a ^t6 d'un grand secours i un pauvre feu historio- 
 graphe de France, tel que moi ". Voltaire, who was made "historiographs 
 de France " in 1745, was stripped of his office in 1750 {ib., xlviii., 100, 328). 
 
 ( k) De Guignes. 
 
 De Guignes was the author of Histoire des Huns. Gibbon, referring to it 
 in The Decline, iii., 87, says : "He has skilfully traced the footsteps of the 
 Huns through the vast deserts of Tartary". Voltaire {CEuvres, xxiv., 
 253) laughs at him "quand il fit descendre les Chinois des Egyptiens ; quand 
 11 pr^tendit que I'empereur de la Chine Yu 6tait visiblement le roi d'Egypte 
 M&ifes, en changeant nis en u, et me eo-y," &c. 
 
 (/) SUARD. 
 
 Ante, p. 134. 
 
 {rn) Madame Geopfrin. 
 
 " Her house is a very good one ; regular dinners there every Wednesday, 
 and the best company of Paris, in men of letters and people of fashion" 
 {Misc. Works, ii., 54). " She is an extraordinary woman, with more common 
 sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in discovering characters, 
 
308 APPENDIX 
 
 penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a 
 likeness— seldom a favourable one " (Walpole's Letters, iv., 466). 
 
 According to D'Haussonville, her reception days were Monday and Wed- 
 nesday, and D'Olbach's Thursday and Sunday; while Helv^tius received 
 on Tuesday and Madame Necker on Friday {Le Salon de Madame Necker, i., 
 121). 
 
 («) Madame du Boccage. 
 
 She was the lady who, when Johnson visited her, " would needs make tea 
 d V Anglaise. The spout of the teapot did not pour freely ; she bade the 
 footman blow into it" (Boswell's Johnson, li., 403 ; see also ib., iv., 331, and 
 John. Misc., ii., 291). Voltaire complimented her in verse on her imitation 
 of Paradise Lost, and called her la Sapho de Normandie (GEuvres, xi., 307 ; 
 xii., 342; xlviii., 167). Horace Walpole wrote of it (Letters, ii., 206) : "My 
 Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original ; but that is not uncommon 
 for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors ". 
 
 (o) Hblvetius. 
 
 "M. Helv6tius, the author of the famous book De l' Esprit, has a very 
 pretty wife, a hundred thousand livres a year, and one of the best tables in 
 Paris. . . . From his heart, his head, and his fortune he is a most valuable 
 man" (Misc. Works, ii., 53-4). 
 
 "April 5, 1764. — I was invited by my Lord Mansfield to dine with that 
 Helv^tius, but he is a professed patron of atheism, a rascal, and a scoundrel, 
 and I would not countenance him " (Walpole's Letters, iv., 217). 
 
 About the time that Gibbon was writing his Memoirs, Burke wrote : " We 
 are not the converts of Rousseau ; we are not the disciples of Voltaire ; 
 Helv6tius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers ; 
 madmen are not our law-givers " (Burke's Works, ed. 1808, v., 166). 
 
 (p) Le Baron d'Olbaoh. 
 
 ' ' Le Baron a de 1' esprit et des connaissances, et surtout il donne souvent 
 et fort bien a diner" (Misc. Works, i., 162). "The Baron d'Olbach is a man 
 of parts and fortune, and has two dinners every week" (ib., ii., 54). "I 
 have left off his dinners, as there was no bearing the authors, and philoso- 
 phers, and savants, of which he has a pigeon -house full" (Walpole's Letters, 
 iv., 449). 
 
 (q) De Foncemagne. 
 
 As to the authenticity of Le Testament politique aitribtii au Cardinal de 
 Richelieu, Foncemagne differed from Voltaire, who, in his reply, thus 
 describes him (CEuvres, xxv., 367) : " Un acad6micien connu de ses amis par 
 la douceur de ses moeurs, et du public par ses lumieres, a 6erit centre mon 
 sentiment. Son ouvrage est plein de cette sagesse et de cette politesse que 
 son titre annonce." See also ante, p. 199. 
 
 29. GIBBON AMIDST THE RUINS OF THE CAPITOL (p. 167). 
 
 In the last paragraph of The Decline Gibbon writes : "It was among the 
 ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has 
 amused and exercised near twenty years of my life ". 
 
 In a brief essay dated "Rome, 13th December, 1764," he shows what his 
 musings were. Writing of " the triumphal show, " he says: "I shall dwell 
 
APPENDIX 309 
 
 on one circumstance alone, more deserving the attention of a philosopher, 
 because by it this institution is honourably distinguished from those vain and 
 fatiguing solemnities which create nothing but weariness or contempt. The 
 triumph converted the spectators into actors, by showing to them objects 
 great, real, and which could not fail to move their affections. . . . The 
 ceremonies of religion, when presented to mankind in a venerable garb, 
 ought powerfuUj^ to interest their affections ; but their influence cannot be 
 completely felt, unless the spectators have a firm faith in the theological 
 system on which thej^ are founded ; and unless they also feel in themselves 
 that particular disposition of mind which lays it open to religious terrors. 
 Such ceremonies, when they are not viewed with respect, arc beheld with the 
 contempt excited by the most ridiculous pantomime. In the triumph every 
 circumstance was great and interesting. To receive its full impression, it 
 was enough to be a man and a Roman. With the eyes of citizens the spec- 
 tators saw the image, or rather the reality, of the public glory. The 
 treasures which were carried in procession, the most precious monuments of 
 art, the bloody spoils of the enemy, exhibited a faithful picture of the war, 
 and illustrated the importance of the conquest. A silent but forcible 
 language instructed the Romans in the exploits and valour of their country- 
 men : symbols chosen with taste showed to them the cities, rivers, 
 mountains, the scenes of their national enterprise, and even the gods of their 
 prostrate enemies subdued under the majesty of Capitoline Jupiter" [Misc. 
 Works, iv., 394). 
 
 In the conclusion of The Decline he tells how "the footsteps of heroes, 
 the relics, not of superstition but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new 
 race of pilgrims from the remote, and once savage, countries of the North ' ' . 
 In an earlier passage, ib., iv., 74, after describing St. Simeon Stylites among 
 ' ' the monastic saints who excite only the contempt and pity of a philoso- 
 pher, ' ' whose lives had been written by Theodoret, Gibbon continues : "If 
 it be possible to measure the interval between the johilosophic writings of 
 Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character of Cato 
 and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable revolution which was 
 accomplished in the Roman Empire within a period of five hundred years ". 
 His scorn, though veiled, is everywhere to be seen. "Writing of the triumph of 
 Heraclius over the Persians in a.d. 628, he says : "In the recovery of the 
 standards and prisoners which had fallen into the hands of the Persians, the 
 emperor imitated the example of Augustus ; their care of the national dignity 
 was celebrated by the poets of the times, but the decay of genius may be 
 measured by the distance between Horace and George of Pisidia : the sub- 
 jects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from persecution, slavery, 
 and exile ; but instead of the Roman eagles, the true wood of the cross was 
 restored to the importunate demands of the successor of Constantine" (ib., 
 v., 93). 
 
 See also Auto., p. 263, for "the contemptuous look he darted on the 
 stately monuments of superstition" at Paris. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, after quoting the passage in the text, continues: " On le 
 voit, si une id^e auguste et grandiose preside k 1' inspiration de Gibbon, 
 I'intention 6pigrammatique est k c6t6 : il con9oit I'ancien ordre romain, il le 
 revere, il 1' admire ; mais cet ordre non moins raerveilleux qui lui a succ^d^ 
 avec les siecles, ce pouvoir spirituel ininterrompu des vieillards et des 
 pontifes, cette politique qui sut etre tour k tour intr^pide, imp^rieuse et 
 superbe, et le plus souvent prudente, il ne lui rendra pas justice, il n'y 
 entrera pas : et de temps en temps, dans la continuity de sa grave Histoire, on 
 croira entendre revenir comme par contraste ce chant de vepres du premier 
 jour, cette impression d^nigrante qu'il ramenera a la sourdine" {Causeries, 
 viii., 452). 
 
310 APPENDIX 
 
 30. HUME ON GIBBON'S COMPOSING IN FEENCH (p. 172). 
 
 Mr. Hume seems to have had a different opinion of this work. 
 ''^ From Mr. Hume to Mr. Gibbon. 
 "Sib, 
 "It is but a few days since M. Deyverdun put your manuscript into my 
 hands, and I have perused it with great pleasure and satisfaction. I have only 
 one objection, derived from the language in which it is written. Why do you 
 compose in French, and carry faggots into the wood, as Horace says with 
 regard to the Romans who wrote in Greek? \Saf., i., x., 34.] I grant that 
 you have a like motive to those Romans, and adopt a language much more 
 generally diffused than your native tongue : but have you not remarked the 
 fate of those two ancient languages in following ages ? The Latin, though 
 then less celebrated, and confined to more narrow limits, has in some measure 
 outlived the Greek, and is now more generally understood by men of letters. 
 Let the French, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. 
 Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we need less 
 dread the inundation of Barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration 
 to the English language. 
 
 " Your use of the French tongue has also led you into a style more poetical 
 and figurative, and more highly coloured, than our language seems to admit 
 of in historical productions ; for such is the practice of French writers, par- 
 ticiilarly the more recent ones, who illuminate their pictures more than 
 custom will permit us. On the whole, your History, in my opinion, is 
 written with spirit and judgment ; and I exhort you very earnestly to con- 
 tinue it. The objections that occurred to me on reading it, were so frivolous, 
 that I shall not trouble you with them, and should, I believe, have a difficulty 
 to recollect them. 
 
 ' ' I am, with great esteem, 
 "Sm, 
 " Your most obedient 
 
 ' ' and most humble servant, 
 
 "David Hume. 
 ' ' London, 
 
 "24th of Oct., 1767." 
 
 (Footnote by Lord Sheffield. ) 
 
 Pope wrote in 1716 : "They [the ancients] wi'it in languages that became 
 universal and everlasting, while ours are extremely limited both in extent 
 and duration. A mighty foundation for oiir pride ! when the utmost we can 
 hope is but to be read in one island, and to be thrown aside at the end of one 
 age" (Warton's Pope's Works, ed., 1822, i., 64). 
 
 Hume lamented the need he was under of writing in English. In 1769 he 
 wrote: "It has been my misfortune to write in the language of the most 
 stupid and factious barbarians in the world " {Letters to Strahan, p. 113). 
 
 ' ' We may reflect with some pleasure, ' ' wrote Gibbon, ' ' that the English 
 language will probably be diffused over an immense and populous continent" 
 {The Decline, iv., 166). 
 
 31. WARBURTON'S HYPOTHESIS (p. 179). 
 
 "None but the initiated could reveal the secret of the mysteries ; and the 
 initiated could not reveal it without violating the laws as well of honour as 
 of religion. I sincerely acquit the Bishop of Gloucester of any design ; yet so 
 unfortunate is his system, that it represents a most virtuous and elegant 
 
APPENDIX 311 
 
 poet as equally devoid of taste and of common honesty. . . . His lordship 
 maintains that after the compliment of a formal apology, 
 
 ' Sit mihi fas audita loqui ' [vi., 266], 
 
 Virgil lays open the whole secret of the mysteries under the thin veil of an 
 allegory, which could deceive none but the most careless readers. An 
 apology ! an allegory ! Such artifices might perhaps have saved him from 
 the sentence of the Areopagus, had some zealous or interested priest 
 denoiiuced him to the court, as guilty of publishing A Blasphemous Poem. 
 But the laws of honour are more rigid, and yet more liberal, than those of 
 civil tribunals. Sense, not words, is considered ; and guilt is aggravated, not 
 protected, by artful evasions. Virgil would still have incurred the severe 
 censure of a contemporary, who was himself a man of very little religion. 
 
 ' Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum 
 Vuigarit arcanse, sub iisdem 
 Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum 
 Solvat phaselum.' 
 
 Nor can I easily persuade myself that the ingenuous mind of Virgil could have 
 deserved this excommunication" [Misc. Works, iv., 502). 
 
 There is an allusion in this passage which, though now obscure, would 
 have been understood by every reader. Seven years earlier the Bishop had 
 complained to the House of Lords of a breach of privilege by John Wilkes, in 
 publishing a blasphemous and obscene poem with notes bearing the name of 
 Dr. Warburton [Pari. Hist, xv., 1346). 
 
 The quotation from Horace (Odes, ili., 2, 26) is rendered by Francis : — 
 
 " And they who mysteries reveal 
 Beneath my roof shall never live. 
 Shall never hoist with me the doubtful sail". 
 
 32. THE LITERARY CLUB (p. 189). 
 
 From the mixed, though polite, company of Boodle's, White's, and 
 Brooks's, I must honourably distinguish a weekly society, which was insti- 
 tuted in the year 1764, and which still continues to flourish, under the title 
 of the Literary Club (Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 415 ; Boswell's Tour to 
 the Hebrides, p. 97 {S>osvfe\Y & Johnson, i., 477; v., 109]). The names of Dr. 
 Johnson, Mr. Burke, Mr. Topham Beauclerc, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Colman, Sir William Jones, Dr. Percy, Mr. Fox, 
 Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Adam Smith, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Dunning, Sir Joseph 
 Banks, Dr. Warton, and his brother, Mr. Thomas Warton, Dr. Burney, &c. , 
 form a large and luminous constellation of British stars. (Footnote by Gibbon. ) 
 
 Boswell, whose luminosity was perhaps invisible to Gibbon, is passed over 
 in this list. In a note in The Tour to the Hebrides, which Gibbon had read, 
 he describes how Paley " shewed in decent but strong terms, the unfairness 
 of the indirect attempts of modern infidels to unsettle and perplex religious 
 principles, and particularly the irony, banter, and sneer of one whom he 
 politely calls 'an eloquent historian " (Boswell's Johnson, v., 203). In the 
 Life of Johnson (iv., 73), also published in Gibbon's lifetime, Boswell writes : 
 " Johnson certainly was vain of the society of ladies, and could make himself 
 very agreeable to them, when he chose it ; Sir Joshua Reynolds agreed with 
 me that he could. Mr. Gibbon, with his usual sneer, controverted it, perhaps 
 in resentment of Johnson's having talked with some disgust of his ugliness, 
 which one would think Vk philosopher would not mind." 
 
312 APPENDIX 
 
 In the proof-sheet, after "Mr. Gibbon," Boswell had added, "the 
 historical writer and to me offensive sneerer at what I hold sacred," but he 
 struck it out. In the proof of the index was the entry, "Gribbon, the his- 
 torian" ; it was altered into "Gibbon, Edward, Esq.". So early as 1776 he 
 showed his dislike of him. In that year he wrote to Temple: "I don't 
 know but you have spoken too highly of Gibbon's book ; the Dean of Derry, 
 who is of our Club as well as Gibbon, talks of answering it. I think it is 
 right that as fast as infidel wasps or venomous insects, whether creeping or 
 flying, are hatched, they should be crushed. Murphy says he has read thirty 
 pages of Smith's Wealth, but says he shall read no more : Smith too is now 
 of our Club. It has lost its select merit." In 1779 Boswell wrote : "Gibbon 
 is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary club to me " 
 {Letters of Boswell, pp. 232, 242). Gibbon was elected a member on March 4, 
 1774 (Croker's Boswell, ed. 1835, ii., 326). A year later, at one of the Club 
 dinners, the talk fell on bears. " 'We are told,' said Johnson, 'that the 
 black bear is innocent ; but I should not like to trust myself with him. ' Mr. 
 Gibbon muttered, in a low tone of voice, ' I should not like to trust mj^self 
 with you '. This piece of sarcastic pleasantry was a prudent resolution, if 
 applied to a competition of abilities " (Boswell' s /oknson, ii., 348). 
 
 Gibbon had at Lausanne an engraving, by Hall, of Reynolds's portrait of 
 Johnson (Read's I/isf. Studies, ii., 479). 
 
 In the first three volumes (quarto) of TAe Decline, published in .Johnson's 
 lifetime, his name is only once mentioned. "Dr. Johnson affirms that /ew 
 English words are of British extraction. Mr. Whitaker, who understands 
 the British language, has discovered more than three thousand'''' (iv., 153). 
 He is perhaps aimed at in vol. iii. , p. 237, where the quotation from 
 Claudian — 
 
 ' ' Nunquam libertas gratior exstat 
 Quam sub rege pio" 
 
 is introduced as ' ' the famous sentence so familiar to the friends of despot- 
 ism". It was the motto to Johnson's Political Tracts, published in 1776. It 
 was the motto also to Filmer's Patriarcha, and to Dryden's History of the 
 league. 
 
 In the last half of The Decline Johnson is attacked in the following notes : 
 " If the reader will turn to the first scene of the first part of Henry IV., he 
 wiU see in the text of Shakespeare the natural feelings of enthusiasm ; and in 
 the notes of Dr. Johnson the workings of a bigoted, though vigorous, mind, 
 greedy of every pretence to hate and persecute those who dissent from his 
 creed " (vi., 266). Johnson's note (there is but one) is as follows : "The law- 
 fulness and justice of the holy wars have been much disputed, but perhaps 
 there is a principle on which the question may be easily determined. If it be 
 part of the religion of the Mahometans to extirpate by the sword all other 
 religions, it is, by the law of self-defence, lawful for men of every other 
 religion, and for Christians among others, to make war iipon Mahometans, 
 simply as Mahometans, as men obliged by their own principles to make war 
 upon Christians, and only lying in wait till opportunity shall promise them 
 success." 
 
 In The Ravibler, No. 122, Johnson says of English historians : "None of 
 our writers can, in my opinion, justly contest the superiority of KnoUes, who, 
 in his history of the Turks, has displayed all the excellencies that narration 
 can admit ". On this Gibbon remarks : "In one of the Ramblers, Dr. John.son 
 praises KnoUes as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of his 
 subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose compilation from 
 Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either 
 instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from the historian some 
 tincture of philosophy and criticism ' ' ( The Decline, vii. , 24). For England's 
 barrenness of historians when Johnson wrote see ante, p. 122. "All the 
 
APPENDIX 313 
 
 colouring, all the philosophy of history," he later on said, "is conjecture" 
 (BosweW s foknson, ii., 365). 
 
 Gibbon, speaking of Mahomet II., says : " His menaces were expressed in 
 the Oriental style, that the fugitives and deserters, had they the wings of a 
 bird, should not escape from his inexorable justice ". In a note he goes out 
 of the way to attack " the extravagance of the rant " in a passage in John- 
 son's /re«^, where "Mahomet's passion soars above sense and reason" (Tke 
 Decline, vii., 187). 
 
 On the other hand, he quotes with approval four lines from the same play 
 {ib., vii., 171). See also ib., vi., 243, for some words in a "sublime inscrip- 
 tion" at which "a critique of high renown (the late Dr. Johnson) might 
 cavil ". I do not believe that Gibbon would have ventured to publish these 
 notes when Johnson was living. He was one of those who signed the Round 
 Robin to Johnson, that day at Reynolds's table, when "the question was 
 who should have the courage to propose" to the Doctor the alterations in 
 Goldsmith's epitaph (BosweU's /isA/^j'ow, iii. , 83). 
 
 He mentioned the Club to Garrick in a letter written from Paris on Aug. 
 14, 1777 : " At this time of year the society of the Turk's-head can no 
 longer be addressed as a corporate body, and most of the individual members 
 are probably dispersed : Adam Smith in Scotland ; Burke in the shades of 
 Beaconsfield ; Fox, the Lord or the devil knows where, &c. Be so good as to 
 salute in my name those friends who may fall in your way. Assure Sir 
 Joshua, in particular, that I have not lost my relish for manly conversation 
 and the society of the brown table " {Garrick Corres., ii., 256). 
 
 Tennyson, who was elected a member of the club in 1865, was told by the 
 Duke of Argyll that ' ' the form of intimation was drawn up as a joke by 
 Gibbon, and has been adhered to ever since". It is as follows: " I have to 
 intimate to you that you have had the honour of being elected a member of 
 'The Club' ". Tennyson had written previously that he had never heard of 
 " The Club " {Life of Tennyson, ii. , 20). For the elections of Macaulay and 
 Grote see Johnsonian Miscellanies, i., 229. 
 
 If Gibbon in this jocular intimation described the club as "The Club," 
 we find him in the above note calling it "The Literary Club," as Boswell 
 also often called it (Boswell' s Johnson, i., 477 ; iv., 326 ; v., 109, n. 5). 
 
 Gibbon described "authors, managers, &c.," as " good company to know, 
 but not to live with ' ' ( Corres. , i. , 201). 
 
 33. LISKEARD (p. 191). 
 
 Gibbon was elected member for Liskeard in the autumn of 1774. He had 
 visited Eliot at Port Eliot in Sept., 1773. "Our ci^al landlord," he wrote, 
 "possesses neither a pack of hounds, nor a stable of running horses, nor a 
 large farm, nor a good library" {Corres., i., 194). Miss Burney, in 1781, 
 described Eliot as "a most agreeable, lively, and very clever man" (Mme. 
 D'Arblay's Diary, ed. 1842, ii., 13). 
 
 Jeremy Bentham wrote in August, 1781: "Eliot is knight of the shire 
 [member of parliament for the county], and puts in seven borough members 
 for Cornwall" (Bentham's Works, x., 97). 
 
 Liskeard, or Leskeard as it was often written, was distinguished by many 
 eminent representatives — Sir Edward Coke in the seventeenth century ; 
 Gibbon in the eighteenth ; William Huskisson, Charles BuUer, Bernal 
 Osborne, Edward Horsman ("the superior person of the House of Com- 
 mons"), and Leonard H. Com-tney. Philip Stanhope, to whom Lord 
 Chesterfield wrote his Letters, was member from 1754 to 1761. ' ' Mr. Eliot, ' ' 
 Chesterfield wrote {Letters, iv. , 58), "has, in the most friendly manner 
 imaginable, fiixed you at his own borough of Liskeard, where you will be 
 elected, jointly with him, without the least opposition or difficulty." Eliot, 
 
314 APPENDIX 
 
 however, was elected at St. Germains. From 1768 to 1784 Samuel Salt was 
 one of the members, that old Bencher of the Inner Temple "of pensive 
 gentility, ' ' who lives in the Essays of Elia. He must have been accounted 
 worthy even of Liskeard, for " it was incredible what repute for talents he 
 enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity ". 
 
 By the last Reform Bill this interesting borough was lost in one of the 
 county divisions of Cornwall. It surely, and not Bodmin, should have given 
 the name to the district. Who cares for Bodmin ? For an account of this 
 ancient borough, see W. P. Courtney's Parliamentary Representatives of 
 Cornwall to 1832, p. 251. 
 
 34. GIBBON'S "SILENT AND SINCERE VOTES" (p. 191). 
 
 "We may well be astonished at the word "perhaps" in the text, when 
 these "silent and sincere votes" helped to set England at war, not only 
 with her thirteen colonies, but also with the three chief naval powers _of the 
 Continent of Europe — France, Spain, and Holland. 
 
 According to Gibbon's own estimate {The Decline, i., 42) it was a struggle 
 between eight millions of people on one side and thirty-two millions on the 
 other side. There were certainly more than 8,000,000 in the British Isles. 
 In 1801 there were nearly 11,000,000 in Great Britain alone [Penny Cyclo., 
 xi., 414). The population of the other countries was probably under-esti- 
 mated also, so that the disproportion of the opposing powers may be correctly 
 given. Moreover, the eight millions were not united. Ireland was dis- 
 affected — Protestants as well as Catholics — and in 1779 a rebellion was on the 
 point of breaking out. So incredibly weak was the Government that for some 
 days in June, 1780, London was scared by a mob which burnt down the very 
 prisons. Of the Ministry Johnson said, " such a bunch of imbecility never 
 disgraced a country" (Boswell's/C/^^zjow, iv., 139). He was one of the least 
 despondent of men so far as the outside world was concerned. Nevertheless, 
 on Aug. 4, 1782, he wrote : "Perhaps no nation not absolutely conquered has 
 declined so much in so short a time. We seem to be sinking" [Letters of 
 Johnson, ii., 264). On Jan. 21, 1783, he wrote : " I am afraid of a civil war " 
 \ib., p. 286). The National Debt was raised by the. war from 129 to 268 
 millions [Penny Cyclo., xvi., 100). At present it amounts to £15 a head 
 (Whitaker's Almanack, 1899, p. 185). In these few years of warfare, taking 
 Gibbon's estimate of population as correct, it was increased by £16 a head. 
 
 He might have learnt wisdom from his friend David Hume, who wrote on 
 Oct. 26, 1775 : " Arbitrary power can extend its oppressive arm to the Anti- 
 podes ; but a limited government can never long be upheld at a distance, 
 even where no disgusts have intervened ; much less where such violent 
 animosities have taken place. We must therefore annul all the charters ; 
 abolish every democratical power in every colony ; repeal the Habeas Corpus 
 Act with regard to them ; invest every governor with full discretionary or 
 arbitrary powers ; confiscate the estates of all the chief planters, and hang 
 three-fourths of their clergy. To execute such acts of destructive violence 
 twenty thousand men will not be sufficient ; nor thirty thousand to maintain 
 them, in so wide and disjointed a territory. And who are to pay so great an 
 army ? The Colonists cannot at any time, much less after reducing them to 
 such a state of desolation : we ought not, and ii\deed cannot, in the over- 
 loaded, or rather overwhelmed and totally ruined state of our finances. Let 
 us therefore lay aside all anger, shake hands and part friends. Or, if we 
 retain any anger, let it only be against ourselves for our past folly ; and 
 against that wicked madman, Pitt, who has reduced us to our present con- 
 dition. Dixi" [Letters of Hu7ne to Strahan, p. 289). 
 
 On April 25, 1781, Horace Walpole wrote [Letters, viii., 30) : "Unfortun- 
 ately Dr. Franklin was a truer politician, when he said he would furnish Mr. 
 
APPENDIX 315 
 
 Gibbon with materials for writing the History of the Decline of the British 
 Empire ' ' . 
 
 The younger Pitt on June 12, 1781, described the war as " most accursed, 
 wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical" (Stanhope's 
 Pitt, ed. 1861, i., 61). 
 
 In The Decline, vi., 408, Gibbon wrote justly of war: "In the miserable 
 account of war the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to the 
 pain ". In another passage, in which he describes the seven appearances of a 
 comet at intervals of 575 years, he perhaps shows how little he foresaw the 
 rapid advance of America. " At the eighth period, in the year 2255, their 
 calculations may perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some future 
 capital in the Siberian or American wilderness" [ib., iv. , 434). See post, 
 p. 324, for doubts cast on Gibbon's sincerity. 
 
 35. THE PUBLICATION OF THE DECLINE AND FALL (p. 195). 
 
 The book was published on Feb. 17, 1776 [Corres., i., 279). " The volume," 
 Gibbon wrote, ' ' a handsome quarto, costs one guinea unbound ; it sold, 
 according to the expression of the piiblisher, like a threepenny pamphlet on 
 the affairs of the day " (Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 387). The day after publi- 
 cation Horace "Walpole wrote [Letters, vS.., 310) : "Lo, there is just appeared 
 a truly classic work ; a history, not majestic like Livy, nor compressed like 
 Tacitus ; not stamped with character like Clarendon ; perhaps not so deep as 
 Robertson's Scotland, but a thousand degrees above his Charles ; not pointed 
 like Voltaire, but as accurate as he is inexact ; modest as he is tranchant, and 
 sly as Montesquieu, without being so recherche. The style is as smooth as a 
 Flemish picture, and the muscles are concealed and only for natural uses, not 
 exaggerated like Michael Angelo's to show the painter's skill in anatomy ; 
 nor composed of the limbs of clowns of different nations like Dr. Johnson's 
 heterogeneous monsters." 
 
