CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE *■ „4'i Date Due '' ' / Cornell University Library PR 3476.A82 1896 The autobiographies of Edward Gibbon.Pri 3 1924 013 183 474 THE AUTOBIOGEAPHIES OF EDWARD GIBBON. Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013183474 'J.iiKA THE AUTOBIOGEAPHIES OF EDWAED GIBBON. PRINTED VERBATIM FROM HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED MS8., WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE EARL OF SHEFFIELD. EDITED BY JOHN MUREAY. WITH PORTRAIT. LONDON: JOHN MUERAY, ALBEMARLE STEEET. 1896. f\j roo-oi LONDON : PRINTED BY WILUAM CLOWES AND SONS, MMITED, STAMFORD STBGKT AND CHABIKG CROSS. INTRODUCTION BY THE EARL OF SHEFFIELD. The centenary of the death of Edward Gibbon (died January, 1794, aged fifty-six) was recorded by a public commemoration held in London in November, 1894, at the instance of the Eoyal Historical Society. The dis- tinguished committee of English and foreign students, who were associated on that occasion, invited me to become their President, as representing the family with which Gibbon had been so intimately connected, and which still retained the portraits, manuscripts, letters, and relics of the historian. The exhibition of these in the British Museum, and the commemoration held on November 15, reawakened interest in the work and re- mains of one of the greatest names in English literature ; and a general desire was expressed that the manuscripts should be again collated, and that what was yet un- published might be given to the world. As is well known, it was my grandfather, the first Earl, who made the historian almost his adopted brother, gave him a home both in town and in country, was his devisee and literary executor, and edited and published the famous Autobiography, the letters, and remains. vi INTRODUCTION BY THE EAEL OF SHEFFIELD. All of these passed under Edward Gibbon's will to Lord Sheffield ; and, together with books, relics, portraits, and various mementos, they have been for a century pre- served by my father and myself with religious care and veneration in Sheffield Park. The original autograph manuscripts of the Memoirs, the Diaries, Letters, Note- hoohs, etc., have now become the property of the British Museum, subject to the copyright of all the unpublished parts which was previously assigned to Mr. Murray. And it is with no little pleasure and pride that I have acceded to the request of the publishers that I would introduce these unpublished remains to the world, and thus com- plete the task of editing the historian, to which my grandfather devoted so great a portion of his time, not only as a testamentary duty, but as a labour of love. The connection of the historian with my grandfather, his early friend, John Holroyd, and the members of the Holroyd family, forms one of the pleasantest and also most interesting passages in literary history. It was in no way interrupted by Lord Sheffield's public and official duties ; it was continued without a cloud to obscure their intimacy, until it was sundered by death ; and the Earl, who survived his friend so long, continued to edit and to publish the manuscripts left in his hands for some twenty years after the death of the historian. By a clause in the will of Edward Gibbon, dated July 14, 1788, his papers were entrusted to Lord Sheffield and Mr. John Batt, his executors, in the following terms : — " I will that all my Manuscript papers found at the time of my decease be delivered to my executors, and that if any shall appear sufficiently finished for the public INTRODUCTION BY THE EAEL OF SHEFFIELD, vii eye, they do treat for the purchase of the same with a Bookseller, giving the preference to Mr. Andrew Strahan and Mr. Thomas Oadell, whose liberal spirit I have experienced in similar transactions. And whatsoever monies may accrue from such sale and publication I give to my much-valued friend William Hayley, Esq., of Eastham, in the County of Sussex. But in case he shall dye before me, I give the aforesaid monies to the Eoyal Society of London and the Eoyal Academy of Inscrip- tions of Paris, share and share alike, in trust to be by them employed in such a manner as they shall deem most beneficial to the cause of Learning." In pursuance of the directions contained in the will and of many verbal communications. Lord Sheffield, in 1799, published the Miscellaneous Works of Edwwrd Gibbon, with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, in 2 vols., 4to. A third volume was added in 1815, and a new edition of the whole, with additions, appeared during the same year in 5 vols., 8vo. In 1837 another edition, in one large 8vo volume, was published. By a clause in his own will, Lord Sheffield directed that no further publication of the historian's manuscripts should be made. " And I request of my said trustees and my heirs that none of the said manuscripts, papers, or books of the said Edward Gibbon be published unless my approbation of the publication be du-ected by some memorandum in- dorsed and written or signed by me. And I also request the person entitled for the time being to the possession thereof not to suffer the same to be out of his possession or to be improperly exposed." Viii INTRODUCTION BY THE EAEL OF SHEFFIELD. This direction has been strictly followed by my father, the second Earl, and by myself; and it is believed that no person has ever had access to any of the manuscripts for any literary purpose, excepting the late Dean Milman, who, when editing his well-known edition of the Decline and Fall, in 1842, was permitted to inspect the original manuscripts of the Autobiography, on condition of not publishing any new matter. The commemoration of 1894, however, again raised the question whether such an embargo on giving to the world writings of national importance was ever meant to be, or even ought to be, regarded as perpetual. Whilst persons named in these papers or their children were living, whilst the bitter controversies of the last century were still unforgotten, whilst the fame of Edward Gibbon had hardly yet become one of our national glories, it was a matter of good feeling and sound judgment in Lord Sheffield to exercise an editor's discretion in publishing his friend's confession and private thoughts. Now that more than a hundred years have passed since his death, no such considerations have weight or meaning. And the opinion of those whom I have consulted, both pro- fessionally and as private friends, amply corroborates my own conclusion, that it is a duty which I owe to my own ancestor and to the public to give to the world all the remains of the historian which for more than a century have been preserved in the strong room of Sheffield Park. The unlocking of the cases in which these manu- scripts were secured was quite a revelation of literary workmanship, and has led to a most interesting problem in literary history. The manuscripts of the historian INTEODUCTION BY THE EARL OP SHEFFIELD, ix are all holographs — the text of the famous Memoirs being written with extraordinary beauty of calligraphy, and studied with the utmost care. But, singularly enough, none of the texts are prepared for immediate, or even direct, publication. The historian wrote, at various intervals between 1788 and 1793, no less than six different sketches. They are not quite continuous ; they partly recount the same incidents in different form ; they are written in different tones : and yet no one of them is complete ; none of them seem plainly designed to supersede the rest. There is even a small seventh sketch, from which one of the noblest and most famous passages that Gibbon ever wrote has been excised, and inserted in the published Autobiography. Lord Sheffield executed his editorial task with extreme judgment, singular ingenuity, but remarkable freedom. He was assisted in preparing the manuscripts for publication by his wife and by Lady Maria Holroyd, his eldest daughter, who became by marriage the first Lady Stanley of Alderley. This very able and remark- able woman, of whose abilities the historian expressed in letters his great admiration, evidently marked the manuscripts in pencil handwriting (now recognized as hers) for the printer's copyist. These pencil deletions, transpositions, and even additions, correspond with the Autobiography as published by Lord Sheffield. Quite a third of the whole manuscript is omitted, and many of the most piquant passages that G-ibbon ever wrote were suppressed by the caution or the delicacy of his editor and his family. The result is a problem of singular literary interest. X INTEODUOTION BY THE EABL OF SHEFFIELD. A piece, most elaborately composed by one of the greatest writers who ever used our language, an autobiograpby 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. The manner and the extent of this extraordinary piece of editing has been so fully explained in the address of November 15, published by the Centenary Committee, that it is not necessary for me to enlarge upon it further. No sooner had the discovery of the process by which Gibbon's Autobiography had been concocted been made public, than a general desire was expressed to have the originals published in the form in which the historian left them. It was no case of incomplete or illegible manuscripts, nor of rough drafts designed only as notes for subsequent composition. The whole of the seven manuscripts are written with perfect precision ; the style is in Gibbon's most elaborate manner ; and each piece is perfectly ready for the printer — so far as it goes. It was impossible to do again the task of consolidation so admirably performed by Lord Sheffield. Nothing remained but to print the whole of the pieces verbatim, as the historian wrote them, not necessarily in the order of time of their apparent composition, but so as to form a consecutive narrative of the author's life. The reader may now rest assured that, for the first time, he has before him the Autobiographic Sketches of Edward Gibbon in the exact form in which he left them at his death. The portions enclosed in dark brackets are INTEODUCTION BY THE EARL OF SHEFFIELD. XI the passages which were omitted by Lord Sheffield, and in the notes are inserted the passages or sentences, few and simple in themselves, which Lord Sheffield added to the original manuscript. For various reasons it was found impracticable to print the six sketches in parallel columns ; but the admirers of the historian and all students of English literature will find abundant oppor- tunity for collating the original texts with each other, and with the text as published by the editor, and now for a century current as one of the masterpieces of English literature. The Letters of the historian, the bulk of which were addressed to Lord Sheffield and his family, were published in part by my grandfather in one or other of the editions of The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon. But in this collection many letters were omitted, and most of them were printed with some omissions and variations. These omissions have now been restored ; and the Letters, like the other papers of our author, are now for the first time given to the world in the form in which they were composed. I cannot pretend to any rivalry with my grandfather in the matter of the skill with which he performed the task of editing and selecting for publication the remains of his friend. But I can assure the reader that every piece contained in this volume as the worJc of Edward Gibbon is now printed exactly as he wrote it without suppression or emendation. And in transferring these literary treasures to the nation, and in giving them to the world, I feel that I am fulfilling the trust which the historian reposed in my grandfather, and am acting in the XU INTRODUCTION BY THE EARL OF SHEFFIELD. spirit of the lifelong friendsliip that bound him to my family. I cannot conclude these prefatory remarks without acknowledging to the fullest extent the obligation I am under to Mr. Frederic Harrison for the assistance he has given me in the preparation and composition of this Preface. PKEFACE. Lord Sheffield has, in his introduction, told the histoiy of the documents contained in this volume so fully, that I will only call attention to one or two minor points respecting the manner in which they are now presented to the public. It was my first intention to append to the auto- biographies a very few explanatory notes, but when the preparation of the proofs had made some progress, I came upon a series of memoranda — I can hardly give them the name of formal notes — in the historian's own handwriting, which were numbered consecutively, but otherwise bore no clue as to the part of the memoirs to which they referred. I soon found that they belonged to Memoir F, which had been placed first of the series. In dealing with them three courses were open: (1) To omit them altogether ; (2) to afSx them to the passages to which they referred, and leave them to tell their own tale; (3) to elaborate them, by finding out the meaning of the very brief and enigmatical sentences of which for the most part they consist. After much deliberation, and taking counsel of XIV PREFACE. seTeral competent advisers, I decided to adopt the third coiu-se, in the hope that, by so doing, I should help to place the reader in a position to understand the working of Gibbon's mind, and the method of his com- position, without constant reference to other books. The explanation of these memoranda, such as it is, has been a work of considerable labour ; on these grounds I would ask the indulgence of the reader and the critic if the notes do not possess that finish which perhaps it would be impossible, in the circumstances, to impart to them. The numbered notes to Memoir E are Gibbon's own ; a few of Dean Milman's notes, and almost all of those supplied by the first Lord Sheffield, have been retained throughout. In reproducing the autobiographies it has been my endeavour to give a literal transcription of the manu- scripts, including Gibbon's own spellings, and mis- spellings of various words. I wish to record my thanks to Mr. Francis B. Bickley, of the British Museum, for the skill and care with which he has collated the proofs with the original manuscripts ; and to the President of Magdalen College, to the officials at the Heralds' College, to Mr. H. E. Tedder, F.S.A., and to Mrs. Salmon, for the assistance which they have afforded me in clearing up many obscure points and allusions. JOHN MUEEAY. CONTENTS. rAQB MEMOIR F 1 The latest and most perfect. Writteu in 1792-3, brought down to 1753. Appendix to Mbmoik F 96 MEMOIR B. 104 From his birth till the eve of his journey into Italy in 1764. MEMOIR C. 211 (Written about 1789) ; from his birth tiJI 1772, when, two years after his father's death, he let the farm of Buritou, and removed to London. MEMOIR E 293 From the early history of the family to July, 1789. MEMOIR A 353 The earliest sketch ; written in 1788-9. From the early records of the family down to the death of Mr. Wm. Law in 1761. MEMOIR D 391 From his bii'th to his father's death. Written 1790-91 ; not hitherto published. Memoranda and Pbagments 416 Will op Edward Gibbon made in 1788 420 Index 425 THE AUTOBIOGEAPHIES OF EDWARD GIBBON^. CHAPTER L* Throughout these autobiographies the portions hitherto unpublished are inserted in [ J. Mt family is originally derived from the County of Kent,^ whose inhabitants have maintained from the earliest antiquity ^ a provincial character of civility, courage, and freedom. The southern district of the coimtry, 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 Eolvenden, the Gibbons were possessed of lands in the year one thousand three hundred and twenty-six; and the elder ^ Cambden in Kent, masterly work — style and spirit pictoresque — LatinEdition — original text — my Edition, 1607. * From Caesar, Will, of Malm. John Sarisb. — provincial marks lost — progress of Society— isle of Sky superior to Old Kent. ' Anderida — Cambden finds that Newenden-sea has retired.f * Memoir F, the latest and most perfect. Written in 1702-3, brought down to 1753. t See Appendix, 1, p. 96. B 2 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik F. branch of the family, without much encrease or diminution of property, still adheres to its native soil. Fourteen years after the first appearance of his name, John Gibben is recorded as the Marmorarius, or Architect, of King Edward the Third ; the strong and stately castle of Queen- borough,* which guarded the entrance of the Medway, was a monument of his skill ; and the grant of an hereditary toll on the passage from Sandwich to Stonar, in the Isle of Thanet, is the reward of no vulgar artist. In the visi- tations of the Heralds, the Gibbons are frequently men- tioned : they held the rank of Esquire in an age when that title was less promiscuously assumed : one of them, under the reign of Queen Elizabeths 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 * Queenborough. Castellum et munitissimum quod Eex Ed. III. posuit, Tit ipse scribit situ amceno ad terrorem hostium et solatium, Populi.f * Canon JoyjViear of Benenden, in Benenden, called Sarnden, corn- has kindly ftirnished me with par- pitted at 70 acres, for the mainte- ticulars of the benefactions of the nance of an Usher for the School. Gibbon family :— " 1699. The FeoflEees by Sale of "1602. Edmund Gybbon of Timber off the said Farm, pur- Benenden, Esq"', gave a Free chased a house and lands, esti- School, house, and lands near the mated at 16 acres, near the Beacon Beacon Hill, estimated at 80 acres, Hill, for an additional maintenance towards the maintenance of the for the Usher, master of the School. " 1713. John Gybbon of Hole, « In the wall of the S. Chantry Esq", gave an Exchequer annuity Chapel (evidently not in situ) is a of £14 per annum out of the excise small brass with the following in- of beer, etc., which will expire in scription: 'Under this stone doeth 1791, for a further augmentation lye buried y body of Edmond to the Schoolmaster, provided he Gibbon, late of this Pish of Ben- be neitherVicar, Curate, or Reader, ninden, who dyed y' last of January and if he be, then for the use of in Anno Dni. 1607, who was y" poor Girls." prineipall founder of Free Scole of The school founded by Edmund Benninden, and gave the living Gibbon in 1602 is still (1896) the that thereto belongeth.' boys' school. " 1677. Edmund Gybbon of t Cf. Memoir A, p. 358. Hole, Esq", gave a house and lands EARLY HISTOEY OP THE GIBBON FAMILY. 3 veil of 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 enquiry after a name — " Go ! search it there, where to be bom, and dye 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 Eolvenden migrated from the Country to the city, and from this branch I do not blush to descend. The law requires 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 independence. 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 » Pope, M. E. ill. 287. " Eegister^ first Lord Cromwell, 1538. Anderson. Vol.i. p. 367 — few so old — series broken.* * An Historical and Chronological the disBolution of MonasterieB, every JOeductionof the Origin of Commerce incumbent minister in all the from the earlieet accounts to the parishes in England was compelled Present time, by Adam Anderson, to keep a register of all Weddings, london, 1764. "By order of Christenings, and Burials."— Vol. i. Thomas Cromwell, Enrl of Essex, p. 367. "Vicar-General of Henry VIIL, upon 4 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoie,F. become an empty decoration, which every man who "has money to build a carriage may paint, according to his fancy, on the pannels. My family arms are the same which were borne by the Gibbons of Kent in an age when the College of Heralds religiously guarded the distinc- tions of blood and name: a Lyon, rampant, gardant, hetioeen three scallop-shells. Argent on a field Azure." I should not, howerer, have been tempted to blazon my coat of arms, the most useless of all coats, were it not connected with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign of James the First, the three harmless scallop-shells were changed by Edmund Gibbon, Esq., into three Ogresses, or female cannibals, with the 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 Segar, King-at-arms, soon expired with its author ; and on his own monument in the Temple Church, the Monsters vanish, and the three scallop-shells resume their proper and hereditary place. [Our alliances by marriage it is not disgraceful to mention. Blue-mantle Poursuivant, who will soon be introduced to the reader's acquaintance, enumerates the Phillips de la Weld in Tenterden, the Whetnals of East- * Arms. In Latin by G . f * Those who are acquainted for scallops, Edmund Gibbon was with heraldry are aware that the guilty of a delicate heraldic pun word ogress is a, synonym for a which his descendant would appear pellet or rowidle. These roundles to have taken in a literal, not «, are supposed to represent little techniciil sense (cf. p. 360). coloured cakes or wafers used in t The father of Lord Chancellor the Crusades, and according to Hardwicke married an heiress of their colour they are in English this family of Gibbon. The Chan- heraldry termed: Bezants (gold), cellor's escutcheon in the Temple Plates (silver), Fomeis (green), Hall quarters the arms of Gibbon Torteaux (red), Golpes (purple), as does also that, in Lincoln's Inu Guzes (sanguine), and Pellets Hall, of Charles Yorke, Chancellor (black). In substituting pellets ia 1770.— Sheffield. LORD SAY AND SELE. 5 Peckham, the Edgars of Suffolk, the Cromers, the Bercleys of Beaustou, the Hextalls, the EUenbriggs, the Calverleys, the Whetnalls of Cheshire— modestly checking his pen lest he should seem to indulge the pride of pedigree : "nam genus et proavos," etc. As such pride would be ridiculous, it would be scarcely less ridiculous to disclaim it; and I shall simply observe that the Gibbons have been immediately or remotely connected with several worthy families of the old gentry of England. The Memoirs of the Count de Grammont,'' a favourite book of every man and woman of taste, immortalize the Whetnalls or Whitnells of Peckham: "la blanche Whitnell et le triste Peckham." But the insipid charms of the lady, and the dreary solitude of the mansion, were sometimes enlivened by Hamilton and love ; and had not our alliance preceded her marriage, I should be less confident of my descent from the Whetnalls of Peckham. The Cromers in the fifteenth century. were twice Sheriffs of Kent and twice Lord Mayors of London. But] the chief honour of my ancestry is James Piens, Baron Say and Seale, and Lord High Treasurer of England in the reign of Henry the Sixth, from whom, by the Phelips, the Whetnalls, 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 tryal, by the Kentish insurgents. The black list of his offences, ' Grammont, C. — Court at Tunbridge — merry times.']' * Cade. " Go take him away, I and strike off his head, and brinf? say, and strike off his head pre- them both upon two poles thither." sently : and then break into his son- — 2 Henry VI., iv. 7. jn-law's honse, Sir James Cromer, t See Appendix, 2, p. 96. G GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoib F. as it is exhibited in Shakespeare, displays the ignorance and envy of a plebeian tyrant. Besides the Tague 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 Prench, the language of our enemies. "Thou has most traitorously corrupted the youth of the Eealm " (says Jack €ade to the unfortunate Lord), " 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, Hs 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, Eobert Gibbon, Esq., of Eolvenden in Kent, who died in 1618, had a ° Caxton, 1471 — ^Westminster. Those who believe in Harlem and Corselis cling to Sh. and allow Lord Say an experiment. Origin of printing, I helieve, by Nichols, 1776, pp. 19, 20, 2nd ed. 8vo. after 25.* * 2 Benry VI., iv. 7. On this land (before the time of Caxton) passage BJackstone writes: "Mr. by Frederic Corsellis, a workmau Moerman in his Origines Typo- from Haerlem in the time of Henry graphics: hath availed himself VI." The whole question is fully of this passage in Shakespeare discussed in Timperlev's Encyclo- to support his hypothesis that piedia of Literary and Typographi- printing was introduced into Eng- cal Anecdote, 1842, pp. 144, et leq JOHN GIBDON. 7 son of the same name of Eobert, wlio settled in London in trade and became a member of the Cloth-workers' Company. His wife was a daughter of the Edgars, who flourished above 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 Eobert Gibbon who died in 1643, Matthew did not aspire abovfe the station of a linnen- draper in Leadenhall Street, in the Parish of St. Andrew's, but John has given the Public some curious Memorials of his existence, his character, and his family. He was born the third of November, in the year 1629 ; his education was liberal, at a grammar-school, and after- wards in Jesus College at Cambridge, and he celebrates the retired content which he enjoyed at AUesborough in Worcestershire, ia the house of Thomas Lord Coventry, where John Gibbon was employed as domestic tutor, [the same office which Mr. Hobbes exercised in the Devonshire family .^*3 But the spirit of my kinsman soon emerged 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 twelfmonth (1659) in the rising Colony of Virginia. In this remote province his taste, or rather passion, for Heraldry found a singular gratifica- tion at a War-dance of the native Indians. As they moved in measured steps, brandishing their Tamahawks, his curious eye contemplated their little shields of bark, '^ The comparison is his own — quotes the words of Mr. nobbes.* • Cf. Memoir A, p. 367. 8 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHT. [Memoik F. 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 humane race. If so, it deserves 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 an house in St. Catherine's cloyster near the Tower, which devolved to my grandfather, and his introduction into the Heralds College (in 1671), by the style and title of Bluemantle Poursuivant 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 remembered in the college, and many of his letters are still preserved.' Several of the most respect- able 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. The study of hereditary honours is favourable to the Koyal prerogative ; and my kinsman, like most of his family, was a high Tory 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 " Mr. Brooks Lancaster Herald.* '" Moral verses.f * There never has been a Mr. the large amount of work done Brooks,LanoasterHerald, but from by his kinsman at the College of a passage in Memoir A (p. 356) Arms, and of the high estimation it is evident that Mr. John Charles in which that work was held — an Brooke, who was Bouge Croix in estimation which survives to the 1773 and Somerset Herald in 1778, present time. is meant. It is very probable f This refers to the verses seat- that Gibbon heard from him of tered through the other works of JOHN GIBBON THE HERALD. 9 cordially detested ; and as each animal is conscious of its proper arms, the Herald's revenge was emblazoned on a most Diabolical scutcheon.^^ But the triumph of the Whig Grovernment checked the preferment of Blue- Mantle ; and he was even suspended from his ofiBce till his tongue could learn to pronounce the oath of abjuration. His life was prolonged to the age of ninety, and in the expectation of the inevitable though uncertain hour, he wishes to preserve the blessings of health, competence, and virtue. In the year 1682 he published at London his Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam, an original attempt which Cambden had desiderated to define, in the Koman idiom, the terms and attributes of a Grothic institution. 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 in- terspersed 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 forgetful of his own name ; and to him I am indebted for almost the " Diabolical blazon — defence of false heraldry.* John Gibbon, viz. : Edoitardus Con- Carolus, Sanoti Foeliois Festos, /essor Sedivivus, The Piety and piospere natas ; CeleisslmuB lUus- Vertues of Holy Edward the Con- trisBimus Dux Jacobus, quem Stel- f essor, Bevived in the sacred Majesty lam Boiealem ante multoB annos of King James II., published 1688 ; pisedixSre Vates ; et unlversa Stops TJnio Dissidentium, Heir Apparent Begia, h, Turba Fanatica Asti- and Preswmptive made one, 1680; monarchies.: Quibus Symbolum et Day Fatality, or some observations Insigne est, Bellua multoium Capi- of Days lucky and unluchy. Penn'd turn, coloris Diabolici (viz. nigri) iind Published whilst His present in Campo sanguineo (Armes pour Majesty the most Serene King enquerir, ut dicimus Gallioe)." — James II. was Dulee of Yorh, 1678. Gibbon, Introductio Ad Latinam * " Tutus sit Augnstissimus Rex; Masonian, p. 165 (cf. p. 371}. 10 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik F. whole of my information concerning the Gibbon family. From this small work, a duodecimo of one himdred and sixty-five pages, the author expected immortal fame; and at the conclusion of his labour, he sings in a strain of self^exultation — " Usque hue corrigitur Eomana Blasonia per me Verborumque dehinc barbara forma cadat Hie liber in meritum si forsitan incidet usum Testis rite mese sedulitatis erit. Quicquid agat Zoilus, ventura fatebitur setas Artis qu8d 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 profes- sion, and very possibly may not be the last of his name.^^ His brother, Matthew Gibbon, the linnendraper of Leadenhall Street, 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 only be pleasing to those persons to whom it is advantageous. The svxc- cessful 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 cloathing King William's troops ; while he ^^ Oblivion— From Wolfenbuttel to Lausanne.* * This memorandum is ex- Gibbon died in 1718, iet. 89, and plained by a passage in Memoir A, is buried in St. Mary Aldermary p. 356; cf. C, p. 214. John Bow Lane. EDWAED GIBBON, 1666-1763, 11 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 nuptials : after his marriage with the daughter of Kichard Acton, Goldsmith, in Leadenhall Street, he gave his own sister to Sir Whitmore Acton, of Aldenham; and I am thus connected 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 pygmy 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 Eevolution. Under the Tory administration 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 1716 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 12 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Mejioik F. grandfather and his brother-Directors, I am neither a com- petent 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 golden dream, 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 Molesworth, the author of the state of Denmark, may shew the temper, or rather the intemperance, of the House of Commons." " Extraordinary crimes," exclaimed '^ Tindal and Anderson * — a private narrative — negocia- tions — false hopes to the last. " Molesworth in B. B., his Denmark, erroneous, partial, and arising from personal pique.f * Adam Anderson was chief derland, and iGlO.OOO each to the clerk of the Stock and Annuities Duchess ofKendal and the Countess to the South Sea Company. He of Platen, Mr. Gibbon being one of yirote an important work, An His- the distributors. torical and Chronological Deduc- f Kobert, first Viscount Moles- tion of the Origin of Commerce worth (1656-1725), Envoy Extra- from the Earliest Accounts to the ordinary to Court of Denmark, Present Time. Died 1765. 1692, where his conduct gave con- The History of England, ly M. siderable oifence to the authorities. Sapin de Thoyrat. Continued by He sat in the Irish, and subse- N. Tindal, M.A. Vol. iv. pt. ii. quently in the English Parliament, 1747. Pp. 630-649 contain a full and in all his actions showed a account of the proceedings of the strong controversial spirit. His Houses of Parliament in the wind- Account of the State of Denmark ing-up of the affairs of the South as it was in the Year 1892 was Sea Company. On January 21, published in 1694. On the meet- 1720, Mr. Gibbon, along with ing of Parliament at the close of several of his co-directors, was, by 1720, the House as well as the order of the Committee of the Lords, country was iu a ferment in conse- taken into custody, and his papers quenoe of the collapse of the South were seized. Among other charges, Sea Scheme. Shippen moved an it appeared that a fictitious stock, amendment to the address in a amounting to £574,000, had been violent speech, and in secondins disposed of by the directors to tlie motion Molesworth used the tacihtate the passing of the South words quoted. Cf. Memoir A Sea Act m Parliament. Of this, i>. 376 ' £50,000 went to the Earl of Sun- THE SOUTH-SEA COMPANY. 13 that ardent Whig, " call aloud for extraordinary remedies. The Koman lawgivers had not foreseen the possible exist- ence of a parricide. But as soon as the first monster appeared, he was sewed 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 only be excused 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, im- posed an exorbitant security for their appearance, and marked their characters with a prsevious 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 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 equal 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 enquiry, the fortune and honour of three and thirty 14 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoib F. Englishineii 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 em- bittered 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 dropt a foolish speech, that his horses should feed upon gold ; another, 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 condemned, absent and unheard, in arbitrary fines and forfeitures which swept away the greatest part of their substance. Such bold oppression can scarcely be shielded by the omnipotence of Parlia- ment; 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; their 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 serrar di Comiglio of the Venetian history.^^ Yet candour will '° In 1298, 470 annually chosen at Michaelmas : voted perpetual and hereditary for all the actual, and of the last years, if they had 12 votes in the Quarantia — Families broken, new ones added — Stability of Venice — Amelot de la Houssaye sur le Gouv. de Venise, Tom. i. pp. 3, 4, 6 SENTENCE ON EDWARD GIBBON. 15 own that to the same Parliament every Englishman is deeply indebted: the Septennial Act, so vicious in its origin, has been sanctioned by time, eiperiencei 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 connections rendered him obnoxious to the rulins powers : his name is reported in a suspicious secret ; and his well-known abilities could not plead the excuse of ignorance or error. In the first proceedings against the South-sea Directors, Mi-. 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; £and as a Philosopher I should mention, without a sigh, the irreparable loss of above ninety-six thousand poimds, of which, in a single moment, and by an arbitrary vote, I have been ultimately deprived. The provision Supineness of Dand. and Sluratori — a Genoese galley more important ? * * See Appendix, 3, p. 97. 16 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoie F. reserved for his wife could not be very considerable; but the valuable gift which he afterwards received from his friend and companion, Mr. Francis Acton, was imder- stood in the family to be the restitution of an honourable trust. Against irresistible rapine the use of fraud is almost legitimate; in the dexterous anticipation of a conveyance some fragments of property might escape; debts of honour will not be annulled by any positive law, and the frequent imposition of oaths had enlarged and fortified the Jacobite conscience.] 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 Temple was not much inferior to the first. [A large stock of money was vested in the funds, and in trade, and his warehouses at Cadiz were replenished with naval stores for which he had contracted to supply the Court of Madrid.] But he had realized a very considerable property in Sussex, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, and the New River Company, and had acquired a spacious house, with gardens and lands at Putney,^* in Surrey, where he resided " Putney— Cits— Mallet.* * "Just there, where our good- On sums to their dear Country natured Tliames is, lent ; Some four short miles above St. Two gods of no inferior fame, James's, Whom ancient wits with rever- And deigns with silver-stream- enco name, ing wave Though wiser moderns much dis- Th' abodes of Earth-born Pride parage — to lave_; I mean the gods of Love and Aloft in air two gods were soaring. Marriage." ^^^nori/fi:"'"'^ "'' ^"''"*" ^'^ -*I»"«t' (^P'<^ ««<^ ^2""«»; "r. Plunged^deep in dreams of ten ^'"^ ^^"^'^'"^ Do,y. per cent. EDWAED GIBBON, 1707-1770. 17- in decent hospitality. [His portraits represent a stern and sensible countenance; his children trembled in his presence ; tradition informs me that the independent visitors who might have smiled at his anger were awed by his frown; and as he was the richest, or wisest, or oldest of his neighbours, he soon became the oracle and the tyrant of a petty Kingdom. His own wrongs had not reconciled him to the house of Hanover ; his wishes might .be expressed in some harmless toasts ; but he was dis- qualified from all public trust; and in the daily devo- tions of the family the name of the King for whom they prayed was prudently omitted. My grandfather] died at Putney in December, 1736, at the age of seventy, leaving Edward, his only son, and two daughters, Hester and Catherine. My father, Edward Gibbon, was born in October, 1707 : at the age of thirteen he could scarcely feel that he was disinherited by act of parliament; and as he advanced towards manhood new prospects of fortune opened on his view. A parent is most attentive to supply in his children the deficiencies of which he is conscious in himself: my grandfather'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 Emanuel College in Cambridge, he passed through a regular course of Academical discipline ; and the care of his learning and morals was entrusted to his private Tutor the celebrated Mr. William Law. But the mind of a Saint is above or below the present World, and while the pupil pro- ceeded on his travels the tutor remained at Putney, the c 18 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [IiIemoib F. 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 giyen him a keener relish. He afterwards yisited 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 Besanpon 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 himseK to the study of Physic. During 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 Besanjon, and became the father of three sons, the eldest of whom. General Acton, is con- spicuous in Europe as the principal minister of the King 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, at the general election of 1734, to serve in Parliament for the borough of Peters- field, a burgage tenure of which my grandfather possessed a weighty share till he alienated, I know not why, such important property. Prejudice and society connected " Acton I want some memoirs.* * Of. Memoir A, p. 372 Bqq. MAEEIAGE OP GIBBON'S FATHEE. 19 his son with the Tories, or, as they were pleased to style themselves, the Country Gentlemen ; with them he gave many a vote, with them he drank many a bottle. With- out stcquiring the fame of an orator or statesman, he eagerly joyned in the great opposition which, after a seven years' chace, hunted down Sir Eobert 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. 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 Church-yard, where I have passed many happy hours of my childhood. Of his son Stanier, and of a daughter Catherine, who preserved her maiden name, I shall hereafter speak: another daughter married Mr. Barrel, of Eichmond, and her two sons are opulent and worthy ; the youngest and hand- somest of the three sisters was Judith, my mother. [In the society of Putney the two families lived in friendly and frequent intercourse ; the familiar habits of the young people improved into a tender attachment, and their mutual affection, according to the difference of the sexes, was ardently professed and modestly acknowledged. These sentiments were justified by a more perfect know- ledge of each other : my father's constancy was neither chilled by absence nor dissolved by pleasure ; and after his return from his travels and his election into Parlia- ment, he seriously resolved to imite himself for ever with the object of his choice. " Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit : Tempore crevit amor, tajdse quoque jure coisaent 20 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHY. [Memoir F, SeJ vetuere patres. Quod non potuere vetare, Ex aequo captis ardebant mentibus ambo." '* Such is the beginning of a love tale at Babylon or at Putney. On the present occasion, however, the oppo- sition of the two fathers was not equally strenuous or sincere. The slender fortunes and dubious credit of Mr. Porten would have been pleased with such an alliance, but he was provoked by a sense of honour to imitate the reluctance of his wealthy and ambitious neighbour. The usual consequences ensued : harsh threats and tender protestations, frowns and sighs ; the seclusion of the Lady, the despair of the Lover, clandestine correspondence and stolen interviews. At the distance of forty years, my aunt, Catherine Porten, could relate with pleasure the innocent artifices which she practised to second or screen her beloved sister ; and I have found among my father's papers many letters of both parties that breathe a spirit of constancy and love. All their acquaiutance, the whole neighbourhood of Putney, was favourable tc> their wishes; my paternal grandfather yielded a tardy and ungracious consent, and as soon as the marriage ceremony had been performed, the young couple was received into his house on the hard terms of implicit obedience and a precarious maintenance. Yet such were the charms and talents of my mother, with such soft " Ovid, Metamorph., iv. 69 — happened in the lifetime of Cadmus — told by one of the Minieides at her work — no con- nection with Greek fables — source unknown — No Roman invented — quoted by Hyginus (C. 242. p. 351, Edit. Var in 4° Lugd. Bat. 1742) after Ovid.* » "Pyranms in Babylonia ob (;Hyginus, JVituZa, etc.); but thero amorem Thisbes ipso se oceidit" is no reference to Ovid. HESTER AND CATHERINE GIBBON. 21 dexterity did she follow and lead the morose humour of the old Tyrant, that in a few|months she became his favourite. Could he have embraced the first child of which she was pregnant at the time of his decease, it is probable that a Will executed in anger would have been cancelled by affection; and that he would have moderated the shares of his two daughters, whom, in resentment to his son, he had enriched beyond the measure of female inheritance. Of my two wealthy aunts on the father's side, Hester persevered in a life of celibacy, while Catherine became the wife of Mr. Edward EUiston, a Captain in the service of the East India Company, whom my grandfather styles his nephew in his Will. Both Mr. and Mrs. EUiston were dead before the date of my birth, or at least of my memory, and their only daughter and heiress will be mentioned in her proper place. These two Ladies are described by Mr. Law under the names of Flavia and Miranda, the Pagan and Christian sister. The sins of Flavia, which excluded her from the hope of salvation,* may not appear to our carnal apprehension of so black a dye. Her temper was gay and lively ; she followed the fashion in her dress, and indulged her taste for company and public amusements ; but her expence was regulated by oeconomy : t she practised the decencies of Religion, nor * "I shall not take upon me to chap. vii. of Law's Serious Call. say that it is impoaaible for Flavia t Her income was £200. " If to be saved : but thus much must she lives ten years longer . . . she be said, that she has no grounds will have spent sixty hundred from Scripture to think she is pounds upon herself, bating only in the way of salvation." The some shillings, crowns, or half- whole description of her character, crowns that have gone from her which is too long for quotation in accidental charities." — Law's here, occupies the greater part of Serious Call. 22 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. : [Memoik F. is she accused of neglecting tlie essential duties of a wife or a mother. The sanctity of her sister, the original or the copy of Miranda, was indeed of an higher cast. By austere pennance Mrs. Hester Gibbon laboured to attone for the faults of her youth, for the profane vanities into which she had been led or driven by authority and example. But no sooner was she mistress of her own actions and plentiful fortune, than the pious virgin aban- doned for ever the house of a brother, from whom she was alienated by the interest of this World and of the next. With her spiritual guide, and a widow lady of the name of Hutchinson, she retired to a small habitation at Cliffe, in Northamptonshire, where she lived almost half a century, surviving many years the loss of her two friends. It is not my design to enumerate or extenuate the Christian virtues of Miranda as they are described by Mr. Law. Her charity, even in its excess, commands our respect. " Her fortune " (says the historian) " is divided between herself and several other poor people, and she has only her part of relief from it." The sick and lame, yoimg children and aged persons were the first objects of her benevolence ; but she seldom refused to give alms to a common beggar : " and instead " (I resume Mr. Law's words) " of driving him away as a cheat, because she does not know him, she relieves because he is a stranger, and unknown to her. Excepting her victuals, she never spent ten pounds a year upon herself. If you was to see her, you would wonder what poor body it was, that was so surprizingly neat and clean. She eats and drinks only for the sake of living ; and with so regular an abstinence that every meal is an exercise of self denial, and she humbles her body every time that she is forced to feed MRS. HESTER GIBBON. 23 it." ^^ Her only study was the Bible, with some legends and books of piety which she read with implicit faith : she prayed five times each day ; and as singing, according to the serious Call, is an indispensable part of devotion, she rehearsed the psalms and hymns of thanksgiving which she now, perhaps, may chant in a full chorus of Saints and Angels. Such is the portrait and such was the life of that holy Virgin who by Gods was Miranda called, and by men Mrs. Hester Gibbon. Of the pains and pleasures of a spiritual life I am ill-qualified to speak ; yet I am inclined to believe that her lot, even on earth, has not been unhappy. Her pennance was voluntary, and, in her own eyes, meritorious; her time was filled by regular occupations ; and instead of the insignificance of an old maid, she was surrounded by dependents, poor and abject as they were, who implored her bounty and im- bibed her lessons. In the course of these Memoirs I shall not forget to introduce my personal acquaintance with the Saint. At an advanced age, about the year 1761, Mr. Law died in the house, I may not say in the arms, of his beloved Miranda.] In our family he has left the reputa- tion of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed and practised all that he enjoyned. The character of a Nonjuror, which he maintained to the last, " Second edition of Serious Call in 1732 — Butterfly in Caterpillar, pp. 92-189.* * These quotations are isolated cannot relieve Hm, because he may passages taken fiom different parts be a cheat or she does not know of the same chapter. him, but she relieves him for that " If a poor old traveller tells her reason, because he is a stranger that he has neither strength, nor and unknown to her." — SerioueCall, food, nor money left, she never bids chap. viii. him go to the place from whence For the Butterfly in Caterpillar, he came, or tells him that she see Memoir A, p. 383. 24 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGKAPHY. [Mkmoik F. is a sufficient evidence of his principles in Church and state, and the. sacrifice of interest to conscience will be always respectable. His Theological Avritings, which our domestic connection has tempted me to peruse, preserve an imperfect sort of life, and I can pronounce with more confidence and knowledge on the merits of the author. His last compositions are darkly tinctured with the incomprehensible visions of Jacob Behmen, and his dis- course on the absolute imlawfullness of stage-entertain-, ments ^ is sometimes quoted for a ridiculous intemperance of sentiment and language. " The actors and spectators must all be damned : the play-house 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." But these sallies of Eeligious phrenzy 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 vigourous mind been clouded by enthu- siasm, he might be ranked with the most agreable and ingenious writers of the times. While the Bangorian ™ A small pamphlet in 1726* — scandalized by Apollo and Daphne f — all sober persons condemned Masqs — Nonj. and Presb. Collier and Prynne — Eousseau, a Phil, less absurd { — Excellent casuist c'est a vous a me le dire. * The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Theatre Eoyal, Lincoln's Inn tlie Stage Entertainment fully de- Fields, in 1726, and at the Covent monitrated. Garden Theatre in 1734. t This was a pantomime, or % Probably refers to Rousseau's entertainment, of which the vocal letter to d'Alembert on his article parts appear to have been composed Geneve in the Encyclopedie, and by Lewis Theobald, and are quoted especially on his project for tho by Law in his pamphlet. Apollo erection of a theatre for comedy in and Daphne was performed at tliat town. Published 1758, WILLIAM LAW. 25 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 of the sacra- ment 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 Nonjuror, on the ground which is common to both, approves himself at least equal to the Prelate.^ On the " Bang. Con. 1715-20 — ^Hoadly answered Snape, Hare, Potter, Sherlock (Biog. B., torn, vii.), disdained Law. Dis- dained? — three letters, Irst eighth edition.* -- By the pen of an angel, says Adams (I. A. L., i. o. 17) — I think out of character. ^ A Demonstration of the gross and fundamental errors of a late book.f 2d Edit. 1738 — a darker Enthusiast; " the Eeligion of reason the very state of hellish minds " (p, 196). '^^ Christian Div. to Whig. pol. — yet Eeligion and liberty — Berkeley much above Hoadley (Warton on Pope, ii. 264) — a Saint to a Priest, a Genius to a Disputant.J * The principal interest of the and Tories, and before the report Bangorian controversy now lies in could be presented to the Upper the fact that it was the immediate House, Conyocation was prorogued, cause of the practical suspension The report, however, drew from of Convocation from 1717 till 1852. Dr. Hoadly a dexterous reply ; and When the minds of Churchmen a prolonged and bitter controversy were in a state of considerable arose, in the course of which over alarm on the accession of George I., a hundred publications appeared, an alien in birth, language, and Dr. Sherlock and WiUiam Law were religion, Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop among those who took part in this of Bangor, published his Preaer- Bangorian controversy. vative against the Prindplei and f The late book was A Plain Practices of the Nonjurors in Account of the Nature and Eiul Church and Slate, in which he of the Sacrament of the Lord'n denied the necessity of being in Supper. It gave rise to a wide- communion with any visibleChuroh; spread controversy at the time, and on March 17, 1717, he preached and then, and since, it has always a sermon reiterating this doctrine, been attributed to Bishop Hoadly, and making light of religious tests though the authorship was never and ecclesiastical government. A openly avowed by him. Law's committee of the Lower House of reply, called A Demonstration of Convocation appointed to consider the Gross and Fundamental Errors these utterances reported stronely of a Plain Account, etc., was pub- against them, but the discussion lished in 1787. aroused the partisanship of Whigs J Alcijahron, or the Minute Philo- 26 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHY, [Memoir F. appearance of the fable of tlie Bees he drew his pen against the licentious doctrine that private vices are public benefits, and morality as well as Eeligion must joyn 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 drawn 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 practise of the Christian World. [Hell-fire and ^ Dr. Johnson (Life by Bozzy, voL i. p. 431 [thb Khoidd be 341]) styles it " the finest piece of hortatory Theology in any language" — ^Would not trust Mrs. Thr. with it (Letters, vol. ii. p. 214) — hugged it himself (p. 400).* eopher, a Platonic dialogae in son. "... I fonoy there is no ilefence of the Christian leligion comparison between the Bcholaetic against the arguments of atheists, learning of the two writers (Law sceptics, and fotalists, by Bishop and Watts); but there is pro- Berkeley, was published in 1732. dxgious knowledge of the human Walton writes of it, "Alciphron heart, and perfect acquaintance did, indeed, well deserve to be with common life, in the Serious mentioned on this occasion, not- Call. You nstd to say you would withstanding it has been treated not trust me with that author up- with contempt by a writer much stairs on the dressing-room sheu, inferior to Berkley in genius, learn- yet I now half wish I had never ing, and taste," and adds the fol- followed smy precepts but his." — lowing note : " Bishop Hoadley (in Letters to andfrom the Late Samuel letters to Lady Snndon, vol i. of Johneon, LL.D. PublUhed/rom the his works), but Sherlock thought original MS8. in her potteuUm hy highly of Alciphron, and presented Bester Lynch Piozzi. Land., 1788. it to Queen Caroline vrith many Vol. ii. p. 214. encomiums. The Queen was used On p. 400 is a letter from John- to be delighted with the conver- son to Miss Boothby, January 8, sation of Berkley, and perhaps 1756, in which he writes, " I have Hoadley was a little jealous of such returned your Law, which, how- a rival." — Essay on the Genius and ever, I earnestly entreat you to Writings of Pope, ii. 264. give me ; " but there ia no allusion * From Mrs. Thrale to Dr. John- to " hugging it to himself." LAW'S "SEBIOTJS CALL." 27 eternal damnation are darted from every page of the book ; and it is, indeed, somewhat whimsical that the Fanatics who most vehemently inculcate the love of God should bo those who despoil him of every amiable attribute.] GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, [Memoik F. r CHAPTER II. I WAS born at Putney in Surry, the twenty-seventh of April. O.S., the eighth of May. KS., in the year one thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven, within a twelfmonth of my father's marriage with Judith Porten, his first wife. From my birth I have enjoyed the right of Primogeniture ; but I was succeeded by five brothers and one sister, all of whom were snatched away in their infancy. |[They died so young, and I was myself so young at the time of their deaths, that I could not then feel, nor can I now estimate their loss, the importance of which could only have been ascertained by future contingencies. The shares of fortune to which younger children are reduced by our English laws would have been sufficient, however, to oppress my inheritance ; and the compensation of their friendship must have depended on the uncertain event of character and conduct, on the affinity or opposition of our reciprocal sentiments.] 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 regretted my sister, whose life was some- what 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 SPANISH CONTRACTS. 29 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, the sole species of Platonic love that can be indulged with truth and without danger. [About four months before the birth of their eldest son my parents were delivered from a state of servitude, and my father inherited a considerable estate, which was magnified in his own eyes by flattery and hope. The prospect of Spanish gold from our naval contract with the Court of Madrid was suddenly overclouded about three years after my grandfather's decease. The public faith had been pledged for the security of the English merchants; their effects were seized (in 1740) on the first hostilities between the two nations. After the return of peace (in 1749 and 1763), the Contractors or their representatives demanded the restitution of their property with a large claim of damages and interest. But the Catholic Kings absolve themselves from the engagements of their predecessors : ^ the helpless strangers were referred by the ministers to the Judges, and from the Judges to the Ministers, and this antiquated debt has melted away in oblivion and despair. Such a stroke could not have been averted by any foresight or care; but the arts of industry were not devolved from the father to the son, and several undertakings which had been profitable in the hands of the merchant became ^ Ferdinand VI. held a consult of Lawyers and Divines — not obliged to pay former debts — same Moral, continued in fact — Nottv. Voy. en Esp., torn. ii. pp. 30, 31.* * See Appendix, 4, p. 97. 30 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir F. barren or adverse in those of the gentleman.] At the general election of 1741 Mr. Gibbon and Mr. Debne stood an expensive and successful contest against Mr. Duiamer and Mr. Henly,* afterwards Lord Chancellor 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 hundi'ed and seventy new freemen turned the scale ; and a supply was readUy obtained of respectable Volunteers who flocked from all parts of England to support the cause of their political Mends. 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 Eobert Walpole perceived that he could no longer lead a Majority in the house of Commons, and prudently resigned, after a reign of one and twenty years, the sceptre of the state (1742). But the fall of an unpopular Minister Avas not succeeded, 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 government was fixed on the old basis of the Whig Ai-istocracy. In the year 1745 the throne and the constitution were attacked by a rebellion which does 2 OfP.ofW.and Jac— Allowance in [17]37— Mr. Gibbon had been spoken to (Doddington's Diary, p. 444 f) — Was it not Philip Gybbon of Eye — a kinsman ? * For Southampton. bring a demand in Parliament for t " A narrative of what passed an augmentation of his allowance between the Prince and Mr. Do- to £100,000 per annum and for a Bois le Due. In our passage through Nancy my eye was gratified by the aspect of a regular and beautiful City, the work of Stanislaus, who, after the storms of Polish royalty, reposed in the love and 154 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir B. gratitude of his new subjects of Lorraine. In our halt at Maestricht I visited Mr. de Beaufort, a learned Critic, who was known to me by his specious arguments against the five first Centuries of the Eoman history. After drop- ping my regimental companions, I stepped aside to visit Eotterdam and the Hague. I wished to have observed a country, the monument of freedom 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 litterary 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 pains and pleasures of the body, how important soever to ourselves, are an indelicate topic of , conversation. I shall not follow the vain example of Cardinal Quirini, who has filled half a volume of his memoirs with medical consultations on his own particular case. I shall not imitate the naked frankness of Montaigne who exposes the most disgustiag symptoms of his malady, and marks the operation of each remedy on his nerves and bowels.] The experience of the "World inculcates a discreet reserve on the subject of our estate ; and we soon learn that a free disclosure of our riches FINANCIAL EMBAKRASSMENTS, 155 or poverty, would provoke the malice of envy, or encourage the insolence of contempt. [[Yet I am tempted to glance in a few words on the state of my private circumstances, as I am persuaded that had I been more indigent or more wealthy, I should not have possessed the leisure or the perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history. My father's impatience for my return to Eng- land was not wholly of the desinterested kind. I have already hinted that he had been impoverished by his two sisters, and that his gay character and mode of life were less adapted to the acquisition than the expenditure of wealth. A large and legitimate debt for the supply of naval stores was lost by the injustice of the Court of Spain: his elegant hospitality at Putney exceeded the measure of his income ; the honour of being chosen a Member of the Old club at White's had been dearly paid, and a more pernicious species of gaming, the contest for Southampton, exhausted his sickly finances. His retirement into Hampshire on my mother's death was coloured by a pious motive ; some years of solitude allowed him to breathe; but it was only by his son's majority that he could be restored to the command of an entailed estate. The time of my recall had been so nicely computed that I arrived in London three days before I was of age : the priests and the altar had been prepared, and the victim was unconscious of the impend- ing stroke. According to the forms and fictions of our law^ I levied a fine and suffered a recovery : the entail was cut off; a sum of ten "tiiousand pounds was raised on mort[g]age for my father's use, and he repaid the obligation by settling on me an annuity for life of three hundred pounds a year. My submission at the time 156 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHY. [Memois B. was blind and almost involuntary ; but it has been justified by duty and interest to my cooler thoughts, and I could only regret that the receipt of some appro- priated fund was not given into my own hands. My annuity, though somewhat more valuable thirty years ago, was, however, inadequate to the style of a young Englishman of fashion in the most wealthy Metropolis of Europe ; but I was rich in my indifference, or, more properly, my aversion for the active and costly pleasures of my age and country. Some arrears, especially my bookseller's bill, were occasionally discharged ; and the extraordinaries of my travels into France and Italy amounted, by prsevious agreement, to the sum of twelve himdred pounds. But the ordinary scale of my expence was proportioned to my ordinary revenue; my desires were regulated by temper as much as by philosophy I and as soon as my purse was empty I had the courage to retire into Hampshire, where I found in my father's house a liberal maintenance, and in my own studies an inexhaustible source of amusement. With a credit which might have been largely abused I may assume the singular merit, that I never lost or borrowed twenty pounds in the twelve years which elapsed between my return from Switzerland and my father's death.] 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, Westminster, and the evening was spent in the effusions of joy and confidence. It was not without some awe and apprehension 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 DOKOTHEA PATTON. 157 at our last parting still dwelt on my memory ; nor could I form any notion of his character, or my probable re- ception. They were both more agreable 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 stem parent, 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 terms of easy and equal politeness: he applauded the success of my education ; every word and action was expressive 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 intro- duced to me with the most unfavourable prejudice : I considered his second marriage as an act of displeasure, [and the rival who had usurped my mother's bed ap- peared in the light of a personal and domestic enemy. I will not say that I was apprehensive of the bowl or dagger, or that I had then weighed the sentence of Euripides — Ex^po yp firiovffa /iiiTpvia rtKvois Toa irpoffS' exiSyv^ ouSei' ■rpitoTepa.* But I well knew that the odium novercale was proverbial in the language of antiquity; the Latin poets always couple with the name of stepmother the hateful epithets * ['Exflp« y^p h \iou(ra fniTpvih rexvois Toil npoffS', ex'Syris obSey ^iriorcpa.] Eurip. Alo. 310. 158 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir B. of crudelis, sseva, scelerata ; and on the road I had often repeated the line of Virgil — " Est mihi namque domi pater, est injusta noverca."] 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 under- standing, 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 con- fidence 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 only bounded by the limits of the island and the measure of my income. Some faint efforts were made to procure me an employment of Secretary to a foreign Embassy ; and I listened to a scheme which would again have transported 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 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 — [Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebua agendis.] LIFE IN LONDON. 159 and I should probably have been diverted from tbe labours of litterature, without acquiring the fame or fortune of a successful pleader. I had no need to call to my aid the regular duties of a profession ; 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 the Hampshire militia, I passed about nine months in London and the remainder in the country. The metropolis affords many amusements which are open to all; it is itself an astonishing and perpetual spectacle to the curious eye ; and each taste, each sense, may be gratified by the variety of objects that will occur in the long circuit of a morning walk. I assiduously frequented the Theatres at a very prosperous sera of the stage, when a con- stellation of excellent actors, both in tragedy and comedy, was eclipsed by the meridian brightness of Garrick, in the maturity of his judgement and vigour of his performance. The pleasures of a town life, [the daily round from the tavern to the play, from the play to the coffee-house, from the coffee-house to the ] 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 sometimes 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 160 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir B. establishment in London, their own house would have introduced me to a numerous and polite circle of acquaintance. But my father's taste had always pre- ferred 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 my own ; and (if I may use Lord Chesterfield's word) 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, and [whatsoever might be the defects of] his wife, [she] 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 language, and the litterature 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 * Mary Lepcll, wife of John, Lord Hervey. BUKITOX. 161 and address which iunlock 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 expensive 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 gradually brightened ; and this unfavourable picture most properly 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 modem house ; and if strangers 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 chearful : the downs commanded a noble prospect, and the long hang- ing 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 his estate, and even rented some additional land ; and whatsoever might be the balance of profit and loss, the farms sup- plied him with amusement and plenty. The produce M 162 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mejioir B. mamtained a number of men and horses, which were multiplied by the iutermixture of domestic and rural servants ; and in the intervals of labour, the favourite team, an 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 irom the uncleanly avarice of Madame Pavilliard, I was suddenly 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 iaterspersed with noble seats and hospitable families, with whom we cultivated a friendly, and might have enjoyed a very frequent, intercourse. As my stay at Buriton was always volimtsuy, I was received and dismissed with smiles ; but the comforts of my retire- ment did not depend on the ordinary pleasures of the Country. My father could never inspire me with his love • and knowledge of farming. [When he galloped away on a fleet hunter to follow the Duke of Richmond's foxhounds, I saw him depart without a wish to join in the sport; and iu the command of an ample manour, I valued the supply of the kitchen much more than the exercise of the field.] 