 By March 26 1,000 copies were sold. Of the second edition of 1,500 copies, 
 published on June 3, 700 were gone by June 6. In March, 1777, a third 
 edition, also in qiiarto, of 1,000 copies, was printing [Corres., i., 280, 285, 304). 
 The estimated profit on this edition was £490, of which Gibbon's two-third 
 share was £326 13s. 4d. [Misc. Works, ii. , 167). The second half of the book 
 would be worth, he estimated, £3,000 [Corres., ii., 126). I infer that it pro- 
 duced £4,000 ; for Lord Sheffield, in publishing Gibbon's letter, changed £3,000 
 into " about £4,000 " [Misc. Works, il, 377). 
 
 For the copyright of Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works John Murray, in 1812, 
 paid Lord Sheffield, as the historian's executor, £1,000 [Memoirs of John 
 Murray, i., 236). 
 
 36. OSSIAN (p. 197). 
 
 " Something of a doubtful mist still hangs over these Highland traditions, 
 nor can it be entirely dispelled by the most ingenious researches of modern 
 criticism" [The Decline, i., 128). 
 
 " Ossian, the son of Fingal, is said to have disputed in his extreme old 
 age with one of the foreign missionaries, and the dispute is still extant in 
 verse, and in the Erse language. See Mr. Macpherson's Dissertations on the 
 Antiquity of Ossian' s Poems, p. 10" [ib., ii., 64). 
 
 In spite of Hume's warning, we find Gibbon writing in a later volume : 
 " In the dark and doubtful paths of Caledonian antiqtiity I have chosen for 
 my giiides two learned and ingenious Highlanders". One of the two was 
 James Macpherson, to whose History of Great Britain he refers [ib., iii., 40). 
 
316 APPENDIX 
 
 Ossian Gibbon describes as " a conjectiiral supplement to the Erse poetry ' 
 (ib., p. 43). In the text he speaks of "the generous humanity which seems 
 to inspire the songs of Ossian " [ib., p. 44). In vi., 230, he seems to sneer at 
 Ossian, where, after quoting a bombastic translation from Dow's History of 
 Hindosian, he adds : "I suspect that by some odd fatality the style of 
 Ferishta has been improved by that of Ossian ". 
 
 It is not impossible that Gibbon wished to keep well with Macpherson, 
 who, if we can trust what Horace Walpole wrote in February, 1776, ' ' had a 
 pension of £600 a year from the Court to supervise the newspapers". In 
 1781 this pension was £800 [Journal of the Reign of George III., ii. , 17, 483 ; 
 see also The Rolliad a7id Probationary Odes, ed. 1799, p. 458). 
 
 Hume at first believed in the poems of Ossian ; though after ' ' often hear- 
 ing them totally rejected with disdain and indignation, as a palpable and 
 most impudent forgery," by many of "the men of letters in London," he 
 too rejected them [Letters to Strahan, pp. 35-38). A year before Gibbon 
 quoted Ossiaii, Johnson, in his Jo7ir7iey to the Western Islands, had exposed 
 the fraiid. "If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, " he wrote, "let 
 us not fill the vacuity witli Ossian. If we have not searched the Magel- 
 lanick regions, let us, however, forbear to people them with Patagons " 
 (Johnson's Works, ix., 116 ; see also Boswell' s /o/^^^jwz, ii., 297-303, 309 ; iv., 
 183). 
 
 37. FRENCH SOCIETY (p. 199). 
 
 Gibbon wrote from Paris in 1763 : " We may say what we please of the 
 frivolity of the French, but I do assure you that in a fortnight passed at Paris 
 I have heard more conversation worth remembering, and seen more men of 
 letters among the people of fashion, than I had done in two or three winters 
 in London" [Corres., i., 29). 
 
 Johnson, who spent some weeks in Paris in the autumn of 1775, but who 
 was only ' ' just beginning to creep into acquaintance " when he left, said on 
 April 9, 1778, at Reynolds's table, in Gibbon's presence: "I question if in 
 Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could be got together in 
 less than half a year " (Boswell's Johnson, ii., 401 ; iii., 253). 
 
 Miss Edgeworth, who, in more than one visit to Paris, had seen some of 
 the best French society, wi-ote in 1822: "The great variety of society in 
 London, and the solidity of the sense and information to be gathered from 
 conversation, strike me as far superior to Parisian society " [Life and Letters 
 of Maria Edgeworth, ii., 77). 
 
 Mme. du Deflfand thus described Gibbon on May 27, 1777 : " Je lui crois 
 beaucoup d'esprit, sa conversation est facile, et forte de choses, comme disait 
 Fontenelle " . After reading some of the translation of The Decline, she 
 continued : " Je trouve I'auteur assez aimable, mais il a, si je ne me trompe, 
 une grande ambition de c616brit6, il brigue h. force ouverte la faveur de nos 
 beaux esprits, et il me parait qu'il se trompe souvent aux jugemens qu'il en 
 porte ; dans la conversation il veut briller et prendre le ton qu' il croit le 
 notre, et il y r^ussit assez bien". On Sept. 2l she wrote : "M. Gibbon a ici 
 le plus grand succes, on se I'arrache, il se conduit trfes bien, et sans avoir, je 
 crois, autant d'esprit que feu M. Hume, il ne tombe pas dans les memes 
 ridicules. ... II se comjjorte avec tout le monde d'une maniere qui ne 
 donne point de prise aux ridicules ; ce qui est fort difficile k ^viter dans les 
 soci^t^s qu'il fr^quente." On Oct. 26 she added : " II fait trop de cas de nos 
 agr^mens, trop de d^sir de les acqu6rir ; j'ai toujours eu sur le bout de la langue 
 de lui dire : ne vous tourmentez pas, vous m^ritez I'honneur d'etre Fran9ais 
 (Leitres de La Marquise die Deffand d Monsieur Walpole, London, 1810, iii., 
 265, 287, 295, 301). 
 
APPENDIX 317 
 
 38. L'ABBE DE MABLY (p. 199). 
 
 {!•) 
 
 Of the voluminous writings of the Abb6 de Mably (see his Eloge by the 
 Abb6 Brizard), the Principes du divit public de C Europe, and the first part of 
 the Observations sur PHistoire de France, may be deservedly praised ; and 
 even the Maniire dUcrire VHistoire contains several useful precepts and 
 judicious remarks. Mably was a lover of virtue and freedom ; but his virtue 
 was austere, and his freedom was impatient of an equal. Kings, magistrates, 
 laobles, and successful writers were the objects of his contempt, or hatred, or 
 envy ; but his illiberal abuse of Voltaire, Hume, Buffon, the Abb6 Raynal, 
 Dr. Robertson, and tutti quanti can be injurious only to himself (Footnote by 
 
 Gibbon praises him in The Decliiie : " The brilliant imagination of Montes- 
 quieu is corrected by the dry cold reason of the Abb6 de Mably " (i. , 
 227). "His accurate distinction of iimes gives him a merit to which even 
 Montesquieu is a stranger" (ib., iv., 131). In an early Essay entitled Du 
 Gouvernement Fdodal, he says of these two writers : "Ces hommes c^lfebres 
 ont ouvert la carri^re ; je les suis en tremblant " [Misc. Works, iii., 183). A 
 little later he wrote of Mably that he " had never been able to discover in his 
 works anything but common-place " (ib., v. , 406). To Dr. Robertson he wrote 
 in 1783 : ' ' The Abb6 appears to hate, and affects to despise everj^ writer of 
 his own times who has been well received by the public (Stewart's Robert- 
 son, p. 365 ; see also ante, p. 224, ?i.). 
 
 Voltaire was described by him as " un homme qui ne voyait pas au bout 
 de son nez" {Mimoires, b'c, de Grimm, v., 412). 
 
 (II.) 
 
 "Est-il rien de plus fastidieux (says the polite Censor) qu'un M. Guibbon, 
 qui, dans son 6ternelle Histoire des Empereurs Romains, suspend i chaque 
 instant son insipide et lente narration, pour vous expliquer la cause [les 
 causes] des faits que vous allez lire?" {Manitre d'icrire VHistoire, p. 184; 
 see another passage, p. 280. ) Yet I am indebted to the Abb6 de Mably for 
 two such advocates as the Anonymous French Critic and my friend Mr. 
 Hayley (Hayley's Works, 8vo edit., vol. ii., pp. 261-263) (Footnote by Gibbon). 
 
 The "other passage" is as follows: "Vous voyez des historiens, par 
 exemple M. Guibbon, qui s'empStrent dans leur sujet, ne savent ni I'entamer 
 ni le finir, et tournent, pour ainsi dire, toujours sur eux-memes ". 
 
 For Hayley see ante, pp. 180, 230. Gibbon was to have a far greater ad- 
 vocate than this poetaster. Sainte-Beuve thus concludes his criticism of the 
 Essai sur l' Etude de la Littirature {ante, p. 127): "En un mot on trouve 
 partout dans cet Essai I'avant-goftt de cet esprit de critique qui sera tout 
 I'oppos^ de la m6thode roide et tranchante d'un Mably " [Causeries, viii., 448). 
 
 39. GIBBON'S ANTAGONISTS— DA VIES, CHELSUM, WATSON, 
 APTHORPE, TAYLOR, MILNER, PRIESTLEY, AND WHITE (p. 202). 
 
 {a) Henry Edwaed Davies. 
 
 He published in 1778, An Examination of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters 
 of Mr. Gibbon^ s History of the Decline, ^c. , in which his View of the progress of 
 the Christian religion is shewn to be founded on the mis7'eprese?itation of the 
 authors he cites, and . . . instances of his inaccuracy and plagiarism are pro- 
 duced. Davies was only one-and-twenty when he attacked Gibbon. He 
 became Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, and died in 1784. Of the 
 
818 APPENDIX 
 
 " royal pension " which Gibbon " enjoyed the pleasure of giving to him," I 
 am informed that "no trace can be found in spite of an exhaustive research 
 in the Treasury Records ". 
 
 (i) Db. James Chblsum. 
 
 He published in 1776 Reynarks on the two last chapters of Mr. Gibbon's 
 History, &c. "Dr. Chelsum," Gibbon wrote, "is unwilling that the world 
 should forget that he was the first who sounded to arms, that he was the first 
 who furnished the antidote to the poison " (Afwc. PFor/^5, iv. , 602). If "poor 
 Chelsum was neglected," nevertheless he had a fair share of the good things 
 of the Church. According to the Did. Nat. Biog. , he held three benefices in 
 as many counties, and, moreover, was chaplain to two Bishops and was one of 
 the Preachers at "Whitehall. 
 
 (c) Dr. Richa-bd "Watson. 
 
 He published in 1776 An Apology for Christianity in a Series of Letters to 
 Edward Gibbon, Esq. In 1782 he was made Bishop of LlandaflE on the recom- 
 mendation of Lord Shelburne, " who (writes "Watson) had erroneously enter- 
 tained the opinion that I was a warm, and might become an useful partisan " 
 {Life of Watson, ed. 1818, i., 153). "My answer to Gibbon," he says, "had 
 a great run" (ib., p. 98). Gibbon described it as "civil, but too dull to 
 deserve notice" (Corres., i., 295). For "Watson's friendly correspondence 
 with him see Afisc. Works, ii., 180, 227- In The Decline, vi., 10, the Bishop's 
 Chemical Essays are styled " a classic book ". For his neglect of his diocese, 
 see John. Misc., ii., 199. 
 
 Not only Davies, but also his allies in this attack, ' ' the two confederate 
 Doctors," Chelsum and Randolph, were of Oxford. " Oppressed with the 
 same yoke, covered with the same trappings, they heavily move along, 
 perhaps not with an equal pace, in the same beaten track of prejudice and 
 preferment" {Misc. Works, iv., 603). To Oxford also belonged Dr. "White. 
 This, no doubt, increased Gibbon's dislike of that university. "V\'"atson be- 
 longed to Cambridge. "There is much less difference," Gibbon wrote, 
 " between the smoothness of the Ionic and the roughness of the Doric dialect 
 than may be found between the polished style of Dr. Watson and the coarse 
 language of Mr. Davies, Dr. Chelsum, or Dr. Randolph " {Misc. Works, 
 iv., 602). 
 
 {d) Db. East Apthobpe. 
 
 He was the son of a merchant of Boston, Massachusetts, and was Vicar of 
 Croydon. "Early in 1778 he published Letters on the Prevalence of 
 Christianity before its Civil Establishment ; with Observations on the late 
 History of the Decline of the Roman Empi?-e. In February of the same year 
 he was collated by Archbishop Cornv/allis to the rectory of St. Mary-le-Bow " 
 (Nichols's Lit. Anec, iii., 94 ; see Misc. Works, iv., 596). 
 
 {e) Henby Taylor. 
 
 The stupendous title, Thoughts on the Catises of the Grand Afostacy, at 
 first agitated my nerves, till I discovered that it was the apostacy of the whole 
 church, since the Council of Nice, from Mr. Taylor's private religion. His 
 book is a thorough mixture of high enthusiasm and low bufifoonery, and the 
 Millennium is a fundamental article of his creed (Footnote by Gibbon). 
 
 He was Rector of Crawley and "Vicar of Portsmouth. In 1781 he published 
 Thoughts on the Causes of the Grand Afostacy, with Reflections and Observa- 
 tions on the X Vth Chapter of Mr. Gibbon's History, &c. 
 
APPENDIX 319 
 
 (/) Joseph Milneb. 
 
 From his grammar school at Kingston-upon-Hull, Mr. Joseph Milner 
 pronounces an anathema against all rational religion. His faith is a divine 
 taste, a spiritual inspiration ; his church is a mystic and invisible body ; the 
 natural Christians, such as Mr. Locke, who believe and interjiret the Scriptures, 
 are, in his judgment, no better than profane infidels (Footnote by Gibbon). 
 
 He published in 1781 Gibbon s Account of Christianity considered ; together 
 with some Strictures on Httme's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. " On 
 the margin of the passage in Milner's History of the Church, where Basil says 
 of Gregory Thaumaturgus (in whose miraculous powers Milner devoutly 
 believed), ' He never allowed himself to call his Brother fool, ' Macaulay 
 wrote, ' He never knew such a fool as Milner then ' " (Trevelyan's Macaulay, 
 ed. 1877, ii., 285). 
 
 [g) Db. Joseph Peiestley. 
 
 He published in 1782 An History of the Corruptions of Christianity. In 
 Part I. of the General Conclusion "he threw down his gauntlet " to Gibbon, 
 and in Part II. to Hurd (atite, pp. 178, 203). Gibbon thus refers to the book 
 in The Decline, vi., 128: "I shall recommend to public animadversion two 
 passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. 
 At the first of these (Hist, of the Corruptioiis of Christianity, vol. i., pp. 275, 
 276) the priest, at the second (vol. ii., p. 484) the magistrate, may tremble !" 
 
 In the first passage Priestley says : " Great buildings do not often fall at 
 once, but some apartments will still be thought habitable after the rest are 
 seen to be in ruins. It is the same with great systems of doctrine, the parts of 
 which have long gone together. The force of evidence obliges us at iirst to 
 abandon some one part of them only, and we do not immediately see that, in 
 consequence of this, we ought to alDandon others, and at length the whole. 
 . . . The detection of one falsehood prepares us for the detection of another, 
 till, before we are aware of it, we find no trace left of the immense and 
 seemingly well-compacted system." With all this Gibbon must have agreed. 
 
 In the second passage Priestley says : "It is nothing but the alliance of 
 the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world (an alliance which 
 our Lord himself expressly disclaimed) that supports the grossest corruptions 
 of Christianity ; and perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil powers 
 before this most unnatural alliance be broken. . . . May the Kingdom of God 
 and of Christ (that which I conceive to be intended in the Lord's prayer) 
 truly and fully come, though all the kingdoms of the world be removed, in 
 order to make way for it. " 
 
 For the letter in which Gibbon "declined his challenge" see Misc. 
 Works, ii., 265. Priestley wrote in his reply: "If there be any certain 
 method of discovering a man's real object, yours has been to discredit 
 Christianity in fact, while in words you^ represent yourself as a friend to it ; 
 a conduct which I scruple not to call highly unworthy and mean ; an insult 
 on the common sense of the Christian world" {ib., p. 267). 
 
 Such a passage as the following justifies Priestley's accusation: "Some 
 deities of a more recent and fashionable cast might soon have occupied the 
 deserted temples of Jupiter and Apollo, if, in the decisive moment, the 
 wisdom of Providence had not interposed a genuine revelation, fitted to 
 inspire the most rational esteem and conviction, whilst, at the same time, it 
 was adorned with all that could attract the curiosity, the wonder, and the 
 veneration of the people" {The Decline, ii., 56). 
 
 So far was he from "fearing" Gibbon, that he wished to publish the 
 letters that had passed between them, but was forbidden by him, as it was 
 "private correspondence, which a man of honour is not at liberty to print ". 
 He printed it soon after the historian's death (Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii., 265, 
 271). 
 
320 APPENDIX 
 
 Three years after this attack on Priestley in The Decline and Fall, the 
 magistrates of Birmingham went to sleep, while a Church and King mob 
 burnt down his house and chapel, as well as another chapel and the houses of 
 many of his friends. The magistrates did not wake up till the mob 
 "expanded their views," and began to plunder indiscriminately {Life of 
 Priestley, ed. 1810, p. 83; Life of Sir Rowland Hill, i., 32). 
 
 [h) Db. Joseph White. 
 
 He was at this time Professor of Arabic at Oxford. Later on he was given 
 in addition the chair of Hebrew and a canonry at Christ Church. In 1784 he 
 delivered the Bampton Lectures, taking for his subject, "y^ Compariso7t of 
 Mahometism and Christianity, in their History, their Evidence, and their 
 Effects. " These lectures, " writes Dr. John Johnstone, " became part of the 
 triumphant literature of the University of Oxford". Of them Dr. Parr had 
 written about one-fifth part. "Writing to Parr about a passage in the manu- 
 script of the last lecture. White said : "I fear I did not clearly explain 
 myself ; I humbly beg the favour of you to make my meaning more intel- 
 ligible". On the death of the Rev. Samuel Badcock in 1788, a note for £500 
 from White was found in his pocket-book. White pretended that this was 
 remuneration for some other work ; but it was believed on good grounds that 
 Badcock had begun what Parr had completed, and that these famous Lectures 
 were mainly their work. Badcock was one of the writers in the Monthly 
 Review. 
 
 On May 13, 1784, White wrote to Parr: "The fame of the Lectures 
 increases daily ; they give equal satisfaction to the beaux and the belles and 
 the Doctors. The Church is crowded in the most extraordinary manner ' ' 
 (Johnstone's Zz/^ of Parr, i., 220-1, 230, 241, 251; see also ib., p. 251, and 
 Lowndes's Bibl. Man., ed. 1871, p. 2901, for an account of a meeting held at 
 Parr's parsonage to ascertain his share in the Lectures). 
 
 The passage in White's letter to Badcock, not quite accurately quoted 
 ante, p. 204, is as follows : "The part where we encounter Gibbon ought to 
 be brilliant, and the conclusion of the whole must be animated and grand ' ' 
 (Johnstone's Parr, i., 248). 
 
 In 1790 he pubished A Statement of Dr. White's Lite7^a7y Obligations to the 
 late Rev. Mr. Samuel Badcock aud the Rev. Samuel, Parr, LL.D. For his 
 explanation of the note for £500 see ib., p. 64. 
 
 It is in The Decline, vi., 15, that Gibbon praises White : "Perhaps the 
 interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools at Oxford, 
 and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and 
 truth of the revelation of Mahomet". Gibbon adds in a note: "Yet I 
 sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosque would have produced a volume 
 of controversy so elegant and ingenious as the sermons lately preached by 
 Mr. White, the Arabic Professor, at Mr. Bampton' s lecture. His observa- 
 tions on the character and religion of Mahomet are always adapted to his 
 argument, and generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains the part 
 of a lively and eloquent advocate ; and sometimes rises to the merit of an 
 historian and philosopher." 
 
 In spite of his borrowed plumes, Wliite was a man of real learning 
 (Johnstone's Life of Parr, i., 268). 
 
 Macaulay recorded in Oct. 9, 1850 : "I picked up Whitaker's criticism on 
 Gibbon. Pointless spite, with here and there a just remark. . . . How 
 utterly all the attacks on his History are forgotten ! this of Whitaker ; Ran- 
 dolph's ; Chelsum's ; Davies's ; that stupid beast Joseph Milner's ; even 
 Watson's. And still the book, with all its great faults of substance and style, 
 retains, and will retain, its place in our literature, and this though it is 
 offensive to the religious feeling of the country, and really most unfair where 
 religion is concerned. But Whitaker was as dirty a cur as I remember " 
 (Macaulay 'sZ.?/e, ed. 1877, ii., 285 ; for Whitaker, see Misc. Works, i., 243, «., 
 
APPENDIX 321 
 
 and Nicholss's Lit. Anec, iii., 102, where it is impudently asserted that 
 Gibbon "submitted the MS. of the first volume of The Decline, &c., to his 
 inspection, but suppressed the chapter obnoxious to the Christian world, over- 
 awed by his high character "). 
 
 40. GIBBON'S VINDICATION (p. 202). 
 
 The full title of the work is A Vindication of Some Passages in the XVth 
 and XVIth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire. By the Author. London, 1779. 8vo [Misc. Works, iv., 415). 
 
 Horace Walpole wrote on Jan. 14, 1779 {Letters, vii., 165): "There is, in 
 sooth, a charming novelty to-day of a very different kind ; an answer from 
 Mr. Gibbon to the monks that have attacked his two famous chapters. It 
 is the quintessence of argument, wit, temper, spirit, and consequently of 
 victory. I did not expect anything so luminous in this age of Egyptian 
 darkness — nor the monks either." He had written to Gibbon somewhat 
 earlier : "Davies and his prototypes tell you Middleton, &c., have vised the 
 same objections, and they have been confuted; answering, in the theologic 
 dictionary, signifying confuting'" [ib., vii., 158). "Walpole probably remem- 
 bered Drj^den, who at the end of his Controversy with Stillingfleet, wrote : 
 ' ' Everything which is called an answer is with them a confutation ' ' 
 (Dry den's Works, ed. 1892, xvii., 253). 
 
 Mackintosh [Life, i., 245) "considered the sixteenth chapter as a very 
 ingenious and specious, but very disgraceful extenuation of the cruelties 
 perpetrated by the Roman magistrates against the Christians. It is written 
 in the most contemptibly factious spirit of prejudice against the sufferers." 
 Gibbon had tried in his Vindication to meet this charge by saying that as 
 there is no "Heathen narrative of the persecutions of Decius and Dio- 
 cletian," he had constituted himself "counsel for the prisoner, who is 
 incapable of making any defence for himself" (Misc. Works, iv., 626). 
 
 In another passage, after stating that his accusers " convert a geographical 
 observation into a theological error, " he continues : ' ' When I recollect that the 
 imputation of a similar error was employed by the implacable Calvin to preci- 
 pitate and to justify the execution of Servetus, I must applaud the felicity of 
 this country and of this age, which has disarmed, if it coiild not mollify, the 
 fierceness of ecclesiastial criticism" [ib., iv., 539). 
 
 For the reasons why he was " more deeply scandalised at the single 
 execution of Servetus than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto 
 da F^s of Spain and Portugal " see The Decline, vi., 127. 
 
 By his conversion to Rome Gibbon had akeadj^ been guilty of high 
 treason {ante, p. 73). By his Decline and Fall he laid himself open to 
 prosecution under the Statute 9 and 10, "William III., c. 22, which enacts 
 that "if any person educated in the Christian religion shall by writing, &c., 
 deny the Christian religion to be true he shall . . . for the second offence 
 . . . suffer three years' imprisonment without bail" (Blackstone's C(7?K»2e«^., 
 ed. 1775, iv., 44). See also ante, p. 291. 
 
 Whiston {Memoirs, p. 226) records that in 1714, at the Stafford Assizes, he 
 heard Baron Price ' ' exhorting the Grand Jury to present all such as blas- 
 phemed or condemned the Church's doctrine of the Trinity. The High 
 Sheriff," "Whiston continues, "afterwards told the Baron that I was in 
 Court, and should naturally suppose this part of his charge levelled against 
 me in particular. The Baron replied that he meant no such thing ; that it 
 was only his usual form ; nay, that I was the honestest man in the world, 
 and that he was then reading my works." 
 
322 APPENDIX 
 
 41. BISHOP HORSLEY (p. 203). 
 
 Samuel Horsley was Bishop, first of St. David's, and next of Rochester. 
 He published Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley upon the Historical 
 Question of the Belief of the First Ages iii Our Loj'd' s Divinity. Priestley, 
 who complains of the rudeness of the attack, replied "in four volumes 
 octavo. This work," he adds, "has brought me more antagonists, and I now 
 write a pamphlet annually in defence of the Unitarian doctrine against all 
 my opponents " (Memoirs of Priestley, ed. 1810, p. 70). 
 
 "Windham, in his Diary, p. 125, speaks of Horsley as having his thoughts 
 "intent wholly on prospects of Church preferment '. Bentham (Works, x., 
 41) says: " I have heard Wilberforce call him ' a dirty rascal ' and 'a dirty 
 scoundrel ' " . 
 
 Lord Holland (Memoirs, &c., ii., 90) describes Horsley as "a man of 
 coarse and vulgar manners, hot temper, and imprudent conduct ; . . . but 
 distinguished for ready and powerful eloquence, a bold spirit, and a strong 
 mind". According to Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, ed. 1846, v., 
 635) Thurlow rewarded him for his Letters to Priestley by a stall at 
 Gloucester, "saying that 'those who supported the Church should be sup- 
 ported by it'". 
 
 Just as Gribbon boasted that attacks on him by the clergy were rewarded 
 in this world, so was it said of Priestley that ' ' to dispute with him was 
 deemed the road to preferment. He had already made two Bishops, and 
 there were still several heads which wanted mitres, and others who cast a 
 more humble eye upon tithes and glebe lands " (Life of William Hutton, ed. 
 1816, p. 161). 
 
 42. BURKE'S PLAN OF ECONOMICAL REFORMATION (p. 207). 
 
 I can never forget the delight with which that diffusive and ingenious 
 orator, Mr. Burke, was heard by all sides of the house, and even by those 
 whose existence he proscribed. (See Mr. Burke's Speech on the Bill of 
 Reform, pp. 72-80 [Burke's Works, ed. 1808, iii., 322-334].) The Lords of 
 Trade blushed at their insignificancy, and Mr. Eden's appeal to the 2,500 
 volumes of our Reports, served only to excite a general laugh. I take this 
 opportunity of certifying the correctness of Mr. Burke's printed speeches, 
 which I have heard and read (Footnote by Gibbon). 
 