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 home I occupied a pleasant and spacious apartment; the library on the same floor was soon considered as my peculiar domain, and I might say with truth that I was never le^- alone than when LIFE AT BURITON. 163 hy mysolf. My sole complaint, which I piously sup- pressed, arose from the kind restraint imposed on the I'roodom of my time. By the habit of early rising I always secured a sacred portion of the day, and many scattered moments wore stolen and employed by my Ntudious industry. But the family hours of breakfast, of onsated in some degree by the spectacle of 164 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir B. 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 age, with much High-church Divinity and politics, which have long since gone to their proper place: yet it con- tained some valuable Editions of the Classics and the fathers, the choice, as it should seem, of Mr. Law ; and many English publications of the times had been occa- sionally 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 appro- priated to my literary wants. I cannot forget the joy with which I exchanged a banknote 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 litterature, I thus expressed my opinion of a learned and various Collection, which since the year 1759 has been doubled in magnitude though not equally in merit : " Une de ces societes, qui ont mieux immor- talise Louis XIV. qu'une ambition souvent pemicieuse aux hommes, commenfoit deja ces recherches qui r^unis- sent la justesse de I'esprit, I'amenite, et Terudition: ou BOOKS AND STUDIES. 165 Von voit tant de decouvertes, et quelquefois, ce qui ne cede qu'a peine aux decouvertes, une ignorance modeste et savante." The review of my library 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 of ostentation ; that every volume, before it was deposited on the shelf, was either read or sufiSciently 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 pur- suit of the Greek language except 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 acquisi- tion, by inheritance or purchase, of the best editions of Cicero, Quintilian, Livy, Tacitus, Ovid, etc., afforded a fair opportunity, which I seldom neglected. I persevered in the useful methods of abstracts and observation, and a single example may sufSce 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, Eissenschmidt, Gronovius, La Barre, Freret, etc. ; and in my French Essay (c. xx.) 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 enteriag 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 166 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoie B. 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 left on my mind. Yet I will embrace this occasion of recommending to the young student a practise which about this time I adopted myself. 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 I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition of our ideas. The favourite companions of my leisure were our English writers since the Eevplution ; they breathe the spirit of reason and liberty, and they most seasonably contributed to restore the purity of myiown 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 simplicity are their common attributes ; :but the style of Swift is sup- ported by manly original vigour; that of Addison is adorned by the female graces of elegance and mildness ; and the contrast of too coarse or too thin a texture is visible even in the defects of these celebrated authors. The old reproach, that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history, was recently disproved by the first performances of Eobertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts. I will assume the pre- sumption to say that I was not unworthy to read them; nor will I disguise my different feelings in the repeated PIEST ESSAY. 167 perusals. The perfect composition, the nervous language, the well-turned periods of Dr. Eobertson, inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps : the calm philosophy, the careless inimi- table 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 litterature, was suggested by a refinement of vanityi, the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. In France, to which my ideas were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Eome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three Koyal societies of Paris: the new appellation oi Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon ; and I was provoked to hear (see Mr. d'Alem- bert's Discours preliminaire a I'Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgement. 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 litterature ; I began to select and adorn the various proofs and illustrations which had offered 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 168 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik B. first to the eleventh of July, were suffered to elapse aftet 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 a judge of my first performance. A writer can seldom be content with the doubtful recompense 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 practise of physic, and an office in the British Musseum. His reputation was justly founded on the eighteen Volumes of the Journal Britannique, which he had supported, almost alone, with perseverance and success. This humble though useful labour, which had once been dignified by the Genius of Bayle and the learning of Le Clerc, was not disgraced by the taste, the knowledge, and the judgement of Maty : he exhibits a candid and pleasing view of the state of litterature 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. The author of the Jowrnal Britannique sometimes aspires to the character of a Poet and philosopher : his style is pure and elegant, and in his virtues or even his defects he may be ranked as one of the last disciples of the school of Fontenelle. His answer to my first letter was * Matthew Maty, M.D. (1718-1776), nnder-Ubrarian (1753) and librarian (1772) of the British Museum. ESSAY ON THE STUDY OP LITBBATUEE. 169 prompt and polite : after a careful examination he re- turned my Manuscript, with some animadversion and much applause; and when I visited London, in the ensuing winter, we discussed the design and execution 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 third, 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 manuscript was safely deposited in my desk ; and as my attention was engaged by new objects, the delay might have been prolonged 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 Frangoise, 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 when he published (in 1614) 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 in folio, Paris, 1696, e Typographia, EegiH.) Two years elapsed in silence; but in the spring of 1761 I yielded to the authority of a parent, and com- plyed, 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 170 GIBBOJTS AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik B. plenipotentiaries were named to assist at the Congress of Augsbnrg, which never met ; I wished to attend them as a Grentleman or a secretary, and my father fondly believed that the proof of some litterary talents might introduce me to pnblic notice and second the recommendations of my friends. After a last revisal I consulted with Mr. MaUet and Dr. Maty, who approved the design and pro- moted 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 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 En-glisli GetiUeman. The work was printed and published under the title of Essai sur Tetude de la Utterature, d Londres, dies T. Behcet et P. A. de Hondt. 1761, in a small Yolume in duodecimo. My dedication to my father, a proper and pious address, was composed the 28th of May : Dr. Maty's letter is dated the 16th of June ; and I received the first copy (June the 23rd) at Alresford, two days before I marched with the Hampshire Tnilitin- Some weeks afterwards, on the same ground, I presented my book to the late Duke of Tork, who breakfasted in Colonel Pitt's tent ; [and as the regiment was just returned from a field-day, the author appeared before his Eoyal Highness, somewhat disordered with PUBLICATION OP THE ESSAY. 171 sweat and dust, in the Cap, dress, and acoutrementa of a Captain of Grenadiers.] By my father's direction and Mallet's advice, a number of copies were given to several [of their acquaintance and my own ; to the Duke of Eiohmond, the Marquis of Caernarvon, the Earls of Litch- field, Waldegrave, Egremont, Shelburne, Bute, Hard- wicke, Bath, Granville, and Chesterfield, Lady Hervey, Sir Joseph Yorke, Sir Matthew Fetherstone, Messieurs Walpole, Scott, Wray, etc.] : two books were sent to the Count de Caylus, and the Dutchess d'Aiguillon, at Paris; I had reserved twenty for my friends at Lau- sanne, as the first fruits of my education and a grateful token of my remembrance ; and on all these persons I levied an imavoidable tax of civility and compliment. It is not surprizing that a work, of which the style and sentiments were so totally foreign, should have been more suooessfal abroad than at home. I was delighted by the copious extracts, the warm commendations, and the flattering predictions of the Journals 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 the 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 Beoket solicited of reprinting it: the public curiosity was imperfectly satisfied by a pyrated copy of 172 <■ GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoie B. tlie 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. Such is the power of a name. I have expatiated on the [loss of my litterary maiden- head] ; 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. Whatsoever 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 appreciate my juvenile work with the impartiality, and almost with the indifi"erence, of a stranger. In his answer to Lady Hervey, the Coimt de Caylus admires, or aifects to admire, " les livres sans nombre que Mr. Gibbon a lus et tres bien lus." 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 acquaintance 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, the title itself, the sense of the word Litterature is loosely and variously applied: a number of remarks and ex- amples, historical, critical, philosophical, are heaped on each other without method or connection; and, if we except some introductory pages, all the remaining chapters might indifferently be reversed or transposed. The obscurity of many passages is often affected, brevis CRITICISM OP HIS OWN ESSAY. 173 esse laboro, obscurus fio ; the desire of expressing per- haps 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 Eome and the new Chronology of Sir Isaac Newton form a specious argument. The patriotic and 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 dawning of a philosophic spirit en- lightens the general remarks on the study of history and of man. I am not displeased with the enquiry into the origin and nature of the Gods of Polytheism. [In a riper season of judgement and knowledge, I am tempted to review the curious question whether these fabulous Deities were mortal men or allegorical beings : perhaps the two systems might be blended in one ; perhaps the distance between them is in a great measure verbal and apparent. In the rapid course of this narrative I have only time to scatter two or three hasty observations. ThMt in the perusal of Homer a naturalist would pronounce his Gods and men to be of the same species, since they were capable of engendering together a fruitful progeny. That before the Eeformation St. Francis and the Virgin Mary 174 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoik B. had almost attained a similar Apotheosis ; and that the Saints and Angels, so different in their origin, were wor- shipped with the same rites, by the same nations. Tliat the current of superstition and science flowed from India to Egypt, from Egypt to Greece and Italy; and that the incarnations of the Ccelestial Deities, so darkly shadowed in our fragments of Egyptian theology, are copiously explained in the sacred books of the Hindoos. Fifteen centuries before Christ, the great Osiris, the invisible agent of the Universe, was born or manifested at Thebes, in Boeotia, under the name of Bacchus; the idea of Bishen is a metaphysical abstraction; the ad- ventures of Kishen, his perfect image, are those of a man who lived and died about five thousand years ago in the neighbourhood of Delhi.] 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 Eeynolds 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.* * The intelligent modern reader smiled at his attributing the thirty Mfill he inclined to adopt Gibbon's years' quiet of the turbulent vete- estimate of his early work. Its rans -mo composed the military faults are very clearly indicated ; colonies to the pacific influence of it is a collection of shrewd and Virgil's poetry. No subject has acute observations, without order been pursued with greater erudi- or connection. The defence of the tion and variety of opinion by early History of Rome and of Continental scholars than the Newton's Chronology are not more origin of polytheism. Gibbon's than specious ; there is ingenuity, theory was far advanced beyond but little more, in the theory about his age, and might suggestl some- the Georgics ; and Gibbon, in his thing like an amicable compromise maturer judgment, might have between the Symboliflts and Anti- CRITICISM OF HIS OWN WORK. 175 At Lausanne I composed the first chapters of my Essay in French, the familiar language of my conver- sation 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 practise, without any affectation, or design of repudiating (as Dr. Bentley would say) my vernacular idiom. But I should 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 [foolish] advice of prefixing an English dedication to a French book; a confusion of tongues which 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 under- stood 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 XV* and XVI'" 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 Eome 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 com'se between pedantry Symbolists of Germany, the respeo- fourth volume of the miscellaneous tive schools of Creuzer and Voas. works. — Milman. The essay is to be found in the 176 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoir B. and barbarism. The Eomans themselyes had sometimes attempted a more perilous task, of writing in a living language, and appealing to the taste and judgement of the natives. The vanity of TuUy 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, i. 19, ii. 1). But it must not be forgot 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 Khetoricians. In modem 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 Frederic, of the first of her philosophers and the greatest of her Kings. The just pride and laudable prejudice of England has restrained the 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 Chesterfield 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 THE MILITIA, , 177 reputation now reposes on the address of Voltaire, " Docte sermones utriusque linguae ; " and, by his English dedication to Queen Caroline, and his Essay on Epic poetry, it should seem that Voltaire himself wished to deserve a return of the same compliment., The exception of Count Hamilton cannot fau-ly be urged; though an Irishman by birth, he was educated in France from his childhood : yet I am surprized 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 " primus ego in patriam meam," etc. ; but with what success I have explored this un- trodden path must be left to the decision of my French readers. Dr. Maty, who might himself be questioned as a foreigner, has secured his retreat at my expence. " Je ne crois pas que vous vous piquiez d'etre moins facile a reconnoitre pour un Anglois que LucuUus pour un Eomain." 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 saillans, 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 recollec- tion of an active scene which bears no affinity to any 178 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOaRAPHY. [Memoir B. other period of my studious and social life. [From the general idea of a militia, I shall descend to the militia of England in the war before the last ; to the state of the Eegiment in which I served, and to the influence of that service on my personal situation and character. The defence of the state may be imposed on the body of the people, or it may be delegated to a select number of mercenaries ; the exercise of arms may be an occasional duty or a separate trade, and it is this differ- ence which forms the distinction between a militia and a standing army. Since the imion of England and Scotland, the public safety has never been attacked, and has seldom been threatened by a foreign invader; but the sea was long the sole safeguard of our isle. If the reign of the Tudors or the Stuarts was often signalized by the valour of our soldiers and sailors, they were dis- missed at the end of the campaign or the expedition for which they had been levied. The national spirit At home had subsided in the peaceful occupations of trade, manufactures, and husbandry, and if the obsolete forms of a militia were preserved, their discipline in the last age was less the object of confidence than of ridicule. " The country rings around with loud alarms. And raw in fields the rude Militia swarms : Mouths without hands maintained at vast expenoe, In peace a charge, in war a weak defence. Stout once a month they march, a blust'ring band, And ever but in times of need at hand. This was the mom when, issuing on the guard, Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepar'd, Of seeming arms to make a short essay ; Then hasten to be drunk — the business of the day." * * Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia. THE MILITIA. 179 The impotence of such unworthy soldiers was supplied from the sera of the restoration by the establishment of a body of mercenaries: the conclusion of each war encreased the numbers that were kept on foot, and although their progress was checked by the jealousy of , opposition,; time and necessity reconciled, or at least aiccustpm^d, a free country to the annual per- petuity of a standing army. The zeal of our patriots, both in and out of Parliament (I cannot add, both in and out of office), complained that the sword had been stolen from the hands of the people. They appealed to the victorious example of the Greeks and Romans, among whom every citizen was a soldier; and they applauded the happiness and independence of Switzerland, which, in the midst of the great monarchies of Europe, is sufficiently defended by a constitutional and effective militia. But their enthusiasm overlooked the modern changes in the art of war, and the insuperable difference of government and manners. The liberty of the Swiss is maintained by the concurrence of political causes : the superior discipline of their militia arises from the niunerous intermixture of Officers and soldiers whose youth has been trained in foreign service ; and the annual exercise of a few days is the sole tax which is imposed on a martial people, consisting for the most part of shepherds and husbandmen. In the primitive ages of (xreece and Eome, a war was determined by a battle, and a battle was decided by the personal qualities of strength, courage, and dexterity which every citizen derived from his domestic education. The public quarrel was his own ; he had himself voted in the assembly of the people ; and the private passions of the majority had 180 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik B. pronounced the general decree of the Republic. On the event of the contest each freeman had staked his fortune and familyi his liberty and life ; and if the enemy prevailed, he must expect to share in the common calamity of the ruin or servitude of his native city. By such irresistible motives were the first Greeks and Eomans summoned to the field ; but when the art was improved, when the war was protracted, their militia was transformed into a standing army, or their freedom was oppressed by the more regular forces of an ambitious neighbour. Two disgraceful events, the progress in the year forty-five of some naked highlanders, the invitation of the Hessians and Hanoverians in fifty-six, had betrayed and insulted the weakness of an unarmed people. The country Gentlemen of England unanimously demanded the establishment of a militia ; a patriot was expected — " Otia qui rumpet patriae, residesque movebit in arma viros." * and the merit of the plan, or at least of the execution, was assumed by Mr. Pitt, who was then in the full splendour of his popularity and power. In the new model the choice of thei^^ofScers was founded on the most constutional {sic) principle, since they were all obliged, from the Colonel to the Ensign, to prove a certain quali- fication, to give a landed security to the country, which entrusted them for her defence with the use of arms. But in the first steps of this institution the legislators of the Militia despaired of imitating the practise of Switzerland. Instead of summoning to the standard all the inhabitants ' " otia qui rumpet patria: residesque movebit Tullus in arma viros, et jam desneta triumpbis Agmiria." (Virg. Mn. vi. 814). ' FEAES OF FRENCH AGGRESSION. 181 of the Kingdom who were not disabled by age, or excused by some indispensable avocation, they directed that a moderate proportion should be chosen by lot for the term of three years, at the end of which their places were to be supplied by a new and similar ballot. Every man who was drawn had the option of serving in person, of finding a substitute, or of paying ten pounds; and, in a country already burthened, this honourable duty was degraded into an additional tax. It is reported that the subjects of Queen Elizabeth amounted to 1,172,674 men able to bear arms (Hume's History of England, vol. v. p. 482 of the last octavo edition) ; and if in the war before the last many active and vigorous hands were employed in the fleet and army, the difference must have been amply compensated by the general encrease of popu- lation, and we may smile at this mighty effort which reduced the national defence to the puny establishment of thirty-two thousand men. The Sunday afternoons had first been appointed for their exercise, but superstition clamoured against the profanation of the sabbath, and a useful day was substracted from the labour of the week. Whatever was the day, such rare and superficial practise could never have entitled them to the character of soldiers. But the King was invested with the power of calling the Militia into actual service on the event or the danger of rebellion or invasion; and in the year 1759 the British Islands were seriously threatened by the armaments of France. At this crisis the national spirit most gloriously disproved the charge of. effeminacy, which, in a popular Estimate, had been imputed -to the times; a martial enthusiasm seemed to have pervaded the land, and a constitutional army was formed under the command of 182 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHT. [Memoir B. tie nobility and gentry of England. After the naval victory of Sir Edward Hawke * (Nov^niber 20'^ 1759), the danger no longer subsisted ; yet, instead of disbanding the first regiments of militia, the remainder Was embodied the ensuing year, and public unanimity applauded their! illegal continuance in the field till the end of the War. In this new mode of service they were subject, like the regulars, to martial law: they received the same advan- tages of pay and cloathing, and the families, at least of the principals, were maintained at the charge of the parish. At a distance from their respective counties these provincial corps were stationed, aid removed, and encamped by the command of the Secretary at War : the officers and men were trained in the habits of subordina- tion, nor is it surprizing that some regiments should have assumed the discipline and appearance of veteran troops. With the skill they soon imbibed the spirit of mercenaries, the character of a militia was lost; and, under that specious name, the crown had acquired a second army more costly and less useful than the first. The most beneficial effect of this institution was to eradicate among the Country gentlemen the relicks of Tory, or rather of Jacobite prejudice. The accession of a British king reconciled them to the government, and even to the court ; but they have been since accused of transferring their passive loyalty from the Stuarts to the family of Brunswick ; and I have heard Mr. Burke exclaim in the house of Commons, " They have changed the Idol, but they have preserved the Idolatry." By the general ardour of the times, my father, a * His victory over De Conflans, near Quiberon. THE HAMPSHIEE MILITIA. 183 new Cmcinnatus, was drawn from the plough: his authority and advice prevailed on me to relinquish my studies ; a general meeting was held at Winchester ; and before we knew the consequences of an irre- trievable step, we accepted (June 12*, 1759) our re- spective commissions of Major and Captain in the South battalion of the Hampshire. The proportion of the County of Southampton had been fixed at nine hundred and sixty men, who were divided into the two regiments of the North and South, each consisting of eight companies. By the special exemption of the isle of Wight we lost a company ; our Colonel resigned, and we were reduced to the legal definition of an independent battalion, of a Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant (Sir Thomas Worsley, Baronet *), a Major, five Captains, seven lieutenants, seven Ensigns, twenty-one Serjeants, fourteen drummers, and four hundred and twenty, rank and file. I will not renew our prolix and passionate dispute with the Duke of Bolton, our Lord-Lieutenant, which at that time appeared to me an object of the most serious importance : by the interpretation of an act of parliament, we con- tested his right of naming himself Colonel of the two Battalions ; after the final decision of the Attorney- general and Secretary at War, his poor revenge was confined to the use and abuse of his power, in the choice of an Adjutant and the promotion of officers. In the year 1759 our ballot was slowly compleated, and as the fear of an invasion passed away, we began to hope, my father and myself, that our campaigns would extend no farther than Petersfield and Alton, the seat of our • Of Pilewell, Hants, and Appnldnrcombe, Isle of Wight. He died in 1768. 184 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY." [Memoie B. particular companies. We were undeceived by the king's sign-manual for our embodying, which was issued May 10"', 1760. It was too late to retreat ; it was too soon t6 repent : the Battalion on the 4th of June assembled' at Winchester, from whence, in about a fortnight, we were removed, at our own request, for the benefit of a foreign education. In a new-raised Militia the neighbourhood of home was always found inconvenient to the officers and mischievous to the men. ■ The battalion continued in actual service above two years and a half, from May 10, 1760, to December 23, 1762. In this period of a military life I have neithej- sieges nor battles to relate ; but, like my brother Major Sturgeon, I shall describe our marches and counter- marches as they are faithfully recorded in my own journal or commentary of the times, i. Our first and most agree- able station was at Blandford, in Dorsetshire, where we enjoyed about two months (June ;17 — August 23) the beauty of the country, the hospitality of the neighbouring gentlemen, the novelty of command and exercise, and the consciousness of our daily and rapid improvements, ii. From this school we were led against the enemy, a body of French three thousand two hundred strong, who had occupied Portehester castle, near Portsmouth : it must not, indeed, be dissembled that our enemies were naked, unarmed prisoners, the object of pity rather than of terror ; their misery was somewhat alleviated by public and private bounty, but their sufferings exhibited the evils of war, and their noisy spirits the character of the nation. During the months of September, October, and November, 1760, we performed this disagreable duty by large detachments of a Captain, four subalterns, and two CHANGING QUARTERS. 185 hundred and thirty men, at' first from Hilsea barracks, and afterwards from our quarters at Titchfield and Fareham. The barracks within the Portsmouth lines are a square of low, ill-built huts, in a damp and dreary- situation : on this unwholsome spot we lost inany men by feavers and the small-pox ; and our dispute with the Duke of Bolton, which produced a series of arrests, memorials, and court-martials, was not less pernicious to the discipline than to the peace of the regiment, iii. Ke- joycing in our escape from this sink of distemper and discord, we performed with alacrity a long mai:ch (De- eeinber 1-11) to Cranbrook, in the Weald of Keiit, where we had been sent to guard eighteen hundred French prisoners at Sissinghurst. The inconceivable dirtyness of the season, the country, and the spot aggravated the hardships of a duty too heavy for our numbers ; but these hardships were of short duration, and before the end of the month we were relieved by the interest of our Tory friends under the new reign, iv. At Dover, in the space of five months, we began to breathe (December 27, 1760— May 31, 1761) ; for the men the quarters were healthy and plentiful, and our dull leisure was enlivened by the society of the fourteenth Eegiment in the castle, and some sea-parties in the spring. Om- persecutions were at an end : the command was settled ; we smiled at our own prowess, as we exercised each morn- ing in sight of the French coast; and before we left Dover we had recovered the union and discipline which we possessed at our departure from Blandford. v. In the summer of 1761 a camp was formed near Winchester, in which we solicited and obtained a place. Our march from Dover to Alton, in Hampshire, was a pleasant walk 186 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoir B. (June 1-12) : I was appointed Captain of tlie new company of Grenadiers, and, with proper cloathing and acoutrements, we assumed somewhat of the appearance of regular troops. The four months (June 25 — October 21) of this encampment were the most splendid and useful period of our military life. Our establishment amounted to near five thousand men — the thirty-fourth Eegiment of foot, and six militia corps, the Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, South Hampshire, Berkshire, and the North and South Gloucestershire. The regulars were satisfied with their ideal pre-eminence ; the Gloucestershire, Berk- shire, and Dorsetshire approached by successive steps the superior merit of the Wiltshire, the pride and pattern of the Militia — an active, steady, -well-appointed regiment of eight hundred men, which had been formed by the strict and skilfull discipline of their Colonel, Lord Bruce.* At our entrance into camp we were indisputably the last and worst; but we were excited by a generous shame — " Extremos pudeat rediisse " — and such was our indefatigable labour that, in the general reviews, the South Hampshire were rather a credit than a disgrace to the line. A friendly emulation, ready to teach and eager to leam, assisted our mutual progress ; but the great evolutions, the exercise of acting and moving as an army which constitutes the best lessons of a camp, never entered the thoughts of the Earl of Effingham,t our drowzy General, vi. The Devizes, our * Thomaa Bruce Brudenell, born in the same year. Died 1814. 1730, succeeded his uncle as second t Thomas Howard, second Earl Baron Bruce of Tottenham, 1747. of Effingham, succeeded his father The earldom of Ailesbury, -vrhich 1743; died 1763. His wife, Eliza- had become extinct on the death beth Beckford, was a sister of the of his predecessor, the third earl, in author of VatheJt. 1747, was revived in his favour MILITIA EXPERIENCES. 187 winter quarters during four months (October 23, 1761 — February 28, 1762), are a populous towii, full of disordei? and disease : the men who were allowed to work earned too much money, and their drunken quarrels with the townsmen and Colonel Barre's black musqueteers * were painfully repressed by the sharp sentences of one and twenty Court-martials. The Devizes afforded, however, a great number of fine young recruits, whom we enlisted from the Eegimental stock-purse without much regard to the forms or the spirit of the Militia laws. vii. After a short march and halt at Salisbury, we paid a second visit of ten weeks (March 9 — May 31) to our old friends at Blandford, where, in that garden of Eng- land, we again experienced the warm and constant hospitality of the natives. The spring was favourable to our military exercise, and the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, who had cherished our infancy now applauded a Eegi- ment in appearance and discipline, not inferior to their own. viii. The necessity of discharging a great number of men, whose term of three years was expired, forbade our encampment in the summer of 1762, and the colours were stationed at Southampton in the last six or seven months (June — December) of our actual service. But after so long an indulgence we could not complain that, during many of the first and last weeks of this period, a detachment almost equal to the whole was required to guard the French prisoners at Forton and Fareham. The operation of the ballot was slow and tedious. In the months of August and September our life at South- ampton was, indeed, gay and busy; the battalion had » The 106th Eegiment, raised in the peace; it -was commanded by 1761 and disbanded shortly after Colonel Isaac Barr^. 