 Burke on Feb. 11, 1780, submitted to Parliament "a plan for the . . . 
 economical reformation of the civil and other establishments " . The passage 
 quoted in the text is found in Burke's Works, ed. 1808, iii., 332. On Feb. 23 
 he brought in his Bill to effect this reformation (Pari. Hist., xxi., 111). On 
 March 13, in answer to Mr. Eden, he said that "his 2,300 volumes would 
 serve as a monument under which both he and his clause might be buried, 
 and form a funeral pile for them as large as the pyramids of Egj^pt ". Eden 
 had instanced the illustrious writers who had sat at the Board — Locke, 
 Addison, and Prior. Burke replied that "considered as an Academy of 
 Belles Lettres, he was willing to bow his head to the great and shining talents 
 of its several members. Every department of literature had its separate 
 Professor. The historian's labours, the wise and salutary result of deep 
 religious research [Gibbon's Decline and Fall}, &c. " (ib., pp. 235-8). On 
 March 13, the Lords of Trade were in vain ' ' urged to withdraw before the 
 division, on the ground of indecency in their voting on a question in which 
 they were so personally concerned" (Ann. Reg., 1780, i., 145). Pitt, not yet 
 in Parliament, witnessed from the gallery "a scene which (he writes) I never 
 saw before, a majority against a Minister" (Stanhope's Pitt, i., 38). 
 
 "The storm blew over" owing to the illness of the Speaker, which kept 
 
APPENDIX 323 
 
 the House from meeting for ten days. During this recess "effectual means 
 were used to bring the numerous deserters from the Court back to their 
 original standard " . On April 24 the Ministers had a majority of 51. In a 
 scene of "shameful disorder," Fox "declared the vote of that night to be 
 scandalous, disgraceful, and treacherous. The defection," he added, 
 "originated chiefly among the county members " {Pari. Hist., xxi., 523-6; 
 Ann. Re^., 1780, i., 181). 
 
 On March 8 the clause for abolishing the office of Third Secretary of 
 State, or Secretary of State for the Colonies, was lost by 201 to 208 {Pari. 
 Hist., xxi., 193, 217). The office was abolished at the Peace of 1782, but 
 restored in 1794 (Stanhope's Pitt, ed. 1861, ii., 242). " Our late president" 
 was Lord George Germain, who was appointed in 1775, and held the office 
 till 1779 {Diet, of Nat. Biog.). In Nov., 1775, he was also made Secretary of 
 State for America (Walpole's Letters, vi., 280), which office he held till 
 March, 1782. 
 
 43. GIBBON'S ACCEPTANCE OF A PLACE (p. 207). 
 
 ^^ From Edward Gibbon, Esq., to Edward Elliot, Esq., of Port Elliot. 
 
 "July 2, 1779. 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 "Yesterday I received a very interesting communication from my friend 
 the Attorney-General [Wedderburne], whose kind and honourable behaviour 
 towards me I must always remember with the highest gratitude. He 
 informed me that, in consequence of an arrangement, a place at the Board of 
 Trade was reserved for me, and that as soon as I signified my acceptance of 
 it, he was satisfied no farther difficulties would arise. My answer to him was 
 sincere and explicit. I told him that I was far from approving all the past 
 measures of the administration, even some of those in which I myself had 
 silently concurred ; that I saw, with the rest of the world, many capital 
 defects in the characters of some of the present ministers, and was sorry that 
 in so alarming a situation of public affairs, the country had not the assistance 
 of several able and honest men who are now in opposition. But that I had 
 not formed with any of those persons in opposition any engagements or con- 
 nections which could in the least restrain or affect my parliamentary conduct : 
 that I could not discover among them such superior advantages, either of 
 measures or of abilities, as could make me consider it as a duty to attach 
 myself to their cause ; and that I clearly understood, from the public and 
 private language of one of their leaders (Charles Fox), that in the actual state 
 of the country, he himself was seriously of opinion that opposition could not 
 tend to any good purpose, and might be productive of much mischief ; that, 
 for those reasons, I saw no objections which could prevent me from accepting 
 an office under the present government, and that I was ready to take a step 
 which I foimd to be consistent both with my interest and my honour. 
 
 "It must now be decided, whether I may continue to live in England, or 
 whether I must soon withdraw myself into a kind of philosophical exile in 
 Switzerland. My father left his affairs in a state of embarrassment, and even 
 of distress. My attempts to dispose of a part of my landed property have 
 hitherto been disappointed, and are not likely at present to be more success- 
 ful ; and my plan of expense, though moderate in itself, deserves the name 
 of extravagance, since it exceeds my real income. The addition of the salary 
 which is now offered will make my situation perfectly easy ; but I hope you 
 will do me the justice to believe that my mind could not be so, unless I were 
 satisfied of the rectitude of my own conduct " (Footnote by Lord Sheffield). 
 
 The following extracts from Gibbon's Letters show his opinion of the 
 ministry ; — 
 
324 APPENDIX 
 
 "(Oct. 31, 1775.) We have a warm parliament, but an indolent cabinet " 
 (Corres., i., 272). 
 
 "(Jan. 29, 1776.) I much fear that our leaders have not a genius which 
 can act at the distance of 3,000 miles " {ib., p. 278). 
 
 "(Aug. 11, 1777.) "What a wretched piece of work do we seem to be 
 making of it in America ! . . . Upon the whole, I find it much easier to 
 defend the justice than the policy of our measures, but there are certain 
 cases where whatever is repugnant to sound policy ceases to be just" (ib., 
 p. 316). 
 
 " (Dec. 16, 1777.) I shall scarcely give my consent to exhaust still further 
 the finest country in the world, in the prosecution of a war from whence no 
 reasonable man entertains any hopes of success" [ib., p. 325). 
 
 "(Feb. 28, 1778.) I still repeat that in my opinion Lord N. [North] does 
 not deserve pardon for the past, applause for the present, or confidence for 
 the future" [ib., p. 331). 
 
 "(Dec. 6, 1781.) The present state of public affairs is indeed deplorable, 
 and I fear hopeless" [ib., ii., 10). 
 
 Lord Sheffield, defending his friend, says that "although Mr. Gibbon 
 was not perfectly satisfied with every measure, yet he uniformly supported 
 all the principal ones regarding the American war. . . . He liked the brilliant 
 society of a Club, the most distinguished members of which were notorious 
 for their opposition to Government, and might be led, in some degree, to join 
 in their language " (Gibbon's Misc. Works, i., 236). Unfortunately very few 
 division lists are preserved. I find, however, that on Feb. 2, 1778, he voted 
 for Fox's motion " that no more of the Old Corps be sent out of the King- 
 dom ". Had it been carried, new levies only could have been sent to 
 America (Pari. Hist., xix., 684). 
 
 G. Hardinge wrote to Horace "Walpole (n. d. ) : " Amongst the books of 
 Charles Fox carried off by the indiscriminate hands of the law, and sold 
 under an execution, was an odd volume of Gibbon's i/zj/w^ of tlie Roman 
 Empire. It sold for three guineas, more in honour to this manuscript in the 
 first leaf than to the work : — 
 
 " 'I received this work from the Author (on such a day). — N.B. I heard 
 liim declare at Brook's, the day after the Rescript of Spain was notified, that 
 nothing could save this country but six heads (of certain Ministers whom he 
 named) upon the table. In fourteen days after this anathema he became a 
 Lord of Trade ; and has ever since talked out of the House, as he has voted 
 in it, the advocate and champion of those Ministers. Charles Fox'" 
 (Nichols's Lit. Hist., iii., 213). 
 
 Wilberforce in 1796 recorded the following : "' There are two ways, ' said 
 Eliot, ' of telling a story. Gibbon was charged with having said, a fortnight 
 before he took a place under Lord North, that the nation's affairs would 
 never go on well till the minister's head was on the table of the House of 
 Commons. Gibbon himself told the story, that he had said till both North's 
 and Fox's heads were on the table ' " (Life of W. Wilberforce, ed. 1839, ii., 
 179). 
 
 Horace Walpole, in May, 1780, spoke of "the Historian's conversion to 
 the Court" (Letters, v\\., 361). On April 1, 1781, he wrote: "If you will 
 not read the Constantinopolitan Historian, you will at least not disdain to 
 turn to a particular passage or two ; look at page 46 of vol. ii. [ed. Bury, ii., 
 178], on the reduction of the legions, beginning at the words, "The same 
 timid policy" . Lord John [Cavendish] says, he is persuaded that Gibbon 
 had thrown in that and such sentences and sentiments when he was paying 
 court to Charles Fox, and forgot to correct them after his change " {ib., viii., 
 24). 
 
 For some verses on Gibbon's acceptance of office, attributed to Fox, see 
 Jesse's George Selwyn, iv., 278. 
 
APPENDIX 325 
 
 44. THE THREE WITNESSES AND ARCHDEACON TRAVIS (p. 210). 
 
 Gibbon, writing of "the orthodox theologians" of the African Church in 
 the sixth century, says : ' ' Even the Scriptures themselves were profaned by 
 their rash and sacrilegious hands. The memorable text which asserts the 
 unity of the Three who bear witness in Heaven is condemned by the universal 
 silence of the orthodox fathers, ancient versions, and authentic manuscripts. 
 . . . The pious fraud, which was embraced with equal zeal at Rome and at 
 Geneva, has been infinitely multiplied in every country and every language 
 of modern Europe" {The Decline, iv., 89). 
 
 "The memorable text" is as follows: "For there are three that bear 
 record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these 
 three are one " (1 Epistle of St. John, v., 7). In spite of Gibbon's prophecy, it 
 disappeared in 1885 from the Revised Version of the New Testament. 
 
 Its genuineness was defended by Archdeacon Travis, who "published 
 three short letters against Mr. Gibbon in The Gentleman s Magazine, 1782 
 [pp. 65, 278, 330, 522]. These letters he afterwards reprinted (4to, 1784), 
 with two others, much longer, addressed to Mr. Gibbon. . . . He published 
 a second edition (8vo, 1786), with some alterations, and a considerable increase 
 of bulk" (Porson's Letters to Travis, Preface, p. 9). 
 
 "'I was occupied two years,' said Porson, 'in composing the Letteis to 
 Travis ; I received thirty pounds for them from Egerton, and I am glad to 
 find that he lost sixteen by the publication' " (Rogers's Table-Talk, he, p. 
 302). 
 
 " When the i^eWerj ^ Travis first appeared, Rennell said to me, 'It is 
 just such a book as the devil would write, if he could hold a pen' " (ib., p. 
 303). 
 
 "It is a masterly work," wrote Macaulay. "A comparison between it 
 and the Phalaris would be a comparison between Porson's mind and Bentley's 
 mind ; Porson's more sure-footed, more exact, more neat ; Bentley's far 
 more comprehensive and inventive" (Trevelyan's Macaulay, ed. 1877, ii., 
 289). 
 
 The following character of Travis, given in Nichols's Lit. A nee, ix., 78, is 
 in curious contrast with the character given by Gibbon : "Though a Pluralist 
 and a man of respectable talents, Mr. Travis was remarkably affable, facetious, 
 and pleasant. "The universality of his genius was evinced by the various 
 transactions in which he was concerned, and in all of which he excelled. In 
 his manners the gentleman and the scholar were gracefully and happily 
 blended." 
 
 45. BISHOP NEWTON (p. 211). 
 
 "•^ {Extract from Mr. Gibbon's Cotnmon Place Book.) 
 
 "Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol and Dean of St. Paul's, was born at 
 Litchfield on Dec. 21, 1703, O.S. (1st Jan., 1704, N.S.), and died Feb. 14, 
 1782, in the 79th year of his age. A few days before his death he finished 
 the memoirs of his own Ufe, which have been prefixed to an edition of his 
 posthumous works, first published in quarto, and since (1787) re-published in 
 six volumes octavo. 
 
 "Pp. 173, 174 [ed. 1782, i., 129]. 'Some books were published in 1781, 
 which employed some of the Bishop's leisure hours, and during his illness. 
 Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Romaii Etnpire he read 
 throughout, but it by no means answered his expectation ; for he found it 
 rather a prolix and tedioiis performance, his matter uninteresting, and his 
 style affected ; his testimonies not to be depended upon, and his frequent 
 scoffs at religion offensive to every sober mind. He had before been con- 
 
326 APPENDIX 
 
 victed of making false quotations, which should have taught him more 
 prudence and caution. But, without examining his authorities, there is one 
 which must necessarily strike every man who has read Dr. Burnet's Tieatise 
 de Siatil Mortnorum. In vol. iii. , p. 99 [ed. Bury, iii., 2l2], Mr. G. has the 
 following note : ' ' Burnet [de S. M. , pp. 56-84) collects the opinions of the 
 Fathers, as far as they assert the sleep or repose of hiiman souls till the day 
 of judgment. He afterwards exposes (p. 91) the inconveniences which must 
 arise if they possessed a more active and sensible existence. Who would not 
 from hence infer that Dr. B. was an advocate for the sleep or insensible 
 existence of the soul after death ? whereas his doctrine is directly the con- 
 trary. He has employed some chapters in treating of the state of human 
 souls in the interval between death and the resm'rection ; and after various 
 proofs from reason, from scripture, and the Fathers, his conclusions are, 
 that human souls exist after their separation from the body, that they are in 
 a good or evil state according to their good or ill behavioiir, but that neither 
 their happiness nor their misery will be complete or perfect before the day of 
 judgment. His argumentation is thus summed-up at the end of the 4th 
 chapter — £x qtdbus constat frimo, a?ii?nas superesse extincto corpore ; secundo, 
 bonus bene, malas male se habituras ; tertio, nee illis swmmam felicitatem, nee 
 his sutnmam miseriam accessurain esse ante diem- judicii.'''' (The Bishop's read- 
 ing the whole was a greater compliment to the work than was paid to it by 
 two of the most eminent of his brethren for their learning and station. The 
 one entered upon it, but was soon wearied, and laid it aside in disgust ; the 
 other returned it upon the bookseller's hands ; and it is said that Mr. G. 
 himself happened unluckily to be in the shop at the same time.)' 
 
 " Does the Bishop comply with his own precept in the next page? (p. 175 
 [ed. 1782, p. 131]). ' Old age should lenify, should soften men's mannei-s, 
 and make them more mild and gentle ; but often has the contrary effect, 
 hardens their hearts, and makes them more sour and crabbed.' — He is speak- 
 ing of Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' ' Have I ever insinuated that preferment -hunting is the great occupation 
 of an ecclesiastical life ? (Memoirs passim) ; that a minister's influence and a 
 bishop's patronage are sometimes pledged eleven deep? (p. 151) ; that a pre- 
 bendary considers the audit week as the better part of the year ? (p. 127) ; or 
 that the most eminent of priests, the pope himself, would change their 
 religion, if any thing better could be offered them ? (p. 56). Such things are 
 more than insinuated in the Bishop's Life, which afforded some scandal to the 
 church, and some diversion to the profane laity " (Footnote by Lord Sheflield). 
 
 Newton wrote in the third person of his appointment as Bishop of Bristol 
 and Residentiary of St. Paul's : " He was no great gainer by his preferment ; 
 for he was obliged to give uj) the prebend of Westminster, the precentorship 
 of York, the lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and the genteel 
 office of sub-almoner". Bristol was, he said, "the poorest bishopric in the 
 kingdom ". When the Duke of York was told by him that "its certain clear 
 income was £300 a year and little more ; ' How then,' said he, ' can you 
 afford to give me so good a dinner ? ' " The Bishop still retained his City 
 living, and later on got the Deanery of St. Paul's (Newton's Works, ed. 1782, 
 i., 9, 65, 92, 195). 
 
 He asked Green, Bishop of Lichfield, to "collate Mr. Seward of Lichfield 
 [Boswell's Johnson, ii., 467] to a prebend in his church of Lincoln. The 
 Bishop replied that at present he stood engaged eleven deep to the Duke of 
 Newcastle, Lord Hardwick, and their friends" [ib., p. 115). 
 
 After describing how " he had for several months together been at Bristol, 
 without seeing the face of Dean, or Prebendary, or any thing better than a 
 Minor Canon," and how the company at the Wells [Clifton] "were 
 astonished at finding only one Minor Canon both to read and preach, and 
 perhaps administer the Sacrament," he continues: "The church of 
 Rochester was said to be much in the same predicament. One of the Pre- 
 
APPENDIX 827 
 
 bendaries dining with the late Bishop Pearce, he asked him, 'Pray, Dr. S., 
 what is your time of residence at Rochester ? ' ' Oh ! my Lord,' said he, ' I 
 reside there the better part of the year '. ' I am very glad to hear it,' replied 
 the good Bishop. But the Doctor's meaning was, and the fact really was, 
 that he resided there only during the week of the Audit " [ib., p. 95). 
 
 "One day at the levee George I. asked Dr. Savage how long he had 
 stayed at Rome. Upon his answering how long, ' Why,' said the King, 
 ' you stayed long enough ; why did not you convert the Pope ? ' ' Because, 
 Sir,' replied he, ' I had nothing better to offer him ' " (ib., p. 44). 
 
 Horace Walpole wrote on June 4, 1782 (Letters , -viii. , 229): "Have you 
 seen Bishop Newton's Life ? I have only in a Review. You may perhaps think 
 it was drawn up by his washerwoman ; but it is more probably mangled (v. 
 the Laundress's vocabulary : I do not mean rnaimed) by Lord Mansfield him- 
 self ; at least he had the MS. for some weeks in his possession." 
 
 "Dr. Newton, the Bishop of Bristol, having been mentioned, Johnson, 
 recollecting the manner in which he had been censured by that Prelate, thus 
 retaliated : ' Tom knew he should be dead before what he has said of me 
 would appear. He durst not have printed it while he was alive.' Dr. Adams : 
 ' I believe his Dissertations on the Prophecies is his great work '. Johnson : 
 ' Why, Sir, it is Tom's great work ; but how far it is great, or how much of it 
 is Tom's, are other questions. I fancy a considerable part of it was borrowed.' 
 Dr. Adams : ' He was a very successful man'. Johnson: ' I don't think so. 
 Sir. He did not get very high. He was late in getting what he did get ; 
 and he did not get it by the best means. I believe he was a gross ilatterer ' " 
 (Boswell's /i?/zrajo«, iv., 285). 
 
 Cowper, in 1765, described Newton as "one of our best bishops, who has 
 written the most demonstrative proof of the truth of Christianity, in my 
 mind, that ever was published" (Southey's Cowper, iii., 248). 
 
 46. THE FALL OF LORD NORTH'S MINISTRY (p. 213). 
 
 Gibbon on Oct. 14, 1775, mentions the Addresses which fill the Gazette — 
 Addresses urging the prosecution of the war (Corres., i., 271). London, Bristol, 
 and the Protestants of Ireland were against the war. The Scotch, "almost 
 to a man, proffered life and fortune in support of the present measures. The 
 same approbation was given, though with somewhat less earnestness and 
 unanimity, by a great number of towns in England. The recruiting service, 
 however, a kind of political barometer with respect to the sentiments of the 
 lowest orders, went on very heavily" (Ann. Reg., 1776, i., 38). 
 
 Horace Walpole, writing on March 3, 1781, of The Decline and Fall, says 
 (Letters, viii., 15) : " One paragraph I must select, which I believe the author 
 did not intend should be so applicable to the present moment. ' The 
 Armorican provinces of Gaul and the greatest part of Spain were thrown into 
 a state of disorderly independence by the confederations of the Bagaudaj ; 
 and the Imperial ministers pursued with proscriptive laws and ineffectual 
 arms the rebels whom they had made ' (end of chap, xxxv.)." 
 
 The following divisions on the American war show the changes of public 
 opinion : — 
 
 Ministry. Opposition. 
 
 June 12, 1781 172 99 (Pari. Hist. , xxii. , 516). 
 
 Nov. 27, 1781 218 129 (lb., p. 729). 
 
 Dec. 12, 1781 220 179 (/^., p. 831). 
 
 Feb. 22, 1782 194 193 (lb., p. 1048). 
 
 Feb. 27, 1782 234 215 {/<^., p. 1085). 
 
 On March 15, on a vote of want of confidence, the Ministry had a majority of 
 236 to 227 (/^., p. 1199). 
 
328 APPENDIX 
 
 On March 20, 1782, Johnson recorded in his Diary : " The Ministry is 
 dissolved. I prayed with Francis and gave thanks. " To Mr. Seward he said : 
 "I am glad the Ministry is removed. Such a bunch of imbecility never dis- 
 graced a country" (Boswell's Johnson, iv., 139 ; John. Miscel., i., 104). The 
 next day Horace Walpole wrote [Letters, viii. , 183) : ' ' Lord North, at the 
 head of the mercenaries, laid down his arms yesterday, and surrendered at 
 discretion ". 
 
 Burke wrote of Lord North on July 28, 1781, a few months before he was 
 driven from power: "I really pity Lord North. He has very nearly 
 exhausted all the funds of his glory. He can now no longer conciliate, as 
 formerly, the affections of mankind by his amiable refusals ; or command 
 their admiration by the magnanimity of his submissions " (Atcckland Corres., 
 i., 310). For his " incomparable temper," see ante, p. 228, n. ; and for Lord 
 Holland's anecdote of "his admirable good humour and pleasantry " on the 
 night of his resignation, see Bagehot's Biog. Studies, ed. 1881, p. 128. 
 
 47. LORD SHELBURNE'S MINISTRY AND THE COALITION OF 
 LORD NORTH AND FOX (p. 214). 
 
 Horace Walpole wrote on July 1, 1782 [Letters, viii., 240) : " I can tell you 
 but one word, but that is a momentous one. Lord Rockingham died at one 
 o'clock at noon [_sic\ to-day. " 
 
 On July 4 Lord Loughborough wrote to "W. Eden (Lord Auckland) : ' ' This 
 morning at Court C. Fox told the iirst person he saw, that he was come with 
 the Seals to resign them, if Lord Shelburne should tell him he was First Lord 
 of the Treasury. . . . Lord Shelburne and he met in the drawing-room, and 
 had an angry conversation, as far as people could judge who only saw it. 
 Fox went into His Majesty, and in about five minutes came out without the 
 Seals" [Auckland Corres., i., 2). 
 
 Ten days later Loughborough wrote : " The first thing is to reconcile Lord 
 North and Fox. The first, you know, is irreconcilable to no man ; the second 
 will feel his ancient resentment totally absorbed in his more recent hostility, 
 which I think he has no other probable means of gratifying" [ib., i., 9). 
 
 Lord Macaulay [Misc. Writings, ed. 1871, p. 403), describing the Coalition 
 that was now formed between these two statesmen, says of Fox : ' ' Unhappily 
 that great and most amiable man was, at this crisis, hurried by his passions 
 into an error which made his genius and his virtues, during a long course of 
 years, almost useless to his country. . . . Not three quarters of a year had 
 elapsed since he and Burke had threatened North with impeachment, and had 
 described him, night after night, as the most arbitrary, the most corrupt, the 
 most incapable of ministers. They now allied themselves with him for the 
 purpose of driving from office a statesman with whom they cannot be said to 
 have differed as to any important question. ' ' 
 
 Fox, defending the Coalition on Feb. 17, 1783, said of Lord North : 
 ' ' When I was the friend of the noble Lord, I found him open and sincere ; 
 when the enemy, I found him honourable and manly. I never had reason to 
 say of the noble Lord that he practised any of those little subterfuges, tricks, 
 and stratagems which I found in others ; any of those behind-hand and paltry 
 manoeuvres which destroy confidence between human beings, and which 
 degrade the character of the statesman and the man" [Part. Hist., xxiii., 
 487). 
 
 Fox's first difference with Lord North was over the Royal Marriage Act of 
 1772, when he resigned his post as a Junior Lord of the Admiralty. ' ' ' Charles 
 Fox ' (observed Gibbon, in one of those sentences which render his Memoirs 
 the favourite book of readers who hold the secret of good writing to lie in 
 saying the most, with the least show of effort and expenditure of type) 
 
APPENDIX 329 
 
 ' very judiciously thought that Lord Holland's friendship imported him more 
 than Lord North's' " (Trevelyan's Fox, ed. 1880, p. 468). The sentence is 
 not in the Memoirs, but in Gibbon's letter of Feb. 21, 1772 [Corres., i., 151). 
 Fox had rejoined the Ministry in January, 1773, as a Lord of the "Treasurj', 
 but in February, 1774, he was dismissed by the Prime Minister. From that 
 date he was in constant opposition. 
 
 On Feb. 21, 1783, resolutions of censure on the peace were carried by 207 
 to 190 [Pari. Hist., xxiii., 571). "It is remarkable," wrote Horace Walpole 
 on March 13, "that the counties and towns are addressing thanks for the 
 peace which their representatives have censured " [Letters, viii., 351). 
 
 Lord Shelburne at once resigned. " A ministerial interregnum ensued, 
 which lasted till the beginning of April, during which time the Kingdom 
 remained in a state of great disorder. . . . On April 2 a new adminis- 
 tration was announced. The Duke of Portland, First Commissioner of the 
 Treasury ; Lord North, Secretary of State for the Home Department ; and 
 Mr. Fox for the Foreign" [Ami. Reg., 1783, i., 168, 175). 
 
 " "When Mr. Fox kissed hands on his appointment, Lord Townshend, an 
 observing and caustic old man, said he saw the King turn back his ears and 
 eyes just like the horse at Astley's, when the tailor he had determined to 
 throw was getting on him. Yet Mr. Fox was treated with civility ; Lord 
 North with manifest coldness and dislike " [Life of Fox, by Earl Russell, ed. 
 1866, ii., 5). 
 
 Gibbon, following Lord North, adhered to Fox and Burke. Eliot, who 
 had deprived him of his seat at Liskeard because he opposed Fox and Burke, 
 followed Shelburne. and Pitt. Within twelve mouths he was rewarded by 
 Pitt with a peerage. His eldest son the following year married Pitt's sister 
 (Stanhope's Pitt, \., 278). 
 
 The "hidden rock on which the Coalition struck" was the influence of 
 the Crown" [ante, p. 207), by which, when Fox's India Bill came before 
 the House of Lords, "a troop of Lords of the Bedchamber, of Bishops who 
 wished to be translated, and of Scotch peers who wished to be re-elected, 
 made haste to change sides" (Macaulay's Misc. Writ., p. 407)- "The 
 Bishops waver, and the Thanes fly from us," Colonel Fitzpatrick had written 
 (Stanhope's Pitt, i., 150). To borrow Gibbon's words, " Corruption, the most 
 infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised" [The 
 Decline, ii., 372). 
 
 On Dec. 3, 1783, the third reading of the Bill had been carried in the 
 House of Commons by 208 to 102 [Pari. Hist., xxiv. , 61). In the face of this 
 majority Pitt, at the age of twenty -four, became Prime Minister. 
 
 On Dec. 19, Horace Walpole wrote [Letters, viii., 446): " I have only a 
 moment's time to tell you that, at one this morning, His Majesty sent to Lord 
 North and Mr. Fox for their seals of Secretary of State ". On Jan. 24, 1784, 
 Gibbon wrote to Lord SheflBeld : " I most sincerely rejoice that I left the ship, 
 and swam ashore on a plank" [Corres., ii., 92). 
 
 " Pitt's contest against the House of Commons lasted from the 17th of 
 December, 1783, to the 8th of March, 1784. In sixteen divisions the Opposi- 
 tion triumphed. ... A final remonstrance, drawn up by Burke with admir- 
 able skill, was carried on the 8th of March by a single vote in a full House. 
 . . . The Parliament was dissolved. ... A hundred and sixty of the 
 supporters of the coalition lost their seats" (Macaulay's Afwc. Writings, p. 
 407). 
 
 48. LORD MACAULAY ON GIBBON'S "POVERTY" (p. 215). 
 
 Macaulay, with gross exaggeration, says, "that the greatest historian of the 
 age, forced by poverty to leave his country, completed his immortal work on 
 the shores of Lake Leman" [Misc. Writings, ed. 1871) p. 413). The following 
 
330 APPENDIX 
 
 facts were in print when he wrote this. Before going to Lausanne Gibbon 
 wrote to Dey verdun : " Je d^penserais sans peine at sans inconvenient cinq 
 ou six cents Louis" [Misc. Works, ii., 297). To Lord Sheffield he wrote: 
 " In a four years' residence at Lausanne I should live within my income, 
 save, and even accumulate my ready money ; finish my Historj% an object of 
 profit as well as fame, expect the contingencies of elderly lives, and return to 
 England at the age of fifty to forma lasting independent establishment" 
 [ib., p. 306). 
 
 To Dr. Robertson he wrote : " This exile will be terminated in due time 
 by the deaths of aged ladies, whose inheritance will place me in an easy and 
 even affluent situation " (Stewart's Robertson, p. 365). One of these aged 
 ladies, his step-mother, was so unreasonable as to outlive him ; the other, his 
 aunt, left him an estate [Misc. Works, ii., 432). On Nov. 14, 1783, he wrote 
 from Lausanne : "I have the inclination and means to live very handsomely 
 here" [ib., p. 336). On March 21, 1785, he wrote : " I can almost promise to 
 land in England next September twelve-month, with a manuscript of the 
 current value of about four thousand pounds" [ib., p. 377). (Gibbon had 
 written "three thousand" (Corrw., ii., 126). Lord Sheffield, I infer, gave 
 the amount received. ) The savings effected by the change of residence were 
 " about four hundred pounds or guineas a year " [Misc. Works, ii., 376). 
 
 Lord Sheffield, accounting for his residence abroad, said : " He was not in 
 possession of an income which corresponded with his notions of ease and 
 comfort in his own country. In Switzerland his fortune was ample " [ante, 
 p. 247). 
 
 49. PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA AND MIRABEAU (p. 222). 
 
 Gibbon wrote of Prince Henry : ' ' He is certainly (without touching his 
 military character) a very lively and entertaining companion. He talked 
 with freedom, and generally with contempt, of most of the princes of Europe ; 
 with respect of the Empress of Russia ; but never mentioned the name of his 
 brother [Frederick the Great], except once, when he hinted that it was he 
 Aimsel/ that won the battle of Rossbach " [Corres., ii., 117). 
 
 " His brother used to say, glancing towards him, ' There is but one of us 
 that never committed a mistake ' " (Carlyle's Frederick II., n. d., viii., 211). 
 The only mention in Carlyle's History of him at Rossbach is in the King's 
 letter, who wrote : " My brother Henri and General Seidlitz have slight hurts 
 in the arm" (?3., vii. , 247). Carlyle describes the Prince's visit to Paris as 
 " a shining event in his Life ; and a profitable ; poor King Louis, — what was 
 very welcome in Henri's state of finance — having, in a delicate Kingly way, 
 insinuated into him a ' gift of 400,000 francs ' (£16,000), partly by way of 
 retaining fee for France ' ' [ib. , x. , 172). 
 
 Mirabeau, who in 1786 was sent by Calonne to Berlin, " in some semi- 
 ostensible, or spy-diplomatist character " (Carlyle's Ci-it. and Misc. Essays, 
 11. d., iv., Ill), published in 1789, under the title of Histoire Secrdte de la 
 Cour de Berlin, the Correspotidance d^un Voyageur Frangais, 1786-7, as an 
 " Ouvrage Posihume" . " It is diabolically good," wrote Gibbon [Corres., ii. , 
 192). 
 
 Horace Walpole wrote on Feb. 24, 1789 [Letters, ix., 173) : "Of Mirabeau's 
 book I have heard of nobody that has got a copy here yet but the Dutch 
 minister, and he the first volume only. The papers to-day say it has been 
 burnt at Paris." 
 
 "The Prince's character," wrote Lord Holland, ''is admirably, though 
 somewhat roughly, drawn," by Mirabeau [Foreign Reminiscences, ed. 1850, p. 
 60). 
 
 Mirabeau, who was in London in March, 1785, wrote to Romilly : ' ' Vous 
 saurez que j'ai entendu hier M. Gibbon parler, comme un des plus plats 
 
APPENDIX 331 
 
 eoquins qui existent, sur la situation politique de I'Europe, et que je n'ai pas 
 dit un mot, quoique d^s la premiere phrase de M. Gibbon, sa morgue et son 
 air insolent m'eussent infiniment repouss6". It might be thought that he 
 had mistaken another man for Gibbon (who was at this time at Lausanne), 
 had he not gone on to repeat what ho said in reply when asked for his 
 opinion by the Marquis of Lansdowne {Life of Roniilly, ed. 1840, i., 310). 
 For Sainte-Beuve's criticism of what Mirabeau says see Causeries, viii. , 460. 
 
 Gibbon, who met Mirabeau's father in 1763, wrote of him : " Get homme 
 est singulier ; il a assez d' imagination pour dix aiitres, et pas assez de sens 
 rassis pour lui seul" [Misc. Works, i., 163). 
 
 50. CHARLES JAMES FOX AT LAUSANNE (p. 222). 
 
 Gibbon wrote on Oct. 4, 1788: "I have eat, and drank, and conversed, 
 and sat up all night with Fox in England ; but it never has happened, perhaps 
 it never can happen again, that I should enjoy him, as I did that day, alone, 
 from ten in the morning till ten at night. We had little politics ; though he 
 gave me in a few words such a character of Pitt as one great man should give 
 of another his rival ; much of books, from my own, on which he flattered me 
 very pleasantlj', to Homer and the Arabian Nights ; much about the countrj', 
 my garden (which he understands far better than I do) ; and, upon the 
 whole, I think he envies me, and would do so were he minister" [Carres., 
 ii., 180). He was accompanied by his mistress, whom he afterwards married. 
 Gibbon wrote : ' ' Will Fox never know the importance of character ? " [/b.) 
 
 " Let Fox do what he will," wrote Gibbon in 1793, " I must love the dog " 
 [ib., ii., 360). 
 
 " It is not in my nature," said Fox, " to bear malice, or to live in ill-will " 
 [Pari. Hist., xxiii., 487). 
 
 Burke, speaking on Feb. 9, 1790, described Fox as "of the most artless, 
 candid, open, and benevolent disposition ; disinterested in the extreme ; of a 
 temper mild and placable, even to a fault ; without one drop of gall in his 
 whole constitution " (Burke's Works, ed. 1808, v., 11). 
 
 Rogers ( Table- Talk, p. 77) reports Fox as saying that during his visit to 
 Gibbon's house "Gibbon talked a great deal, walking up and down the 
 room, and generally ending his sentences with a genitive case ; every now 
 and then, too, casting a look of complacency on his own portrait by Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, which hung over the chimney-piece — that wonderful 
 portrait, in which, while the oddness and vulgarity of the features are refined 
 away , the likeness is perfectly preserved ' ' . 
 
 Horace Walpole [Letters, vii., 505) mentions Gibbou's "vanity, even about 
 his ridiculous face and person ". Some years earlier, however, he had written 
 [ib., vi., 311) : " I know him a little, never suspected the extent of his talents, 
 for he is perfectly modest, or I want penetration, which I Imow too". 
 
 5L THE SUMMER-HOUSE AT LAUSANNE (p. 225). 
 
 The last lines of the Decline and Fall are not worthy either of the History 
 itself or of this beautiful passage. He ends by spealdng of his book as a 
 work ' ' which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the 
 curiosity and candour of the Public ' ' . 
 
 To the kindness of the Astronomer Royal I owe the following note, which 
 shows the age of the moon on the night when Gibbon, having laid down his 
 pen, saw " the silver orb reflected from the waters " : "The moon was new 
 June 15d 3h 50m, G. M. T. , and full June 30d 2h 38m, in the year 1787. 
 Between 11 and 12 in the evening, local time of Lausanne, therefore, the 
 
332 APPENDIX 
 
 Moon was l2d 7h old, or 2d 15^h short of the full. The Moon was on the 
 Meridian of Lausanne about 10 minutes to 10, local time, on the evening of 
 June 27, 1787." Rogers, who was at Lausanne with Mackintosh in 1814, 
 said : " My sister and I went to see Gibbon's house ; and borrowing the last 
 volume of the Decline and Fall, we read the concluding passages of it on 
 the very spot where they were written. But such an amusement was not to 
 Mackintosh's taste ; he meanwhile was trotting about, and making inquiries 
 concerning the salaries of professors, &c. " (Rogers's Table-Talk, p.' 196). 
 "We ran to Gibbon's house," wrote Mackintosh. "We went into la 
 Gibbonidre, the little summer-house where he wrote his History, which is now 
 somewhat dilapidated " {Life of Mackintosh, ii., 305). 
 
 Lord Byron wrote to John Murray on June 27, 1816 : "I enclose you a 
 sprig of Gibbon's acacia and some rose-leaves from his garden, which, with 
 part of his house, I have just seen. You will find honourable mention, in his 
 Life, made of this acacia, when he walked out on the night of concluding his 
 history. The garden and summer-house, where he composed, are neglected, 
 and the last utterly decayed ; but they still show it as his "cabinet," and 
 seem perfectly aware of his memory " (Moore's Life of Byron, ed. 1860, p. 
 308). 
 
 General Read, who visited Gibbon's house. La Grotte, in 1879, says that 
 its site is now occupied by the new Post Office. The proprietor of the Hotel 
 Gibbon, which was built at an earlier date on part of the property, ' ' attracted 
 attention to the hotel garden and its historical associations, with the approval 
 of the owners of La Grotte, who thus escaped the former horde of sight- 
 seers ". An old lady who lived there from 1802 to 1831 told the General that 
 ' ' for nearly a generation the pilgrimage of visitors was continuous. As every 
 English visitor cut away a portion, the summer-house gradually disappeared 
 from Lausanne, and was distributed in fragments through Great Britain. Bit 
 by bit the owners renewed it, but eventually not a morsel of the original was 
 left. The real had given way to a copy." The copy disappeared also. "A 
 little later the guides began to point out the venerable Madame Grenier, if 
 she chanced to be in the garden, as Gibbon's widow. Gradually this cult was 
 forgotten, and the pilgrimages had long ceased when I first reached the city." 
 (They had been diverted to the hotel. ) An interesting view is given of the 
 street-front of the house, where it is only one storey Ijigh, with a lofty and 
 steep roof. On the southern side it had three stories. ' ' It originally formed 
 a portion of St. Francis Convent. In the gigantic garrets," continues the 
 General, " I found parchments, diplomas, titles of nobility, portraits in oil, 
 engravings, . . . the remains of Gibbon's theatre ; in fact, the odds and ends 
 of a family life of three or four hundred years. Here were letters of Vol- 
 taire, Rousseau, Chesterfield, Necker, De Stael, and Gibbon" {Hist. Studies, 
 i., 1-10). 
 
 52. LORD SHEFFIELD ON THE AMERICAN TRADE (p. 226). 
 
 Observations on the Commerce of the American States, by John, Lord 
 Sheffield ; the sixth edition ; London, 1784 ; in octavo (Footnote by Gibbon). 
 It was reviewed in the Gent. Mag., Sept., 1783, p. 770, where it is stated 
 that "Pitt's bill for the provisional establishment of trade and intercourse 
 between Great Britain and America undoubtedly gave rise to it". "Pitt 
 desired to treat the United States on points of commerce nearly as though 
 they had been still dependent colonies" (Stanhope's -PzVi?, i., 110). For his 
 American Intercourse Bill &qq Pari. Hist., xxiii., 602, 640, 724, 894; Observa- 
 tions, pp. 3, 280. Lord Sheffield wrote on Jan. 16, 1792: "British-built 
 ^commercial tonnage since 1773 has increased 318,522 tons, which is more than 
 three-fourths of the whole commercial tonnage of France. Thanks to that 
 illustrious writer, the Lord Sheffield" {Corres., ii., 288). 
 
APPENDIX 333 
 
 Hume, at the beginning of the contest with oiir American colonies, had 
 said that "a forced, and every day more precarious, monopoly of about six 
 or seven hundred thousand pounds a year of manufactures, was not worth 
 contending for ; that we should preserve the greater part of this trade, even 
 if the ports of America were open to all nations " (Hume's Letters to Strahan, 
 p. 288). The total declared exports from England to America were said, in 
 1768, to amount to £2,072,000, and the imports to £1,081,000 {ib., p. 292). In 
 1897 the exports from the United Kingdom were close on £38,000,000, and 
 the imports were £113,000,000 ("Whitaker's Almanack, p. 588). 
 
 For Adam Smith's defence of the Navigation Act, see Wealth of Nations, 
 bk. iv., chap. 2 (ed. 1811, ii., 254). The Act was repealed in most of its pro- 
 visions in 1849 by the 12 and 13 Vict., c. 29. "With "the palladium" lost, 
 our shipping has grown so rapidly that the tonnage is almost equal to that of 
 all the other countries of the world ; with our colonies thrown in, it more 
 than equals it (Whitaker's Almanack, 1899, p. 726). 
 
 53. LORD SHEFFIELD ON THE TRADE OF IRELAND (p. 227). 
 
 The trade of Ireland was throttled by the selfish policy of England. In 
 1784 an attempt, backed by the Irish mob, was made to exclude English 
 goods, and "to force the home-consumption by non-importation agreements". 
 Pitt, a disciple of Adam Smith, wished to give Ireland a far freer trade. He 
 required from Ireland a return which the clamour even of his own party forced 
 him to increase, and which the Irish were unwilling to grant. The Lancashire 
 manufacturers were scared at the advantages Ireland would have in the low 
 price of labour. Fox stood forward as "the champion of high protective 
 duties". At Manchester, he was attended into the town, he wrote, "by a 
 procession as fine, and not unlike that upon my chairing in Westminster ' ' . 
 
 Pitt carried resolutions through the English Parliament for the basis of a 
 commercial arrangement between the two countries. A correspondent bill 
 being carried in the Irish House of Commons by only 127 to 108, was dropped 
 {Ann. Reg., 1786, i., 10-24 ; Stanhope's Pitt, i., 261-75). 
 
 Lord Sheflfield was ready to remove all restraints on Irish manufactures, 
 provided England retained the monopoly of the colonial trade {Observations, 
 &c.. Preface, p. 8, and p. 382). Gibbon wrote to him on Sept. 5, 1785 : "Of 
 Ireland I know nothing, and while I am writing the decline of a great Empire, 
 I have not leisure to attend to the affairs of a remote and petty province " 
 {Corres., ii., 136). 
 
 Lord Sheffield's "concluding observations" begin: " The most successful 
 of our political writers are those who assert roundly that the public interests 
 are irretrievably sunk into distress and misery. There is the greatest disposi- 
 tion in the people to be convinced that such doctrines are just ; and they 
 greedily adopt maxims which seem rather formed to prepare us for another 
 world than to reconcile us to that in which we are placed" (p. 351). 
 
 54. LORD SHEFFIELD'S ELECTION FOR BRISTOL (p. 227). 
 
 Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield on Aug. 7, 1790 : "The second commercial 
 city invites from a distant province an independent gentleman, known only 
 by his active spirit and his writings on the subject of trade, and names him 
 without intrigue or expense for her representative" {Corres., ii., 219). The 
 election was not without expense. "I subscribed," Lord Sheffield wrote, 
 " somewhat above £300 to Infirmary, Magdalens, Small Debtors, &c." {ib., p. 
 218). The invitation was, in all likelihood, disgraceful both to Bristol and 
 Lord Sheffield. That city rivalled Liverpool as a seat of the slave-trade, 
 
334 APPENDIX 
 
 against which the conscience of England was now rising. Shortly before the 
 election he had published Observations on the Project for abolishing the Slave 
 Trade. Gibbon wrote to him on May 15, 1790 : " You have such a knack of 
 turning a nation that I am afraid you will triumph (perhaps by the force of 
 argument) over justice and humanity. But do you not expect to work at 
 Beelzebub's sugar plantations in the infernal regions, under the tender govern- 
 ment of a negro-driver?" [lb., ii., 217.) On April 17, 1791, Sheffield spoke 
 against "VVilberforce's motion for the abolition of the trade {Pari. Hist., xxix., 
 358-9). Four days later he wrote of the debate : "I was a considerable prop 
 to good sense against nonsense, and the most eloquent declamation on 
 humanity" [Carres., ii., 245). 
 
 On April 2, 1792, a motion was carried for the gradual abolition of the 
 slave-trade {Pari. Hist., xxix,, 1158). Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield on May 
 30: "What is the cause of this alteration? If it proceeded only from an 
 impulse of humanity I cannot be displeased even with an error ; since it is 
 very likely that my own vote would have been added to the majority. But 
 in this rage against slavery, in the numerous petitions against the slave trade, 
 was there no leaven of new democratical principles ? no wild ideas of the 
 rights and natural equality of man ? It is these I fear " {Carres., ii., 297). 
 
 "Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea, 
 never to return to their native country, but they are embarked in chains ; and 
 this constant emigration . . . accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of 
 Africa" {The Decline, iii., 52). 
 
 "The last abomination of the abominable slave-trade " {ib., vi., 78). 
 
 The slave-trade was abolished by the Whigs in 1806. Had it not been for 
 George III. it would have been abolished many years earlier (Lord Holland's 
 Memoirs, &c., ii., 157; Stanhope's Pitt, i., 370 ; ii., 146 ; iii., 186 ; iv., 202). 
 
 55. SHEB,IDAN'S COMPLIMENT TO GIBBON (p. 228). 
 
 Mr. Sheridan said the facts that made up the volume of narrative were 
 unparalleled in atrociousness, and that nothing equal in criminality was to be 
 traced, either in ancient or modern history, in the correct periods of Tacitus, 
 or the luminous pages of Gibbon {Morning Chi'atticle, June 14, 1788) (Footnote 
 by Lord Sheffield). 
 
 "Yesterday," wrote Gibbon, "the august scene was closed for the 
 year. Sheridan surpassed himself. . . . There were many beautiful 
 passages in his speech, . . . and a compliment much admired to a certain 
 Historian of your acquaintance. Sheridan, in the close of his speech, stmk 
 into Burke's arms ; — a good actor ; but I called this morning, he is perfectly 
 well. A good Actor ! " {Carres., ii., 172.) 
 
 "I was pi-esent," said Rogers, "on the second day of the trial; when 
 Sheridan was listened to with such attention that you might have heard a pin 
 drop. During one of those days Sheridan, having observed Gibbon among the 
 audience, took occasion to mention ' the luminous author of The Decline and 
 Fall' . After he had finished, one of his friends reproached him with flatter- 
 ing Gibbon. ' Why, what did I say of him ? ' asked Sheridan. ' You called 
 him the luminous author,' &c. 'Luminous! oh, I meant voluminous'" 
 (Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 63). 
 
 Sir Gilbert Elliot (first Earl of Minto) wrote on June 14, 1788 : "Burke 
 caught Sheridan in his arms as he sat down. ... I have myself enjoyed that 
 embrace on such an occasion, and know its value" {Life a?id Letters of Sir 
 Gilbert Elliot, he, 1874, i., 218). The editor, ElUot's great-niece, the 
 Countess of Minto, says: "It is often related that at the close of the 
 sentence the orator turned to a friend, and whispered, 'I said volummous '. 
 The author of the joke was Dudley Loiig, who was sitting next to Gibbon in 
 
APPENDIX 335 
 
 the gallery. Gibbon, as Long thought for the gratification of hearing the 
 compliment again, asked his neighbour to tell him exactly what Sheridan 
 had said. 'Oh,' said Long, 'he said something about your voluminous 
 pages ' . Lord Russell, on whose authority we give the story, was told it by 
 Dudley Long himself. ' ' 
 
 On June 19 Gibbon dined with Hastings "by special desire " {Carres., ii., 
 173). They had been school-fellows for a short time at Westminster. 
 
 56. WILLIAM HAYLBY (p. 230). 
 
 An Essay on History 171 Three Epistles, to Edward Gibbon, Esq. London, 
 1780 ; 4'^. It seems almost incredible that Gibbon should have been pleased 
 with such verses as the following : — 
 
 "Yet while Polemics, in fierce league combin'd 
 With savage discord vex thy feeling mind. 
 And rashly stain Religion's just defence 
 By gross detraction and perverted sense. 
 Thy wounded ear may haply not refuse 
 The soothing accents of an humbler Muse ' ' 
 
 {Epis., i., 1. 17). 
 
 "(May, 1780.) There are just appeared three new Epistles on History, 
 addressed to Mr. Gibbon by Mr. Hayley. They are good poems, I believe, 
 weight and measure, but, except some handsome new similes, have little 
 poetry and less spirit. In short, they are written by Judgment, who has set 
 up for herself, forgetting that her business is to correct verses, and not to 
 write them" (Walpole's Z-s^^erj, vii., 361). 
 
 On July 3, 1782, Gibbon wrote of the poet : "He rises with his subject, 
 and since Pope's death I am satisfied that England has not seen so happy a 
 mixture of strong sense and flowing numbers" {Carres., ii., 17). For the 
 lines written by Porson in ridicule of Hayley — "poetarum et criticorum 
 pessimus," as he called him — ^qq Johnsonian Misc., ii., 420. 
 
 For other stanzas of Hayley in praise of Gibbon see Gibbon's Misc. Works, 
 i., 260. 
 
 57. CRITICISMS OF THE DECLINE AND FALL (p. 231). 
 
 "(Nov. 8, 1789.) Mr. Gibbon never tires me. He comj)rises a vast body 
 and period of history too ; however, I do wish he had been as lucid as Vol- 
 taire, or, to speak more justly, that he had arranged his matter better" 
 (Walpole's Letters, ix., 235). 
 
 ' ' Gibbon' s style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about 
 him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with the 
 temper and habits of imperial Rome. . . . His work is little else but a dis- 
 guised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in any book 
 concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the capture of Con- 
 stantinople. When I read a chapter in Gibbon I seem to be looking through 
 a luminous haze or fog : — figures come and go, I know not how or why, all 
 larger than life, or distorted or discoloured ; nothing is real, vivid, true ; all is 
 scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by candle light " (Coleridge's Table-Talk, 
 ed. 1884, p. 245). 
 
 " (Feb., 1823.) Gibbon is a kind of bridge that connects the antique with 
 the modern ages. And how gorgeously does it swing across the gloomy and 
 tumultuous chasm of those barbarous centuries. . . . The perusal of his 
 
336 APPENDIX 
 
 work forms an epoch in the history of one's mind " {Early Letters of Carlyle, 
 ii., 180). 
 
 Mackintosh said in 1830 that "Gibbon's accuracy was such as justly to 
 elevate him to the rank of a great authority as an historian ; and at times he 
 is an excellent narrator, — for instance, in his account of Julian's march, and 
 of the taking of Constantinople. The cause of his being so ill remembered is 
 that he often insinuates instead of relating. Addison and Swift are now not 
 read at aU ; Johnson and Gibbon very rarely " {Life of Mackintosh, ii., 476). 
 
 "I venture to assert that no work in prose, since the time of Titus Livius, 
 is equal to Gibbon's History. There is somewhat of palatial magnitude and 
 of Oriental splendour in it ; nothing disorderly, nothing overcharged 
 (Landor's Imag. Conver., ed. C. G. Crump, v., 15). 
 
 " Grote said he had tested Gibbon's trustworthiness on several points, by 
 reference to ancient writers, and invariably found his statements correct and 
 candid. . . . He remarked upon the excellent judgment, the just apprecia- 
 tion of historical incidents, the freedom from bias on personal preferences, the 
 faculty of discernment in sifting the bearing of evidence, also the vigour of 
 expression of Gibbon ; adding, however, his objection to the style in which 
 the book is written. ' There is but o?ie Gibbon,' he said " {Life of Grote, ed. 
 1873, p. 296). 
 
 Sainte-Beuve qiiotes with approval Guizot's admiration in Gibbon of 
 " '1' immensity des recherches, la vari6t6 des connaissances, I'^tendue des 
 lumieres, et surtout cette justesse vraiment philosophique d'un esprit qui juge 
 le pass6 comme il jugerait le present,' et qui, a travers la forme extraordi- 
 naire et impr^vue des moeurs, des coutumes et des 6v6nements, a I'art de 
 retrouver dans tons les temps les memes hommes " {Causeries, viii., 453). 
 
 Mr. John Morley {Miscellanies, ed. 1886, iii., 49), recording a talk he had 
 with John Mill in 1873, writes : " He greatly dislikes the style of Junius 
 and of Gibbon ; indeed, thinks meanly of the latter in all respects, except for 
 his research, which alone of the work of that century stands the test of nine- 
 teenth century criticism ". 
 
 58. PORSON'S CRITICISM (p. 231). 
 
 ' ' His industry is indefatigable ; his accuracy scrupulous ; his reading, 
 which indeed is sometimes ostentatiously displayed, immense ; his attention 
 always awake ; his memory retentive ; his style emphatic and expressive ; his 
 periods harmonious. His reflections are often just and profound ; he pleads 
 eloquently for the rights of mankind, and the duty of toleration ; nor does his 
 humanity ever slumber, unless when women are ravished i, or the Christians 
 persecuted^. . . . I confess that I see nothing wrong in Mr. Gibbon's attack 
 on Christianity. It proceeded, I doubt not, from the purest and most virtuous 
 motive. We can only blame him for carrying on the attack in an insidious 
 manner, and with improper weapons. He often makes, when he cannot 
 readily find, an occasion to insult our religion ; which he hates so cordially 
 that he might seem to revenge some personal injury. Such is his eagerness in 
 the cause that he stoops to the most despicable pun, or to the most awkward 
 perversion of language, for the purpose of turning the Scripture ^ into ribaldry, 
 or of calling Jesus * an impostor. ... A less pardonable fault is that rage for 
 indecency which pervades the whole work, but especially the last volumes. 
 And, to the honour of his consistency, this is the same man who is so prudish 
 
 1 Chapter Ivii. , note 54 [vii. , 250, n. 61.] 
 
 2 See the whole sixteenth chapter. 
 
 3 Chapter lix. , note 32 [vi. , 333, n. 36]. 
 * Chapter xi., note 63 [i., 305, n. 70]. 
 
APPENDIX 337 
 
 that he dares not call Belisarius a cuckold, because it is too bad a word for a 
 decent historian to use \TJie Decline, iv., 335]. If the history were anony- 
 mous, I should guess that these disgraceful obscenities were written by some 
 debauchee, who having from age, or accident, or excess, survived the practice 
 of lust, still indulged himself in the luxury of speculation ; and exposed the 
 impotent imbecility after he had lost the vigour of the passions [Junius, Letter 
 xxiii.]" (Letters to Travis, Preface, p. 28). 
 