188 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoik B. been renewed in youth, and vigour, and so rapid was the improTement that, had the militia lasted another year, we should not have yielded to the most perfect of our brethren. The prelinaries {sie) of peace and the suspen- sion of arms determined our fate : we were dismissed with the thanks of the king and parliament, and on the 23rd of December, 1762, the companies were disembodyed at tlieir respective homes. The officers possessed of property rejoiced in their freedom ; those who had none lamented the loss of their pay and profession; but it was found by experience that the greatest part of the men were rather civilized than corrupted by the habits of military subordination.] A young mind, unless it be of a cold and languid . temper, is dazzled even by the play of arms ; and in the first sallies of my enthusiasm I had seriously wished and tryed to embrace the regular profession of a soldier. The military feaver was cooled by the enjoyment of our mimic Bellona, who gradually unveiled her naked de- formity. How often did I sigh for my true situation of a private gentleman and a man of letters : bow often did I repeat the complaints of Cicero "Clitellse bovi sunt impositse. Est incredibile quam me negotii tsedeat. Hie cursus animi et industriae mese prseclarel opera cessat. Lucem, Ivbros, urbem, domum, vos desidero. Sed feram ut potero, sit modo annuum ; Si prorogatur, actum est." * From a service without danger I might indeed have * "Est incredibile quam me forum, uibem, domum, vos desidero. negotii ttedeat, Non habet satis Sed feram ut potero; sit modo magnum campum, ille tibi non annuum. Si prorogatur actum est ignotus cursus animi et industriie . . . cliteltse bovi sunt impositse, mese praeclara opera : cessat. . . . Cillane, non est nostrum onus."— Deuique hsec non desidero ; lucem, Epitt. ad Attlcum, lib. v. 15. EXPERIENCES OF MILITIA LIFE. 189 retired without disgrace ; but as often as I hinted a wisli of resigning, my fetters were riveted by [[my. father's authority, the entreaties of Sir Thomas Worsley, and some regard for the welKare of a corps of which I was the principal support. My proper province was the care of my own, and afterwards of the Grenadier, company : but, with the rank of first captain, I possessed the con- fidence, and supplied the place of the Colonel and Mgjor. In their presence or in their absence I acted as the commanding officer : every memorial and letter relative to our disputes was the work of my pen ; the detach- ments or court-martials of any delicacy or importance were my extraordinary duties ; and to supersede the Duke of Bolton's adjutant, I always exercised the Bat- talion in the field. Sir Thomas Worsley was an easy good-humoured man fond of the table and of his bed ; our conferences were marked by every stroke of the midnight and morning hom's, and the same drum which invited him to rest has often summoned me to the parade. His example encouraged the daily practise of hard and even excessive drinking which has sown in my constitu- tion the seeds of the gout]. The loss of so many busy and idle houi's was not compensated by any elegant pleasure ; and my temper was insensibly soured by the society of our rustic officers Qwho were alike deficient in the knowledge of scholars, and the manners of gentlemen]. 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 exercise 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 190 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik B. 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 cha- racters 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 meditated 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 modem battalion gave me a clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legions, and the Captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Boman Empire. When I complaiu 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 * Charles TheophilusGuiachardt in Africa. When Frederic the. (or Guichard), a memher of a Great was in Silesia in, 1757, he French refugee family, was bom summoned Guisohardt to Breslan, in Magdeburg in 1724 or 1725: and was much attracted by him. he was destined for the Protestant He asked him on one occasion ministry, but following his natural whom he considered the best of bent, he became a soldier, and Caesar's aides-de-camp. " Quintus served in the Dutch army. Icilius," replied Gnischardt. After the treaty of Aix-la-Cha- '• Then," said Frederic, " you shall pelle in 1748, he employed his be my Quintus Icilius" — a sobri- leisure in writing his Memoires quet which he thenceforwtird as- militaires sur les Orecs et les Bo- sumed. He rose to the rank of mains. He subsequently translated colonel in the King's service, and the Military Institutions of Ono- in 1773 brought out an enlarged Sander, Arrian's Tactics, and Hir- edition of his work, and died in tins' Analysis of Caesar's campaigns 1775. RETURN TO STUDIES. 191 obliged to leath as well as to teacli. The dissipation of Blandford and the disputes of Portsmouth consumed the hours which were not iemployed in the field; and amid the pei^petual hurry of an Inn, a barrack, or a guard-room, all litterary 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 think- ing, 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 publication had prompted me to investigate the Nature of the Gods: my enquiries led me to the Histoire Critique du Manicheisme 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 recoveiy I never relapsed into indo- lence ; and my example might prove that in the life most adverse 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 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 litterary 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 192 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik B. 1 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 performing the same labour in an equal number of weeks. After the first difficulties were sur- mounted, the language of Nature and harmony soon became easy and familiar, and each day I sailed on the Ocean with a brisker gale and a more steady course. Ev 5' ave/ios TrprivWop(n}ae , , , El nil trrdtrts ianiivftpa . . , iL/iepae irdrpas. {Olynvp. xii.) If my childish revolt against the Eeligion 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 240 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHY. [Memoie C. 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 Cloyster. Had I obtained a more early deliverance from the regions of sloth and pedantry, had I been sent abroad with the indulgence which the favour and fortune of my father might have allowed, I should probably have herded with the young travellers of my own nation, and my attainments in language and manners and science would have been such as they usually import from the continent. But my religious error fixed me at Lausanne, in a state of banish- ment 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 : I was reduced to seek my amusement in myself and my books; and in the society of the natives, who considered me as their fellow-citizen, I insensibly lost the prejudices of an Englishman. My friends may indeed complain that this foreign education has eradicated the love and preference of my native country ; my mother-tongue was grown less familiar, and I had few objects to remember and fewer to regret in the British islands. If I was impatient of my situation, it was rather as a prisoner than as an exile ; and I should gladly have accepted a small independent estate on the easy terms of passing my life in Switzer- land with the two persons who possessed the different affections of my heart. BETUEN TO ENGLAND. 241 At length, in the Jspring of the year 1758, my father signified his permission and his pleasure that I should immediately return home. The jealousy of war pro- hibited my passage through France, but I assumed the name and dress of a Swiss OflScer in the Dutch serYice, without sufficient reflection on the danger of a discovery and the guilt of a disguise. I took my leave of Lausanne on the 11th of April, with a mixture of joy and grief, and expressed my sincere resolution of visiting, as a man, the persons and places which had been so dear to my youth. My Journey was slow and pleasant, through the provinces of Franche-Comte, Lorraine, Luxembourg, and Liege. After dropping my two military companions at their garrisons of Maestricht and Bois-le-Duc, I indulged myself in a short visit to the Hague and Eotterdam, embarked at the Brill, and landed in England on the 4th of May, 1758, after an absence of four years, ten months, and fifteen days. Section IL At the age of twenty-one I returned as a stranger, with a prejudice rather adverse than favourable to my native country. My aunt, Mrs. Catherine Porten, still kept a boarding-house at Westminster ; and the nurse of my infancy, the friend of my youth, was the only person in England of whom I had cherished a tender remembrance, whose kind embraces I was impatient to seek. Of my father's character I had little knowledge; my infancy had seldom been favoured with his smiles. I could not forget the severity of his look and language at our last parting; his letters to Lausanne had been B 242 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. few, brief, and imperious; and in the relation between us, I saw nothing but authority on his side and depend- ence on mine. About three years before my return from Switzerland he had engaged in a second marriage with Mrs. Dorothea Patton, a lady of forty years of age, of a respectable family and a moderate fortune. This step might be interpreted as an act of his displeasure, and, without knowing her, I was disposed to hate the rival of my mother and the enemy of her son. My favourite Classics might teach me to dread the bowl or dagger of a stepmother. Euripides has observed that a second wife is more cruel than a viper to the children of a former bed, and on the road I had often muttered the line of Virgil — " Est mihi namque domi pater, est injusta noverca." 5ut my fears and prejudice were removed by her presence, and this viper appeared to be a woman of polished manners, an excellent understanding, and an amiable character. Her behaviour at our first meeting assured me that the surface would be smooth, and the suspicion of artifice was gradually dispelled by the discovery of her warm and exquisite sensibility. After some reserve on my side, our minds associated in confidence and friend- ship ; and as Mrs. Gibbon had neither children, nor hopes of children of her own, we more easily adopted the tender names and genuine sentiments of mother and of son. By her mediation, perhaps, my father was prepared to receive me as a man and a friend. The rigour of parental discipline has been relaxed by the philosophy and softness of the age, and if he remembered how he had himself trembled in the presence of a stem father, it was only to adopt a more liberal and indulgent mode COMING OF AGE. 243 of behaviour. All constraint was banished on our first interview, and we continued to live on the same terms of easy and equal politeness. He applauded the success of my education ; every word and action was expressive of the most cordial affection, and our serene friendship would never have been darkened by a cloud if his fortune had been adequate to his wishes, or if his oeconomy had always been proportioned to his fortune. Some years of retirement in Hampshire had allowed him to breathe, but it was only with the legal consent of his son that he could break the fetters of an entail, and alleviate in some degree the weight of his incumbrances. The time of my recall had been so nicely computed that I arrived in London three days before I was of age, and my blind submission to the sacrifice which he re- quired has been justified by the more enlightened sense of duty and prudence. According to the forms and fictions of our law, I levied a fine, I suffered a recovery ; the entail was cut off; a sum of ten thousand pounds was raised on mortgage for my father's use, and he acknowledged the obligation by settling on me for life an annuity of three hundred pounds a year. During the seven years (1758-1760, 1765-1770) which I divided between London and Buriton, my ordinary expences were reduced to this moderate stipend ; the extraordinaries of the Militia and my travels (1760-1765) were defrayed, the former by my pay of Captain, the latter by a stipu- lated supply of twelve hundred pounds, and I may claim the singidar merit of never having borrowed a shilling during the whole term of my filial dependence. From the fashionable follies of English youth, the vanity of dress, the mischief of play, and the impulse of perpetual 244 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. motion, I was saved by temper as well as by ceconomy ; and with the private establishment of a lodging, a servant, and a chair, my amusements were simple, and my appe- tites moderate. As soon as my purse was emptied by the unavoidable charges of a town life, I retired without a murmur to the shelter of domestic hospitality, and all circulation was suspended for some months; like those animals who repose in a torpid state, without any occasion to exhaust or renovate their vital juices. Of the two years between my return to England and the embodying of the Hampshire militia (May, 1758 — May, 1760), I passed about ten months in London. The metropolis affords many amusements, which are open to all : it is itself a perpetual and astonishing spectacle to the curious eye ; and each taste, every sense, may be gratified by the variety of objects that will occur in. the long circuit of a morning walk. I assiduously frequented the Theatres at a very propitious sera, when a constella- tion of excellent actors, both in tragedy and comedy, was eclipsed by the meridian brightness of Garrick, in the maturity of his judgement and the vigour of his per- formance. The pleasures of a town life, the daily round from the tavern to the play, from the play to the coffee- house, from the Coffee-house to the Bagnio, are within the reach of every man who is regardless of his money, his health, and his company; nor will I deny that, by the contagion of example, I was sometimes seduced. The better habits which I had formed at Lausanne induced me to seek a more rational and elegant society ; but my search was not easy or successful, and the first tryal of a capital did not correspond with the gay pictures of my fancy. I had promised myself the pleasure of LONDON SOCIETY. 245 conversing with every man of litterary fame ; but our most eminent authors were remote in Scotland, or scattered in the country, or buried in the Universities, or busy in their callings, or unsocial in their tempers, or in a station too high or too low to meet the approaches of a solitary youth. Had the rank and fortune of my parents given them an annual establishment in town, their house would have introduced me to an encreasing circle of their equals; but my father had always delighted in a club of peers or of farmers, 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 foreigner in a vast and unknown city, and at my entrance into life I was reduced to some dull family parties, to some old Tories of the Cocoa-tree, and to some casual connections, such as my taste and esteem would never have selected. The most useful of my father's friends were the Mallets; they entertained me with civility and kindness, at first on his, and afterwards on my own account ; and I was soon (if I may use Lord Chesterfield's word) domesticated in the family. Mr. Mallet himself, a name among the English poets, is praised by an unforgiving enemy (Dr. Johnson) for the ease and elegance of his conversation ; and his wife, what- soever might be her faults, was not deficient in wit or knowledge. By his assistance I was introduced to Lady Hervey, the mother of the present Earl of Bristol, who had established a French house in St. James's place. At an advanced period of life, she was distinguished by her taste and politeness; her dinners were select: every evening her drawing-room was filled by a succession of the best company of both sexes and all nations ; nor was 246 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik C. I displeased at her preference and even affectation of the books, the language, and manners of the Continent. But my progress in the English World was in general left to my own efforts, and those efforts were languid and slow. I was not endowed by Nature or art with those happy gifts of confidence and address which unlock every door and every bosom : it would be unreasonable to complain of the just consequences of my sickly childhood, foreign education, and reserved disposition; but, amidst the crowds of London, I often breathed a sigh towards the society of Lausanne.] 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, of which I occupied the most agreable apartment; and if strangers 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 chearful ; the downs commanded the prospect of the sea, 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 his 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. With the produce he maintained a number of men and horses, which were ihultiplied by the intermixture of domestic and rural servants; and in the intervals of labour, the favourite LIFE AT BUBITON. 247 team, an 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, who prided herself in the elegance of her occasional dinners, and from the dirty * avarice of Madame Pavillard I was transported to the neatness and luxury of an English table. Our immediate neighbom-hood was rare and rustic ; but from the verge of our hills, as far as Chichester and Goodwood, the weste^rn district of Sus^x was filled with noble seats and hospitable families, with whom we maintained a friendly, and might have enjoyed a frequent, intercourse. But the comforts of my retirement did not depend on the ordinary pleasures of the coTintry. [The science of farming could never be adapted to my understanding ; and, in the command of an ample manor, I Valued the supply of the table rather thein the exercise of the field.] I never handled a gun, I seldom mounted an horse, and my walks were soon terminated by [some shady bench of philosophic contempla,tion. When my father galloped away on a fleet hunter to meet the Duke of Eichmond'g foxhounds, I saw him depart without the wish or idea of following his footsteps. Yet I was sometimes obliged to accompany him to the provincial assemblies of races, assizes, and balls. After the militia business began to be agitated, many tedious days were consumed at Peters- field, Alton, and Winchester, in our meetings of Justices and Deputy-Lieutenants. In the contest for Hampshire in 1759 between Stuart and Legge, we supported the former candidate with some trouble and expence ; and I had an opportunity of observing in his train the politics * " Uncleanly " in Lord Sheffield's edition. 248 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoie C. and humours of an English canvass. From these excur- sions I always returned with pleasure to my home at Buriton : a domestic bond of affection and confidence is the purest blessing of life ; and, as my stay was voluntary, I was received and dismissed with smiles. The love of learning was so deeply implanted in my mind, as an amusement and even as a passion, that it could no longer be eradicated by any change, of place or circumstances; In some respects my removal from Switzerland to England was not unfavourable to the progress of my studies. The library at Buriton was my first inheritance and peculiar domain. It] was stuffed with much trash of the last age, with much High Church divinity and politics, which have long since gone to their proper place ; but it contained some valuable Editions of the Classics and Fathers, the. choice, as it should seem, of Mr. Law, and many English publications of the times had been occasionally added. [The right of alienating or purchasing I was allowed to exercise without much controul or much assistance; my bookseller's bill was a weighty though pleasant article of expence ; and the annual sales in London afforded a plentiful feast, at which my litterary hunger was provoked and gratified. The critical review of my library may be reserved for the season of its maturity ; after observing in this place that I have never purchased a book from a motive of ostenta- tion, that, every volume was read or examined before it was deposited on the shelf; and that I soon adopted the tolerating maxim of the elder Pliny, " Nullum esse librum tam malum, ut non ex aliqua parte prodesset." After my library, I must not forget an occasional place of weekly study, the parish Church, which I . EELIGIOUS STUDIES. 249 frequented commonly twice every Sunday, in conformity ■with the pious or decent custom of the family. I deposited in our pew the octavo Volumes of Grabe's Septnagint, and a Greek Testament of a convenient edition ; and in the lessonsi Gospels, and Epistles of the morning and evening service, I accompanied the reader in the original text, or the most ancient version of the Bible. Nor was the use of this study confined to words alone: during the psalms, at least, and the sermon I revolved the sense of the chapters which I had read and heard ; and the doubts, alas ! or objections that invincibly rushed on my mind were almost always multiplied by the learned expositors whom I consulted on my return home. Of these Ecclesiastical meditations few were transcribed, and still fewer have been preserved; but I find among my papers a polite and elaborate reply from Dr. Hurd (now Bishop of Worcester), to whom I had addressed, without my name, a critical disquisition on the sixth Chapter of the book of Daniel, Since my escape from Popery I had humbly acquiesced in the common creed of the Protestant Churches; but in the latter end of the year 1759 the famous treatise of Grotius 1 (de veritate Eeligibnis Christianse) first engaged me in a regular tryal of the evidence of Christianity. By every possible light that reason and history can afford, I have repeatedly viewed the important subject ; nor was it my fault if I said with Montesquieu, " Je lis pour m'edifier mais cette lecture produit souvent en moi un effet tout contraire," since I am conscious to myseK that the love of truth and the spirit of freedom directed my search. The most accurate philosophers' and the most orthodox Divines will perhaps agree that the belief of 250 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. miracles and mysteries caimot be supported on the brittle basis, the distant report, of human testimony, and that the faith as well as the virtue of a Christian must be formed and fortified by the inspiration of Grace. In the pregnant state of a young mind, the ideas which reading and meditation have generated are im- patient to deliver themselves on paper. Among the works of my leisure, I had planned and undertaken a more elaborate composition; and the French language was used without affectation, as most easy and familiar to my pen. I was animated by the desire of vindicating a favourite study from the unjust contempt of the French philosophers, who had degraded Scholars or Erudits among the lowest mechanics of science. I was ambitious to prove, by my example as well as by my arguments, that all the nobler faculties, as well as the memory, might be employed and displayed in the study of ancient litterature. I had began to select and adorn the various proofs and illustrations which had offered themselves in the perusal of the Classics, and some pages or chapters of my Essay were finished before my departure from Lausanne. The hurry of the journey and the novelty of the English World suspended my application, but the] object was ever before my eyes ; and no more than ten days (from the first to the eleventh of July, 1758) were suffered to elapse after my summer establishment at Buriton. My Essay was compleated in about six weeks ; and as soon as a fair €opy had been transcribed by one of the French prisoners at Petersfield, I looked round for a critic and a judge of my first performance. [An author is seldom content with the doubtful reward of self-approbation; but a youth, ignorant of mankind and of himself, may reasonably] STUDY OP ENGLISH STYLE. 251 desire to weigli his talents in some scales less partial than his own. [|My choice of Dr. Maty was judj-cious and fortunate. By descent and education he was a French- man : the eighteen Volumes (1750-1755) of his Journal BHtanniqm are a fair monument of a learned and liberal mind ; and in the delicacy of his taste and philosophy, that ingenious physician might be considered as the last disciple of the school of Fontenelle. His answer to the first letter of a stranger was prompt and polite ; and after a careful examination, he returned my manuscript with some animadversion and much applause. In the ensuing winter, when I visited my Judge at the British Musseum, we discussed the design and execution in several free and familiar conversations. In a short excursion to Buriton I reviewed my Essay according to his friendly advice : a third was suppressed; a third was added; a third was altered. After marking the date (February 3* 1759) by a short preface, the Manuscript was deposited in my bureau. I still shrunk from the press with the terrors of virgin modesty, and the nine years of Horace might have slipped away before I could have resolved to encounter the public eye. My hours were agreably spent among the Latin and English classics; and the perfect recovery of my own language was the serious and laudable object of my diligence. By the wise counsel of Mr. Mallet^ himself no contemptible writer, I studied, in the prose of Swift and Addison, the purity, the grace, the idiom, of the English style ; and my emula- tion was kindled by the recent histories of Hume and Eobertson; far distant as I was from the presumptuous hope that my name might one day be ranked with those celebrated names. In my first Essay I had gathered some 252 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoib C. of the flowers, in my second I would have removed some of the thorns, of litterature. A passage of Livy (xxxviii. 38) involved me in the dry and dark treatises of Greaves, Arbuthaot, Hooper, Bernard, Eisenschmidt, la Barre, Freret, Gronovius, etc., and in my French work (c. xx.) I absurdly send my reader to my own manuscript remarks on the measures, weights, and coins of the ancients. This important subject, an abstruse and technical language, is connected with the Geography, history, and ceconomy of Greece and Eome ; but my half-finished researches were abruptly termioated by the sound of the Militia drum.] In the outset of a glorious war the English people had been defended and (sie) the aid of German mercenaries. A national Militia has been the cry of every patriot since the Eevolution ; and this measure, both in parliament and in the field, was supported by the Country Gentle- men or Tories, who insensibly transferred their loyalty to the house of Hanover. In the act of offering our names and receiving our commissions, as Major and Captain in the Hampshire Eegiment (June 12, 1759), we had not supposed that we should be dragged away, my father from his farm, myself from my books, and condemned more than two years and a half (May 10, 1760— 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 ridicnloiis ; and after the pretence of an invasion 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 came down, it was WITH THE MILITIA. 253. too late to retreat and too soon to repent. The south battalion of the Hampshire militia was a small indepen- dent corps of four hundred and seventy-six, officers and men, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas "Worsley, vfho, 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 effective 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 and discord (September 1) ; to Cranbrook in the Weald of Kent (December 11) ; to the sea-coast of Dover (December 27) ; to Winchester camp (June 25, 1761); 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 resort 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 only occasion where we saw the face of an enemy was in 254 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir G. our duty at Porchester castle and Sissingliurst, wliicli were occupied by above five thousand Frencliman. These enemies, it is true, were naked, unarmed prisoners : they were relieved by public and private bounty ; but their distress exhibited the calamities of War : and their joyous noise the vivacity of the nation.] But the most splendid and useful scene of our life, was a four months encamp- ment on Winchester down, under the command of the Earl of Effingham. Our army consisted of the thirty- fourth Eegiment of foot and six Militia corps, [the Wilt- shire, Dorsetshire, Berkshire, North and South Gloster- shire, and South Hampshire, amounting to five thousand men ; and the discipline of the Wiltshire claimed a pre- eminence which was not disputed by the regulars them- selves.] The consciousness of our defects was stimulated by friendly emulation : we improved our time and oppor- tunities 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. [My first work, the Essai sur I'etuAe de la lAtteratwe, was published in the year 1761, during the service of the Militia. If I had yielded to the impulse of youthful vanity, if I had given my Manuscript to the World, because I was tired of keeping it in my closet, the venial sin might be honestly confessed, and would be easily pardoned. But I can affirm, in truth and conscience, that it was forced from my reluctant hands by the advice and PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST ESSAY. 255 authority of my father. He was himself impatient to enjoy the glory of his son ; and he fondly conceived that the success of a Classical performance in the French language might recommend the author to some honourable employment in the approaching congress of Augsburgh, which indeed was refused to the pacific wishes of Europe. After a last revisal I anxiously consulted my two Judges, Mr. Mallet and Dr. Maty : they approved the design and promoted the execution. The praeposterous mixture of an English dedication was enjoyned by Mr. Mallet ; and he delivered the Manuscript to Becket, a bookseller, who undertook the impression in a small volume in duodecimo, on the easy terms of supplying me with a certain number of copies. Dr. Maty engaged, in my absence, to correct the sheets ; and it was without my knowledge that he inserted an elegant and flattering Epistle — so prudent, however, that, in case of a defeat, he might excuse his friendly indulgence to a young English Gentleman. I received the first copy at Alresford (June 23, 1761) two days before I marched into camp. Some weeks after- wards, on the same ground, I presented my book to the late Duke of York ; and as the Battalion was returning from a field-day, the author, somewhat disfigured with sweat and dust, appeared before his Eoyal Highness in the cap, dress, and accoutrements of a grenadier. Ac- cording to my father's and Mallet's directions, my litterary gifts were distributed to several eminent cha- racters in England and France. I had reserved for my friends at Lausanne some tokens of my gratitude and affection ; and from these correspondents I reaped a sure harvest of civility and praise. It is not surpriziag that a work, in language and manner so totally foreign,, should 256 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. have been more favourably entertained abroad than at home : I was delighted with the copious extracts, warm applause, and fair predictions of the Journals of Holland and Paris; and a new edition (I believe of Geneva) diffused its fame, or at least its circulation, on the Con- tinent. In Britain it was treated with cold indifference, little read, and speedily forgotten ; the bookseller mur- mured that a small impression was slowly dispersed, and the author (had his feelings been more exquisite) might have wept over the baldness and blunder of his English translation. Fifteen years afterwards (such is the power of a name), the first Volume of my history revived the memory of my Essay on the study of literature : the shops were eagerly searched ; and when the book occurs in an auction, the fanciful price is raised from half a crown to a Guinea or thirty shillings. The public curiosity was gratified in some degree by a pyrated Edition at Dublin. But, as I was proprietor of the copy, I denied Becket the permission, which he solicited, of reprinting it ; and my denial was the effect of pride rather than modesty. Yet, in a cool, impartial perusal, near thirty years after the first effusion, I am less ashamed than I might have ex- pected of this juvenile treatise. The want of order and perspicuity, the ardour of style and the affectation of wit (CEuvres de Rousseau, tom. xxxiii. p. 88), are the errors of an ambitious youth. But the substance is the fruit of sound though superficial reading and thinking ; the spirit is liberal ; and my Essay contains the seeds of some ideas, especially on the Polytheism of the ancients, which might deserve the illustrations of a riper judgement. The merit of language still remains, and that merit is singular : the examples of Count Hamilton and the STUDIES OP A MILITIA OFFICER. 257 Chevalier Eamsay are inadequate, and I may esteem myself the first British writer who has aspired to the purity and elegance of a French style.