 The slumbers of Gibbon's humanity were more extended than Porson 
 represents. In the first volume of The Decline he expatiates on the "amiable 
 character" of the elder Gordian ; on his " mild administration, " and on the 
 "elegant taste and beneficent disposition" which "he displayed in the 
 enjoyment of a great estate ". " His long life," he adds, "was innocently 
 spent in the study of letters and the peaceful honours of Rome". This 
 amiableness, this mildness, this elegance, this beneficence, this studious and 
 peaceful innocence was not inconsistent with the slaughter of thousands of 
 gladiators. "The public shows exhibited at his expense, and in which the 
 people were entertained with many hundreds of wild beasts and gladiators, 
 seem to surpass the fortune of a subject ; and whilst the liberality of other 
 magistrates was confined to a few solemn festivals in Rome, the magnificence 
 of Gordian was repeated, when he was sedile, every month in the year, and 
 extended, during his consulship, to the principal cities of Italy. He some- 
 times gave five hundred pair of gladiators, never less than one hundred and 
 fifty" [Ttie Decline, i., 175). 
 
 In describing the Roman triumph, when Kings were led "to an igno- 
 minious death, ' ' Gibbon exhibits all the unf eelingness of the sentimentalist. 
 " When the citizen cast his eye on the vanquished Kings dragged in triumph, 
 his own pride triumphed at once over them and insulted humanity. But if a 
 sentiment of compassion overcame his stern prejudices, and he melted at the 
 sight of a fallen monarch and his innocent children still unconscious of their 
 misfortim.e, his tenderness inust have been rewarded with that delightful pleasure 
 with which nature repays such tears ' ' [the italics are mine] (Misc. Works, iv., 
 396). 
 
 " Gibbon has but a coarse and vulgar heart, with all his keen logic, and 
 glowing imagination, and lordly irony : he worships power and splendour ; 
 and suffering virtue, the most heroic devotedness if lonsuccessful, unarrayed 
 in the pomp and circumstance of outward glory, has little of his sympathy " 
 (Early Letters of Carlyle, ii., 180). 
 
 59. LOUIS XVL, THE SUPPOSED TRANSLATOR OF THE DECLINE 
 AND FALL (p. 232). 
 
 Querard in Les Supercheries Littiraires DivoiUes, 1870, ii., 723, has the 
 following entry: "LeClerc de Sept-Chenes, prite-no7n{J^(imSs, XVL, roi de 
 France). Histoire de la dicade7ice, &c., par Gibbon (traduction commenc^e 
 par Louis XVI., sous le nom de M. Le Clerc de Sept-ChSnes ; continu^e, des 
 le quatrieme tome, par MM. D^meunier et Boulard, finie par MM. Cantwel 
 et Marini^, et revue, quant aux derniers volumes, par M. Boulard). Paris, 
 Moutard et Maradan, 1777-95, 18 vol., in-8. 
 
 'Siskxzh.i. ^lXL Roi martyr, ou Esquisse du portrait de Louis XVL . . . "Aprfes 
 en avoir traduit cing volumes, M. le Dauphin, ne voulant pas etre connu, 
 chargea M. Le Clerc de Sept-Chenes, son lecteur du cabinet, de les faire 
 imprimer sous son nom". Two years later a splendidly-bound copy of the 
 book from the translator was given by the Count de Vergennes to the Abbd 
 Aubert, who had passed the manuscript as censor. "Sur 1' observation du 
 censeur que M. de Sept-Chenes aurait pu se dispenser de la magnificence de 
 la reliure, M. de Vergennes lui dit : ' C'est M. le Dauphin qui est le veritable 
 traducteur, et qui m'a charge de vous faire ce cadeau en son nom'. ' Nous 
 
 22 
 
838 APPENDIX 
 
 tenons cette anecdote de I'abb^ Aubert lui-mSme.' A. A. B — r [Ant. Alex. 
 Barbier]." 
 
 Sainte-Beuve believed in this story. " On a su depuis, que cette traduction 
 a laquelle Septchenes mit son nom, 6tait en partie de Louis XVI." (Cate- 
 series, &c., viii., 454). 
 
 One part of the story is so manifestly untrue that I distrust it altogether. 
 In this anecdote Louis XVI. is spoken of as "M. le Dauphin" two years 
 after the publication of the first part of the French translation. He became 
 King on May 10, 1774, nearly two years before the first volume was published 
 in English, and three years before the French publication began. Moreover, 
 the five volumes which he is said to have translated must have included the 
 second portion of the Historj', which was not published till 1781. 
 
 Of Septchenes' s translation. Gibbon wrote that " it is admirably well done " 
 {Corres., i., 296). "It has been corrected and re-edited by Guizot" [The 
 Decline, ed. Milman, 1854, i. , 124). 
 
 In the Almanack Royal, 1781, p. 119, in the "Maison du Roi," among the 
 " Secretaires de la Chambre et du Cabinet," is entered : — 
 
 ' ' (1771. ) M. le Clerc des Sept-Chenes en surviv [ance]. ' ' 
 
 60. GIBBON'S LOVE OF LAUSANNE (p. 233). 
 
 ' ' I shall soon visit the banks of the Lake of Lausanne, a country which I 
 have known and loved from my early youth. Under a mild government, 
 amidst a beauteous landscape, in a life of leisure and independence, and 
 among a people of easy and elegant manners, I have enjoyed, and may again 
 hope to enjoy, the varied pleasures of retirement and society. But I shall 
 ever glory in the name and character of an Englishman." The Decline, 
 Preface, p. 12. 
 
 In his glorying he copies George III. , who, in his first speech to his Par- 
 liament, said : "I glory in the name of Briton " (Boswell's /(7A«J(?«, i. , 353, n.). 
 George III., in his turn, copied Milton's Satan, who ;said, "I glory in the 
 name ' ' of Satan {Paradise Lost, x. , 386). 
 
 Miss Holroyd, on Oct. 29, 1792, writing of the, threatened invasion of 
 Switzerland by the French, says : " They would not do Mr. Gibbon any 
 harm, being 'un Anglais,' which name he will now probably condescend to 
 make use of, and not talk so much of ' nous Suisses ' as he did " {Girlhood, 
 he,., p. 203). See also Corres., ii. , 373, where Lord Sheffield writes to him as 
 a Swiss : "You do not deserve to be a nation," &c. 
 
 Gibbon generally speaks of the Lake as the Leman Lake, and not, as here, 
 of the Lake of Lausanne. In The Decline, vi., 333, writing of St. Bernard, he 
 says : ' ' The disciples of the Saint record a marvellous example of his pious 
 apathy. ' Juxta Lacum etiam Lausannensem totius diei itinere pergens, 
 penitus non attendit, aut se videre non vidit. Cum enim vespere facto de 
 eodem lacu socii colloquerentur, interrogabat eos ubi lacus ille esset ; et mirati 
 sunt universi.' To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought, the reader, like 
 myself, should have before the windows of his library the beauties of that 
 incomparable landscape." 
 
 61. GIBBON'S LIBRARY (p. 234). 
 
 Lord Sheffield reproached Gibbon with his "damned, parson-minded, 
 inglorious idea of leaving books to be sold". It was to Sheffield Place they 
 should be left, "to be handed down seris nepotibus [Ovid, Meta., vi., 138] as 
 the Gibbonian Library ". Gibbon replied: "I consider a public sale as the 
 most laudable method of disposing of it. From such sales my books were 
 
APPENDIX 339 
 
 chiefly collected" {Corres., ii., 296, 301). In his library in Bentinck Street his 
 Vjooks had stood two deep on the shelves {ib. , ii. , 48). The carriage of it back 
 to England might, Sheffield thought, cost £400 (id., ii., 362). 
 
 Beckford, the author of Vathek, said to Cyrus Redding: "I bought 
 Gibbon's library to have something to read when I passed through Lausanne. 
 I shut myself up for six weeks from early in the morning until night, only 
 now and then taking a ride. The people thought me mad. I read myself 
 nearly blind. I made a present of the library to my physician [Dr. SchoU] ' ' 
 {New Monthly Mag. , 1844, ii. , 307). 
 
 Miss Berry recorded at Laiisanne on July 6, 1803: "Went to the library 
 of Mr. Gibbon ; it still remains here, though bought seven years ago by Mr. 
 Beckford for £950. Of all the libraries I ever saw it is that which seems 
 exactly everything that any gentleman or gentlewoman fond of letters could 
 wish. The books are placed in two small and inconvenient rooms hired for 
 the purpose. Mr. Beckford packed up about 2,500 volumes in two cases, which 
 he proposed sending to England directly, but which still remain in their 
 cases" (Miss Berry's Journal, &c., ed. 1866, ii. , 260). 
 
 Henry Matthews, in 1818, found it in the same state — " locked up in an 
 uninhabited house at LauS&nne " {Dairy of an Invalid, ed. 1820, p. 316). 
 
 According to the account given to General Read in 1879 by Dr. Scholl's 
 daughter, Beckford, after taking away a few volumes, left the remainder in 
 her father's charge till 1815 or 1816, when he gave them to him. In 1825 Dr. 
 SchoU sold half the library for 12,500 francs [£500] to Mr. Halliday, an 
 Englishman, who lived in a tower near Orbe. The other half was dispersed 
 by sale, 500 volumes going to an American University {Hist. Studies, ii., 505) 
 In Notes and Queries, 5th S., v., 425, it is stated that the owner of the 
 unscattered half " presented it to its present [1876] owner, who lives near 
 Geneva". 
 
 62. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (p. 237). 
 
 In 1784 Gibbon, who seems to have learnt little from history, invested 
 £1,300 in a new French loan {Corres. , ii. , 93). Describing the French monarchy 
 as it was in 1788, he said " it stood founded, as it might seem, on the rock of 
 time, force, and opinion, supported by the triple Aristocracy of the Church, the 
 Nobility, and the Parliaments " {ib. , ii., 298). 
 
 How striking a comment was to be made on the following passage in The 
 Decline, v. , 243, by the Reign of Terror, the execution of the King, the fall of 
 so many of the Princes of Europe, and the rise of Napoleon ! "I shall not 
 descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of Kings ; but I may surely observe 
 that their condition, of all others, is the most pregnant with fear and the least 
 susceptible of hope. For these opposite passions a larger scope was allowed 
 in the revolutions of antiquity than in the smooth and solid temper of the 
 modern world, which cannot easily either repeat the triumph of Alexander or 
 the fall of Darius." 
 
 The following extracts show the view he took of events as they passed 
 before him : — 
 
 " (Dec. 15, 1789.) How many years must elapse before France can recover 
 any vigour, or resume her station among the powers of Europe ! " (Corres., ii., 
 210.) 
 
 " (April 4, 1792. ) It is the opinion of the master-movers in France (I know 
 it most certainly), that their troops will not fight, that the people have lost all 
 sense of patriotism, and that on the first discharge of an Austrian cannon the 
 game is up" (ib., p. 293). 
 
 " (Sept. 12, 1792.) On every rational principle of calculation the Duke of 
 Brunswick must succeed ; yet sometimes, when my spirits are low, I dread 
 the blind efforts of mad and desperate multitudes fighting on their own 
 ground" (ib., p. 311). 
 
340 APPENDIX , 
 
 "(Nov. 10, 1792.) Every clog has his day; and these Gallic dogs have 
 their daj'^, at least, of most insolent prosperity. After forcing or tempting the 
 Prussians to evacuate their country, they conquer Savoy, pillage Germany, 
 threaten Spain ; the Low Countries are ere now invaded ; Rome and Italy 
 tremble ; they scour the Mediterranean, and talk of sending a squadron into 
 the South Sea" {Corres., ii., p. 333). 
 
 Had he written his History a few years later, it would never have con- 
 tained such passages as the following: "Augustus or Trajan would have 
 blushed at employing the meanest of the Romans in those menial offices 
 which, in the household and bedchamber of a limited monarch, are so eagerly 
 solicited by the proudest nobles of Britain" [The Decline, i. , 68). 
 
 ■'A weak prince will always be governed by his domestics. . . . There is a 
 chance that a modern favourite may be a gentleman " {ib., n.). 
 
 ^'TYie Ecclesiastes and Proverbs dUs^Y&y 2k larger compass of thought and 
 experience than seem to belong either to a Jew or a King" {ib., iv., 294). 
 
 ' ' The choice of the people is the best and purest title to reign over them " 
 (j^., iv., 310). 
 
 "The power of Kings is most effectual to destroy " (ib. , iv,, 425). 
 
 "When Gibbon heard of the King's execution he wrote to Lord Sheffield : 
 ' ' I was much tempted to go into mourning, . . . but as the only Englishman 
 of any mark, I was afraid of being singular" (Corres., ii. , 370). For his 
 friend's abuse of him in reply, as " a damned, unworthy, temporising son of 
 a bitch," see ib., p. 374. 
 
 According to Sainte-Beuve, the French Revolution gave Gibbon " un peu 
 de ce patriotisme dont il avait eu jusque-la si peu. . . . En consid^rant le 
 champ illimit6 d'anarchie et d'aventures dans lequel on se lancait a I'aveugie, 
 il en revint a aimer cette Constitution anglaise pourlaquelle il s'^tait toujours 
 senti assez ti^de. ... II est curieux de voir Gibbon devenu chaleureux comme 
 uu Burke, et levant la main pour I'Arche de la Constitution comme un Fox 
 et comme un Macaulay " (Causeries, viii., 469). 
 
 63. CHURCH ESTABLISHMENTS (p. 237). 
 
 On March 2, 1790, Burke, speaking against Fox's motion for the repeal of 
 the Test and Corporation Acts, ' ' professed his peculiar reverence for the 
 Established Chui-ch " (Pari. Hist., xxviii., 435). 
 
 Lord Holland (Me7noirs, &c. , ed. 1825, i., 5) wrote of Burke: " An extra- 
 vagant veneration for all established rites and ceremonies in religion appears 
 to have been a sentiment long and deeply rooted in his mind. It arose, 
 indeed, from a conviction of the necessity of some establishment to the pre- 
 servation of society. . . . Mr. Fox assured me that in his invectives against 
 Mr. Hastings's indignities to the Indian Priesthood he spoke of the holy 
 religion and sacred functions of the Hindoos with an awe bordering on 
 devotion. ' ' 
 
 "What Gibbon thought of Church establishments he shows when he writes, 
 that by an Archbishop of Alexandria "the revenues of the Church were 
 restored to the true proprietors, the poor of every country and every denomi- 
 nation" (The Decline, v., 71). A Jacobin would not have gone further. In 
 another passage, quoting Selden and Montesquieu, "who represent Charle- 
 magne as the first /«§«/ author of tithes," he continues: "Such obligations 
 have country gentlemen to his memory ! " (lb., v., 286.) 
 
 He wrote of Burke to Lord Sheffield in the winter of 1790-1 : "I admire 
 his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can forgive 
 even his superstition. The primitive Church, which I have treated with some 
 freedom, was itself at that time an innovation, and I was attached to the old 
 Pagan establishment" [Corres., ii., 237). On May 31, 1791, he wrote : " Poor 
 Burke is the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew ' ' (ib. , p, 
 251). 
 
APPENDIX 341 
 
 Lord Sheffield records how Gibbon " became a warm and zealous advocate 
 for every sort of old establishment. ... In a circle where French affairs 
 were the topic, and some Portuguese present, he, seemingly with seriousness, 
 argued in favour of the Inquisition at Lisbon, and said he would not, at the 
 present moment, give up even that old establishment" [Misc. Works, i., 328). 
 
 " It is by no means true that unbelievers are usually tolerant. They are 
 not disposed (and why should they ?) to endanger the present state of things 
 by suffering a religion of which they believe nothing to be disturbed by 
 another of which they believe as little. Thej^ are ready themselves to con- 
 form to anything ; and are oftentimes among the foremost to procure 
 conformity from others by any method which they think likely to be 
 efficacious" (Paley's Evidences, ed. 1796, i., 32). 
 
 64. BERNE'S GOVERNMENT OF VAUD (p. 239). 
 
 Gibbon wrote on April 4, 1792, that two popular leaders had been ' ' con- 
 demned to jfive-and-twenty years' imprisonment in the fortress of Arbourg. 
 It is not believed that the proofs and proceedings against them will be pub- 
 lished ; an awkward circumstance, which it does not seem easy to justify. 
 Some (though none of note) are taken up, several are fled, many more are 
 suspected and suspicious. All are silent ; but it is the silence of fear and 
 discontent ; and the secret hatred which rankled against government begins 
 to point against the few who are known to be well-affected" (Corres., ii., 
 293). 
 
 Writing of the law-suit with which he was threatened, he says: "The 
 administration of justice at Berne (the last appeal) depends too much on 
 favour and intrigue. ... I must have gone to Berne, have solicited my 
 judges in person ; a vile custom ! " {lb., ii., 203, 205.) 
 
 In his Introduction li fHistoire Ghiirale de la Rdpublique des Suisses, he 
 says : ' ' Berne apporta dans les conseils des Suisses une politique plus f erme, 
 plus r^fl^chie et plus 6clair6e ; mais elle y apporta en meme temps ses desseins 
 int&ess6s, le gout des conquetes, et une ambition moins soumise aux lois de 
 la justice qu'a celles de la prudence " [Misc. Works, iii., 329). 
 
 Torture was used in some of the Swiss States at all events as late as 1779 
 (A7171. Reg., 1779, ii., 16). 
 
 Vaud was freed by the French from dependence on Berne in 1798, and was 
 made a sovereign canton in 1803 [Penny Cycle, xxvi., 161). 
 
 65. CONDEMNED TO IGNORANCE AND POVERTY (p. 239). 
 
 " Such is the constitution of civil society that, whilst a few persons are 
 distinguished by riches, by honours, and by knowledge, the body of the 
 people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance, and poverty" [The Decline, ii., 
 65). In another passage — a passage that reveals the great historian's igno- 
 rance of his countrymen — he says that ' ' the illiterate peasant rooted to a 
 single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses but very little 
 his fellow -labourer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties" [ib./x., 
 218). 
 
 It is true that in another place he greatly exaggerates the extent of popular 
 education. Speaking of Charlemagne, he says : "In his mature age the 
 Emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant now 
 learns in his infancy " [ib., v., 286). 
 
 Li writing of the Ai-abs' " perfection of language," and the abundance of 
 their synonyms, he continues : " This copious dictionary was entrusted to the 
 memory of an illiterate people " [ib,, v., 325). 
 
342 APPENDIX 
 
 Johnson would not have had any class ' ' condemned to ignorance and 
 poverty". " Though it should be granted," he wrote, "that those who are 
 born to poverty and drudgery should not be deprived by an improper education 
 of the opiate of ignorattce, even this concession will not be of much use to 
 direct our practice, unless it be determined who are those that are born to 
 poverty. To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after generation, only 
 because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel, if not unjust, and 
 is wholly contrary to the maxims of a commercial nation, which always . . . 
 offer every individual a chance of mending his condition by his diligence. 
 Those who communicate literature to the son of a poor man consider him as 
 one not born to poverty, but to the necessity of deriving a better fortune from 
 himself" (Johnson's Works, vi., 56 ; see also Johnson's Letters, ii. , 437). 
 
 66. GIBBON'S THOUGHTS OF MARRIAGE (p. 241). 
 
 In 1763, and again in 1764, he told his father that he did not think of ever 
 marrying (Corres., i., 46, 70). In 1784 he wrote to Lady ShefiBeld : "Should 
 you be very much surprised to hear of my being married ? Amazing as it may 
 seem, I do assure you that the event is less improbable than it would have 
 appeared to myself a twelvemonth ago" [Co7-res., ii., 118). Seven years later 
 he wrote to his step-mother : "At fifty -four a man should never think of 
 altering the whole system of his life and habits " [ib., ii., 248). " I was not 
 very strongly pressed by my family or passions," he said, " to propagate the 
 name and race of the Gibbons" {A?.eto., p. 275). For his "passions" see 
 Auto., pp. 60, 150, 159, 205, 244, 263, 274, and Corres., i., 70 ; see also ante, 
 pp. 105, 153, n. 4. 
 
 Miss Holroyd describes a lady, Mme. de Montolieu, "who had put Mr. 
 Gibbon's liberty in danger. ... It never occurs to him that she might have 
 refused him" (Girlhood, &c., p. 115). For his confession that he "was in 
 some danger " see Corres., ii. , 154. 
 
 It was before this lady that he fell on his knees as a lover, according to 
 Mme. de Genlis, "une assez m^chante langue, il est vrai," to borrow Sainte- 
 Beuve's description of her (Causeries, viii., 468). She Avrote : "Avec cette 
 figure et ce visage 6trange qu'on lui connait, M. Gibbon est infiniment galant, 
 et il est devenu amoureux d'lme trfes-aimable personne, madame de Crouzas. 
 Un jour, se trouvant tete k tete avec elle, pour la premiere fois, il voulut 
 saisir un moment si favorable, et tout k coup il se jeta k ses genoux en lui 
 declarant son amour dans les terraes les plus passionn^s. Madame de Crouzas 
 lui r^pondit de manifere k lui 6ter la tentation de renouveler cette joUe sc^ne. 
 M. Gibbon prit un air constern6, et cependant il restait k genoux, malgr6 
 r invitation r6it6r^e de se remettre sur sa chaise ; il 6tait immobile et gardait 
 le silence. 'Mais, Monsieur, r^p6ta Madame de Crousaz, relevez-vous done. — 
 H61as ! Madame, r^pondit enfin ce malheureux amant, Je ne peux pas.' 
 Madame de Crousaz sonna, et dit an domestique qui survint : Relevez 
 monsieur Gibbon" {Souvenirs de Filicie, par Mme. de Genlis, ed. 1857, p. 
 176). 
 
 Mme. de Genlis' daughter said that her mother had made " a confusion of 
 persons" (Read's Hist. Studies, ii. , 350). General Read quotes The Gent. 
 Mag. , 1843, p. 506, and The Life of Cardiiial Mezzofanti to prove that the 
 lady was Lady Elizabeth Foster, afterwards Duchess of Devonshire. In The 
 Gent. Mag. it is stated that she was at Lausanne in June, 1787. She was 
 there in 1784; " poorly in health," Gibbon wrote to Lady Shefiield, "but 
 still adorable (nay, do not frown !), and I enjoyed some delightful hours by 
 her bedside" ; and she was there again in 1792 {Corres., ii., 117, 310). His 
 letters to her are not those of a man who had made himself ridiculous before 
 her. He would not have recalled to her his "aged and gouty limbs " {Misc, 
 
APPENDIX 343 
 
 Works, ii. , 472). On the death of Lady Sheffield he wrote to her : " I am 
 sure that your f eeUng, affectionate mind will |not be surprised to hear that I 
 set out for England next week" (Corres., ii., 380). 
 The whole story is probably an invention. 
 
 67. THE CHANCES OF LIFE AND DEATH (p. 243). 
 
 Mr. Buffon, from our disregard of the possibility of death within the four 
 and twenty hours, concludes that a chance which falls below or rises above 
 ten thousand to one will never affect the hopes or fears of a. reasonable man. 
 The fact is true, but our courage is the effect of thoughtlessness, rather than 
 of reflection. If a public lottery were drawn for the choice of an immediate 
 victim, and if our name were inscribed on one of the ten thousand tickets, 
 should we be perfectly easy ? (Footnote by Gibbon.) 
 
 "Apresy avoir r^fl^chi, j'ai pens^ que de toutes les probabilit^s morales 
 possibles, celle qui affecte le plus I'homme en g^n^ral, c'est la crainte de la 
 mort, et j'ai senti dfes-lors que toute crainte, ou toute esp^rance dont la 
 probability serait 6gale k celle qui produit la crainte de la mort, peut dans le 
 moral etre prise pour I'unit^ k laquelle on doit rapporter la mesure des autres 
 craintes. . . . Je cherche done quelle est r^ellement la probability qu'un 
 homme qui se porte bien, et qui par consequent n'a nulle crainte de la mort, 
 meure m^anmoins dans les vingt-quatre heures. En consultant les tables de 
 mortality, je vois qii'on en peut d^duire qu'il n'y a que 10,189 a parier centre 
 un qu'un homme de cinquante-six ans vivra plus d'un jour. Or comme tout 
 homme de cet ^ge, ou la raison a acquis toute sa maturity et I'exp^rience toute 
 sa force, n'a n^anmoins nulle crainte de la mort dans les vingt-quatre heures, 
 quoi qu'il n'y ait que 10,189 k parier centre un qu'il ne mourra pas dans ce court 
 intervalle de temps; j'en conclus que toute probability 6gale ou plus petite, 
 doit etre regard^e comme nulle, et que toute crainte ou toute esp6rance qui se 
 trouve au-dessous de dix mille ne doit ni nous affecter, ni meme nous occuper 
 un seul instant le cceur ou la tete." 
 
 The mathematician Bernoulli, after pointing out to Buffon that "1' exemp- 
 tion de frayeur n'est assur^ment pas dans ceux qui sont d^ji malades," 
 continues : " Je ne combats pas votre principe, mais il parait plutot conduire a 
 TTtTTBinr qu'a rTTDTnr " (Hist. Nat., &c., ed. 1777 ; Supplement, iv., 56. 
 
 The passage in the text is dated March 2, 1791 (Auto., p. 349). Gibbon was 
 within eight weeks of his fifty-fourth birthday. His expectation of life he 
 derived from Buffon, who says : " Pour une personne de cinquante-quatre 
 ans on peut parier 2,786 contre 2,588 qu'elle vivra 14 ans de plus. On peut 
 parier 2,969 contre 2,405 qu'elle ne vivra pas 16 ans de plus " (Suppldme7it, iv. , 
 224). "The expectation of life at fifty -four, calculated on the mortality of 
 1871-80, is sixteen years and a half (Whitaker's Almanack, 1899, p. 691). 
 
 These fond hopes of Gibbon came into my mind when, in Sainte-Beuve, I 
 read that fine passage where Bossuet describes life as that " qui nous 
 manquera tout a coup comme un faux ami, lorsqu'elle semblera nous 
 promettre plus de repos " (Causeries, x., 201). 
 
 68. LIFE'S AUTUMNAL FELICITY (p. 244). 
 
 " Quelqu'un demandait au philosophe Fontenelle, ag6 de quatre-vingt 
 quinze ans, quelles ^taient les vingt ann^es de sa vie qu'il regrettait le plus ; 
 il r6pondit qu'il regrettait peu de chose, que n^anmoins I'S-ge ou il avait €i,€ le 
 plus heureux ^tait de cinquante-cinq k soixante-quinze ans ; il fit cet aveu de 
 bonne foi, et il prouva son dire par des v6rit6s sensibles et consolantes. A 
 cinquante-cinq ans la fortune est 6tablie, la reputation faite, la consideration 
 
344 APPENDIX 
 
 obtemie, I'^tat de la vie fixe, les pretentions ^vanouies ou remplies, les projets 
 avort^s ou miiris, la plupart des passions calm^es ou du moins refroidies," 
 &c. (Buffon, Hist. Nat., SuppUment, iv., 413). 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, in the letter mentioned ante, p. 221, n. 4, quoted 
 Fontenelle' s saying that ' ' the two great qualities necessary to live long were 
 a good body and a bad heart" (Read's Hist. Studies, ii., 199). 
 
 Voltaire wrote to Mme. du DeflEand in his seventieth year [CEuvres, lii., 
 239) : " Rarement le dernier age de la vie est-il bien agr^able ; on a toujours 
 esp6r6 assez vainement de jouir de la vie ; et a la fin, tout ce qu'on peut faire, 
 c'est de la supporter ". Seven years later he vnrote to Lord Chesterfield : " Je 
 me borne k croire que, si vous avez du soleil dans la belle maison que vous 
 avez bitie, vous aurez des momens tol^rables ; c'est tout ce qu'on peut esp^rer 
 a I'age ou nous sommes. Cic^ron 6crivit un beau traits sur la vieillesse, mais il 
 ne prouva point son livre par les faits ; ses dernieres annees furent tres- 
 malheureuses " (Chesterfield's Misc. Works, iii., 399). 
 
 Hume, a few months before his death, writing of the previous year when 
 his health was being slowly undermined by disease, said : " Were I to name a 
 period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be 
 tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in 
 study, and the same gaiety in company " {Letters to Strahan, Preface, p. 32). 
 
 Bo wring wrote of Jeremy Bentham : "It was principally in the latter 
 portion of his life that his felicity was almost untroubled. The many dis- 
 comforts of the early half of his existence were often contrasted by him vrith 
 the quiet and habitual pleasures of his later years" (Bentham' s Works, x., 
 25). 
 
 " An healthy old fellow that is not a fool is the happiest creature living " 
 (The Guardian, No. 26). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abernethy, John, 257 n. 
 
 Abingdon, Earl of, 169 n. 
 
 Abjuration, Act of, 13 n, 274. 
 
 Abulpharagius, 45, 282. 
 
 Academy of Inscriptions, 120, 123. 
 
 Academy of Medals, 1518. 
 
 Acton, Lord, 276. 
 
 Acton, Dr. Edward, 24, 154, 276. 
 
 Acton, Richard, 16, 276. 
 
 Acton, Richard (of Leghorn), 25, 276. 
 
 Acton, General Sir John, 24, 276. 
 
 Acton, Sir Walter, 276. 
 
 Acton, Sir Whitmore, 16. 
 
 Adams, William, D.D., 287, 327. 
 
 Addington, Henry (Viscount Sid- 
 mouth), 215 71. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, army, 298 ; barring- 
 out, 40 71 ; Board of Trade, 322 ; 
 Dialogues, 160 ; historians, 295 ; 
 Magdalen College, 284 ; not read, 
 336 ; Padua, 166 ?i ; style, 122 ; 
 younger brothers, 273. 
 
 Africanus, 46 ?i. 
 
 Agathias, 214. 
 
 Agesilaus, 40. 
 
 Aiguillon, Duchess of, 127. 
 
 Aldrich, Dean, 283. 
 
 Alembert (d'). Olivet, 91 « ; erudits, 
 123 ; Gibbon meets him, 152 ; 
 happiness, 241 «. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 78 7i. 
 
 Alfred, King, 51 71. 
 
 Algiers, 25. 
 
 Allamand, Professor, loi. 
 
 America, war with, 191, 193, 212, 226, 
 314, 324, 327, 329 ; — astrono- 
 mers, 315 ; — trade, 332. 
 
 American Secretary of State, 208, 323. 
 
 Ammianus Marcellinus, 6 «, 181. 
 
 Ancestry, 2-5. 
 
 Anderson, James, 45, 283. 
 
 A7tgloma7iie , 305. 
 
 Anne, Queen, 16 «, 274. 
 
 Anstey, Christopher, 174. 
 
 ATiti-Jacobitt, 231 ti. 
 
 Anville (d'), 159. 
 
 (345) 
 
 ApoUinaris, 223 «. 
 
 Apthorpe, Rev. East, D.D. , 203, 318. 
 
 Arabia7i Nights, 38, 93 n. 
 
 Arabs, 341. 
 
 Argyle, Eighth Duke of, 313. 
 
 Arianism, 201. 
 
 Arms, wearing, 161 n. 
 
 Army, standing, 134, 298. 
 
 Arnauld, Abbe, 152, 306. 
 
 Ashmole, Elias, 13. 
 
 Assises de Jirusalem, 229. 
 
 Assist, 192 71. 
 
 Astrology, 13. 
 
 Astruc, Jean, 203 7i. 
 
 Athanasian Creed, 71. 
 
 Athanasius, 57 n. 
 
 Atticus, 132. 
 
 Aubert, Abb6, 338. 
 
 Aubrey, Sir John, 169 n. 
 
 Auckland, Lord, 260-2, 322. 
 
 Augsburg, Congress of, 126. 
 
 Augustus, 130 ;z. 
 
 Aulnoi (d'). Countess, 7 ti, 278. 
 
 Austin, St., 7. 
 
 Authors, 153 71, 191, 243 n, 308, 313. 
 
 Antomathes, 22. 
 
 Bacon, Francis (Viscount Verulam) 
 
 6 n, 34 «, 145. 
 Bacon, Friar, 52 ti. 
 Badcock, Rev. Samuel, 204, 320. 
 Bagehot, Walter, 197 «, 297. 
 Bagot, Bishop Lewis, 81 ti. 
 Baillie, Matthew, M.D., 257. 
 Baker, a Jesuit, 72 72. 
 Ballard, — , 300. 
 Balliol College, 290. 
 Banks, Sir Joseph, 311. 
 Bar, The, 114. 
 Barbeyrac, 96. 
 Barbier, A. A., 338. 
 Barnard, Dean, 303, 312. 
 Baronius, Cardinal, 68 «, 182. 
 Barons' War, 144. 
 Barr6, Colonel Isaac, 193. 
 Barrow, Isaac, 304. 
 
346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Barth^lemy, Abb6, 152, 306. 
 Bath Guide, 174. 
 
 Batt, John Thomas, 225 n, 264, 268. 
 Bayle, Peter, scepticism, 74, 76 ; at- 
 tacked by De Crousaz, 87, 96 ; at 
 Copet, 222 71 ; obscenity, 231 n. 
 Beauclerk, Hon. Topham, 30 n, 311. 
 Beaufort (de), no. 
 Beaumarchais, 206. 
 Beausobre, 140, 299, 
 Backet, T., 126, 128. 
 Beckford, William, 339. 
 Beddoes, Thomas, M.D., 200 n, 
 Bedford, Fourth Duke of, 298. 
 Behraen (Bohme), Jacob, 22. 
 Belisarius, 337. 
 Belleisle, Marshal de, 155 n. 
 Benedict XIV. , 164. 
 Benedictines, 56. 
 
 Bentham, Edward, D.D., 80, 291. 
 Bentham, Jeremy, Oxford, 50 «, 65 n, 
 289, 290 ; Lind's Manifesto, 205 n ; 
 Eliot and Gibbon, 209 n, 313 ; 
 Westminster School, 279 ; Hors- 
 ley, 322 ; old age, 344. 
 Bentley, Richard, D. D., Phcedrus, 36, 
 278 ; Pope's Homer, 38 n ; New 
 Testament, 56 n ; vernacular idiom, 
 130 ; Spanheim's portrait, 160 n ; 
 learning, 210. 
 Bergier, Nicholas, 159. 
 Bernard, St., 338. 
 Berne, 98 n, 223, 238, 341. 
 Bernoulli, S9, 343- 
 Berry, Miss, 339. 
 Bertie, Hon. Peregrine, 169 «. 
 Best, H. D., 288. 
 Betts, Dr. John, 13. 
 Bigge, Thomas Charles, 169 n. 
 Biographia Britannica, 6. 
 Birch, Thomas, D.D. , 144. 
 Blackstone, Sir William, act of abjura- 
 tion, 274 ; armorial ensigns, 9 n ; 
 army, 298 ; burgage tenure, 277 ; 
 Christianity, 321 ; Cornmentaries, 
 81, 184 ; esquires, 8 n ; lectures at 
 Oxford, 292 ; Militia Act, 119 n, 
 135 n ; Popery laws, 73, 291 ; uni- 
 versities, 287 ; younger sons, 273. 
 Blake, William, 303. 
 Blandy, Miss, 58 n. 
 Bl^terie, Abb6 de la, 97, 152, 306. 
 Bliss, Philip, 61 ?i. 
 Blondel, — , 220 n. 
 Bloxam, Rev. J. R., D.D., 283. 
 Blunt, Sir John, 18 n. 
 Board of Trade, 208, 213, 322. 
 Boase, Rev. C. W. , 61 n. 
 
 Boccage (du), Madame, 153, 308. 
 
 Bochat (de), 223 n. 
 
 Boileau, 231. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Viscount, army, 298 ; 
 French, 133 ; Gibbon's grand- 
 father, 16 ; historians, 295 ; Jaco- 
 bites, 25 ;?, 58 n. 
 
 Bologna, 165. 
 
 Bolton, Duke of, 119 n, 136, 302. 
 
 Bolton, Duchess of, 7 tt. 
 
 Booksellers, 243. 
 
 Boromean Islands, 161. 
 
 Bossuet, 69, 343. 
 
 Boswell, James, boyish years, 46 n ; 
 esquires and gentlemen, 8 ;/,, 273 ; 
 Gibbon, 73, n 311 ; Highlanders 
 at Derby, 28 n ; Literary Club, 
 312 ; popular belief, 78 n ; read 
 beyond the Mississippi, 233 n ; 
 Russell Street, 72 n ; Toryism, 
 174 n. 
 
 Boufflers (de). Countess, 175 n. 
 
 Bougainville (de), 152, 307. 
 
 Boulainvilliers (de), Count, 223 n. 
 
 Boulard, 337. 
 
 Bourdaloue, 300. 
 
 Bower, Archibald, 44, 282. 
 
 Bowring, Sir John, 344. 
 
 Boyhood, 46. 
 
 Breitinger, Professor, 100. 
 
 Brenles (de), Madame, 295. 
 
 Bristol, 227, 253, 333. 
 
 Bristol, Earl of, 115. 
 
 British Museum, 124 n, 188 n. 
 
 Brizard, Abb^, 317. 
 
 Brocklesby, Richard, M.D. , 137 «• 
 
 Brodrick, Thomas, 17 n. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 297. 
 
 Brunswick, Duke of, 339. 
 
 Brunswick, Hereditary Prince of, 14, 
 221 n. 
 
 Bryce, James, 293. 
 
 Brydges, Sir S. E., 10 n, 11 n. 
 
 Buffon, style, i n ; chances of life, 29 n, 
 239 n, 343 ; Gibbon's acquaintance, 
 152, 199. 
 
 Bugnion, Madame, 89 n. 
 
 Buller, Charles, 313. 
 
 Burgage tenure, 25, 277. 
 
 Burgersdicius, 80 n. 
 
 Buriton or Beriton, 116. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, army, 298 ; Bill of 
 Reform, 208, 213, 215 n, jfii ; 
 Chatham, Earl of, 151 n ; Church 
 Establishments, 237, 290, 340 ; 
 Coalition Ministry, 329 ; com- 
 panions, 220 n ; fame, 242 n ; Fox, 
 331 ; ; French Revolution, 237 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Gibbon, 190 n, 260-1 ; government 
 asleep, 192 n ; Helv^tius, 308 ; 
 historians, 296 ; Hunter's lectures, 
 200 71 ; influence, 119 ;z ; " le 
 grand Burke," 134 n ; Literary 
 Club, 311 ; Militia Act, 135 n ; 
 North, Lord, 328 ; opposition, 193 ; 
 Oxford, 291 ; Septennial Act, 19 
 n ; Sheridan, 334 ; Tories, 135. 
 
 Burmann, Peter, 36, 59, 278. 
 
 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 61 n. 
 
 Burnet, Bishop Gilbert, 6 n, 211 7i, 274. 
 
 Burnet, Rev. Thomas, LL.D., 211, 
 326. 
 
 Burney, Dr., 311. 
 
 Burton, John, D.D., 80. 
 
 Bute, third Earl of, 119, 207 «, 301. 
 
 Bute, Marquis of, 169 n, 
 
 Byers, James, 163. 
 
 Byrom, John, 24 Jt. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 332. 
 
 Cade, Jack, 10. 
 
 Cadell, Thomas, 194, 229. 
 
 Caesar of Este, 165 n. 
 
 Calonne, 330. 
 
 Calvin, 321. 
 
 Cambridge, University of, antiquity, 
 51 ; discipline, 47, 52 ; matricula- 
 tions, 42 n ; Darwin, 50 n ; Parr 
 and Pitt, 57 n. 
 
 Camden, William, 14, 295. 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 322. 
 
 Canterbury, John Moore, Archbishop 
 of, 262. 
 
 Cantwel, Andr^, 232, 337. 
 
 Capperonnier, 152, 307. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, Frederick the Great, 
 103 71, 138, 330 n ; British Museum, 
 188 7z ; FreTtch Revolution, 225 « ; 
 Girondists, 260 « ; Gibbon, 297, 
 
 335. 337- 
 Caroline, Queen, 133, 298. 
 Carter, Laurence, 18 71. 
 Casaubon, 123, 277. 
 Catrou, Fran9ois, 93. 
 Cattel, — , 59 71. 
 Cavendish, Lord John, 324. 
 Caylus, Count de, 127, 129, 152, 305. 
 Cellarius, Christopher, 45, 282. 
 Cellini, Benevenuto, 7. 
 Cerinthus, 223 71. 
 Chambers, Sir Robert, 292. 
 Charlemagne, 340, 341. 
 Charlemont, Earl of, 115 /i. 
 Charles L , 13 «, 74. 
 Charles IL, 13. 
 Charles V., Emperor, 147. 
 
 Charles VI. , Emperor, 97 n. 
 
 Charles VIIL of France, 143. 
 
 Charles XIL of Sweden, no /t. 
 
 Charles Emanuel IIL , 161. 
 
 Chatham, Earl of, see Pitt, William. 
 
 Chelsum, James, D.D., 202, 210, 318. 
 
 Chemistry, 200. 
 
 Chesterfield, Fourth Earl of, Arabian 
 Nights, 93 n ; domesticated, 115 ; 
 Du Boccage, 308 ; Einsidlen, 99 
 71 ; French, 132 ; Geneva, 82 n ; 
 Gibbon, 175, 176 ?£ ; Lady Hervey, 
 116 n ; letters, 332 ; Liskeard, 
 313 ; Militia Bill, 119 n ; old age, 
 344 ; the Pope, 164 71 ; Robertson, 
 297 ; schools, 40 n ; u7iwell, 255 
 71 ; young travellers, 167 71. 
 
 Chesterfield, Fifth Earl of, 176, 216 71. 
 
 Child, Professor F. J., 82 ;z. 
 
 Chilling worth, Wilham, 49, 74, 286. 
 
 Chitty, Lord Justice, 293. 
 
 Choiseul, Duke of, 206. 
 
 Christianity, Church establishments, 
 237i 340 ; effect on learning, 52 71 ; 
 • — on the Roman empire, 183 ; 
 established by law, 321 ; Gibbon's 
 attack, 201, 209, 317-21, 325 ; 
 human causes, 194 ; Incarnation, 
 223 ; infallible church, 74 ; mir- 
 acles, 67. 
 
 Chronology, 45. 
 
 Church Establishments, see Christi- 
 anity. 
 
 Church, Dr., 67 n. 
 
 Churchill, Charles, 25 7t, 287. 
 
 Churton, Archdeacon, 64 7t. 
 
 Cibber, Colley, 7. 
 
 Cicero, Gibbon studies him, 90 ; 
 quoted, 118 n, 139 ; knowledge 
 of Greek, 132 ; circulation of the 
 blood, 203 n ; first editions, 254 ; 
 philosophic writings , 309. 
 
 Clarendon, First Earl of, 75 «, 81, 285. 
 
 Clarke, Godfrey, 169. 
 
 Claron, Madame, 153. 
 
 Cleaver, Rev. Mr. , 169 it. 
 
 Clement XIII. , 164. 
 
 Clement XIV. , 164. 
 
 Clergy, 66 n. 
 
 Cline, Henry, 257. 
 
 Clos (du), 152, 307. 
 
 Cluverius, 158. 
 
 Coalition Ministry, 214, 217, 227 n. 
 
 Coke, Sir Edward, 8 71, 313. 
 
 Coleridge, Sir J. T., 293. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T. , 335. 
 
 Colman, George, 58 «, 65 ti, 311. 
 
 Condamine (de la), 152, 306. 
 
348 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Condorcet, iii n, 296. 
 
 Confucius, 4. 
 
 Congreve, William, 151 n. 
 
 Constantine, Emperor, 68 n. 
 
 Constantine, Robert, 302. 
 
 Constantinople, libraries of, 120 n. 
 
 Conversation, 220. 
 
 Conversions, 72. 
 
 Convocation, 274. 
 
 Conway, General, 175 n. 
 
 Cork, Countess of, 250 n. 
 
 Cornbury, Lord, 29 n. 
 
 Corneille, 105 n. 
 
 Cornelius Nepos, 35. 
 
 Cornwallis, Archbishop, 318. 
 
 Corporation and Test Acts, 193 n. 
 
 Correvon, — , 294. 
 
 Courtney, Right Hon. L. H. , 313. 
 
 Courtney, W. P., 209 n, 314. 
 
 Coventry, Second Earl of, 12. 
 
 Cowper, William, Westminster 
 School, 46 «, 279, 287 ; Maty, 
 124 11 ; Hayley, 230 n ; Gibbon 
 and Robertson, 297 ; Raynal, 306 ; 
 Bishop Newton, 327. 
 
 Cox, Rev. G. v., 288. 
 
 Craufurd of Auchinames, 251, 260, 
 264-5. 
 
 Cr^qui, Duke of, 149 n. 
 
 Crevier, 100. 
 
 Cromers, 10. 
 
 Crousaz (de), 87, 96 
 
 Crousaz (de), Madame, 342. 
 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 127 n. 
 
 Cumberland, Richard, 279. 
 
 Curchod, Susan, see Necker. 
 
 Dalrymple, Sir David (Lord Hailes), 
 203-4. 
 
 Damer, Hon. George and John, 169 n. 
 
 D'Arblay, Mme., Gibbon and Cecilia, 
 96 n ; Gibbon's voice, 245 n ; — 
 person, 248 11 ; Lord Eliot, 313. 
 
 Darrell, Edward, 26 n, 268. 
 
 Darrell, Robert, 26 «, 265. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 50 n, 54 n. 
 
 Darwin, Francis, 50 n. 
 
 Dashwood, Sir James, 58 n. 
 
 Davey, Samuel, 219 n. 
 
 Davies, Rev. Henry Edward, 202, 210, 
 
 317- 
 
 Da Vila, 44, 281, 296. 
 
 Decently, 20 n. 
 
 Decline and Fall, accuracy, 231, 336 ; 
 composition, 225 ; conception, pro- 
 gress, and deliverance, 167, 181, 
 189, 225, 308, 331 ; criticised, 
 335 ; dedication, 228 n ; editions, 
 
 Dublin, 195, 233 ; — foreign, 233 ; 
 "grouping the picture," 224; 
 happiness in writing it, 242 ; 
 indecency, 230, 336 ; irreligion, 
 201, 230, 325, 336 ; notes, 233 n ; 
 presented to a Duke, 127 n \ 
 publication and profits, 195, 209, 
 229, 315, 330; style, 190, 224, 
 297, 315 ; title, 189 ; translations, 
 210, 212, 232, 337; vol. i., 193; 
 vols. ii. and iii. , 200, 209 ; vols, 
 iv., v., and vi. , 214, 223, 229. 
 
 Deffand (du), Mme., 316. 
 
 Delany, Mrs., 48 ;z. 
 
 Delm6, Peter, 27. 
 
 D^meunier, Count, 232, 337. 
 
 Denbigh, Earls of, 4. 
 
 Dennis, John, 22 n, 274. 
 
 Destouches, P. N. , 218 n. 
 
 Devonshire, Duke of, 264. 
 
 Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, 
 252. 
 
 Deyverdun, George, Gibbon, early 
 friendship with, 86, 93 ; — visits, 
 168 ; — Swiss History, 171 ; — 
 shares his house, 216 ; Mimoires 
 Littiraires, 173 ; tutor, 176 ; 
 reads MS. of The Decline, 225 
 n ; death, 235. 
 
 Dicey, Professor A. V., 293. 
 
 Diderot, 152. 
 
 Digby, Lord, 258 n. 
 
 Dodd, James William, 279. 
 
 Dodwell, Dr., 67 n, 302. 
 
 Domesticated, 115. 
 
 Douglas, Sylves'ter (Lord Glenbervie), 
 249 n. 
 
 Dow, Colonel Alexander, 316. 
 
 Droit de retrait, 235. 
 
 Dryden, John, army, 298 ; astrology, 
 13 n ; author's judgment of his 
 own works, 191 n ; confutation, 
 321 ; controversial books, 69 n ; 
 conversion, 75 n ; Epistle to Knel- 
 ler, 43 71 ; The Hind and the 
 Panthe7', 70, 71, 78 « ; History of 
 the League, 312 ; lucid interval, 
 34 fi; Oxford, 50 n; "tracking 
 in their snow," 201 n ; Virgil, 38. 
 
 Dublin pirates, 195. 
 
 Dugdale, Sir William, 13. 
 
 Dumesnil, Madame, 153. 
 
 Dummer, — , 27. 
 
 Dunning, John (Lord Ashburton), 193, 
 207, 256 n, 311. 
 
 Eachard, Lawrence, 45, 282. 
 Edgar, Sir Gregory, 11, 
 
INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 316. 
 Edgeworth, R. L. , 289. 
 Edmonstone, Colonel, 169 n. 
 Education, 341. 
 Edward the Black Prince, 144. 
 Edwards, Rev. Thomas, LL. D. , 204. 
 Effingham, Earl of, 137, 300-1. 
 Egerton, T. and J., 325. 
 Egremont, Lord, 250-1. 
 Einsidlen, 99. 
 
 Eldon, First Earl of, 289, 292. 
 Eliot, Edward (First Lord Eliot), 21, 82, 
 86 n, 191, 208, 268, 313, 323, 324, 
 
 329- 
 Eliot, Lady, 21, 268. 
 Eliot, Sir John, 21 n. 
 ElUot, Sir Gilbert (Earl of Minto), 334. 
 Elliston, Catherine, 21. 
 Elliston, Edward, 21. 
 Elmsley, Peter, 194, 251, 255. 
 Emerson, R. W. , 225 n. 
 Emmius, 282. 
 England, prosperity, 227 ; language 
 
 and literature, 233, 310. 
 Entails, 185 n. 
 Enthusiasm, 22, 163. 
 Erasmus, 6, 52 n, 131, 237. 
 Erskine, Lord Chancellor, 257 n. 
 Erskine, Monsignor, 260. 
 Erudits, 123. 
 
 Esquires and gentlemen, 8, 273" 
 Ethico, Duke of Alsace, 4. 
 Eton College Library, 284. 
 Eugenius IV. , 182 n. 
 Eusebius, 22 «, 46 ti. 
 Evelyn, John, 166 7i. 
 Exmouth, Viscount, 25 n. 
 
 Fables, 35. 
 
 Fame, 241. 
 
 Farquhar, Sir Walter, 256, 259, 262, 
 
 266. 
 Farquhar, — , 256 n. 
 Fathers and sons, 186 n. 
 Fell, Bishop, 286. 
 Fenton, Elijah, 274. 
 Ferdinand IV. of Naples, 164. 
 Ferrara, 165. 
 Fielding, Henry, Jacobites, 26 n ; 
 
 Tom Jones, 4, 243 ; schools, 34 «, 
 
 40 n ; tour of Europe, 166 n ; 
 
 Hoadley's Plain Account, 275 ; 
 
 Mandeville, 275. 
 Fiens, James (Baron Say and Seale), 
 
 10. 
 Filmer, Sir Robert, 312. 
 Finden, John, 61 n, 283. 
 Fines, 56. 
 
 Fisher, John, 74. 
 
 Fitzpatrick, Colonel, 329. 
 
 Fleury, Abb6 de, 97 n. 
 
 Florence, 147, 162, 171, 229. 
 
 Flying post, 263. 
 
 Folard, J. C. de, 138 n. 
 
 Foncemagne (de), 143, 153, 199, 308. 
 
 Fontenelle, 125, 152, 243, 343. 
 
 Foothead, — , 210. 
 
 Fortescue, G. K. , 32 n. 
 
 Foster, Lady Elizabeth, 342. 
 
 Fowler, Thomas, D.D., 286. 
 
 Fox, Charles James, American war, 
 323, 324 ; Burke's Bill of Reform, 
 323 ; character, 222, 331 ; coali- 
 tion ministry, 214, 328 ; debater, 
 193 ; Gibbon, 271, 324 ; influence, 
 208 n, 213 71 ; Irish trade, 333 ; 
 Lausanne, 221-2, 331 ; Literary 
 Club, 311 ; medical science, 258 
 n ; Oxford, 289 ; Pitt, compared 
 with, 192 n ; resigns office, 328 ; 
 Septennial Act, 19 ?t ; Test Acts, 
 340 ; thirty-nine articles, 290. 
 
 France, Anglomania, 151 ; authors, 
 152 ; historians, 173 ; language, 
 109, 132, 172, 310; people, 150; 
 prisoners, 123 ; Revolution, 237, 
 248, 253, 260, 339 ; society, 316 ; 
 soldiers, 257 n ; splendour, 150 ; 
 war, 109, 134, 151, 206 7t. 
 
 Francis, Rev. Philip, 42. 
 
 Francis, Sir Philip, 42 7i. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 196 «, 207 n, 314. 
 
 Frederick the Great, Beausobre, 140 « ; 
 greatness, 132, 161 ; happiness, 
 241 n ; Prince Henry, 330 ; Quintus 
 Icilius, 138 71 ; Raynal, 306 ; 
 Voltaire, 103, 154 «. 
 
 Freret, iii «. 
 
 Frey, 82. 
 
 Froben, John, 52 7t. 
 
 Gale, Thomas, D.D., 142. 
 
 Galton, Arthur, 281. 
 
 Game laws, 117. 
 
 Garat, D. J., 245 w, 248 «. 
 
 Garrick, David, 114, 304, 311. 
 
 Gascoyne, Sir Thomas, 169 n. 
 
 Gay, John, 116 n, 166 ?i. 
 
 Gee, — , 85 n. 
 
 Geneva, 222 ??, 223, 238 n. 
 
 Genius, 143, 303. 
 
 Ge7iius of the place, 50. 
 
 Genhs (de), Madame, 342. 
 
 Gennadius, Patriarch, 71 w. 
 
 Genoa, 161. 
 
 Gentlemari s Magazine, 230 n. 
 
350 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Geoffrin, Madame, 153, 307. 
 
 George I., 29 n, 274, 291, 327. 
 
 George II., 32. 
 
 George III., a Briton, 338 ; Chatham, 
 Lord, 203 n ; coronation, 137 « ; 
 Fox, 329 ; Gibbon, 212 n ; Hessian 
 troops, 134 n ; Kurd's Dialogues, 
 146 n ; North, Lord, 208 n ; slave 
 trade, 334 ; subpreceptor, 141 h ; 
 Warburton, 179?? ; Wedderburne, 
 207 n. 
 
 George IV., 80 «, 215 n, 256 n. 
 
 Germain, Lord George, 323. 
 
 German mercenaries, 134. 
 
 Gesner, Matthew, loi. 
 
 Giannone, 97. 
 
 Gibbon, Catherine (Mrs. EUiston), 21, 
 23, 276. 
 
 Gibbon, Dorothea (the historian's step- 
 mother), 113, 117, 168, 198 w, 251, 
 253, 269 n. 
 