* In the narrative of my litterary life, the first seven or •eight months of the Militia must be thrown aside as an absolute blank. My hours were miserably wasted in the exercises of the field or of the bottle, in the contemptible details and disputes of the Battalion. In the tumultuous hurry of an Iim, a barrack, or a guard-room, I was alike destitute of leisure and of books ; but no sooner had we reached the quiet solitude of Dover, than my mind resumed its elasticity, and I can remember the pleasure with which I opened a volume of TuUy's philosophical works, and afterwards followed my enquiries into the Critical history of Manicheism, by the moderate and sagacious Beausobre. After this recovery I never relapsed into indolence, and my example might prove that, in the life most adverse to study, some hours may be stolen, some minutes may be snatched. Amidst the agitation of A camp, I sometimes thought and read in my tent, and in the more settled quarters of the Devizes, Blandford, and Southampton, I always secured a separate lodging and sufBcient books. In the Militia I confirmed and much improved my knowledge of the Greek language. Heason and the practise of Scaliger directed me to Homer, the father of poetry, the bible of the ancients. He ran through the Iliad in twenty-one days ; but I was * Two modem writers of imagi- in a foreign language by an Bng- natioD, Mr. Beokford and the late lishman ia the translation of Hudi- Mr. Hope, originally wrote, the bras by Mr. Townley. — ^Milman. line Vathelc, the other AnatUuius, To these may be added the late in French; but perhaps the most Lord Stanhope's fli'sioiVe^JejPnnce* extraordinary effort of composition de Condi: a 258 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. not dissatisfied with my own diligence, which accomplished the same task in as many weeks. From the Iliad, I proceeded with ease and delight to the Odyssey ; the simple prose of Strabo and the sublime figures of Lon- ginus enlarged my sphere of Geography and Criticism ; and in a dissertation of thirty folio pages, I weighed in my own scales the Epistles of Horace and the Com- mentary of Hurd. The daily occupations of the Militia introduced me to the science of Tactics, which opened a new field of reading and remark. The narratives and precepts of Polybius and Caesar, of Arrian and Onosander, were consulted in the original text, and elucidated by their best interpreter, Mr. Guichardt, who alone has applied the learning of a Professor and the experience of a Prussian veteran to the military system of the ancients. A familiar view of the discipline and evolutions of a modem 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 decline and fall of the Eoman Empire. After the publication of my Essay, I revolved the plan of a second work ; and a secret Genius might whisper in my ear that my talents were best qualified to excell in the line of historical composition. The ages of the World and the climates of the Globe were open to my choice, and many names and subjects which had dazzled my eyes were successively proscribed by my cooler meditation : the Expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy ; the Crusade of Eichard I. ; the Wars of the Barons till the establish- ment of Magna Charta ; the exploits of the Black Prince ; the parallel characters of the Emperor Titus and Henry V.; and the lives of Sir Philip Sydney and Sir Walter MILITIA EXPEEIENOES. 259 Kaleigh. The history of the origin and establishment of the liberty of the Swiss, and the EeTolutions of the Eepublic of Florence under the family of Medicis, sus- tained the most rigorous scrutiny ; and I long hesitated between these interesting themes. My short excursions to Buriton were commonly employed in these preparatory tryals, and the trains of reading, of thinking, and some- times of writing into which I was led, left me no room to repine at the loss of time or the failure of the experiment. But I was soon called away from my library to the battalion ; and these historical projects were finally sus- pended by the long interruption of my travels. That, in the Militia, a sedentary life was broken by some salutary exercise of the mind and body, I shall not deny. My active duties forced me from the closet into the field : I hunted with a battalion instead of a pack ; and at any hour of the day or night I was ready to fly from quarters to London, from London to quarters, on the slightest call of business or amusement. A quick and various succession of new scenes and new faces emboldenei the reserve of a foreigner and a student ; and I became familiar with the government and manners, the interests, and characters, of the English world. But these casual benefits bore no proportion to the loss of time, of temper, and of health. Our Colonel, Sir Thomas Worsley, was an easy, good-humoured man, fond of my company, of his bottle, and bed : our customary sittings were marked by every stroke of the midnight and morning hours, and the same drum which invited him to rest has often summoned me to the parade. His example encomaged in the Hampshire militia the vice of drinking ; and those acts (let me confess), those habits of intemperance, have 260 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHT. [Memoie C. sown in my constitution the seeds of the gout. My philosophy was sowred by the ignorance and vulgarity of our rustic officers ; and my passions were heated by our regimental disputes, in which my pen was too often degraded to the ungrateful task of writing letters and memorials against the claims and injuries of the Duke of Bolton.] 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 feaver was cooled by the enjoyment of our mimic Bellona, who soon unveiled to my eyes her naked deformity. And 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 — "Clitellas bovi sunt impositse. Est incredibile quam me negotii taedeat. . . . lUe cursus animi et industriae mese prseclara opera cessat. Lucem, libros, urbem domum, vos desidero. Sed feram ut potero, sit modo annuum. Si prorogatum actum est." 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 rivetted by the friendly entreaties of the Colonel, the parental authority of the Major, and my own regard for the honour and wellfare 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 annual patience of Cicero, and it was not till after the preliminaries of peace that I received my discharge, fcom the act of Government which disembodied the Militia. [As soon as I was restored to the freedom of an English Gentleman, I resolved, with my father's consent. SECOND JOURNEY ABROAD. 261 to execute the plan of foreign travel, wMcli had been suspended above four years by the general war, and my particular engagements. Two or three years were loosely defined for my tour of France and Italy: the measure of my extraordinary expence had been already fixed ; the choice of place and distribution of time were left to my own judgement ; and such was my eagerness, that in forty days I had shifted the scene from a guard- room at Gosport to an Hotel in the Eauxbourg St. Germain at Paris, where I resided (January 28 — May 9, 1763) between three and four months. The moment was happily chosen. At the end of a successful war the British name was respected on the continent — " Clarum et venerabile nomen Gentibus." Our opinions, our fashions, and even our games, were adopted in France ; and every Englishman was supposed to be bom a patriot and a philosopher. I had provided myself, before my departure, with honotirable and/ effective recommendations. My Essay entitled me to a favourable reception ; and the style of my appearance and equipage distinguished me from the hungry authors who, even at Paris, are secretly envied and despised. In the worlds of fashion and of science the national urbanity surpassed my sanguine expectation. I listened to the oracles of d'Alembert and Diderot, who reigned at the head of the Eneyehpedie and the philosophic sect. I shall be content to enumerate the well-known names of the Count de Caylus, of the Abbes de la Bleterie, Barthelemy, Eaynal, Amaud, of Messieurs de la Conda- mine, Duclos, de Bougainville, de Ste. Palaye, de Guignes, 262 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOaRAPHY. [Memoik C. Caperonnier, Suard, etc., without attempting to discri- minate the shades of their characters or the degrees of our acquaintance. Four times a week I might seat myself, without invitation, at the hospitable and elegant tables of Mesdames Greoffrin and du Bocage, of the celebrated Helvetius, and of Baron d'Holbach. These Symposia were enlivened by the free conflict of wit and knowledge: the company was select, though various and voluntary, and each unbidden guest might mutter to himself — PJiTOixi/roi, 8' ayiSoi Sel\av iirl Sairas idffiv,* But I was often disgusted by the capricious tyranny of Madame Geoffrin ; nor could I approve the intolerant :zeal of the friends of d'Holbach and Helvetius, who preached the tenets of scepticism with the bigotry of dogmatists, and rashly pronounced that every man must be either an Atheist or a fool. The society of Madame du Bocage was more soft and moderate, and the evening conversations of Mr. de Foncemagne were supported by the erudition and good sense 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 amtisement. Two rival Actresses divided the public applause ; but I will confess that the consummate art of the Clairon was more agreable to my taste then the intemperate though powerful sallies of the Dumesnil. In the course of my morning excursions I explored every object of curiosity in the City and Country ; the palaces, churches, and convents. * Written without accent or breathing. PAEIS— LAUSANUE. 263 the libraries, manufactures, and galleries of pictures. The treasures of the Eoyal library I would have gladly transported to London ; but, as an Englishman, I beheld without envy the rich ornaments of Paris, which has devoured a kingdom ; I darted a contemptuous look on the stately monuments of superstition, and I viewed with horror the prodigies of Versailles and Marly, which have been cemented with the blood of the people. I have 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. Madame B[ontemps] was an author without vanity, a devotee without gall : she managed a small income with oeconomy and taste; in the middle season of life, her beauty was an object of desire, and if her heart was tender, if her passions were warm, decency and gratitude should cast a veil over her frailties. Fourteen weeks stole away in the enchantment of Paris ; and had I been independent and rich, I should have prolonged, and perhaps perpetuated, my stay. It had been my first design to advance from the metropolis into the southern provinces of France; but I was diverted from this long and costly circuit by the recent expences of Paris, and the ancient love of Lau- sanne. Shaping my course through Dijon and Besangon, I arrived, in the month of May, 1763, on the delightful banks of the Leman Lake; and such were the simple attractions of the spot, that the summer was lost in the autumn and succeeding winter, before I could resolve to pass the Alps. An absence of five years had not produced much alteration in manners or even in persons. My old friends of both sexes hailed my return — the most 264 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. genuine proof of my attachment : they had been flattered by the gift of my book, the growth of their soil; and Pavillard shed tears of joy in embracing a pupil whose litterary merit he might fairly impute to his own labours. After a taste of English and Parisian luxury, it was impossible that I could reconcile myself to his wife's oeconomy ; nor were they offended at my entering myself as a Pemionaire, or boarder, in the family of Monsieur and Madame de Mesery, A style of elegant hospitality and polite freedom was maintained by the various talents of the Gentleman and Lady: their apartments in town and country were spacious and elegant, and their whole establishment stood for many years unparaleled in Europe. The most numerous of their guests were the English : and I will not deny that the contagion of my countrymen and the habits of the militia seduced me into some intemperance and riot, which might have been more excusable in my first residence at Lausanne. As a youth I had courted the grave and instructive conversation of my elders ; as a man I was most amused in a young society, which had assumed the proud though fading denomination of the Spring {la societe du frmtems). It consisted of fifteen or twenty immarried women, all agreeable, some handsome, and two sisters of exquisite beauty. Under the guard of their own pru- dence, they assembled almost every day at each other's houses, which, in the absence of their mothers, were open to the young men of every nation, They laughed, they sung, they danced, they played at cards, they acted dramatic pieces ; but in the midst of this careless gayety they respected themselves and were respected by the men: the invisible line between liberty and licentious^ ITALIAN »TOUE, 1764-5. 265 ness was never transgressed by a gesture, a word, or a look, and their virgin chastity was never sullied by the breath of scandal — a singular institution, expressive of the innocent simplicity of Swiss manners ! Some Eccle- siastical quarrel had provoked Voltaire to retire to his castle of Ferney, where I again visited the poet and the actor without seeking his more intimate acquaintance, to which I now might have pleaded a better title. But the Theatre which he had foimded, the disciples whom he had formed at Lausanne, survived the loss of their master; and recent from Paris, I assisted with pleasure at the representation of several tragedies and comedies on their humble stage. In my ancient school I still found motives and moments of application. My studies were chiefly preparations for my Classic tour — the Latin poets and historians, the science of Manuscripts, medals, and inscriptions, the rules of Architecture, the Topography and antiquities of Bome, the Geography of Italy, and the military roads which pervaded the Empire of the Caesars. Perhaps I might boast that few travellers more compleatly armed and instructed have ever followed the footsteps of Hannibal. As soon as the return of spring had unlocked the mountains, I departed from Lausanne (April 18, 1764) with an English companion (Mr., after- wards Sir William Guise), whose partnership divided and alleviated the expences of the Journey.] I shall advance with rapid brevity in the narrative of my Italian tour, in which somewhat more than a year (April, 1764 — May, 1765) was agreeably employed. Content with tracing my line of march, and slightly touching on my personal feelings, I shall wave the minute investiga- tion of the scenes which have been viewed by thousands. 266 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHT. [Memoir C, and described by hundreds of our modern travellers. EoME is the great object of our pilgrimage, and i. The Journey, ii. The residence, and iii. The return will form the most proper and perspicuous division, i. 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 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 Frederic, held the second rank {proximus longo tamen intervaXlo) among the Kings of Europe. The size and populousness of Milan could not surprize an inhabitant of London ; [the Dome or Cathedral is an unfinished monument of Gothic superstition and wealth :] but the fancy is amused by a visit to the Boromean islands, an enchanted palace, a work of the fairies in the midst of a lake encompassed with mountains, and far reinoved from the haunts of men. I was less amused by the marble palaces of Genoa, than by the recent memorials of her deliverance (in December, 1746) from the Austrian tyranny : and I took a military survey of every scene of action within the inclosure 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 » Charles Emanuel III., King trians at Gnaatalla, 1734 ; was de- of Sardinia, born 1701 ; succeeded feated by the French and Spaniards his lather, 1730 ; defeated the Aus- at Coni, 1744 ; died 1773, PIKST SIGHT OF HOME. 267 and Dresden. By the road of Bologna and the Apenine 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 Tribime, I first acknowledged, at the feet of the Venus of Medicis, that the chissel may dispute the pre-eminence with the pencil — a truth in the fine arts which cannot, on this side of the Alps, be felt or understood. 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 short- ness of my time, and the use of the French language, prevented my acquiring any facility of speaking ; and I was a sUent 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 industry of Lucca and Leghorn, and continued my journey through Sienna to Eome, where I arrived in the beginning of October, ii. My temper is not very susceptible of enthusiasm, 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 City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Eomulus stood, or TuUy spoke, or Ceesar fell, was at once present to my eye ; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. My guide was Mr. Byers,* a Scotch antiquary of experience * Jamea Byres, of Tonley, in forty years in Borne in the study Aberdeenshire (1733-1817), spent of archeology and in collecting 268 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. 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 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 correspond- ence from the Secretary of State to the Eoyal society and British Musaeum, has elucidated a country of such inestimable value to the Naturalist and Antiquarian. On my return I fondly embraced, for the last time, the miracles of Eome ; but I departed without kissing the feet of Eezzonico (Clement XIII.), who neither pos- sessed the wit of his predecessor Lambertini, nor the virtues of his successor Ganganelli. iii. In my pilgrimage from Eome to Loretto I again crossed the Apennine : from the coast of the Adriatic I traversed a fruitful and populous country, which would alone disprove the paradox of Montesquieu that modem Italy is a desert. Without adopting the exclusive prejudice of the natives, I sin- cerely admired 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 Venice aiforded some hours of astonishment [and some days of disgust] ; the university of Padua is antiquities. At one time he pos- countrymen. Bessed the Portland Vase, which * Ferdinand IV., bom 1751 ; sno- he sold to Sir William Hamilton, ceeded to the kingdom of the Two Sir James Hall alludes to the great Sicilies on the accession of his influence exercised by him in edu- father, Carlos III., to the throne eating the classical taste of his of Spain, 1759 ; died 1825. USES OP FOREIGN TEAYEL. 269 a dying taper ; but Verona still boasts her amphitheatre, and his native Vicenza is adorned by the classic archi- tecture 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 in- dividual. 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 praevious and indispensable requisites of age, judgement, 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. [It must stimulate him with a restless curiosity, impatient of ease, covetous of time, and fear- less of danger ; which drives him forth, at any hour of the day or night, to brave the flood, to climb the mountain, or to fathom the mine on the most doubtful promise of ■entertainment or instruction. The arts of common life «re not studied in the closet; with a copious stock of classical and historical learning, my traveller must blend the practical knowledge of husbandry and manufactures ; he should be a Chymist, a botanist, and a master of mechanics. A musical ear will multiply the pleasures 270 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHT. [Memoir C. of his Italian tour; but a correct and exquisite eye, which commands the landskip of a country, discerns the merit of a picture, and measures the proportions of a building, is more closely connected vdth the finer feelings of the mind, and the fleeting image shall be fixed and realized by the dexterity of the pencil. I have reserved for the last a virtue which borders on, a vice ; the flexible temper which can assimilate itseK to every tone of society from the court to the cottage ; the happy flow of spirits which can amuse and be amused in every company and situation. With the advantage of an independent fortune and the ready use of national and provincial idioms, the traveller should unite the pleasing aspect and decent familiarity which makes every stranger an acquaintance, and the art of conversing with ignorance and dulness on some topic of local or professional infor- mation.] The benefits of foreign travel will correspond with the degrees of these f various] qualifications, but in this sketch Qof ideal perfection] those to whom I am known will not accuse me of framing my own panygeric. [Yet the historian of the decline and fall must not regret his time or expence, since it was the view of Italy and Eome which determined the choice of the subject. In my Journal the place and moment of conception are recorded ; the fifteenth of October, 1764, in the close of evening, as I sat musing in the Church of the Zoccolanti or Franciscan fryars, while they were singing Vespers in the Temple of Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol.] 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. KETURN TO ENGLAND. 271 before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work. I had not totally renounced the southern proTinces of France, but the letters which I found at Lyons were expressive of some iapatience, [the measure of absence and expence was filled ;] Eome and Italy had satiated my curious appetite, and [the excessive heat of the weather decided the sage resolution of turning my face to the north, and seeking] the peaceful retreat of my family and books. After an happy fortnight, [I tore myself from the embraces of *] Paris, embarked at Calais, again landed at Dover, after an interval of two years and five months, and hastily drove through the summer dust and solitude of London. [On the 25th of June, 1765, 1 reached the rural mansion of my parents, to whom I was endeared by my long absence and chearful submission. 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 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. £1 have nothing to change (for there was not any change) in the annual distribution of my summers and winters, between my domestic resi- dence in Hampshire and a casual lodging at the west end of the town; though once, from the tryal of some months, I was tempted to substitute the tranquil dissipa- tion of Bath instead of the smoke, the expence, and the tumult of the Metropolis, fumum, et opes, strepitumque • "Kelnctantly left" in Lord Sheffield's edition. 272 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. Eomse.] Every spring I attended tlie 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. |[Under the care (may I presume to say?) of a veteran officer, the south Battalion of the Hampshire militia acquired the degree of skill and discipline which was compatible with the brevity of time and the looseness of peaceful subordination ;] but I was each year more disgusted with the Inn, the wine, the company, and the tiresome repetition of annual attendance and daily exercise. At home, the oeconomy of the family and farm still main- tained the same creditable appearance. QI was received, entertained, and dismissed with similar kindness and indulgence :] my connection with Mrs. Gibbon was mellowed into a warm and solid attachment; 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 lifetime, of my litterary talents. Our solitude was soon and often enlivened by the visit of the friend of my youth, of Mr. DeyVer- dun, whose absence from Lausanne I had sincerely lamented. About three years after my first departure he haxi migrated 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 own industry ; and he was entrusted with the education df a young prince, the grandson of the Margrave of Schwedt,* of the Eoyal family of Prussia. Our friendship was never THE ROMAN CLUB. . 273 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 honourable passion drove him from his German court, and the attractions of hope and curiosity were fortified by the expectation of my speedy return to England. [I was allowed to offer him the hospitality of the house:] during four successive summers he passed several weeks or months at Buriton, and our free con- versations on every topic that could interest the heart or understanding would have reconciled me to a desert or a prison. In the wruter 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 acquaintance, Mr. Godfrey Clarke of Derbyshire, an amiable and worthy young man, who was snatched away by an untimely death. A weekly convivial meeting was instituted by myself and my fellow-travellers under the name of the Eoman Club ; * [and I was soon ballotted into Boodle's (the school of virtue, as the Earl of Shelburne had first named it), where I found the daily ressource of excellent dinners, mixed company, and moderate play. I must pwn, however, with a blush, that my virtues of temperance and sobriety had not compleately recovered, themselves from the wounds of the militia, that my * The members were Lord liam Guise, Sir John Aubrey, the- Mountstuart (now Marquis of lute Earl of Abingdon, Hon. Pere- Bute), Colonel Edmonstone, Wil- grine Bertie, Rev. Mr. Cleaver, liam Weddal, Eev. Mr. Palgrave,, Hon. John Damer, Hon. George Earl of Berkley, Godfrey Clarke Damer (late Earl' of Dorchester), (Member for Derbyshire), Holroyd Sir Thomas Gaacoygne, Sir John (Lord SheflSeld), Major Kidley, Hort, E. Gibbon. — Lokd Shep- Thomas Charles Bigge, Sir Wil- field. 274 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPBY. [Memoie C. connections were much less among women than men, and that these men, though far from contemptible in rank and fortune, were not of the first emiaence in the litterary or political World.] 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 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 tran- , scended my thirtieth year, I began to feel the desire of being master in my own house. The most gentle authorily will sometimes frown without reason, the most chearful 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 dependents. While so many of my acquaintance were married, or in parliament, or advancing with a rapid step in the various roads of honours and fortune, I stood alone, immoveable 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 suc- cessful merit has always excited my warmest applause. j[A matrimonial alliance has ever been the object of my PROSPECTS OF SETTLING DOWN. 275 terror rather than of my wishes. I was not very strongly pressed by my family or my passions to propagate the name and race of the Gibbons, and if some reasonable temptations occurred in the neighbourhood, the vague idea never proceeded to the length of a serious negocia- tion.] 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 ; and my repent- ance became more lively as the loss of time was more irretrievable. Experience shewed 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 stinted to the same narrow allowance, to be encreased 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 inheritance. In the first summer after my return, whilst I enjoyed at Buriton the society of my friend Deyverdun, our daily conversations exspatiated over the field of ancient and modern litterature, and we freely discussed my studies, my first Essay and my future prospects. The decline and fall of Eome I still contemplated at an awful distance : but the two historical designs which had 276 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoie C. balanced my choice were submitted to his taste, and in the paralel 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 himdred 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 who, after some sallies of martial adventure, has been content to- guard the blessings of peace with the sword of freedom. " Manus hseo inimica Tyrannis Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem." My judgement, 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 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 con- temporary 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 Leu. Yet such was the SWISS HISTORY ABANDONED. 277 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 agreable task of composition. A specimen of my history, the first book, was read the following winter in a litterary society of foreigners in London ; and as the author was unknown, I listened, without observation^ to the free strictures and imfavourable sentence of my judges.* The momentary sensation was painful, but their condemnation was ratisfied (sic) by my cooler thoughts ; I delivered my imperfect sheets to the flames,t and for ever renounced a design in which some expence, much labour. * Mr. Hume seems to have had a different opinion of this work. From Mr. Bwme to Mr. Gibbon. SiE, — It is but a few days ago since M. Deyverdun put your manuscript into my hands, and I have perused it with great plea- sure 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 Homans who wrote in Greek? I grant that you have a like motive to those Romans, and adopt a lan- guage much more generally dif- fused 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 theGreek, and is now more generally under- stood by men of letters. Let the French, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing estab- lishments in America, where we meed less dread the inundation of Barbarians, promise a superior sta- bility and duration to the English language. Your use of the French tongue has also led you into a style more poetical and flgurative, and more highly coloured, than our language seems to admit of in historical pro- ductions: for such is the practice of French writers, particularly 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 continue it. The objections that occurred to me on reading it were so frivolous that I shall not trouble you with them, and should, I be- lieve, have a difficulty to recollect them. I am, with great esteem. Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, (Signed) David HnuK. London, 24th of Oct. 1767. t 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, perhaps may justify the publicatiun of it. — Sbbfiield. '278 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, [Memoir C. and more time had been so vainly consumed. I cannot regret tte 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, remote from the libraries and archives of the Swiss Kepublics. 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 the failure to the injudicious choice of a foreign language. Perhaps I may suspect that the language itself is ill adapted to sustain the vigour and dignity of an important narrative. But if France, so rich in litterary 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 employ- ment that my friend Deyverdun had visited England: his remittances 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 qualifications solicited the station of <^he travelling governor of some wealthy pupill; 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 resi- dence of several years he never acquired the just pro- nunciation and. familiar use of the English tongue, but he read our most difficult authors with ease and taste ; M. DEYVEEDUN. 279 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 Shakespeare 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 Britarmique was esteemed and regretted ; and to improve his model, by uniting with the transactions of litterature 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 Lyttleton's history of Henry II., I must own myseK responsible ; but the public has ratified my judgement of that voluminous work, in which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of Genius. 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 humour, of the English verse. It is not my 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 composed and corrected by turns, and the praise which I might honestly bestow would fall perhaps on some 2S0 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGKAPHY. [Memoir C. 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 protection, and myself to the acquaintance, of the Earl of Chesterfield, 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), and 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 compleated, when I recommended Deyverdun as Governor to Sir Eichard Worsley, a youth, the son of my old ;Lieutenant-Colonel, who was lately deceased. They set forwards on 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 to insolent pedantry. The sixth book of the JEneid is the most pleasing and perfect composition of Latin poetry. The descent of JEneas and the Sybill to the infernal regions, to the world of spirits, expands an awful and boundless prospect, from the nocturnal gloom of the Cumsean grot — " Ibant obscuris sola sub nocte per umbram " — to the meridian brightness of the Elysian fields — " Largior hie campos aether et lumino vestit Purpureo " CONTKOVERSY WITH WAEBUKTON. 281 •from the dreams of simple nature to the dreams, alas ! of -Slgyptian Theology and the Philosophy of the Greeks. But the final dismission of the Hero through the Ivory gate, from whence " Falsa ad coclum mlttunt 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 haste or irreligion of Virgil ; but, accord- ing 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 ^neas, in the character of a Law-giver, to the Eleusinian mysteries. This hypothesis, a singular chapter in the Divine legation of Moses, had been admitted by many 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 abilities of the author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the Dictator and tyrant of the World of Litterature. 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 an- tagonists without mercy or moderation, and his servile flatterers (see the base and malignant delieacy of friend- ship),* 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 general * By Hard, afterwards Bishop Tracts by Warburton, and a War- of Worcester. See Dr. Parr's burtonian. — Lobd Shbffoild. 282 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. opposition, and the zeal of opposition is seldom candid or impartial. A late Professor of Oxford (Dr. Lowth), in a poiated and polished Epistle * (August 31, 1765), defended himself and attacked the bishop ; and, whatsoever might be the merits of an insignificant controTersy, his victory was clearly established by the silent confusion of War- burton and his slaves. I 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 JEneid 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 War- burton. I proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that the ancient Lawgivers did not invent the mysteries, and that JEneas was never invested with the office of law- giver. That there is not any argument, any circum- stance, 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 (Vetabo 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- balanced to my feelings by the weighty approbation of * This letter of Lowth'a is a Christian prelates engaged in this masterpiece of its kind, and, if our fierce intellectaal gladiatorism, calmer judgment is offended by the chief blame must fall on the the unseemly spectacle of two aggreasor, Warburton. — Milhak. CONTROYEEST WITH WAEBUETON. 283 the last and best Editor of Virgil, Professor Heyne of Gottingen, who acquiesces in my confutation, and styles the unknown author doctus • . . et elegantissimus Britannus. But I cannot resist the temptation of tran- scribiag the favourable judgement of Mr. Hayley, himself a poet and scholar: "An intricate hypothesis, twisted into a long and laboured chain of quotation and argu- ment, the Dissertation on the sixth book of Virgil, remained some time imrefuted. ... 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 unbyassed German, " PauUo acrius quam velis . . . perstrhixit." * But I cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a man who, with all his faults, was entitled to my esteem ;t and I can less forgive, in a personal attack, the cowardly conceal- ment of my name and character. In the fifteen years between my Essay on the study of jliterature and the first Volume of the decline and fall (1761-1776), this criticism on Warburton, and some » The editor of the Warbur- in the dust, of the vigour and toniau tracts, Dr. Parr (p. 192;, weakness of the human mind. If considers the allegorical interpre- Warburton's new argument proved tatiou "as completely refuted in a anything, it would be a demonstra- most clear, elegant, and decisive tion against the legislator who left work of criticism ; which could his people without the knowledge not, indeed, derive authority from of a future state. But some epi- Ihe greatest name, but to which sodes of the work, on the Greek the greatest name might with pro- philosophy, the hieroglyphics of priety have been affixed." — Lobd Egypt, etc., are entitled to the Sheffield. praise of learning, imagination, and t The Divine Legation of Moses diacernment. — Lord Sheffield. is a monument, already crumbling 284 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mbmoie C. articles in the Journal, were my sole publications. It is more specially incumbent on me to mark the employ- ment, or to confess the waste of time, from my travels to my father's death, an interval in which I was not diverted by any professional duties from the labours and pleasures of a studious life. i. As soon as I was released from the fruitless task of the Swiss revolutions, I more seriously imdertook (1768) to methodize the form, and to collect the substance, of my Eoman decay, 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 descending 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 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 diligently compared them with the parallel or transverse lines of Sigonius and Maffei, Baronius and Pagi, till I almost grasped the ruins of Eome in the fourteenth Century, without sus- pecting 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 PREPARATIONS FOE KOMAN HISTORY. 285 commentary of James Grodefroy, must be gratefully re- membered. I used 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 triumph of the Church are inseperably connected with the decline of the Eoman Monarchy, I weighed the causes and effects ! of the Eevolution, 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 sect. 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 unbelieving age. I have assembled the prepa- ratory studies 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, ii. 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, "Multum legere potius quam multa," I reviewed again and ag£|,in the immortal works of the French and English, tl^e Latin and Italian Classics. My Greek studies (though less assiduous than I de- signed) maintained and extended my knowledge of that 286 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoik C. incomparable idiom. Homer and Xenophon were still my favourite authors ; and I had almost prepared for the press an Essay on the Cyropsedia, which in my own judgement 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 fashion- I able currency. A more respectable motive may be ! assigned for the triple perusal of Blackstone's commen- \ taries, and a copious and critical abstract of that English I work was my first serious production in my native ' language, iii. My litterary leisure was much less com-; pleat 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. [By the habit of early rising I always secured a sacred portion of the day ; and many precious moments were stolen and saved by my rational avarice. But the family hours of breakfast and dinner, of tea and supper, were regular and tedious: after breakfast Mrs. Gibbon expected my company in her dressing-room; after tea my father claimed my conversation and the perusal of the Newspapers. In the heat of some interest- ing pursuit, I was called down to receive the visits of our idle neighbours; their civilities required a suitable return ; and I dreaded the period of the full moon, which was usually reserved for our more distant excuxsions.] My quiet was gradually distmrbed by our domestic anxiety ; and I should be ashamed of my unfeeling philosophy, had I found much time or taste for study in the last fatal summer (1770) of my father's decay and dissolution. DEATH OP GIBBON'S FATHER. 287 The disembodying of the Militia at the close of the War (1762) 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, qni procul negotiis (Ut prlsca gens mortalium) Faterua rura bubus exercet suis, Solutus omni foenore." * But the last indispensable condition, the freedom from debt, was wanting to my father'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 weis an 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 lawsuit ; and each year multiplied the number and exhausted the patience of his creditors. Under these painful circumstances, [|my own behaviour was not only guiltless but meritorious. Without stipulating anv personal advantages,] I consented, [at a mature and well-informed age,] to an additional mortgage, to the sale of Putney, and to every sacrifice that could alleviate his distress; 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, " Hor. Epod. ii. 1. 288 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik C. (remedia malorum potius quam mala differebat). 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 has 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 amply 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 unaffected chearful- ness, 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. QThe tears of a son are seldom lasting.] 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. [Few, perhaps, are the children who, after the expiration of some months or years, would sincerely rejoyce in the resurrection of their parents ; and it is a melancholy truth, that my father's death, not unhappy for himself, was the only event that could save me from an hopeless life of obscurity and indigence.] Section III. As soon as I had paid the last solemn duties to my father, and obtained from time and reason a tolerable composure of mind, I began to form the plan of an LIFE AT BUEITON. 289 independent life most adapted to my circumstances and inclination. Yet so intricate was the net, my efforts were so awkward and feeble, that near 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 an house in London. During this interval I continued to divide my year between town and the country ; but my new freedom was brightened by hope: [nor could I refuse the advantages of a change, which had never (I have scrutinized my conscience) — which had never been the object of my secret wishes. Without indulging the vanity and extravagance of a thoughtless heir, I assumed some additional latitude of lodging, attendance, and equipage ; I no longer numbered with the same anxious parsimony my diimers at the club or tavern :] my stay in London was prolonged into the summer, and the uni- formity of the summer was occasionally broken by visits and excursions at a distance from home. [That home, the house and estate at Buriton, were now my own ; I could invite without controul the persons most agreable to my taste ; the horses and servants were at my disposal ; and in all their operations my rustic ministers solicited the commands and smiled at the ignorance of their master. I will not deny that my pride was flattered by the local importance of a country gentleman: the busy scene of the farm, productive of seeming plenty, was embellished in my eyes by the partial sentiment of property ; and, still adhering to my original plan, I expected the adequate offers of a tenant, and postponed without much impatience the moment of my departure. My friendship for Mrs. Oibbon long resisted the idea of our final separation. u 290 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik C. After my father's decease, slie preserved the tenderness, without the authority, of a parent : the family, and even the farm, were entrusted to her care ; and as the habits of fifteen years had attached her to the spot, she was herself persuaded, and she tryed to persuade me, of the pleasures and benefits of a country life. But, as I could not afford to maintain a double establishment, my favourite project of an house in London was incompatible with the farm at Buriton, and it was soon apparent that a woman and a philosopher could not direct with any prospect of advan- tage such a complex and costly machine. In the second summer my resolution was declared and effected; the advertisement of the farm attracted many competitors ; the fairest terms were preferred : the proper leases were executed; I abandoned the mansion to the principal tenant, and Mrs. G-., with some reluctance, departed for Bath, the most fashionable azylum for the sober singleness of widowhood. But the produce of the effects and stock was barely sufficient to clear my accounts in the country, and my first settlement in town: from the mischievous extravagance of the tenant I sustained many subsequent injuries ; and a change of ministry could not be accom- plished without much trouble and expense. Besides the debts for which my honour and piety were engaged, my father had left a weighty mortgage of seven- teen thousand pounds : it could only be discharged by a landed sacrifice, and my estate at Lenborough, near Buck- ingham, was the devoted victim. At first the appearances were favourable ; but my hopes were too sanguine, my demands were too high. After slighting some offers by no means contemptible, I rashly signed an agreement with a worthless fellow (half knave and half madman), who, in SALE OF LENBOEOUGH. 291 three years of vexatious chicanery, refused either to con- summate or to relinquish his bargain. After I had broken my fetters, the opportunity was lost ; the public distress had reduced the value of land : I waited the return of peace and prosperity ; and my last secession to Lausanne preceded the sale of my Buckinghamshire estate. The delay of fifteen years, which I may impute to myself, my friends, and the times, was accompanied with the loss of many thousand pounds. A delicious morsel, a share in the New river company, was cast, with many a sigh, into the gulph of principal, interest, and annual expence ; and the far greater part of the in- adequate price of poor Lenborough was finally devoured by the insatiate monster. Such remembrance is bitter ; but the temper of a mind exempt from avarice suggests some reasonable topics of consolation. My patrimony has been diminished in the enjoyment of life.] The grati- fication 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 was soon dispelled by the studious or social occupation of the present hour. My conscience does not accuse me of any act of extravagance or in- justice : the remnant of my estate affords an ample and honourable provision for my declining age, f and my spontaneous bounty must be received with implicit gratitude by the heirs of my choice.] I shall not ex- patiate [more minutely] on my ceconomical affairs, which cannot be instructive or amusing to 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 292 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir C. 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 super- fluous fortune. QFew works of merit and importance have been executed either in a garret or a palace. A gentleman, possessed of leisure and independence, of books and talents, may be encouraged to write by the distant prospect of honour and reward ; but wretched is the author, and wretched will be the work, where daUy diligence is stimulated by daily hunger.] MY OWN LIFE.* QMy family is ancient and honourable in the county of Kent.^ As early as the year 1326 the Gibbons, who still bear the same arms as myself,^ were possessed of lands in the parish of Eolyenden,' and their successive alliances connect them with many worthy names of the English 1 I have obtained much domestic information from an English treatise of Heraldry (with a Latin title), composed by John Gibbon, Blue-mantle Poursuivant, and the brother, as I believe, of my great- grandfather Matthew — Introductio ad Latinam Blazoniam, London, 1682, in 12mo. The author of this odd and even original work is deeply tinctured with the prejudices of his age and his art. After observing the colours and symbols on the painted bodies of the Indians of Virginia, he logically concludes that " Heraldry is ingrafted naturally into the sense of human race " (p. 156). I wish to insert his diabolical scutcheon for the Whigs (p. 165). The Gibbons were high Tories. 2 A Lyon, rampant, gardant, between three Schalhps. Blue-mantle tells a whimsical story of Edmond Gibbon, who changed the three schallops of his arms into three ogresses, or female monsters, the emblems of three cousins with whom he had a law-suit (p. 161). 3 " Nedum mentionem sum facturus " (he modestly talks Latin) "Gibbonos terras tenuisse et possedisse in Eolvenden, anno 1326." Fourteen years afterwards. King Edward IH. granted to his Mar- morarius, John Gibbon, the profits of the passage between Sandwich and the isle of Thanet, the reward of no vulgar architect. He is supposed to have built Queensborough Castle (p. 160). •Memoir E; from the early The numbered notes to this Memoir history of the family to July, 1789. are Gibbon's own. 294 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir E. gentry.* About the beginning of the last century, a younger branch appears to haye noigrated from the country to the city. My grandfather, Edward Gibbon, was Commissioner of the Customs (1710-1714), and a Director of the South Sea Company. In the calamitous year twenty, he was stripped of his apparent fortune (£106,543 5s. 6^.) by an arbitrary vote of the house of commons, which reduced him to an allowance of ten thousand pounds ; ^ yet such were his dexterity and diligence, that he died, sixteen years afterwards, in very affluent circumstances. My father, Edward Gibbon (bom in 1707), enjoyed the advantages of education and travel, and successively represented in Parliament the borough of Petersfield (1734) and the town of Southampton ■(1740). In the opposition to Sir Eobert Walpole and the Pelhams he was connected with the Tories — shall I say ihe Jacobites ? With them he gave many a vote, with them he drank many a bottle. But the prejudices of youth were gradually corrected by time, temper, and good sense. * See the Introductio ad Blazoniam, pp, 157-160. Our most respectable ancestor in the female line is Lord Say and Seale, Lord High Treasurer of England in the reign of Henry VI. According to Shakespeare, he may be considered as a martyr of Litterature. My grandfather was allied by his wife and sister to the Actons of Shrop- shire, who now claim the Minister of the Sicilian Monarchy. 6 See the whole course of these iniquitous proceedings in Bapin and Tindal's History of England (vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 629-644, folio Edition). The offence of the South Sea Directors was not defined in law; their guilt was not proved, in fact : they were refused the common right of being heard by their council against a bill of pains and penal- ties, and their fate was decided by hasty and passionate votes on the character and fortune of each individual. It may be added, as a last aggravation, that the legal existence of the Parliament which con demned them is extremely questionable. EARLY ILLNESSES. 295 I was born at his house at Putney, in Surry, the a.d. eldest child of his marriage, a marriage of inclination, April 27, with Judith Porten. My five brothers and my sister all jj^y g, ~ died in their infancy, and the premature decease of my ^•^* mother (1746) left her fond husband a disconsolate widower." Some years afterwards (1755) he was married to his second wife, Mrs. Dorothea Patten, whose tender friendship has often made me forget that I had scarcely known the blessing of a mother. From my birth to the age of fifteen, my puny con- a.,d. stitution was afflicted with almost every species of disease yj^^. and weakness ; and I owe my life to the maternal tender- ness of my aunt, Mrs. Catherine Porten, at whose name I feel a tear of gratitude trickling down my cheek. My first domestic tutor was Mr. John Kirkby, the author of an English Grammar and the Philosophical Eomance of Automathes.' But my progress at Kingston and West- ^ In an agreable little poem, in which Mr. Mallet invites some friends to the anniversary of his wedding-day, my father is thus introduced— " But first a pensive love forlorn, Who three long weeping years has home His torch revers'd, and all around, Where once it flam'd with Cypress bound, Sent off to call a neighhouring friend, On whom the mournful train attend ; And bid him, this one day at least. For such a pair, at such a feast. Strip off the sable vest, and wear His once gay look and happier air." ' A self-taught Youth who discovers Beligion and Science in a desert island, is indeed a Romance. The characters of a Philosopher and .a Bigot are blended in my old tutor; but the story of Automathes (London, 1745, in 12mo) is agreably told. The original idea is borrowed, however, from the life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, composed in 296 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoir E. minster Schools was too often interrupted by my returns of illness ; and the want of public discipline was imper- fectly supplied by private instruction. It is fashionable for the mwn to envy and regret the happiness of the hoy, but I never could understand the happiness of servitude ; ^ and my want of agility and strength disqualified me for the joyous play of my equals. The long hours of con- finement to my chamber or my couch were soothed, however, by an early and eager love of reading. Some books of fiction, Pope's Homer and the Arabian Nights, were the first food of my mind ; but I soon began to devour, with indiscriminate appetite, the history, chrono- logy, and geography of the ancient and modern world. A.D. At an unripe age I was matriculated as a Gentleman- April 3. commoner at Magdalen College, in the University of Oxford, where I lost fourteen valuable months of my youth. The reader will ascribe this loss to my own incapacity, or to the vices of that ancient institution.^ A I,. Without a master or a guide, I unfortunately stumbled March ^^ some books of Popish controversy ; nor is it a matter of reproach that a boy should have believed that he the twelfth century by Abd Jaafar Ebn Tophail, and translated from Arabic into Latin by Dr. Pocock (Oxon, 1700, in 4to, secundS edit.). There is a very good abstract in the BibliothSque Universelle (torn. iii. pp. 76-98)ofLeClerc. * A similar opinion is ascribed by d'Alembert (iilloges des Acade- miciens, torn. iii. p. 24) to Boileau, who had suffered, indeed, many hardships in his childhood and youth. The life of a schoolboy is by no means exempt from care or passion, and he is yet unripe for the highest enjoyments of the mind and body. 8 The revenues, monopoly, and idleness of these Ecclesiastical corporations are justly censured by Dr. Adam Smith (Riches of Nations, vol. ii. pp. 340-374), who affirms that most of the professors of Oxford have given up even the pretence of public teaching. PIRST VISIT TO LAUSANNE. 297 believed, etc. I was seduced like Chillingworth and Bayle,^" and, like them, my growing reason soon broke through the toils of sophistry and superstition. Most fortunately my father was persuaded to fix my jygs^ exile and education at Lausanne, in Switzerland, under "^"gQ^*" the care of Mr. Pavillard, a Calvinist Minister. I would praise his virtue above his learning, his learning above his genius : yet a pupil might imbibe from his lessons the love, the method, and the rudiments of science, and I shall always esteem that worthy man as the first father of my mind. At the end of five years I was recalled home — of five 1758. years which my voluntary and rational diligence had May4.~" profitably employed. It was at Lausanne that I acquired the perfect knowledge and use of the French language ; that I read almost all the Latin Classics in prose and verse ; that I made some progress in Greek litterature ; and that I finished a regular course of Philosophy and Mathematics. It was there that my taste and reason were expanded ; that I formed the habits of being pleased (I will not say of pleasing) in good company ; and that I eradicated the prejudices which would have ripened in the Atmosphere of an English Cloyster. A tour of Swit- zerland enlarged my views of Nature and man : I en- joyed the singular amusement of seeing Voltaire an actor '" When these masters of argument were seduced by Popery, the Frenchman was near twenty- two, the Englishman above twenty-eight years of age. In their retrograde motion, the logic of Chillingworth paused on the last verge of Christianity ; the genius of Bayle pervaded the boundless regions of Scepticism. See the article Chillingworth in the third Volume of the new Edition of the Biographia Britannica; and Vie de Pierre Bayle, by Mr. des Maizeaux, in the first volume of the Dictionary. 298 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoir E. in his own tragedies ; " and, before the age of twenty, I solicited and sustained a learned correspondence with several professors in foreign universities.^^ I should blush if the season of youth had passed away without love or friendship. My connection with Mr. George Deyverdun, a young gentleman of Lausanne, has been ter- minated only by the death of my friend. A lover's wishes reluctantly yielded to filial duty;^* time and absence produced their effect ; but my choice has been justified by the virtues of Mademoiselle C (now Madame N ) in the most humble and the most splendid fortune. 1' Voltaire had lately escaped from the dangers of Koyal friend- ship, and now hegan, at the age of threescore, to enjoy his freedom and fortune. His letters, dated from Lausanne, repeatedly praise, in 1757 and 1758, the country, the people, his audience, his actors, etc. (Correspondance g&&ale, torn. iv. pp. 396, 408, 410, 414, 410, 421-424, 429, 430, 431, 439 ; torn. v. pp. 6, 9, 15, 16, 19, 21-23, 26, 34 ; Edition de Beaumarchais). '^ Crevier of Paris, Gesner of Gottingen, and Breitinger of Zurich are known as Authors or Editors. But the most valuable of my corre- spondents was Mr. AUamand of Bex, whose learning and philosophy were buried in a Swiss village. '^ See ffiuvres de Eousseau, torn, xxxiii. pp. 88, 89, octavo Edition. As an author, I shall not appeal from the judgement, or taste, or caprice of Jmn Jacques ; but that extraordinary man, whom I admire and pity, should have been less precipitate in condemning the moral character and conduct of a stranger.* * " Lettre h Mr. M[pulf}^. "'^s* m 'Ji|"«,'i'«"« ■ "If is qui I'a pu sentir, & s en detache, est uu " A Motiers, le 4 Juin 1763. bomme Si m^priser. EUe ne salt " Vous me donnez pour Mile. ce qu'elle veut, cet homme la sert C uno commission dont jo mieux que son propre coeur. J'aime m'acquitterai mal, precisement k cent fois mieux qu'il la laisse cause de men estime pour elle. pauvre & libre au milieu de vous, Le refroidissement de M. G que de I'emmener 6tre malheureuse me fait mal pensor de lui ; j'ai & riohe en Angleterre. Eu v^rite Tcvu son livre; il y court aprfes je souhaite que M. G ne resprit,_il s'y gninde: M. G vienne pas. Je voudrois me d^- ii'est point mon homme ; je ne puis guiser, mais je ne saurois, je croiro qu'il soit celui de Mile. voudrois bien faire, & je sens que C qui no sent pas son prix, je gaterai tout." THE MILITIA. 299 On my return home I was indulged with a decent 1758. allowance of money and liberty ; and the two following i760. years were unequally divided between a short visit to London, and a long calm residence in my father's house at Buriton, near Petersfield, in Hampshire. For rural sports and agriculture I had no taste ; and all the hours that I could steal from family duties were deliciously passed in a library, which soon became my own. By prac- tise and study I recovered the purity of my native tongue ; and the English, Greek, and Latin Classics were the best companions of my solitude. My pen was seldom idle, and I began to write for the public eye as well as for my own. From these studies I was called away by the sound i760. of the militia drum, by the embodying of the South 1762. ~ Battalion of the Hampshire, in which I had rashly ^^o-^s. accepted a Captain's commission, and in which I was afterwards promoted to the rank of Major and Lieutenant Colonel-Commandant. At the first outset I was dazzled and fired by the play of arms, the exercise, the march, and the camp, and my present acquaintance mil smile when I assure them that I was once a very tolerable officer. I read Homer in my tent, I compared the theory of ancient with the practise of modern tactics ; and the Captain of Grenadiers (they may again smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Eoman Empire. By degrees our mimic Bellona unveiled her naked deformity, and before our final dissolution I had long sighed for my release.^* ** In an old pocket-book of the time I find the satirical lines of Dryden, which thus conclude — " Of seeming arms they make a short essay ; Then hasten to be drunk — the business of the day." 300 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik E. 1761. In the midst of this military life, I published my Essai sur Vitude de la Litterature, which was extorted from me by my father's authority, and the advice of Dr. Maty 15 and Mr. Mallet,!^ after it had slept two or three years in my desk. The vanity of being the first English author in the French language^' might perhaps be excused ; but, in sober truth, I wrote, as I thought, in the most familiar idiom. The journals of Paris ^^ and Holland have praised the style and spirit, the learning and judgement, of this juvenile performance, with which, at the distance of thirty years, I am not absolutely displeased. But in England my Essay was slowly In the qualifications of dexterity and discipline our embodied regiments were far superior to the old militia. But the exercise of the field was still succeeded by that of the bottle, and the habit of intemperance too long survived my discharge from the service. 15 The eighteen volumes of the Journal Britannique, which he sustained six years (1750-1755), almost alone had displayed the moderation and taste of Dr. Maty. A flattering epistle which he prefixed to my Essay is so cautiously worded, that, in case of a defeat, he might have excused his indulgence to a young Engliah gentleman. 18 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. An enemy, and a stern enemy (John- son's Lives of the Poets), acknowledges that Mallet's conversation was elegant and easy. " The French letters of Sir William Temple, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Chesterfield, etc., were not composed for the public. The writings of the Chevalier Ramsay and Count Hamilton may form an exception ; but the latter, who is indeed a model of original style, had been educated from his infancy in France. 18 The copious extracts which were g^ven 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. PARIS. 301 circulated, little read, and soon forgotten ; till tlie fame of tlie historian enhanced the price of the remaining copies, which I refused to multiply by a new edition. After this first experiment, I meditated some historical composition. Many subjects were examined and rejected : an history of the freedom and victories of the Smss was the theme on which I dwelt with the longest pleasure, and which I abandoned with the most reluctance.^' The hour of peace and national triumph was pro- 1763. pitious to my design of visiting the continent. The arts May. and public buildings, the libraries and theatres of Paris, might have occupied more than four months the curiosity of a stranger. But the favourable reception of my Essay, and some weighty recommendations, introduced me into the societies of Helvetius, of the Baron d'Holbach, of Mr. de Foncemagne, of Madame Geoffrin, and of Madame du Bocage. At these elegant Symposia, to which I was wellconie, without invitation, almost every day of the week, I saw and heard the most eminent of the wits, scholars, and philosophers of France ; and it was amusing, as well as instructive, to compare the writings with the characters of the men. In my second voluntary visit I was received at lyes. Lffiusanne as a native, who, after a long absence, returns 1764" to his friends, his family, and his country. The simple April, charms of Nature and society detained me at the foot of the Alps till the ensuing spring ; and I justified my 1" By the assistance of Mr. Deyverdmi I obtained many extracts and translations from the German originals of Tschudi, Stetler, Schilling, Lauffer, Leu, etc. ; but I soon found, on a tryal, that these materials were insufiScient. An historian should command the language, the libraries, and the archives of the country of which he presumes to write. : 302 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir E. delay by the useful study of the Italian and Eoman antiquities. 17M^ The pilgrimage of Italy, which I now accomplished, 1765. had long been the object of my curious devotion. The passage of Mount Cenis, the regular streets of Turin, the Gothic cathedral of Milan, the scenery of the Boromean Islands, the marble palaces of Genoa, the beauties of Florence, the wonders of Eome, the curiosities of Naples, the galleries of Bologna, the singular aspect of Venice, the amphitheatre of Verona, and the Palladian archi- tecture of Vicenza, are still present to my imagination. I read the Tuscan writers on the banks of the Arno ; but my conversation was with the dead rather than the living, and the whole college of Cardinals was of less value in my eyes than the transfiguration of Eaphael, the Apollo of the Vatican, or the massy greatness of the Coliseum. It was at Eome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted 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. After Eome has kindled and satisfied the enthusiasm of the Classic pilgrim, his curiosity for all meaner objects insensibly subsides. My father was impatient, and I returned home by the way of Lyons and Paris, enriched with a new stock of images and ideas, which I could never have acquired in the solitude of the Closet. After this various and delightfuU excursion, I again settled, in the dull division of my English year, between November. Lq^^q^ and Buriton. But in the militia I had been used to command, in my travels I was free from controul. The most gentle authority will sometimes frown without STUDY OF ROMAN HISTORY. 303 reason, tlie most chearful obedience will sometimes murmur without cause ; and, at the age of thirty, I felt the natural wish of being master in my own house. The love of study secured me against the tediousness of an idle life, but I sometimes regretted that I had not con- sulted my interest and independence by the timely choice of a lucrative profession. The greatest part of the seven years which elapsed Y,^~r after my return home was seriously employed in pre- paring the materials of my Eoman history, of whose nature and extent at first I had a very inadequate idea. i. From the Augustan age to the fall of the western Empire, I studied, almost always with my pen in my hand, the origiual records, both Greek and Latin, both Ecclesiastical and profane. I have never denied or dis- sembled my obligations to modern glasses, more especially to the incomparable microscope of Tillemont ; but as it was my privilege to think with my own reason, so it was my duty to see with my own eyes. ii. In the Italian history of the middle ages, Muratori and Pagi, Sigonius and Maffei, were my faithful and assiduous guides ; and I grasped the ruins of Eome in the fourteenth century, without suspecting that the distant object would fly before me to the end of a sixth quarto. Yet in the progress of my work I was often diverted by the amusements of the World, and the avocations of old and new books; of the ancient Classics of Greece and Eome, of the annual publications of France and England. During this period I twice gave my thoughts, without giving my name, to the public. I joyned with my friend Mr. Deyverdun, who resided several years in England: we published two volumes of a litterary 304 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik E. Journal or review, Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, for the years 1767 and 1768 ; but in this social work I am not ambitious of ascertaining my peculiar property. In the year 1770 I sent to the press some Critical Observations on the Sixth Booh of the Mneid. This anonymous pamphlet was poiated against Bishop War- burton, who demonstrates that the descent of .^neas to the shades is an Allegory of his initiation to the Eleusinian mysteries. The love of Virgil, the hatred of a Dictator,^ and the example of Lowth,^ awakened ™ Our litterary Sylla was encompassed with a guard of flatterers and slaves ready to execute every sentence of proscription which his arrogance had pronounced. The assassination of Jortin by Dr. Hurd, now Bishop of Worcester (see the Delicacy of Friendship), is a base and malignant act, which cannot be erazed by time or expiated by secret pennance.* 2' See a letter from a late Professor in the University of Oxford (1766, fourth Edition). The public adjudged the prize to the chaste and temperate spirit of Dr. Lowth (since Bishop of London), who had been furiously attacked by "Warburton and his bloodhounds. As long as the dispute is connected with the taste and knowledge of Hebrew poetry, the Oxford professor fights on his own ground. But his argument is often weak ; and how can it be strong, when he pleads the cause of bigotry and persecution ? f * Dr. John Jortin, in 1755, in a and Dr. "Warburton on the use ■dissertation On the State of the Dead made of the Book of Job in sup- as described by Homer and Virgil, port of a chronological argument had strongly opposed the theory of in the lectures. The dispute was Warburton mentioned in the text, apparently at an end, till War- aud was thereupon attacked with burton, _ in 1765, renewed the considerable severity by Hurd in attack in the sixth book of his liis treatise On the VeUcact/ of Divine Legation, and was answered Friendship, a Seventh Dissertation, by Lowth in his Letter to the Author addressed to the Author of the Sixth. of the Divine Legation, which is Hurd again took up the cudgels on described by Gibbon as " a pointed behalf of his patron, Warburton, in and polished epistle." 