 Gibbon, Edmund, 10. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward (1602), 8 n. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward (the historian's grand- 
 father), birth, 15 ; South Sea Com- 
 pany, 16-20, 239;? ; second fortune, 
 20 ; death, 21 ; Borough of Peters- 
 field, 25, 276 ; Jacobite, 32 n ; 
 stern parent, 112. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward (historian's father), 
 marriage, 21, 26 ; birth and edu- 
 cation, 23 ; member for Petersfield, 
 25, 277 ; alderman, 29 ; wife, death 
 of, 36 ; son's conversion, 73 ; son's 
 return, 112 ; second marriage, 112 ; 
 retirement, 115 ; racehorse, 118 ; 
 his son's Essai, 126-7 I militia, 135 ; 
 debts, 168, 185, 323 ; death, 186. 
 
 GIBBON, EDWARD, Chief Events 
 OF His Life. 
 Born 27th April, o.S. (8thMay, N.S.), 
 
 1737, 26. 
 Death of his mother (1747), 36. 
 Enters Westminster School (1748 or 
 
 1749). 39, 278. 
 Enters Magdalen College, Oxford 
 
 (1752). 43- 
 Converted to Rome (1753), 72. 
 Re-converted (1754), 90. 
 Sent to Lausanne (1753), 82. 
 Engaged to Mile. Curchod (1757), 
 
 106. 
 Returns to England (1758), 109. 
 Enters the Militia (1760), 135. 
 Publishes Essai sur I'Etude de la 
 
 Littirature (1761), 127. 
 Begins his foreign tour (1763), 148. 
 
 Sat amidst the ruins of the Capitol 
 
 (15th October, 1764), 167. 
 Returns to England (1765), 168. 
 Finishes his Introduction d V Histoire 
 
 Ginirale de la Rdpublique des 
 
 Suisses (1768), 172. 
 Publishes Mimoires Littdraires de la 
 
 G}-a?ide Bretagne (1768-69), 175. 
 Publishes Critical Observations on 
 
 the Sixth Book of the ^neid 
 
 (1770), 179. 
 Death of his father (1770), 186. 
 House in London (1773), 187. 
 Elected M.P. for Liskeard (1774), 
 
 191. 
 Publishes vol. i. of The Decline and 
 
 Fall {lyth February, 1776), 194, 
 
 315- 
 Trip to Paris (1777), 198. 
 Publishes Vindication, etc. (1779), 
 
 202. 
 Writes Mimoire Jtistificatif (1779), 
 
 205. 
 Commissioner of Trade (1779)1 207. 
 Parliament dissolved (1780), 208. 
 Publishes vols. ii. and iii. of The 
 
 Decline and Fall (ist March, 
 
 1781), 209. 
 Elected M.P. for Lymington (1781), 
 
 212. 
 Ceases to be Commissioner of Trade 
 
 (1782), 213. 
 Retires to Lausanne (1783), 216. 
 Writes the last lines of The Decline 
 
 and Fall (27th June, 1787), 
 
 225. 
 Visits England (1787), 226. 
 Publishes last three vols, of The 
 
 Decline and Fall (8th May, 
 
 1788), 229. 
 Returns to Lausanne (1788), 234. 
 Death of Deyverdun (1789), 235. 
 Returns to England (1793), 248. 
 Dies (i6th January, 1794), 264. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, Age of Sesostris, 
 63 ; allowance, 48, 84, 148 n ; 
 American war, 191, 314 ; anatomy 
 and chemistry, 200 ; Bath, 41, 253 ; 
 Bentinck Street house, 187, 218 n ; 
 birth, 26, 229 ; Board of Trade, 
 207, 213, 215, 323 ; boyish years, 
 46 ; brothers and sister, 27, 29 ; 
 Buriton, 117, 187; canvassing, 119; 
 card-playing, 220 ; character, iii, 
 153 n, 240, 294, 300, 316, 336-7; 
 Chesterfield's Letters, xj6n; Coali- 
 tion Ministry, 215, 329 ; common- 
 
INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 place book, 98 ; conversation, 245, 
 250, 262 ; correspondence with 
 scholars, 100 ; country life, 117, 
 187 n, 219 n ; critics, 242 ; dancing, 
 86, 215 n ; death, 264 ; Decline 
 and Fall, see ante under Decline 
 and Fall; Deyverdun, friendship 
 with, 86, 168, 173, 216, 235 ; dis- 
 guised as a Dutch officer, no; 
 Dissertation on Charles VIII., 
 144 ; Dissertation on Virgil, 93 ; 
 Downing Street, 227 ; education 
 at Lausanne, 108 ; English, study 
 of, 122 ; Englishman, ceases to be 
 an, 109, 293 ; — made an, 138 ; — 
 glories in the name, 338 ; enthusi- 
 asm, 163; envy, not susceptible of, 
 170 ; epitaph, 270 ; exercise, 249 ; 
 fame, love of, 241 7i ; father, treat- 
 ment by his, 112 ; — dedication to, 
 127 ; foreign embassy, proposed 
 employment on, 113 ; Freemason, 
 93 n ; French, knowledge of, 85, 
 130-4, 172 ; — loan, 339 ; — people, 
 150, 238 n, 247 ; friend, warm, 248 ; 
 future state, 248 n ; Gallicisms, 
 109 n, 224 ; gaming, 85 n ; gentle- 
 man, not an author, 151 n ; 
 German, ignorance of, 147, 233 ; 
 Greek, 94, 121, 129, 141, 184, 214, 
 234, 299 ; happiness, 242 n ; health, 
 
 30, 42, 218 ?t, 241, 247, 256-66 ; 
 historian, aspired to be an, 122, 
 143, 296 ; historical compositions 
 planned, 143-8, 171, 234/2 ; history, 
 love of, 43, 44 ; Holroyd, meets, 
 157; "home," 226 n ; ignorance 
 of the people, 341 ; income, 187, 
 215, 241, 243, 247, 323, 329; 
 independence, 169, 188 ; indolence, 
 84 n, 249 ; Inquisition upheld, 
 341 ; Italian, 162 ; journal, 298 ; 
 Lausanne (1753-58), 82-110 ; — 
 (1763-4), 154-60; — (1783-87), 216- 
 26, 329; — (1788-93), 234-9; — 
 house (La Grotte), 218, 235, 246, 
 295 ; — summer-house, 225, 331 ; 
 law, study of, 95, 113, 184 ; hbrary, 
 119, 216, 219, 222, 234, 338 ; life, 
 lot in, 26, 239 ; — chances of, 243, 
 265, 343 ; Literary Club, 311 ; 
 Lives of Eminent Persons planned, 
 235 n ; London, love of, 114 ; — 
 its solitude, 218 n\ — its tumult, 
 233 ; love and matrimony, 105, 
 153 ^^ 157 n, 241, 293, 342; 
 Madeira wine, 265 ; mathematics, 
 
 31, 95 ; memory, 104 ; militia, 
 
 119, 127, 135-41, 148, 158 n, 168- 
 70, 295, 298-303 ; Miscellaneous 
 Works, 315 ; mortgages, 185 ; 
 mother's death, 36 ; natural 
 beauties, 219 ?i ; novel-reading, 
 96 ; office-seeker, 193 n ; Oxford 
 (1752-3). 46-73. 283; — (1793), 
 251 n, 284 ; Paris (1763), 148, 
 157 ; — (t^777), 198 ; parliament, 
 member of (1774-80), 191, 208 ; 
 
 — (1781-3), 212, 215, 216 n ; — 
 votes, 191, 314; patriotism, 340; 
 person, 86 n, 89 n, 161 n, 248, 
 256 n, 311 ; portraits, 86 n, 209 n, 
 269 n, 331; "poverty," 329; 
 Principes des Poids, etc., 121 ; 
 professions, 170 ; Putney, 37 ; 
 reading, 37, 43, 63, 85-98, 119, 
 140, 158, 299 ; riding, 86 ; Roman 
 Catholic, 67 ; — re-conversion, 
 89, 293 ; Roman Club, 169 ; 
 Rome, 163, 164, 167, 308 ; school 
 life, Putney, 31 ; — Kingston, 34 ; 
 
 — Westminster, 39, 278 ; — 
 Esher, 42 ; Scotch flattered, 206 n ; 
 servant, 84; shyness, 116; slave- 
 trade, 334 ; solitude, 118, 236 ; 
 sports, 87 n, -L-Lj ; step-mother, 
 112, 251 ; studying, method of, 
 122; — hours of, 224; style, i, 
 189, 201, 245, 297 ; Swiss, Hking 
 for the, 238 71, 338 ; tailor's bill, 
 219 n \ "The Gibbon," 234 n; 
 tour, Swiss, 98 ; — foreign, 148- 
 168 ; tutor, 31 ; untruthfulness, 
 112 n, 113 n, 226 n ; vanity, 331 ; 
 verses, 38 n ; Wedgewood ware, 
 218 n ; will, 235 n, 268. 
 
 Gibbon, Hester (the historian's grand- 
 mother), 15. 
 
 Gibbon, Hester (the historian's aunt), 
 21, 23, 276. 
 
 Gibbon, John (Mannorarius), 8. 
 
 Gibbon, John (Bluemantle), 8 n, 12. 
 
 Gibbon , J udith (the historian's mother), 
 26, 36. 
 
 Gibbon, Matthew, 11, 15. 
 
 Gibbon, Robert (1618), 10 n, 11. 
 
 Gibbon, Robert (1643), 11. 
 
 Gibbon, Thomas (1596), xx n. 
 
 Gibbon, Thomas (Dean of Carlisle), 
 
 IS- 
 Girondins, 260. 
 Glaciers, 98. 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of, 127 n. 
 Godefroy, James, 182. 
 Godfrey of Bouillon, 229 n. 
 Goldoni, 7. 
 
352 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, a notable man, 15 
 n ; Gibbon's companion, 130 n, 
 169 n ; Italy described, 165 n ; 
 worked in a garret, 243 n ; Re- 
 taliation, 282 ; Literary Club, 311. 
 
 Gordon Riots, 208, 314. 
 
 Gordon, Thomas, 44, 281. 
 
 Graevius, 158. 
 
 Grafton, Duke of, 213 n. 
 
 Grammont, Comte de, xx n. 
 
 Gratian, 87 n. 
 
 Graves, Rev. Richard, 197 n. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, Bolton, Duke of, 119 
 n\ Cambridge, 57 n\ Mann, Sir 
 Horace, 162 n ; Mont Cenis, 160 
 n ; Naples, 164 n ; New Bath 
 Guide, 174 71 ; Rome, 163 n ; 
 Warburton, 180 n. 
 
 Greek, 94. 
 
 Green, Bishop, 326. 
 
 Grenier, Madame, 332. 
 
 Grew, Dr. Nehemiah, 13. 
 
 Grigsby, — , 18 n. 
 
 Grimm (de), Baron, 125 w, 296, 305. 
 
 Grote, George, wasted time, 118 n ; 
 Gibbon, 202 n, 336 ; neglect of 
 health, 259 n. 
 
 Grotius, 96, 121 n. 
 
 Gudin de la Brenellerie, 199 «. 
 
 Guicciardini, 296. 
 
 Guichard (Quintus Icilius), 138. 
 
 Guignes (de), 152, 307. 
 
 Guize, Sir William, 169 n. 
 
 Guizot, 336, 338. 
 
 Habsburgh, Counts of, 4. 
 
 Hai Ebn Yokhdan, 33. 
 
 Hale, Sir Matthew, 9 n. 
 
 Hall, Bishop Joseph, 284. 
 
 Halley, Dr. Edmund, 302. 
 
 Halliday, — , 339. 
 
 Hamilton, Count Anthony, 133. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 163 n, 164. 
 
 Hamilton, Lady, 164 n. 
 
 Hannibal, 159. 
 
 Hardinge, George, 324. 
 
 Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor, 10 n. 
 
 Hare, Francis, 278. 
 
 Harley, Nathanael and Thomas, 273. 
 
 Harrison, Colonel, 285. 
 
 Harrison, — , 302. 
 
 Harte, Rev. Walter, 82 n. 
 
 Hartley, Mr.s. , 254. 
 
 Harvey, Colonel, 300. 
 
 Hastings, Warren, 228, 287, 334, 340. 
 
 Hastings, Mrs., 277. 
 
 Haussonville (d'), Viscount, 294. 
 
 Hawes, — , 20 n. 
 
 Hawke, Admiral, 136 n. 
 
 Hawkins, Sir C^sar, 258. 
 
 Hayley, William, 180, 230, 250, 317, 
 335- 
 
 Hearne, Thomas, 44, 61 n, 274-5, 280, 
 282 n. 
 
 Helvetius, 153, 308. 
 
 Helvicus, Christophorus, 45, 283. 
 
 Hfeault, President, 91 n. 
 
 Henley, Robert, Earl of Northington, 
 27. 
 
 Henrietta Maria, 74. 
 
 Henry IV. of France, 213 n. 
 
 Henry V. , 144. 
 
 Henry of Prussia, Prince, 221, 222, 330. 
 
 Heraclius, 309. 
 
 Heraldry, 12. 
 
 Herbelot (d'), 45, 63 n. 
 
 Herodotus, 184 n. 
 
 Hervey, John, Lord, 25 «, 298. 
 
 Hervey, Lady, 115, 151. 
 
 Hervey, John Augustus, Lord, 252. 
 
 Heyne, Professor, 180. 
 
 Higgins, — , 201. 
 
 Hilsea Barracks, 136. 
 
 Historians, English, 122, 295. 
 
 Hoadley, Archbishop, 275. 
 
 Hoadley, Bishop Benjamin, 23, 274. 
 
 Hoare, — , 44. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 12. 
 
 Hogarth, William, 304. 
 
 Holcroft, Sir H., 281. 
 
 Holland, Charles, 304. 
 
 Holland, Third Lord, Burke, 340 ; 
 Hamilton,' Sir W. , 164 n ; Hol- 
 land House, 252 n ; Horsley, 322 ; 
 Naples, 276 ; North, Lord, 328. 
 
 Holroyd, John Baker, see Sheffield, 
 Earl of. 
 
 Holroyd, Louisa, 255-6, 269. 
 
 Holroyd, Maria Josepha (Lady Stanley 
 of Alderley), Gibbon's love affairs, 
 107 n, 342 ; — at Lausanne, 238 
 n ; — conversation, 245 n ; — 
 influence on Lord Sheffield, 268 
 n ; — will, 269 ; Prince of Wales, 
 256 n. 
 
 Holroyd, Sarah Martha, 253 n, 268 n. 
 
 Home, Sir Everard, 257 n. 
 
 Home, Rev. John, 105 w, 207 n. 
 
 Homer, 38, 141. 
 
 Hondt (de), P. A. , 127. 
 
 Honoria, 107 n. 
 
 Hook, Dean, 275. 
 
 Hooker, Sir J. D. , 51 n. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, 49, 286. 
 
 Hope, Professor, 54 n. 
 
 Hopital (de 1'), 95. 
 
INDEX 
 
 353 
 
 Horace, Kurd's edition, 142 ; quota- 
 tions from .4rs Poetica, 125, 191 ; 
 Epistles, 2.dp ; Epodes, 185 ; Odes, 
 179, 243 n ; Satires, 310. 
 
 Home, Bishop George, 288. 
 
 Horsley, Bishop Samuel, 203, 322. 
 
 Horsman, Edward, 313. 
 
 Hort, Sir John, 169 n. 
 
 Hotel, 255 n. 
 
 Hotham, Baron, 277. 
 
 Howard, Sir Charles, 300. 
 
 Howe, Earl, 261-2. 
 
 Howell, Dr. William, 45, 2S2. 
 
 Huet, Bishop, 7. 
 
 Huguenots, 132. 
 
 Hume, Sir Abraham, 216 n. 
 
 Hume, David, American war, 314, 
 333 ; Autobiography , 6 ; charac- 
 ter, 316 ; death, 198 ; deists, 115 
 n ; English hated, 196, 310 ; 
 genius, 303 ; Gibbon's writings, 
 172 n, 190, 195, 206 n, 233 n, 310 ; 
 historians, 295 ; History of Eng- 
 land, 122, 195 n, 296, 299 ; 
 Home's Douglas, 105 n ; impar- 
 tial, 146 ; Lyttelton's History, 174 
 n ; old age, 244, 344 ; Ossian, 315 ; 
 Paris, 152 71 ; Rousseau, 175 n ; 
 style, 232, 297 ; transubstantiation, 
 89 n ; Under-Secretary, 175 ; Wal- 
 pole's Historic Doubts, 176 n ; 
 Warburton, 178 n. 
 
 Hunter, Dr., 200. 
 
 Hurd, Bishop Richard, Delicacy of 
 Friendship, 178 ; Dialogues, 146 ; 
 enthusiasm, 22 n ; George IV. 's 
 preceptor, 80 n ; Horace's Epistles, 
 142 ; Priestley, 203, 319. 
 
 Hurdis, James, 65 n, 289. 
 
 Husbands, Rev. J., 284. 
 
 Huskisson, William, 313. 
 
 Hyde, Thomas, D.D., 61. 
 
 Hypolitus, 278. 
 
 ILLKN, Nanette de, 295. 
 
 Image-worship, 69, j-j. 
 
 Influence of the Crown, 119, 207, 
 
 213 n. 
 Innate ideas, 43. 
 Innocent III., 71 ti. 
 Inquisition, 71 71, 341. 
 Institution, 31 ra. 
 Inverary, 150. 
 Ireland, 227, 314, 333. 
 Italy, 165. 
 
 Jackson, Cyril, D.D., 81 n. 
 Jackson, Richard^ D^D,, 5,8 71, 
 
 23 
 
 Jacobites, 25. 
 James I. , 74 «. 
 
 James II., 13. 
 
 James, John, 59 n, 62 «, 66 71, 284, 
 288, 290, 292. 
 
 Jekyll, Joseph, 250. 
 
 Jerusalem, Temple of, 97. 
 
 Jesuits, 126 71, 164 11. 
 
 John, King, 71 «. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, arithmetic, 31 « ; 
 army, 298 ; Behmen and Law, 22 
 « ; beliefs, 78 n ; Benedictines, 
 56 n ; biography, 6 ;? ; Bologna, 
 165 n ; Boswell, 72 n ; boyhood, 
 46 n ; brothers and sisters, 27 7i ; 
 Burke, 134 n ; Burman, 278 ; 
 character, i n ; common rooms, 
 287 ; composition, 201 n ; conversa- 
 tion, 220 n ; death of a wife, 36 71 ; 
 declamations, 288 ; education, 342 ; 
 fame, 242 ;« ; flattery, 242 71 ; 
 garret, 243 n; genius, 143, 303; 
 Giannone, 97 n ; Gibbon, 73 ;z, 
 311, 312 ; Grotius,i2i 71 ; historians, 
 295 ; Hume, 297 ; Inverary, 150 
 71 ; lapidary inscriptions, 271 ti. \ 
 Law's Serious Call, 275 ; lectures, 
 54 n ; library, 219 n ; lucid inte7-- 
 val, 34 n ; Lyttelton's History, 174 
 n ; Mallet, 115, 305 ; Maty, 124 n ; 
 memory, 98, 104 « ; merchants, 
 273 ; new style, 26 « ; Newton, 
 Bishop, 326-7 ; nonjurors, 274 ; 
 North's ministry, 314, 328 ; Ossiaia, 
 316 ; Oxford vacation, 62 n ; Paris, 
 316 ; patronage, 243 7i ; Pom- 
 ponius Mela, 159 n ; Popery, 
 75 n ; Queen's library, 188 n ; 
 Raynal, 306 ; read rarely, 336 ; 
 Robertson, 297 ; Sarpi's History, 
 282; Scott, Dr., 292; solitude, 
 218 71 ; style, i « ; subordination, 
 3 n ; Taylor & Ward, 30 n ; 
 Thuanus, 6 71 ; Thurlow, 193 « ; 
 travelling, 167 « ; universities 
 abroad, 166 it ; Usher, Arch- 
 bishop, 283 ; Voltaire and Hume, 
 296; Warburton, 178 n; Young 
 Pretender, 28 n. 
 
 Johnstone, John, M.D., 320. 
 
 JoUiffe, Hylton, 277. 
 
 Jolliffe, Sir William, 277. 
 
 Jones, Sir William, 62 n, 94 n, 289, 311. 
 
 Jonson, Ben., 201 n. 
 
 Jordan, C. E., 47 n, 56 n, 203 7i. 
 
 Jortin, John, D.D., 178 n. 
 
 Journal Br itannique, 124, 173. 
 
 Journals, 134 n. 
 
354 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Joyner, William, 7 n. 
 Julian, Emperor, 97, 209. 
 Justinian, Emperor, 231. 
 Juvenal, 2 n. 
 
 Kerseboom, a. , 29 n. 
 King, Dr. William, 285. 
 Kirk, — , 210. 
 Kirkby, Rev. John, 31. 
 Knolles, Richard, 312; 
 
 La Bruy^re, 23. 
 La Fontaine, 12 ra, 35 11. 
 Lamb, Charles, 15 n, 72 «, 314. 
 Lamb, Mary, 72 n. 
 Landor, W. S. , 336. 
 Langer, — ,14. 
 Languet de Gergy, 150 n. 
 Lansdowne, Third Marquis of, 257 n. 
 Lardner, Nathaniel, D.D. , 97 n, 183. 
 Latin, 131. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 75 n. 
 Lauffer, — , 172. 
 
 Lausanne, academy, 100 n, 222 ; 
 boarding-house, 156 ; described, 
 83, 246 ; French emigrants, 237 ; 
 frequented, 98 7t, 103 11 ; Gibbon's 
 love of it, no, 216, 338 ; — sum- 
 mer-house, 331 ; lake, 338 ; la 
 soci6t6 du printemps, 156 ; society, 
 220. 
 Law, William, 21-4, 120, 186, 273. 
 Lawyers, 187 n. 
 Leake, Major, 300. 
 Le Clerc, 88, 98 n, 124, 301. 
 Le Clerc de Septchenes, 232, 337. 
 Legge, H. B., 119. 
 Leibnitz, 132. 
 Leo IV. , 163 n. 
 Le Sueur, Jean, 86. 
 Le Vade, 269. 
 Lew, 172. 
 Lewis IX., 71 n. 
 
 Lewis XIV. , Convertisseur, 72 n ; 
 persecutions, 78 ; Academy, 120 ; 
 Versailles, 149. 
 Lewis XV., Ill ?2. 
 
 Lewis XVI., described by Gibbon, 
 150 n, 212 ; gift to Prince Henry, 
 330 ; translation of The Decline, 
 337 ; death, 340. 
 Lewis of Wirtemberg, Prince, 154. 
 Lewis, a bookseller, 72. 
 Life, chances of, 26, 239, 243, 343 ; — 
 
 autumnal felicity, 244, 343. 
 Limborch, 88. 
 Lind, John, 205 n. 
 Line, 43 n. 
 
 Lipsius, 123. 
 
 Liskeard, igi, 209, 313. 
 
 Literary Club, 311. 
 
 Littlebury, Isaac, 44, 280. 
 
 Liverpool, First Earl of, 213 n. 
 
 Livy, 100, 121. 
 
 Lloyd, Robert, 287. 
 
 Locke, John, Board of Trade, 322 ; 
 
 Common-place Book, 98 ; innate 
 
 ideas, 43 n ; Oxford, 49, 286 ; 
 
 philosophy, 80, 88, 102 ; Treatise 
 
 of government, 96. 
 London, no public library, 188 n. 
 Long, Dudley, 334. 
 Longinus, 142. 
 Lovibond, — , 64 n. 
 Lowth, Bishop Robert, 49, 55, 179, 
 
 285. 
 Lucan, 151. 
 
 Lucan, First Earl of, 255, 258, 264. 
 Lucan, Countess of, 257, 264. 
 Lucian, 237. 
 Lucid interval, 34. 
 Lyttelton, First Lord, 173. 
 
 Mabillon, 158. 
 
 Mably (de), Abbd, 199, 224 «, 317. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, Bentley and Person, 
 325 ; Boswell's writings, 233 n ; 
 Coalition Ministry, 328, 329 ; Gib- 
 bon reported a Mahometan, 73 n ; 
 — The Decline, 320; — poverty, 
 329 ; historians, 296 ; Holland 
 House, 252 n ; Magdalen College, 
 56 n ; Milner, 319, 320 ; Procopius, 
 281 ; Robertson, 297 ; Sarpi, 282 ; 
 Warburton, 178 n. 
 
 Macdonald, Chief Baron Archibald, 
 
 65 71. 
 
 Machiavel, 44, 281, 296. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 201 n, 321, 
 
 332, 336- 
 
 Macpherson, James, see Ossian. 
 
 Maffei, 182. 
 
 Magdalen College, 48, 50, 55-73. 283, 
 288. 
 
 Mahomet, 223 n, 312. 
 
 Mallet, David, Elvira, 148, 304 ; Gib- 
 bon, 82, 115, 122, 126, 131, 151, 
 300 ; Life of Bacon, 145 ; — of 
 Marlborough, 304. 
 
 Mallet, Lucy, 115. 
 
 Malmesbury, First Earl of, 289, 292. 
 
 Malone, Edmond, 84 n, 218 n, 245 n, 
 256 n. 
 
 Malony, John Baptist, 291. 
 
 Maltby, WilUam, 195 n. 
 
 Mandeville, Bernard, M.D., 23, 275. 
 
INDEX 
 
 355 
 
 Manetho, 63. 
 
 Mann, Sir Horace, 162. 
 
 Mansfield, First Earl of, 297, 308, 
 
 327- 
 
 Margoliouth, Rev. Professor, 33 n. 
 
 Marini^, 232 n, 337. 
 
 Markham, Archbishop, 80, 279. 
 
 Marlborough, First Duke of, 4, 304. 
 
 Marlborough, Henrietta, Duchess of, 
 4 n. 
 
 Marolles (de), Michael, 7. 
 
 Marsham, Sir John, 45, 63. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 82 n. 
 
 Masham, Lady, 286. 
 
 Mason, Rev. William, 266. 
 
 Matthews, Henry, 339. 
 
 Maty, Matthew, M.D. , 124, 126, 134, 
 151 n, 173. 
 
 Maty, Paul Henry, 124. 
 
 Maupertuis, 103 n. 
 
 Maurice, Rev. F. D. , 275. 
 
 Maynard, Sir John, 11 n. 
 
 Mayor, Professor, 274. 
 
 Mead, Richard, M.D., 203 n. 
 
 Meard, Captain, 302. 
 
 Medicis, House of, 147. 
 
 Mimoires Littiraires de la Gra?ide 
 Bretagne, 173. 
 
 Misery (de), 156. 
 
 Methodism, 197 n. 
 
 Meuselius, 231. 
 
 M6zeray, 44, 281. 
 
 Meziriac, 93. 
 
 Middleton, Lord Chancellor (Ireland), 
 17 n. 
 
 Middleton, Lord, 216 n. 
 
 Middleton, Conyers, D.D., 67, 91, 321. 
 
 Militia, 119, 135, 168, 301. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 95 n, 336. 
 
 Millar, Andrew, 243 n. 
 
 Milman, Dean, 210 n, 292. 
 
 Milner, Joseph, 203, 319. 
 
 Milton, John, foreign travel, 166 n ; 
 foundations of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, 51 n ; school divinity, 52 
 n ; quotations from Lycidas, 74, 
 242 n ; — Paradise Lost, 3 71, 102, 
 192, 338. 
 