1764, when his Doctrine of Grace " This letter of Lowth's is a was controverted by Dr. Thomas masterpiece of its kind, and if our Leiand. calmer judgment is offended by the t In 1741 Bobert Lowth, when unseemly spectacle of two Christian Professor of Poetry at Oxford, de- prelates engaged in this fierce livered a series of Lectures on gladiatorism, the chief blame must Mebrew Poetry. In 1756 some con- fall on the aggressor, Warburton." troversy took place between him — Milman. CONTROVERSY "WITH WARBURTOJST. 305 me to arms. The coldness of the public has been amply compensated by the esteem of Heyne,^^ of Hayley,^ and of Parr ; 2* but the acrimony of my style has been justly blamed by the Professor of Gottingen. Warburton ^ was not an object of contempt. ^ That incomparable scholar, who, after so many hundred editions has enriched the world with the first edition of Virgil, declines the examination of Warburton's hypothesis, " Otium fecit vir doctus, qui earn in singulari libello paullo acrius quam velis perstrinxit" (Virgilii Opera, tom. ii. p. 804, Lipsise, 1787). He afterwards (p. 821) approves a conjecture, " elegantissimi Britanni," etc. 23 " At length a superior but anonymous critic arose, who, in one of the most judicious and spirited essays which our nation has produced on a point of classical literature, compleatly overturned this ill-founded edifice, etc." (Hayley's Works, vol. iii. p. 152, etc.). He then transcribes several passages, from an idea that the circulation of the pamphlet had not been equal to its merit. 2* The editor of the Warburtonian Tracts (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." 25 The Divine Legation of Moses * is a monument, already crumbling into dust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind. If Warburton's new argument proved any thing, it would be a demon- stration against the Legislator, who left his people without the knowledge of a future state. But some episodes of the work on the Greek philosophy, the Hieroglyphics of Egj-pt, etc., are entitled to the praise of learning, imagination, and discernment. * Tlie Divine Legation 0/ Moses in seeking what was certainly not Demonstrated, on the Principles of to be found there, otherwise than a Beiigioas Deist, from the Omission, by inference or implication. But of the Doctrine of a Future State of Warburton, with an intrepidity nn- Bewards and Punishments in the heard of before, threw open the Jewish Dispensation,\>ka.l-'i,ll^%\ gates of his camp, admitted the bks. 4-6, 1741 ; bk. 9, 1788. host of his enemy within his works, " That the doctrine of a future and beat them on a ground which state of reward and punishment was now become both his and was omitted in the Book of Moses theirs. In short, he admitted the had been insolently urged by infl- proposition in its fullest extent, and dels against the truth of his mission, proceeded to demonstrate from that while divines were feebly occupied very omission, which in all instances 306 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoie E. 1770. At the time of my father's decease I was upwards of thirty-three years of age, the ordinary term of an human generation. My grief was sincere for the loss of an affectionate parent, an agreeable companion, and a worthy man. But the ample fortune which my grand- father had left was deeply impaired, and would have been gradually consumed by the easy and generous nature of his son.^" I revere the memory of my father, his errors I forgive, nor can I repent of the important sacrifices which were chearfuUy offered by filial piety. Domestic command, the free distribution of time and place, and a more liberal measure of expence, were the 1772. immediate consequences of my new situation; but two years rolled away before I could disentangle myself from the web of rural ceconomy, and adopt a mode of life agreeable to my wishes. From Buriton Mrs. Gibbon withdrew to Bath ; while I removed myself and my books into my new house iu Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square, in which I continued to reside near eleven years. The clear untainted remains of my patrimony have been always sufficient to support the rank of a Gentleman, and to satisfy the desires of a philosopher.] 1773. I had now attained f^he solid comforts of life — a inuary — 17S3. Septemlaer. 17S3. convenient well-furnished house, a domestic table, half 2" In his Hampshire retirement, my father might seem to enjoy tlie state of primitive happiness — " Beatus Hie qui procul negotiis, etc." But, alas ! he was not " solutus omni fcenore," and without such freedom there can be no content. of legislation, merely human, had people to whom it was given must heen industriously avoided, that a have been placed under His imme- system which could dispense with mediate superintendence," — Dr. such a doctrine, the very bond and Whittaker, in Quarterly Beview, vii. cement of human society, must SOS. have come from God, and that the LIFE IN LONDON. 307 a dozen chosen servants, my own carriage, and all those decent luxuries whose value is the more sensibly felt the Iqnger they are enjoyed. These advantages were crowned by] the first of earthly blessings, independence. 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 com- panions, was enlarged. To a lover of books the shops and sales in London present irresistible temptations, and the manufacture of my history required a various and growing stock of materials. The Militia, my travels, the House of Commons, the fame of an author, contributed to multiply my coimections. I was chosen a member of the fashionable clubs ;'^' and before I left England there were few persons of any eminence in the litterary or political World to whom I was a stranger,^ By my own choice I passed in town the greatest part of the ^ From the mixed, though polite, company of Boodle's, White's and Brooks's, I must honourably distinguish a weekly society which ■was instituted 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). The names of Dr. Johnson, Mr. Burke, 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, etc., form a large and luminous constellation of British stars. ^ 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 practise of transforming a private memorial into a vehicle of satire and praise. 308 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir E. year ; but whenever I was desirous of breathing the air of the Country, I possessed an hospitable retreat at SheflSeld Place, in Sussex, in the family of Mr. Holroyd, a valuable friend, whose character, under the name of Lord Sheffield, has since been more conspicuous to the public. 1773. No sooner was I settled in my house and library than etc ' 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, the true sera of the decline and fall of the Empire, the limits of the Introduction, the 1 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 should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise ; many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull Chronicle and a Ehetorical 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, from 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 consulted and obeyed with rational devotion ; but I was soon disgusted with the modest practise of reading the manuscript to my MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. 309 friends. Of such friends some will praise from politeness, and some will criticise from vanity. The author himself is the best Judge of his own performances ; none has so deeply meditated on the subject, none is so sincerely interested in the event. By the friendship of Mr. (now Lord) Eliot, who had „^''.^*- married my first cousin,^^ I was returned at the general ber. election for the borough of Leskeard. I took my seat at the beginning of the memorable contest between ^ Catherine ElUston, whose mother, Catherine Gibbon, was my grandfather's second daughter. The education of Lady Eliot, a rich heiress, had been entrusted to the Mallets ; and she is thus invited to their Hymenseal feast. " Last comes a virgin — ^Praj- admire her ! Cupid himself attends to squire her : A welcome guest ! we much had mist her ; For 'tis our Kitty, or his sister. But, Cupid, let no knave or fool Snap up this lamb to shear her wool ; No Teague of that unblushing band, Just landed, or about to land ; Thieves from the womb, and train'd at nurse To steal an heiress, or a purse. No scrapmg, saving, saucy cit, Sworn foe of breeding, worth, and wit ; No half-form'd insect of a peer, With neither land nor conscience clear, Who, if he can, 'tis all he can do, Just spell the motto on his Landau. From all, from each of these defend her. But thou and Hymen both befriend her, With truth, taste, honour in a mate, And much good sense, and some estate." The poet's wishes were soon accomplished, by her marriage with Mr. Eliot, of Port Eliot, in Cornwall. In the year 1784 he was raised to the honour of an English peerage, and their three sons are all Members of the house of Commons. 310 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoie E. Great Britain and America ; and supported, with many a sincere and silent vote, the rights, though not perhaps the interests, 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 or education with the intrepid energy of nund and voice — " Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendia." timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the tryal of my voice. But I assisted at the debates of a free assembly, ^which agitated the most important questions, of peace and war, of Justice and Policy :] 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 eight sessions that I sat in Parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian. 1775. The volume of my history, which had been somewhat delayed by the novelty and tumult of a first session, was now ready for the press. After the perilous adventure had been declined by my timid friend Mr. Elmsley, I agreed, on very easy terms, with Mr. Thomas Cadell, a respectable bookseller, and Mr. William Strahan, an eminent printer; and they undertook 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 impression had been stinted to five hundred, till June. PUBLICATION 01" VOL. I. 311 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 appre- hension 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; Eome is familiar to the schoolboy 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 enquiry into the hwmcm causes of the progress and establishment of Christianity. \ I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work ' 1776. without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first ^^^^ impression 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 pyrates of Dublin. 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. Th& favour of mankind is most freely bestowed on a new acquaintance of any original merit, and the mutual sur- prize of the public and their favourite is productive 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. Eobertson embraced his disciple; a letter from Mr. Hume*" overpaid the i 3" That curious and original letter will amuse the reader ; and his 312 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGKArHY. [Memoik E. labour of ten years ; but I bave nerer presumed to accept a place in tbe triumvirate of British bistorians. My second excursion to Paris was determined by tbe gratitude should shield my free communicatiou from the reproach of vanity. « Edinburgh, 18th of March, 1776. "Deae Sie, "As I ran through your Volume of History -with great avidity and impatience, I cannot forbear discovering somewhat 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 woi'k as equally the object of esteem, and I own that, if I had not prseviously had the happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a performance from an Englishman in our age would have given me some surprize. 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 expected any valuable production ever to come from them. I know it will give you pleasure (as it did me) to find that all the men of letters in this place concur in their admiration of your work, and in their anxious desire of your continuing it. " When I heard of your imdertaking (which was some time ago) I own that I was a little curious to see how you would extricate your- self 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 may 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 PARIS. 313 pressing invitation of Mr. and Madame Necker, who had visited England in the preceding summer. On my arrival I found Mr. Necker, Director-general of the finances, in the first bloom of power and popularity ; his private fortune enabled him to support a liberal estab- lishment ; and his wife, whose talents and virtues I had long admired, was admirably qualified to preside in the conversation of her table and 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 facts, could have been preserved by oral tradition, during fifty genera- tions, 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 for 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. " I must inform you that we are all 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 slill more delicate than the preceding, but I trust in your prudence for extricating you from the difiBculties ; 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 j'ear (1776) he died at Edinburgh, the death of a Philosopher. 314 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir E. me to enumerate. The fashionable suppers often broke into the morning hours ; yet I occasionally consulted the Eoyal Library, and that of the Abbey 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 Mr. de Buffon, who united with a sublime Genius the most amiable simplicity of mind and manners. At the table of my old friend, Mr. de Foncemagne, I was involved in a dispute ^^ with the Abbe de Mably,^^ and his jealous 2' As I might be partial in my own cause, I shall transcribe the words of an unknown critic (Supplement 4, la maniSre d'^crire I'histoire, p. 125, etc.), observing only that this dispute had been preceded by another on the English constitution at the house of the Countess do Froulay, an old Jansenist Lady. " Vous Itiez chez M. de Foncemagne, mon cher Theodon, lo jour que M. I'Abb^ de Mably et M. Gibbon y dinerent en grande compagnie. La conversation roula presque entiere- ment sur I'histoire. L'Abb^ etant un profond politique, la tourna sur I'administration, quand on fut au dessert ; et comma par caractere, par humeur, par I'habitude d'admirer Tite-Live, il ne prise que le systSme E^publicain, il se mit k vanter I'excellence des B^publiques ; bien per- suade que le savant Anglois I'approuveroit en tout, et admireroit la profondeur de g(Snie, qui avoit fait deviner tons ces avantages 3, un Fran9ois. Mais M. Gibbon, instruit par experience des inconvfiniens d'un gouvernement populaire, ne fut point du tout de son avis, et il prit genfireusementla defense du gouvernement monarohique. L'Abbe voulut le convaincre par Tite-Live, et par quelques argumens tir& de Plutarque en favour des Spartiates. M. Gibbon, dou^ de la memoire la plus heureuse, et ayant tons les faits pr&ens k la penaee, domina bien-t6t la conversation ; TAbb^ se fstcha, il s'emporta, il dit des choses dures. L' Anglois, conservant le flegme de son pays, prenoit ses avantages, et pressoit I'Abbd avec d'autaut plus de succSs que la colere 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 sallon, oil per- sonne ne fut tent^ de la renouer." ^ Of the voluminous writings of the Abb^ de Mably (see his £loge VAEIOUS STUDIES. 315 irascible spirit revenged itself on a work which he was incapable of reading in the original.*^ Near two years had elapsed between the publication 1777. of my first and the commencement of my second Volume ; etc. and the causes must be assigned of this long delay. 1. After a short holyday I indulged my curiosity in some studies of a very different nature ; a course of Anatomy which was demonstrated by Dr. Hunter, and some lessons of Chemistry 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 or Chemist may sometimes track me in their own snow. 2. I dived perhaps too deeply into the mud of the Arian controversy ; and many days of reading, thinking, and writing 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 by the Abbd Brizard), the Frincipes du Droit public de V Europe, and the first part of the Observations sur Vhistoire de Framx, may be deservedly praised ; and even the Maniere d'ecrire 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, Nobles, and successful writers were the objects of his contempt, or hatred, or envy ; but his illiberal abuse of Voltaire, Hume, Buffon, the Abbe Eaynal, Dr. Eobertson, and tutti qucmti, can be injurious only to himself. 3^ " Est-il rien de plus fastidleux" (says the polite Censor), "qu'un M. Ouihbon, qui, dans son etemelle histoire des Empereurs Eomains, sus- pend 'k chaque instant son insipide et lente narration, pour vous expliquer la cause des faits que vous allez lire ? " (Maniere d'ecrire I'histoire, p. 184 ; see another passage, p. 280). Yet I am indebted to the Abb^ de Mably for two such advocates as the Anonymous French Critic (Supplement, pp. 125-134), and my friend Mr. Hayley (vol. ii. pp. 261-263). 316 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik E. with the first Essay, that I committed to the flames aboTe fifty sheets. 4. The six months of Paris and pleasure must be deducted from the account. But when I re- sumed my task I felt my improvement. I was now master of my style and subject ; and while the measure of my daily performance was enlarged, I discovered less reason to cancel or correct. It has always been my practise to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to I try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to I suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last I polish to my work. Shall I add that I never found my ' mind more vigorous or my composition more happy than in the winter hurry of society and Parliament ? 1779. Had I believed that the majority of English readers were so fondly attached even to the name and shadow of Christianity, had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the 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 rejoyce that if the voice of our priests was clamorous and bitter, their hands were disarmed of 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 good faith, of the historian. My Vindication,^^ expressive of •'* A Vindication of some passages in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the Eistory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by the Author : London, 1779, in octavo — for I would not print it in quarto, lest it Bhoiild be bound and preserved with the History itself. At the distance of twelve j'ears, I calmly affirm my judgement of GIBBON'S "VINDICATION." 317 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, appears to have been satisfied of my innocence and accuracy. My antagonists, however, were rewarded in this World : poor Chelsum * was indeed neglected, and I dare not boast the making Dr. Watson t a Bishop ; ^ but I enjoyed the pleasure of giving a Eoyal pension to Mr. Davies,| and of collating Dr. Apthorpe § to an Archiepiscopal living. Their success encouraged the zeal of Taylor || the Arian^s and Milner the Me- Davies, Chelsum, etc. A victory over such antagonists was a sufficient humiliation. ^ Dr. Watson, now Bishop of LlandafiF, is a prelate of a large mind and liberal spirit. I should be happy to think that his apology for Christianity had contributed, though at my expence, to clear his Theological character. He has amply repaid the obligation by the amusement and instruction which I have received from the five Volumes of his Chemical Essays. It is a great pity that an agreable and useful science should not yet be reduced to a state oi fixity. ^ The stupendous title, Thoughts on the Causes of t}ie Grand Apostacy, 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 strange mixture of high enthusiasm, and low buffoonery, and the Millennium is a fundamental article of his creed. * James Chelsum, D.D. (1740- Gibbon's History, within a few 1801), Fellow of Christ's College, months of taking his B.A. degree Cauibridgo, author of Bemarlcs on at Balliol in 1778. His work dis- Mr. CUbbon's History, 1772 and 1778 ; played ability, but he was no match Beply to Gibbon's Vindication, 1785. for the historian as a contro- He also wrote a History of the Art versialist. of Engraving. § East Apthorp (1732-1816), a t Eiohard Watson (1737-1816), native of Boston, U.S.A. came to Fellow of Trinity College, Cam- Jesus College, Cambridge, and waa bridge. Professor of Chemistry, appointed Prebend of Finsbury, BegiusProfessor of Divinity; Arch- 1790. deacon of Ely, 1780; Bishop of || Henry Taylor (died 1785), lilandaff, 1782. An Apology for Eeotor of Crawley and Vicar of Christianity, in a Series of Letters Portsmouth. His liumghts on the toEdward &i66ore, appeared in 1776. Nature of the Grand Apostacy, with % Henry Edwards Davis (1756- Reflections on the Fifteenth Chapter 1784) published an attack on the of Mr. Gabon's History, waa pub- fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of liehed in 1781-2. 318 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik E. thodist,^' with many others whom it would be difficult to remember and tedious to rehearse : the list of my adver- saries was graced with the more respectable names of Dr, Priestley,88 Sir David Dalrymple,*' and Dr. White," and '' From his Grammar school at Kingston-upon-Hull, Mr. Joseph Milner * pronounces an anathema against all rational Beligion. 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 interpret the Scriptures, are in his judgement no better than profane inSdels. 2* In his History of the Corruptions of Christianity (vol. ii.), Dr. Priestly throws down his two gauntlets to Bishop Hurd and Mr. Gibbon. I declined the challenge in a polite letter, exhorting my opponent to enlighten the World by his philosophical discoveries, 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 (Astruc de la Btructure du Coeur, torn. i. pp. 77-79). 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 much. From my replies he has nothing to hope or fear ; but his Socinian shield has repeatedly been pierced by the spear of the mighty Horsley, and his trumpet of sedition may at length awaken the magistrates of a free country. ^ The profession and rank of Sir David Dalrymple (now a Lord of Session) f 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 sometimes succeed in finding, a flaw. In his Annals of Scotland he has shewn himself a diligent Collector and an accm'ate Critic. ^o I have praised, and I still praise the eloquent sermons which were preached in St. Mary's pulpit at Oxford by Dr. White.t If he » Joseph Milner (1744-1797), 1781. Head-master of Hull Grammar f Afterwards Lord Hailes Sohcol, and subsequently Vicar of, (1726-1792). Holy Trinity, Hull, was a volurai- t Joseph White, D.D. (1746- nous writer ; hia best-known work 1814), sou of a weaver at Glon- is his History of tlie Church of oester, became Fellow of Wadham Christ, which he did not live to College, Laudian Professor of Ara- complete. His Gibbon's Account of bic, and Begius Professor of Hebrew Christianity Considered appeared in in Oxford. The allusion to Gibbon ATTACKS ON THE HISTORY. 319 every polemic of either University discharged his sermon or pamphlet against the impenetrable silence of the ( Eoman historian,*^ Let me frankly own that I was [ startled at the first voUies of this Ecclesiastical ordnance; but as soon as I found that this empty noise was mis- I chievous only in the intention, my fear was converted to indignation, and every feeling of indignation or curiosity has long since subsided in pure and placid indifference. The prosecution of my history was soon afterwards 1779. checked by another controversy of a very different kind. At the request of the Chancellor and of Lord Weymouth, then Secretary of State, I vindicated against the French assaults me with some degree of ilKberal acrimony, in such a place and before such an audience, ho 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 brill[i]ant and striking." *^ In a sermon lately preached before the University of Cam- bridge, Dr. Edwards compliments a work " which can only perish with the language itself,'' and esteems the autlior as a formidable enemy. He is indeed astonished that more learning and ingenuity has not been shewn 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 investigation ; but are too frequently disgusted by vague and inconclusive reasoning, by unseasonable banter and senseless witticisms, by unlettered 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, etc." {MontMy Eeview for October, 1790, vol. iii. p. 237). was made in his Bampton Lectures Samuel Badcock, who is mentioned on Mahometanism and Christianity. in Gibbon's note ; the question is We need not here dwell on the use dealt with in the life of Dr. Samuel he made of the works of the Eer. Parr. 320 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHY. [Memoir E. 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 Memoire Justifieatif, which I composed in French, was first ap- proved by the Cabinet Ministers, and then delivered as a state paper to the Courts of Europe, The style and manner are praised by Beaumarchais himseK, who, in his private quarrel, attempted a reply ; but he flatters me by ascribing the Memoire to Lord Stormont, and the grossness of his invective betrays the loss of temper and of wit.^* 1779. Among the honourable connections which I had formed, I may justly be proud of the friendship of Mr. Wedderbume, 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 favourable disposition of Lord North, I was appointed one of the Lords Com- missioners 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 *2 See (Euvres de Beaumarchais, torn. iii. pp. 299-355 : " Le style ne seroit pas sans graces ni la logique sans justesse," 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. " See Mr. Burke's Speech on the bill of reform, pp. 72-80. I can never forget the delight with which that diffusive and ingenious Orator was heard by all sides of the House, and even by those whose LORD COMMISSIONER OF TRADE, ETC. 321 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 lived in habits of intimacy, and I was most unjustly accused of deserting a party in which I had never been enlisted. The aspect of the next Session of parliament was stormy and perilous : County meetings, petitions, and committees of correspondence announced the public dis- content ; and instead 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. Duiming's motion, "that the influence of the Crown had encreased, was encreasing, and ought to be diminished ; " and Mr. Burke's bill of reform was framed with skill, introduced with eloquence, and sup- ported by numbers. Our late president, the American a.d. Secretary of State, very narrowly escaped the sentence uaroh is. 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 June 2, by a mischievous madman, admonished all thinking men * "' of the danger of an appeal to the people. In the prse- existence he proscribed. The Lords of Trade blushed at then: own insignificancy, and Mr. Eden's appeal to the two thousand five hundred •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. Y 322 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHT. [Memoik E. Sept. 1. mature dissolution which followed this Session of parlia- ment I lost my seat. Mr. Eliot was now deeply engaged in the measures of opposition, and the Electors of Leskeaid are commonly of the same opinion as Mr. Eliot. 1781. 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 Protestant zeal is more indifferent to the characters and controversies 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 re- newing 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 ** The piety or prudence of my Italian translaix)r * has provided an antidote against the poison of his original. The v"" and vii"" Volumes are armed with five letters from an anonymous Divine to his friends, Foofhead and Kirk, two English students at Eome, and this meritorious service is commended by Monsignore Stonor, a prelate of the same nation, who discovers much venom in the fluid and nervous style of Gibbon. The critical Essay at the end of the iii* 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 ? *5 The brutal insolence of his challenge can only be excused by the absence of learning, judgement, and humanity ; and to that excuse he has the fairest or foulest title. Compared with Archdeacon Travis,t Chelsum and Davis assume the character of respectable enemies. , * Dean Milman states in his and — Poggl). notes that he was never able to f George Travis (1740-1797), of find the Italian translation. It was St. John's OoUege, Oxford, wrote published in Pisa, 177&-86, under Letters to Edward Gibbon . . . in the title Istoria della deeadenza e Defence ofthe Authenticity of IJohn '^ovina dell' Imperio Momano tra- ». 7 in 1784. dotta daW IngUse (by A. Fabbroni SECOND AND THIRD VOLUMES OP THE HISTORY. 323 condemning with the best Critics the spurious text of the three heavenly Witnesses. The bigotted advocate of Popes and monks may be turned over even to the bigots of Oxford, and the wretched Travis still howls under the lash of the mercyless Porson.*^ But I perceived, and without surprize, the coldness and even prejudice of the town; nor could a whisper escape my ear that, in the judgement of many readers, my continuation was much inferior to the origiaal attempt. An author who cannoi ascend will always appear to sink: envy was now pre- pared for my reception, and the zeal of my religious *'' was fortified by the malice of my political enemies. I was, however, encouraged by some domestic and foreign. ^ I consider Mr. Porson's answer to Archdeacon Travis as tha- 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 be polluted, by this spurious text, " Sedet setemumque sedebit." The more learned Ecclesiastics will, indeed, have the secret satisfaction of repro- bating in the Closet what they read in the Church. *^, Bishop Newton (see his Life in Posthumous works, vol. i. pp. 173, 174, octavo edition) was at full liberty to declare how much hO' himself and two eminent brethren were disgusted 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 conscious- ness, but destitute of all active or passive connection with the external World. "Secundum communem dictionem Sacrse Scriptarse, Mors dicitur somnus, et morientes dicuntur obdormire : quod innuere mihi videtur statum mortis esse statnm quietis, silentii, et depyacrtas" (De Btatfl Mortuorum, C. v. p. 98). 324 ' GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [Memoir E, testimonies of applause, and the second 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 efforts had not been relaxed by success, and I had rather deviated into the opposite fault of minute and superfluous^ dili- gence. 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 construed as a personal reflection on the reigning Monarch.^ A.D. Before I could apply for a seat at the general Election, June, 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 I once been the favourite of the Country ; the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her Colonies ; and the executivp power was driven by national clamour into the most vigorous and coercive measures. But the length of a fruitless contest, the loss of armies, the 48 It may not be generally known that Louis XVI. is a great reader, and a reader of English books. On the perusal of a passage of my History (vol. iii. p. 636), which seems to compare him with 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 th^ situa- tion of the late King of Prance 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. ABOLITION OF THE LORDS OP TRADE. 325 accumulation of debt and taxes, and the hostile con^ federacy 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 oflSce, and retired to a private station, with the tranquil assurance of a clear conscience and a chearfal 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 compelled the patriots to 17S2. revive, and I was stripped of a convenient salary after I had enjoyed it about three years. So flexible is the title of my history, that the final sera 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 fullfiUed my first engagement with the public. In this interval of sus- pense, near a twelvemonth, I returned by a natural im- pulse to the Greek authors of antiquity. In my library in Bentinck street, at my summer lodgings at Bright- helmstone, at a country house which I hired atr Hampton Court, I read with new pleasure the Iliad a,nd 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 Socratie school. Yet in the luxury of freedom I began to wish for the liaily task, the active pursuit which gave a value to every 326 GffiBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik E. 1782. book, and an object to every enquiry : the preface of a new edition announced my design, and I dropt without reluctance from the age of Plato to that of Justinian. The original texts 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 modem interpreters before I presumed to form an abstract of the Civil law. My skill was improved by practise, my diligence perhaps was quickened by the loss of office, and, except the last chapter, I had finished my fourth Volume before I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman lake. 1783. 