 Minto, Countess of, 334. 
 
 Mirabeau (de). Count, 222, 330. 
 
 Mirabeau (de), Marquis, 331. 
 
 Miracles, 68, 183. 
 
 Moivre (de), Abraham, 141. 
 
 Molesworth, Viscount, 17. 
 
 Molesworth, — , 69 n. 
 
 Monks, 52, 56 n, 57, 69. 
 
 Monson, Sir William, 145. 
 
 Montaigne, 6. 
 
 Montesquieu, read by Gibbon, 96 ; 
 Italy, 165, 166 ; laws against Po- 
 pery, 291 ; compared with Gibbon, 
 315 ; — with Mably, 317 ; tithes, 
 340- 
 
 Montfaucon, 158. 
 
 Montolieu (de), Madame, 157 n, 342. 
 
 Montrose, Marquis of, 144. 
 
 Moore, Arthur, 18 n. 
 
 More, Hannah, 242 «, 266 n, 276. 
 
 Morfill, W. R., Ill n. 
 
 Morley, John, 336. 
 
 Mortimer, T. , 221 n. 
 
 Motley, J. L. , 194 n. 
 
 Moulton, — , 293. 
 
 Muratori, 182. 
 
 Murphy, Arthur, 312. 
 
 Murray, John, 194 n, 315. 
 
 Naples, 163. 
 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, 221 n, 339, 344. 
 
 National Debt, 3x4. 
 
 Navigation Act, 226, 333. 
 
 Necker, Jacques, minister of France, 
 108, 198 ; marriage, 108, 294 ; 
 war with England, 206 n ; Copet, 
 219 n, 222 ; Treatise on the 
 Finances, 221 ; letters, 332. 
 
 Necker, Madame (Susan Curchod), 
 engaged to Gibbon, io5, 293 ; 
 married Necker, 108 ; Gibbon 
 visits her, 198, 221, 247, 295 ; re- 
 ceptions, 308. 
 
 Nelson, Admiral Viscount, 164 n, 251 
 n. 
 
 Nestorius, 99 n. 
 
 Newbery, Francis, 289, 292. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 201 n. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, Chronology, 45, 63, 
 106 n, 129 ; poetry, 304. 
 
 Newton, Rev. John, 297. 
 
 Newton, Bishop Thomas, 7, 211, 325. 
 
 Nichol, Professor John, 291. 
 
 Nichols, John, 8 n. 
 
 Nicoll, Dr. John, 39, 279. 
 
 Nivemois, Duke de, 151. 
 
 Non-jurors, 21. 
 
 Norfolk, Eleventh Duke of, 20 n. 
 
 North, Lord, Second Earl of Guilford, 
 Coalition with Fox, 214, 328 ; Gib- 
 bon in his ministry, 207 ; — seat 
 for Lymington, 212 ; — dedica- 
 tion, 228 ; — visits him, 234 71 ; 
 prime-minister, 192, 208 n, 212-3, 
 314, 324, 327. 
 
 North, Frederick, Fifth Earl of Guil- 
 ford, 249. 
 
 Notable, 15 71. 
 
356 
 
 INDEX 
 
 OcKLEY, Simon, 45, 282. 
 
 Ogle, William, M.D. , 29 «. 
 
 Olbach (d'). Baron, 153, 308. 
 
 Old age, 243, 343. 
 
 Oldys, William, 145. 
 
 Olivet, J. T., 91, 125. 
 
 Orators, 193 n, 228. 
 
 Ormond, Duke of, 58 n.\ 
 
 Osborne, Bernal, 313. 
 
 Ossian, 197, 315. 
 
 Ossory, Lord, 255. 
 
 Ovid, 5 n. 
 
 Oxford, Third Earl of, 273. 
 
 Oxford, University of, antiquity, 51 ; 
 climate, 42 71 ; commission of in- 
 quiry, 53 ?i ; common rooms, 287 ; 
 declamations, 59, 288 ; degrees, 
 53 ; discipline, 47, 66 n, 289 ; 
 examinations, 59 ; gentlemen- 
 commoners, 48, 57, 289 ; Head- 
 ington Hill, 61 ; Jacobites, 58, 
 285 ; long vacation, 62 ; matric- 
 ulations, 42 n ; monks, 57, 109 ; 
 poor students, 284 ; professors, 
 53, 81 ; reforms, 80 ; religious 
 teaching, 66 ; riding school, 81 ; 
 tutors' fees, 65 n ; White's Bamp- 
 to?i Lectures, 320. 
 
 Padua, 166. 
 
 Paganism, 130, 183 n. 
 
 Pagi, Father, 182. 
 
 Palgrave, Rev. — , 169 n. 
 
 Palladio, 166. 
 
 Palping, 257. 
 
 Pandects, 214. 
 
 Parian marble, 64. 
 
 Paris, 149-150, 152. 
 
 Parliaments, 29 n. 
 
 Parr, Rev. Samuel, LL.D. , Cam- 
 bridge, 57 fi ; choice of colleges, 79 
 n ; Gibbon at Oxford, 61 n, 73 «, 
 
 81 « ; and War bur ton, 180 
 
 n ; — resentments, 205 n ; — 
 epitaph, 270 ; Home, Bishop, 288 ; 
 Kurd's Essay, 178 n ; Prince of 
 Wales, 80 n ; White's Bampton 
 Lectures, 320. 
 
 Parsons, Robert, 70 n. 
 
 Pascal, 97. 
 
 Patriots, 213. 
 
 Pattison, Rev. Mark, Casaubon, 277; 
 Gibbon' s learning, 46 w ; — tutors, 
 61 71 ; Jesuit learning, 126 n ; 
 Lowth's Prcelectiones, 55 n, 285 ; 
 Scaliger, 141 7i. 
 
 Pavilliard, Rev. — , 83, 94, 98, 109, 
 154. 293. 
 
 Pavilliard, Madame, 84 w, 117, 156. 
 
 Payne, Sir Ralph, 264. 
 
 Pearce, Bishop, 327. 
 
 Pelham, Thomas, 251. 
 
 Percy, Bishop Thomas, 311. 
 
 Petavius, 45, 126 n, 283. 
 
 Peter the Hermit, 273. 
 
 Petersfield, 25, 276. 
 
 Petrarch, 6. 
 
 Petty, Sir William, 200 7i. 
 
 Phasdrus, 35, 277. 
 
 Phehps or Phillips, 10, \\ n. 
 
 Philhmore, Sir Walter, 293. 
 
 Philosophers, 198 n. 
 
 Pindar, 108. 
 
 Pinkerton, John, 235 71. 
 
 Piozzi, Mrs. (Mrs. Thrale), 34 w, 36 «, 
 149 71, 275. 
 
 Pithou, Peter, 35, 278. 
 
 Pitt, Colonel, 127. 
 
 Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham. 
 Militia Act, 135 ; Burke's eulogium, 
 151 71 ; George HI.'s attack, 203 n j 
 Wilkes, 301 ; Hume, 314. 
 
 Pitt, Wilham (the younger), American 
 war, 315, 332 ; Board of Trade, 
 213 n, 322 ; Cambridge, 57 « ; 
 Fox, 192 n, 331 ; Gibbon's ac- 
 quaintance, 262 ; influence, 208 71 ; 
 Ireland, 333 ; Necker's daughter, 
 107 71 ; Nelson's victories, 251 71 ; 
 Prime Minister, 329 ; prosperity of 
 country, 227 71 ; Reform Bill, 277 ; 
 Septennial Act, 19 7i ; sinecures, 
 215 71 ; War Minister, 206 71. 
 
 Pius n., 52 n.' 
 
 Plautus, 106 n. 
 
 Pliny, 6, 121, 159. 
 
 Plutarch, 78. 
 
 Pocock, Edward, D.D. , 33, 45, 61. 
 
 Poggius, 182 71. 
 
 Polier (de). Mile. , 269. 
 
 Polignac (de), Cardinal, 79. 
 
 Pomponius Mela, 159. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, building, 236 ; 
 character, i 71 ; church registers, 
 9 ; critics, 242 n ; Crousaz, 87 ; 
 English language, 310 ; foreign 
 travel, 166 n ; Hearne, 280 ; 
 Homer, 38 ; life of a wit, 178 » ; 
 Molly Lepell, 116 n ; patriots, 
 
 28 71. 
 
 Por6e, Charles, 286. 
 
 Porson, Richard, Gibbon's Decli7ie 
 
 aTid Fall, 231, 336 ; Misc. 
 
 Works, 195 71 ; — style, 190 « ; 
 
 Hayley, 335 ; Kurd's Essay, 146 
 
 71 ; Letters to T7-avis, 210, 325. 
 
INDEX 
 
 357 
 
 Porten, Catherine (the historian's 
 
 aunt), 26 n, 30, 36-7, 39-41, 67, 
 
 112, 240 n, 279. 
 Porten, Charlotte, 236 n. 
 Porten, James, 26 n, 37, 278. 
 Porten, Judith, 26. 
 Porten, Sir Stanier, 26 n, 268. 
 Porter, Mrs. , 153 n. 
 Portland, Duke of, 329. 
 Posting, 252. 
 Pouilly (de), in n. 
 Preachers, 300. 
 Prescott, W. H., 194 n. 
 Preston, — , 254. 
 Pretender, The Old, 13 n, 58 n. 
 Pretender, The Young, 28. 
 Price, Baron, 321. 
 Prideaux, Dean Humphrey, 45, 223, 
 
 283. 
 Priestley, Joseph, 203, 319, 322. 
 Primogeniture, 27. 
 Prince, Daniel, 34 «, 63 fi. 
 Prior, Matthew, 16, 281, 322. 
 Procopius, 178 n, 214, 281. 
 Professional life, 170. 
 Puffendorf, 96. 
 Pullein, Robert, 52 n. 
 Pullen, Josiah, 61 n. 
 Pulteney, William., Earl of Bath, 28 
 
 «, 240 n. 
 Putney, 20, 34, 185. 
 
 Queen's College, Oxford, 65 n, 284, 
 
 288, 289, 290. 
 Qu^rard, 232 n, 237 • 
 Quintilian, 92, 192 n. 
 
 Racine, 105 «, 242 n. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 144. 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, 215 ??. 
 
 Ramusius, 229. 
 
 Randolph, Dr., 318. 
 
 Rapin de Thoyras, 44, 281, 295. 
 
 Raynal, Abb6, 152, 306. 
 
 Read, General Meredith, 218 n, 265 », 
 
 332- 
 
 Redding, Cyrus, 339. 
 
 Registers, Church, 9. 
 
 Rennell, — , 325. 
 
 Resnel, 87 n. 
 
 R^tif de la Br^tonne, 226. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, Duke of Cum- 
 berland, 127 n ; genius, 143, 303 ; 
 Gibbon's portrait, 86 n, 331 ; — 
 fi'iend, 130 n, i6g», 228 n- Gold- 
 smith, 15 n ; Literary Club, 311. 
 
 Richard I., 144. 
 
 Ridley, Major, 169 n. 
 
 Robertson, William, D.D. , his His- 
 tories, 122, 134 n, 232, 296, 297, 
 315 ; TAe Decline, 195, 209 n. 
 
 Rockingham, Marquis of, 213 n, 214. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 250 n, 332, 334. 
 
 Roman Club, 169. 
 
 Roman Empire, happy period, 239 n. 
 
 Rome, 163, 167, 182 n, 183, 308. 
 
 Rome, Church of, 73, 291. 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 238 n, 306, 330. 
 
 Rooke, Sir George, 11 n. 
 
 Ross, Bishop John, 92. 
 
 Round, J. H., s n. 
 
 Rousseau, J. J. , 7 ; fables, 35 ; Mont- 
 morency, 152; Hume, 175 n; 
 Gibbon, 293 ; letters, 332. 
 
 Routh, M. J., D.D., 61 n, 65 w, 81 n, 
 283, 284, 289. 
 
 Royal Society, 22 n. 
 
 Russell, Earl, 335. 
 
 Riistic, 37 n. 
 
 Rutilius Numatianus, 159. 
 
 Rylands, Mrs. John, 254 «. 
 
 Sacheverell, Rev. Henry, D.D., 
 274. 
 
 Sade (de), 307. 
 
 Saint Sulpice, 150. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Bossuet, 70 n ; Gibbon 
 at Oxford, a,% n\ — conversion, 
 72 71, 89 ; — French, 91 n; — 
 and nature, 117 n ; — and the 
 Acadionie, 120 11 ; — indecency, 
 231 71 ; — religion, 237 7t, 248 n, 
 309 ; — in love, 293 ; — Essai, 
 317 ; — learning, 336 ; — trans- 
 lators, 338 ; — patriotism, 340 ; 
 Huet, 7 71 ; Hume, 297. 
 
 Saints, 69, 71 n, 309. 
 
 Sallier, Abb6, iii n. 
 
 Sallo, Denis de, 134 tu 
 
 Salmasius, 96 ti. 
 
 Salt, Samuel, 209 n, 314. 
 
 Sanderson, Bishop Robert, 288. 
 
 Sargeaunt, J., 279. 
 
 Sarpi, Paolo (Father Paul), 6 n, 44, 
 282, 296. 
 
 Savage, Dr., 327. 
 
 Savage, Richard, 2 n. 
 
 Savanarola, 147. 
 
 Saxe, Marshal, 269 «. 
 
 Scaliger, J. J., 45, 141, 283. 
 
 Scapula, 302. 
 
 Schavedt, Margrave of, 169. 
 
 Schilling, Diebold, 172. 
 
 Scholl, Dr. , 240 n, 339. 
 
 Schomberg, Count de, 269. 
 
 Schools and schoolmasters, 34, 39, 47. 
 
358 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Schott, Andrew, 126 n. 
 
 Scott, George Lewis, 141. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, brothers and sisters, 
 27 n ; school life, 46 n ; quotes 
 Prior, 281 ; genius, 304. 
 
 Scott, Sir William (Lord Stowell), 8q, 
 289, 292. 
 
 Seagar, Sir William, 10. 
 
 Selden, John, 340. 
 
 Septennial Act, 19. 
 
 Servetus, 203, 321. 
 
 S6very (de), family, 236. 
 
 S6very (de), Wilhelm, 234, 269. 
 
 S6very (de), of Mex, 86 n, 218 n, 269 n. 
 
 Seward, Rev. Thomas, 326. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Fourth Earl of, 118 n. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 105. 
 
 Shefifield, John Baker Holroyd, first 
 Earl of. Downing Street house, 
 227 ; Gibbon abused, 340 ; — 
 his adviser, 268 n ; — business 
 affairs, 241 ; — executor, 268 ; — 
 friend, 157, 189, 227 ; — grave, 
 270 ; — illness and death, 258-67 ; 
 
 — letters, 251-7, 259-61, 263 ; — 
 library, 338 ; — and the Ministry, 
 324 ; — ■ memoirs continued, 245 ; 
 
 — retirement, 216 n, 220 «, 234 ; 
 
 — seat for Lymington, 216 n ; — 
 visitor at Lausanne, 246 ; marriages, 
 248 n ; member for Coventry and 
 Bristol, 226-7, 333 ; peerage, 189, 
 226 ; political writings, 226, 332 ; 
 Prince of Wales, 256 ?i. 
 
 Sheffield, First Lady, 234, 239 n, 248, 
 
 269, 342. 
 Sheffield Place, 189. 
 Shelburne, Earl of. First Marquis of 
 
 Lansdowne, 209 n, 214-5, 3^^> 
 
 328, 329, 331. 
 Sheldon, Archbishop, 75 n. 
 Shelley, Sir John, 20 n. 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 228, 311, 
 
 334- 
 Sheridan, Thomas, D. D. , 32 n. 
 Shorthand writers, 228. 
 Siddons, Mrs., 153 «. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 145. 
 Sigebert, King, 51 n. 
 Sigonius, 182. 
 Simeon Stylites, 309. 
 Sirmond, Father, 125. 
 Slave trade, 333. 
 Sloane, Sir Hans, M. D. , 30. 
 Sloper, — , 18 n. 
 Smelt, Leonard, 200 n. 
 Smith, Adam, Balliol College, 54 n, 
 
 62 n ; contempt, 46 n ; Decline 
 
 and Fall, 206 n ; enthusiasm, 22 
 n ; fines, 56 n ; Greek, 94 n ; 
 Literary Club, 311 ; Mandeville, 
 275 ; Navigation Act, 333 ; praise, 
 242 71 ; Racine, 105 n ; Uni- 
 versities, 51 n, 53 71, 54, 286 ; 
 Versailles, 149 w, 150 n ; Wealth 
 of Natiotis, 196 71, 312 ; young 
 travellers, 167 n. 
 
 Smith, Dr., 292. 
 
 Smollett, Tobias, 197 n, •zi^'Ti '^• 
 
 South, Robert, D.D. , 22 7i. 
 
 South Sea Company, 16. 
 
 Southey, Robert, Hayley the poet, 230 
 n ; Oxford, 50 «, 62 «, 290 ; West- 
 minster School, 279, 280. 
 
 Spanheim, Ezechiel, 160. 
 
 Spedalieri, Nicola, 210. 
 
 Speed, John, 44, 281. 
 
 Spelman, Edward, 44, 280. 
 
 Spencer, Second Earl, 4, 251, 253-4, 
 264. 
 
 Spencer, Countess of, 251 w, 264. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 4. 
 
 Sprat, Bishop, 22 n. 
 
 Stael, Madame de, 107 n, 332. 
 
 Stanhope, Second Earl, 298. 
 
 Stanhope, Philip, 313. 
 
 Stanislaus, King, no «. 
 
 Stawell, Lord, 116 n. 
 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 17 n. 
 
 Steevens, George, 311. 
 
 Ste Palaye (de), 152, 307. 
 
 Stephen, Sir James, 290. 
 
 Sterling, John,, 27 5. 
 
 Sterne, Laurence, 80 ;z, 231 n. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, 102 n, 190 n. 
 
 Stewart, Sir Simeon, 119. 
 
 St. Germains, First Earl of, 21 n. 
 
 Stonor, Monsignore, 210. 
 
 Storer, Anthony, 206 ;z. 
 
 Stormont, Lord (second Earl of Man^^ 
 field), 205. 
 
 Strabo, 142, 159. 
 
 Strahan, William, 194, *zg. 
 
 Strauch, yEgidius, 45, 283. 
 
 Style, I, 189. 
 
 Suard, j. B. A., 134 71, 152. 
 
 Subordination, 238 n. 
 
 Sunderland, Earl of, 4 7i. 
 
 Superstition, 78, 197. 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, October Club, 25 n ; 
 death, 36 n ; style, 122 ; Temple's 
 Works, 132 n ; oaths of abjuration, 
 274 ; army, 298 ; not read, 336. 
 
 Swiss, History of the Liberty of the, 
 147, 171. 
 
 Switzerland, 98, 341. 
 
INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 Sylva, Madame de, 252, 265. 
 Symonds, J. A., 165 n. 
 
 Tacitus, 266. 
 
 Tanucci, 276. 
 
 Taylor, Rev. Henry, 203, 318. 
 
 Taylor, John (" Chevalier "), 30. 
 
 Temple, Lord, 301. 
 
 Temple, Sir William, 6, 132. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 29 7«, 242 n, 313. 
 
 Terrick, Bishop Richard, 180 n. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M. , 5 n. 
 
 Theatres, 22, 114. 
 
 Theodora, Empress, 178 n, 231. 
 
 Theodoret, 309. 
 
 Theodosian Code, 182. 
 
 Theology, Books of, 120 n. 
 
 Thirty-nine articles, 66, 75, 290. 
 
 Thomson, James, 243 n. 
 
 Three Heavenly Witnesses, 210, 325. 
 
 Thuanus (De Thou), 6. 278. 
 
 Thurlow, Lord Chancellor, 192, 205, 
 
 322. 
 Tibullus, 163 «. 
 Tillemont, 182, 183 n, 232. 
 Tillotson, Archbishop, 89 «. 
 Tissot, Dr. , 221. 
 Titus, Emperor, 144. 
 Tories, 25, 135. 
 
 Townshend, First Marquis, 329. 
 Townshend, Second Viscount, 273. 
 Transubstantiation, 71, 89. 
 Travel, Foreign, 148, i66. 
 Tiavis, Archdeacon George, 209, 210, 
 
 325- 
 Traytorrens (de), 95. 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, 329. 
 Trinity College, Oxford, 289. 
 Triumphs, 309. 
 Tschudi, Giles, 172. 
 Turin, 161. 
 Tuscany, 252 n. 
 Tuscany, Marquis of, 242 n. 
 
 Universal History, 43. 
 Universities, 51, 286. 
 Unwell, 255 71. 
 Usher, Archbishop, 45, 283. 
 
 Vaud, 98 n, 238, 341. 
 Venice, 19, 166. 
 Vergennes (de), 337. 
 Vernacular, 130. 
 Versailles, 149. 
 Vertot, 90, 147. 
 Vicat, — , 95. 
 Villaret, 306. 
 Villemain, 191 n. 
 
 Vincent, Dr., 279. 
 
 Viner, Charles, 81, 292. 
 
 Virgil, Gibbon's Dissertation, 106 n, 
 130 ; Critical observations, 177, 
 310 ; quotations from Eclogues, 
 113 n ; — Georgics, 133 ; — 
 ^neid, 161, 211, 242 n. 
 
 Voltaire, Age of Lewis XIV., 63, 
 103 n ; ancient philosophers, 123 
 n ; Anglo?nanie, 305 ; atheism, 
 78 n ; Bayle, 77 n, 79 n\ Ber- 
 noulli, 59 n ; Bolingbroke, 133 ; 
 Congreve, 151 n ; Crousaz & Pope, 
 88 }t ; De la Bl^terie, 97 n ; De 
 Guignes, 307 ; English dedication, 
 133 ; English historians, 295-96 ; 
 Ferney, 155 ; Frederick the Great, 
 103 ; Giannone, 97 n ; Gibbon, 
 102, 315 ; Grotius, 96 n ; historio- 
 graphe, 307 ; Huet, 7 n ; Lausanne, 
 103 ; Leibnitz, 132 n ; Limborch, 
 88 71 ; letters, 332 ; loan, 154 71; 
 Mably, 317 ; nobility and trade, 
 273 ; old age, 244, 344 ; old super- 
 stitions, 237 ; Olivet, 91 n ; Paris, 
 150 n ; P^tau, 283 ; style, 125 n ; 
 theatre, 104, 155 ; universities, 
 286 ; Versailles, 149 n. 
 
 Wainfleet, Bishop, 55. 
 
 Waldgrave, Thomas, D.D., 60, 75 «, 
 288. 
 
 Walpole, Horace (Fourth Earl of 
 Orford), acting, 153 71 ; A7iglo- 
 manie, 305 ; authors, 153 «, 308 ; 
 Bath Guide, 174 7t ; Benedict 
 XIV. , 164 n ; Biographia Britan- 
 7iica, 6 71 ; Bologna School, 165 71; 
 Bute, Lord, 119 n ; character, 7 « ; 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 308 ; Cibber, 
 7 n ; coronation, 137 n ; corre- 
 spondence, 162 n ; Egremont, 
 Lord, 250 71 ; Ferdinand IV., 164 
 «; Geoffrin, 308; Gibbon, 29 «, 151, 
 201 n, 206 n, 211 n, 276, 297, 314, 
 315, 321, 324, 327, 331, 335, ; 
 Hay ley, 335 ; Helv^tius, 308 ; 
 Historic Doubts, 146 «, 176 ; 
 Hume, 296, 297 ; Hunter's lec- 
 tures, 200 n ; influence, 208 n ; 
 Italy, 163 n ; Jacobites, 28 n ; 
 King's speech, 29 n ; Macpherson, 
 316 ; Middleton, 91 n ; Mirabeau, 
 330 ; Mont Cenis, 160 n ; Newton, 
 Bishop, 327 ; Northington, Lord, 
 27 n ; Paris, 148 n, 149 n, 152 n ; 
 Raynal, 306 ; Turin, 161 71 ; war 
 with France, 126 n ; Whiston, 7 n. 
 
160 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert (First Earl of Or- 
 ford), South Sea Bubble, i8 it, 
 26 ; opposition, 25, 28 ; misquotes 
 Horace, 240 n. 
 
 Walpole, — , 255. 
 
 War, 315. 
 
 Warburton, Bishop William, contro- 
 versy with Lowth, 50, 285 ; Bur- 
 gersdicius, 80 n ; Divine Legation, 
 i.'77-'i>\, 310. 
 
 Ward, Joshua, 30. 
 
 Warton, Joseph, D.D. , 231, 311. 
 
 Warton, Rev. Thomas, 50 n, 287, 311. 
 
 Warton (a painter), 209. 
 
 Watson, Bishop Richard, 200 11, 202, 
 2og, 318. 
 
 Watteville (de), 106 n. 
 
 Watts, Isaac, D.D. , 43 n. 
 
 Webster, Lady (Lady Holland), 252. 
 
 Weddal, William, 169 n. 
 
 Wedderburne, Alexander ( Lord Lough- 
 borough and Earl of Rosslyn), 
 Solicitor-General, 193 ; Chief Jus- 
 tice, 206 ; Lord Chancellor, 261 ; 
 Gibbon's friend, 215 n, 323 ; North 
 and Fox, 328. 
 
 Wells, Dr. Edward, 45, 283. 
 
 Wenman, Lord, 58 n. 
 
 Wesley, Rev. John, 65 n. 
 
 Wesseling, Peter, 159. 
 
 West, Richard, 280. 
 
 West, Thomas, D.D., 288. 
 
 Westbury, First Lord, 290, 293. 
 
 Westminster School, 38, 278. 
 
 Weymouth, Lord (First Marquis of 
 Bath), 205. 
 
 Wheatley, Henry B. , 82 n. 
 
 Whetnalls, 10, n n. 
 
 Whicher, Rev. J., 277. 
 
 Whiston, William, 7, 63 «, 66 n, 68 n, 
 274, 321. 
 
 Whitaker, Rev. John, 312, 320. 
 
 White, Joseph, D.D. , 203-4, 320. 
 
 Whiteway, Mrs. , 36 n. 
 
 Wilberforce, William, Gibbon, 324 ■ 
 Horsley, 322 ; Pitt, 208 « ; Prac- 
 tical Christianity, 194 n ; slave 
 trade, 334. 
 
 Wilkes, John, 301, 311. 
 
 William HI., 11 n, 15, 286. 
 
 Williams, George, 291. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. H. A. , 288. 
 
 Wilton, 150. 
 
 Winchester, Dr. Thomas, 64, 79, 284. ■ 
 
 Windham, Right Hon. William, 261, 
 322. 
 
 Wirtemberg, Duke, 154. 
 
 Wirtemberg, Prince Lewis of, 154. 
 
 Wolf, F. A., 46 «, 61 71. 
 
 Wood, Anthony, 7. 
 
 Wooddeson, Dr., 34. 
 
 Worsley, Sir Richard, 176, 216 n. 
 
 Worsley, Sir Thomas, 136, t68, 399, 
 300. 
 
 Xenophon, 92, 184, 
 
 York, Charles, 10 n. 
 York, Ehike of, 127, 326. 
 Young, Edward, D.C.L., 2 «. 
 
 ZUINGLIUS, 99.' 
 
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