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 Eockingham, the appointment of the Earl of Shelburne, the resignation of Mr. Fox, and his famous coalition with Lord North. But I may affirm with some degree of assurance that in their political conflict those great antagonists had never felt any personal animosity to each other ; that their recon- ciliation 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 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 over- looked in the division of the spoil. There were many claimants more deserving and importunate than myself: MEDITATES LEAVING ENGLAND, 32?" the board of trade could not be restored ; and while the list of places was curtatiled, 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 f*arlia[ment] were grown more irksome, and without some additional income I could not long or prudently maintain the style of expence to which I was accustomed. From my early acquaintance with Lausaime I had *'^^". always jcherished a secret wish that the school of my youth might become the retreat of my declining age. A moderate fortune would secure the blessings of ease, leisure, and independence : 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 Englishjt Mr. Deyverdun was now settled at home in a pleasant habitation, the gift of his deceased aunt : we had * About the same time, it being principal, of an unknown, perhaps in contemplation to send a secre- an unamiable character : to \rhich tary of embassy to Paris, Mr. might be added the danger of the Gibbon was a competitor for that recall of the ambassador, or the office. The credit of being dis- change of ministry. Mr. Anthony tingoished and stopped by govern- Storer was preferred. Mr. Gibbon ment when bewas leaving England, was somewhat indignant at the the salary of 12001. a year, the preference; but he never knew society of Paris, and the hope of a that it was the act of his friend future provision for life, disposed Mr. Fox, contrary to the solicita- him to renounce, though with much tions of Mr. Graufurd, and other reluctance, an agreeable scheme on of his friends. — Sheffield. the point of execution ; to engage, t Sir Bichard Worsley, Lord without experience, in a scene of Chesterfield, Broderiok Lord Midle- business which be never liked ; to ton, and Mr. Hume, brother to Sir give himself a master, or at least a Abraham. 328 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHT. [Memoie E. long been separated, we had long been silent ; yet in my first letter I exposed with th^onost 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 expence 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 indo- lence 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-chaise moved over Westminster bridge, I bid a long farewell to the " fumum, et opes, strepitumque Komse." My journey by the direct road through France was not attended with any accident, and I arrived at Lausanne near twenty years after my second departure. Within less than three months the Coalition struck on some hidden rocks ; had I remained aboard I should have perished in the general shipwreck. A.B. Since my establishment at Lausanne more than seven 1783 geptember years have elapsed, and if every day has not been equally 178?!^ ^^^* *^^ serene, not a day, not a moment has occurred in July 29. vvhich I have repented of my choice. During my absence, a long portion of human life, many changes had happened : my elder acquaintance had left the stage ; virgins were ripened into matrons, and children were grown to the age of manhood. But the same manners were trans- mitted from one generation to another : 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 EBTUEN TO LAUSANNE. 329 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 dis- covered 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 delivered from the chain of duty and dependence, firom the hopes and fears of political adventure : my sober mind was no longer intoxicated by the fumes of party, and I rejoyced 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 batchelor who might afford some occasional dinners. In Switzerland I enjoyed at every meal, at every hour, the free and pleasant conversation of the Mend of my youth; and my daily table was always provided for the reception of one or two extra- ordinary 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 families of Lausanne, and my style of prudent expence enabled me to maintain a fair balance of reciprocal civilities. 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 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 descends 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 330 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir E. 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. My Mends had been kindly apprehensive that I should not be able to exist in a Swiss town at the foot of the Alps, after so long conversing with the first men of the first cities of the World. Such lofty connections may attract the curious and gratify the vain, btit I am too modest or too proud to rate my own value by that of my associates; and whatsoever. may be the fame of learning or genius, experience has shewn 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 nimierous gentry, whose companionable idleness is seldom disturbed by the pursuits of avarice or ambition ; the women, though confined to a domestic education, are endowed for the most part with more taste and knowledge than their husbands or brothers ; but the decent freedom of both sexes is equally remote from the extremes of simplicity and refinement. 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 repu- tation of Dr. Tissot, and the fashion of viewing the mountains and glaoiers, have opened us on all sides to the incursions of foreigners. The visits of Mr. and LIFE AT LAUSANNE. 331 Madame Necker,*' of Prince Henry of Prussia,™ and of Mr. Fox ^^ may form some pleasing exceptions ; but, in general, Lausanne has appeared most agreable in my eyes when we have been abandoned to our own society. My transmigration from London to Lausanne could ■*'^- not be effected without interrupting the course of my July, etc. 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 praeviously selected ; the Academical library of Lausanne, which I could use as my own, contains at least the fathers and councils, and I have darived some occasional succour from the public collections of Bern and Geneva. The fourth volume was soon terminated ^ I saw them frequently in the summer of 1784, at a country house near Lausanne, where Mr. Necker composed his treatise of the administration of the Finances. I have since (in October, 1790) visited them in their present residence, 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 the month of August, 1784, Prince Henry of Prussia, in his way to Paris, passed three days at Lausaime. His military conduct is praised by professional men; his character has been vilified by the wit and malice of a Daemon (Memoires secrets de la cour de Berlin); but I was flattered by his affability, and entertained by bis conversation. «i 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 admired the powers of a superior man, as they are blended m 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. 332 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGBAPHT. [Memoir E. by an abstract of the controversies of the Incarnation/^ which the learned Dr. Prideaux* was apprehensive of exposing to profane eyes.^* In the fifth and sixth Volumes the revolutions of the Empire and the World are most rapid, various, and instructive ; and the Greek or Eoman historians are checked by the hostile narratives of the Barbarians of the East and West. It was not till after many designs and many tryals that I preferred, as I still prefer, the method of groupping 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 *^ In one of the Dialogues of the dead (xvi.) Lucian turns into ridicule the Pagan theology concenung^the double Nature of Hercules, God and Man (0pp., torn. i. pp. 402-405, edit. Eeitz). As truth and falsehood have sometimes an apparent similitude, I am afraid that even the Synods of Ephesus and Chalcedon would not have been safe from the arrows of his profane wit. ^ 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 miravel all those controversies which the Christians made about the Hypostatical Union, but also to unfold all the niceties and subtile notions which each sect did hold concerning it. The pious historian was apprehensive of exposing that Jncomprehensible Mystery to the cavils and objections of unbelievers, and he durst not, considering the nature of this book, venture it abroad in so wanton and lewd an age (see Preface to the Life of Mahomet, p. xxi.). '* I have followed the judicious precept of the AbbI de Mably (Manilre d'^crire I'histoire, p. 110), who advises the historian not to dweU too minutely on the decay of the Eastern Empire, but to con- sider the Barbarian conquerors as a more worthy subject of his narrative. " Fas est et ab hoste doceri." * Hmnphrey Prideaux (1648- Dean of Norwich, 1702. His lafe 1724), Christ Church, Oxford; of Jtfaftomet was published in 1697 COMPLETION OF THE HISTOBY. 333 and third it is ripened 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 Grallic 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 ; 1787. I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather the 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 herceau, 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 dissemble the first \ emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride i was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread •over my mind by the idea that I had taken my ever- lasting leave of an old and agreable dompanion, and 334 gibbon's autobiography. [Memoie E. 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 except those of the Author and the printer ; the faults and the merits are exclusively my own. A.B. After a quiet residence of four years, during which I July 29. 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 atchieved 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. Hol- royd) 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 intercourse with America®® 55 I cannot help recollecting a much more extraordinary fact, which is affirmed of himself by E^tif de la Bretonne, a voluminous 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. 5* Observations on the commerce of the American states, hy John Lord Sheffield: the sixth edition, London, 1784, in octavo. Their sale was diflfasive, 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- RETURN TO ENGLAND. 335 and Ireland." He fell* (in 1784) with the unpopular coalition, but his merit has been acknowledged at the last general election (1790) by the honourable in- vitation and free choice of the city of Bristol. During the whole time of my residence in England, 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 without the prejudices of an Englishman ; but I rejoyced in the apparent encrease 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 ; 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 the most pleasure and assiduity was that country may survive and flourish after the loss of America. My friend has never cultivated the arts of composition, hut his materials are copious and correct, and he leaves on his paper the clear impression of an active and vigorous mind. w Ohservations on the trade, manufactures, and present state of Ireland, ly John Lord Sheffield : the third edition, London, 1784, in octavo. Their useful aim was to guide the industry, to correct the prejudices, and to asswage the passions of a country which seemed to forget that she could only he free and prosperous hy a friendly con- nection with Great Britain. The concluding ohservations are expressed with so much ease and spirit, that they may he read hy those who are the least interested in the suhject. * It is not ohvlous from whence light dragoons, which he raised he fell : he never held nor desired himself, and which was disbanded any office of emolument whatever, on the peace, 1783, should be unless his military commissions, deemed snoh.— JTofe in Lord Blief- and the command of a regiment of fieWs edition. 336 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGKAPHY. [Memoie E. 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 1788. from England I assisted at the august spectacle of "°^' Mr. Hastings's tryal in Westminster hall: I shall not 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.™ 1787. As the publication of my three last volumes was the "res." principal object, so it was the first care of my English April, journey. The prsevious 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 SheflSeld Place. The length of the operation and the leisure of the country allowed some time to review my manuscript : several rare and useful books, the Assises de Jerusalem, Eamusius de bello C. P"°, the Greek Acts of the Synod of Florence, the Statuta Urbis Romae, etc., were procured, and I introduced in their proper places the supplements 58 From this display of Genius, which blazed four successive days, I shall stoop to a very mechanical circumstance. As I was waiting in the Manager's box, I had the curiosity to enquire of the short-hand writer how many words a ready and rapid Orator might pronounce in an hour. From 7000 to 7500 was his answer. The medium of 7200 will afford one hundred and twenty words in a minute, and two words in each second. But this computation will only apply to the English language. * Sheridan alluded to certain Taoitua or the luminous page of facta as being unparalleled in Gibbon." He ia credited with atrooiousnesa and criminality having explained in private that " either in andent or modern his- he meant vo-luminous. tory, in the correct periods of PUBLICATION OF VOL. IV. 337 •which they afforded. The impression of the fourth volume had consumed three months ; our common in- terest required that we should move with a quicker pace, and Mr. Strahan fullfllled his engagement, which few printers could sustain, of delivering every week three thousand copies of nine sheets. The day of publication jj„ g was, however, delayed, that it might coincide with the fifty-first anniversary of my own birthday : the double festival was celebrated by a chearful litterary dinner at Cadell's house, and I seemed to blush while they read an elegant compliment from Mr. Hayley,^^ whose poetical talent had more than once been employed in the praise of his friend. As most of the former purchasers were naturally desirous of compleating 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 appears to have diffused a strong sensation; it 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.^ Yet, upon the whole, ^ Before Mr. Hayley inscribed -with my name his Epistles on History, I was not personally acquainted wifli 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. 60 I never could understand the clamour which 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. (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 Z 338 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, [Memoir E. the history of the decline and fall seems to hare struck a root both at home*^ and abroad,*^ and may, perhaps, an hundred years hence, still continue to be abused. The French,* Italian, and German transla- is told by the Reverend Mr. Joseph Warton, an instractor of Youth (Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, pp. 322-324). (3) My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language. " Le Latin dans ses mots brave I'honnStet^," says the correct Boileau in a country and idiom more scrupulous than our own. " 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 testi- mony to my attention, diligence, and accuracy^— those humble virtues which Religious zeal has most audaciously denied. The sweetness of his praise is tempered by a reasonable mixture of acid (see his preface, pp. xxviii.-xxxii.). '2 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 (Vol. iv. P. i. pp. 342-344) : " Summis ^vi nostri historicis Gibbonus sine dubio adnumerandus est. Inter ■Capitolii ruinas stans primtim hujus operis soribendi consilium cepit. Florentissimos vitse annos colligendo et laborando eidem impendit. Enatum inde monimentum sere perennius, licet passim appareant ■sinistre dicta, minus perfeota, veritati non satis consentanea. Videmus quidem ubique fere studium scrutandi veritatemque scribendi maxi- mum : tamen sine TUlemontio duce, ubi scilicet hujus historia finitur, sospius noster titubat atque haUucinatur. Quod vel maxime fit, ubi de rebus Ecclesiasticis vel de Juris prudentia Romana (tom. iv.) tradit, et in aliis locis. Attamen neevi hujus generis hand impediunt quo minus operis summam et oiKovo/dav prseclare dispositam, delectum rerum sapientissimum, argutum quoque interdnm, dictionemque seu stilum historioo seque ac philosopho dignissimum, et vix a quoque alio Anglo, Humio ac Robertsono haud exceptis, prserepto (prcereptumf), vehe- menter laudemus, atque sseculo nostro de hujusmodi historic gratu- lemur . . . Gibbonus adversaries cum in turn extra patriam nactus est, quia propagationem Religionis Christiana:, non, ut vulgo fieri solet, aut more Theologormn, sed ut historicum et philosophum decet exposuerat." * The French edition was subsequently revised by M. Guizot. LONDON COMPARED WITH LAUSANNE. 339 tions^ have been executed with various success; but instead of patronizing, I should willingly suppress such imperfect copies which injure the character while they propagate the name of the author. The Irish pyrates are at once my friends and my enemies, but I cannot be displeased with the two numerous and correct impres- sions of the English original, which have been published for the use of the Continent at Basil in Switzerland." The conquests of our language and litterature are not confined to Europe alone ; and the writer who succeeds in London is speedily read on the banks of the Dela- ware and the Ganges. In the preface of the fourth Volume, while I gloried in the name of an Englishman, I announced my ap- proaching return to the neighbourhood of the lake of Lausanne. This last tryal 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 Lausanne? The tumult of London astonished my eyes and ears; the ^ The first Volume had been feebly though faithfully translated into French by M. Le Clerc de Septchgnes, a young Gentleman of a studious character and liberal fortune. After his decease the work was continued by two manufacturers of Paiis, MM. Desmeuniers and CantweU; but the former is 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 it were in my power to read the German, which is praised by the best Judges. «* 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 complyance. 340. GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir E. 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 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 tempta- tions would not have enlisted me a second time in the A.D. servitude of parliament or office. At Tunbridge, some ■IITQD July 21- weeks after the publication of my history, I tore myself ^"^ from the embraces of 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 encreased my chosen library to the number of six or 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 stept aside into every path of enquiry which reading or reflection accidentally opened. 1789. Alas ! the joy of my return and my studious ardour J"iy 5- were goon damped by the melancholy state of my friend, Mr. Deyverdun. His health and spirits had long suffered a gradual decline; a succession of Apoplectic fits announced his dissolution, 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 character was still alive in ' M. Willielm de Severy. DEATH OF M. DEYVERDUN. 341 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 me the option of purchasing 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 Daemon 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 advantageous. The cer- tainty 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 encouraged to love the parents as a brother, and the children as a father. Every day we seek fi* Yet I had often revolved the judicious lines in which Pope answers the objection of his long-sighted friend — " Kty to build without or child or wife ! Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life. Well, if the use be mine, does it concern one Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon? " 342 GIBBON-S AUTOBIOGBAPHY. [MemoikE. and find the opportunities of meeting, yet even this valu- able connection cannot supply the loss of domestic society. 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. 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 the present state of their mind and fortune, much contribute 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 experience are silenced by the clamours of the triumphant Democrates. The fanatic missionaries of sedition have scattered the seeds of dis- content 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. '° I beg leave to subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on the Revolution of France. . I admire Iiis 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 acknow- ledge the danger of exposing an old superstition to the contempt of the blind and fanatic multitude. KEVOLUTIONS. 343 Many individuals, and some communities, appear to be infected with the [French disease *], the wild theories of equal and boundless freedom : but I trust that the body of the people will be faithful to their sovereign and them- selves ; 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 Ber^rotects the happiness, it is superfluous to enquire whether it is foimded in the rights of man : the oeconomy of the state is\ liberally supplied without the aid of taxes ; ^^ and the magistrates must reign with prudence and equity, since tney are unarmed in the midst of an armed nation. For ikyself (may the omen be averted) I can oidy declare thati the first stroke of a rebel drum would be the signal of\my immediate departure. 1 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 over- spread 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 coimtry, in an honourable and wealthy family, is the lucky chance of an unit agarast millions. The general probability is about three to one that a new-born infant will not live to compleat his fiftieth year.*^ I have w The revenue of Bern (I except some small duties) is derived from Church lands, tythes, feudal rights, and interest of money. The Republic has near 500,000 pounds sterling in the English funds, and the amount of their treasure is unknown to the Citizens themselves. ^ See Buffon, Supplement h I'histoire natureUe, torn. vii. 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 ! • " Gallic frenzy " in Lord Sheffield's edition. 344 GIBEON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [MemoieE. now passed that age, and may fairly estimate the present value of my existence in the threefold division of mind, body, and estate. i. The first indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach or remem- brance of an unworthy action. " Hie murus aheneus esto Nil conscire sibi, nulIS. pallescere culpS.." I am endowed with a chearful temper, a moderate sensi- bility, and a natural disposition to repose rather than to action : some mischievous appetites and habits have perhaps been corrected by philosophy or time. The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigour from enjoy- ment, 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 labour and manure ; but it may be questioned whether some flowers of fancy, some grateful errors, have not been eradicated with the weeds of prejudice, ii. Since I have escaped from the long perUs of my childhood, the serious advice of a physician has seldom been requisite. " The madness of superfluous health" I have never known; but my tender constitution has been fortified by time; [the play of the animal machine still continues to be easy and regular,] and the inestimable gift of the soimd and peaceful slumbers of infancy may be imputed both to the mind and body, [About the age of forty I was first afflicted with the gout, which in the space of fourteen years has made seven or eight different attacks; their duration, though not their intensity, appears to encrease, and after each fit I rise and walk with less strength and CONTENTMENT OF MIND. 345 agility than before. But the gout has hitherto been confined to my feet and knees ; the pain is never intoler- able ; I am surrounded by all the comforts that art and attendance can bestow ; my sedentary life is amused with books and company, and in each step of my convalescence I pass through a progress of agreable sensations.] iii. I have already described the merits of my society and situation; but these enjoyments would be tasteless and bitter, if their possession were not assured by an annual and adequate supply. [By the painful method of ampu- tation, my father's debts have been compleatly discharged ; the labour of my pen, the sale of lands, the inheritance of a maiden aunt (Mrs. Hester Gibbon ^), have improved my property, and it will be exonerated on some melan- choly day from the payment of Mrs. Gibbon's jointure.] According to the scale of Switzerland I am a rich man ; and I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expence, and my expence is equal to my wishes. My friend Lord ShefSeld has kindly relieved me from the cares to which my taste and temper are most adverse : * [the oeconomy of my house is settled without avarice or profusion; at stated periods all my bills are regularly paid, and in the course of my life I have never been reduced to appear, either as plaintiff or 89 My pious aunt and her profane sister are described under the names of Miranda and Flavia in Law's Serious Call, a popular and powerful hook of Devotion. Mr. William Law, a Nonjuror, a Saint, and a wit, had been my father's domestic Tutor. He afterwards retired, with his spiritual daughter Miranda, to live and dye in a Hermitage at Cliffe, in Northamptonshire. * This read originally, "My been altered in ink, but not by friends, more SBpeeially Lord Shef- Gibbon, to " My friend Lord Shef- field, kindly relieve me." It baa field has kmdly relieved me." 346 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [MemoikE. defendant, in a court of Justice.] 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 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 other- wise 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 litterary temper is so happily framed, that I am less sensible of pain than 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 social sympathy may be grati- fied by the idea that, now in the present hour, he is imparting some degree of amusement or knowledge to Ms friends in a distant land; that one day his mind will be familiar to the grandchildren of those who are yet ™ Mr. 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. MOEALIZINGS. 347 unborn." I cannot boast of the friendship or favour of princes ; the patronage of English litterature 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 : [few books of merit and importance have been composed either in a garret or a palace. A Gentleman, possessed of leisure and competency, may be encouraged by the assurance of an honourable reward ; but wretched is the writer, and wretched will be the work, where daily diligence is stimulated by daily hunger.] The present is a fleeting moment: the past is no more ; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may posdhly be my last ; but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow me about fifteen years,'^ and I shall soon enter into the '■I In the first of ancient or modem Eomances (Tom Jones, 1. xiii. c. 1) this proud sentiment, this feast of fancy, is enjoyed by the Genius of Fielding. " Foretell me that some future maid whose grandmother is yet unborn, etc." But the whole of this beautiful passage deserves to be read.* ^2 See Buffon, p. 224. From our disregard of the possibility of death within the four and twenty hours, he concludes (pp. 56-58) 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, * "Come, bright love of fame, &c., not only to foresee but to enjoy, fill my ravished fancy ■with the nay even to feed on, future praise, hopes of charming ages yet to Comfort me by the solemn asBur- come. Foretel me that some tender ance that, when the little parlour maid, whose grandmother is yet in which I sit at this moment shall unborn, hereafter, when, under the be reduced to a worse furnished fictitious name of Sophia, she reads box, I shall be read with honour the real worth which once existed by those who never knew nor saw in my Charlotte, shall from her me, and whom I shall neither know sympathetic breast send forth the nor see." — Book xiii. chap. I. heaving sigh. Do thou teach me 348 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik E. period wliicli, as the most agreable of his long life, was selected by the judgement 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 supposed to be calmed, our duties fuUfiUed, our ambition satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basisJ' I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine : I will not suppose any praemature decay of the mind or body; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life. 1. 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 a 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 tryal it will be found satisfactory and just. 2. 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 disappointment or possession ; but our courage is the effect of thoughtlessness rather than of reflec- tion. If a public lottery was 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? '^ See BuSbn, p. 413. 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 letters. MORALIZINGS. 349 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. Lausakme, March 2, 1791. '* This coelestial hope is confined to a small number of the Elect, and we must deduct : (1) All the mere philosophers, who can only speculate about the immortality of the soul. (2) All tlie earthly Christians, who repeat without thought or feeling the words of their Catechism. (3) All the gloomy fanatics, who are more strongly afiected by the fear of Hell, than by the hopes of Heaven. " Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and/eio there be who find it." Sfi '■■ THE MEMOIRS OH THE LIFE OF EDWARD GIBBON WITH VAEIOUS OBSERVATIONS AND EXOUESIONS BY HIMSELF. [MEMOIRS OF MY OWN LIFE.* CHAPTER I. Introduction — Account of my family — My grandfather— My father — My birth in the year 1737— My infancy— My first education and studies.] In the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of a toilsome and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of my leisure in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and litterary 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 appearances of art and study. My own amusement 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 from the reach of criticism or ridicule.f * Memoir A. The earliest, bon, in his communications \rith 1788-9. Lord Sheffield printed me on the subject of his Me- from this only pars. 1, 2, and 3, moirs, a subject which he had not partially. mentioned to any other person, ex- t This passage is found in this pressed a determination of publish- alone of the sketches. "Mr. Gib- ing them in his lifetime; and never 2a 354 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOaRAPHY. [Memoik A. [The reasons and examples which may furnish some Apology will be reserved for the last chapter of these Memoirs, when the order of time will lead me to account for this vain undertaking. A Philosopher may reasonably despise the pride of ancestry ; and, if the philosopher himself be a plebeian, his own pride will be gratified by the indulgence of such contempt. It is an obvious truth that parts and virtue cannot be transmitted with the inheritance of estates and titles ; and that even the claim of our legal descent must rest on a basis not perhaps sufficiently firm, the unspotted chastity of all our female progenitors. Yet in every age and country the common sense or common prejudice of mankind has agreed to respect the son of a respectable father, and each successive generation is supposed to add a new link to the chain of hereditary splendour.] 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 harm- less vanity of those who are associated to the honours of its name. In the study of past events our curiosity appears to have departed from that suggested to him that, if he should resolution, excepting in one of his make them a full image of bis mind, letters, in which he intimates a he would not have nerves to publish doubt, though rather carelessly, them, and therefore that they should whether in his time, or at any time, be posthumous. He answered, they would meet the eye of the rather eagerly, that he was deter- public. — ^In a conversation, how- mined to publish them in his life- wee, not long before his death, I time." — Sheffield. PRIDE OP DESCENT. 355 is stimulated by the immediate or indirect reference to ourselyes; [within its own precincts a local history is always popular, and the connection of a family is more clear and intimate than that of a kingdom, a province, or a city. For my own part, could I draw my pedigree from a General, a statesman, or a celebrated author, I should study their lives or their writings with the dili- gence of filial love, and I suspect that from this casual relation some emotions of pleasure — shall I say of vanity ? — ^might arise in my breast. Yet I will add that I should take more delight in their personal merit than in the memory of their titles or possessions, that I should b& more affected by litterary than by martial fame ; and that I would rather descend from Cicero than from. Maxius, from Chaucer than from one of the first Com- panions of the Garter. The family of Confucius is, in my opinion, the noblest upon Earth. Seventy authentic- Generations have elapsed from that Philosopher to the present Chief, of his posterity, who reckons one hundred and thirty-five degrees from the Emperor Hoang-ti, the father, as it is believed, of an illustrious line which haa now flourished in China four thousand four hundred and twenty-five years. I have exposed my private feelings,. as I shall always do, without scruple or reserve Let every reader, whether noble or plebeian, examine his own conscience on the same subject.] That these sentiments are just, or at least natural, I am the more inclined to believe, since I do not feel myself interested in the cause, since I can derive from my ancestors neither glory nor shame.* [I had long and * From this point onward this Memoir has not hitherto been published. 356 gibbon's AUTOBIOGEAPHY. [MemoibA. modestly acquiesced in the knowledge of my two imme- diate predecessors, a country gentleman and a wealthy merchant. Beyond these I found neither tradition nor memorial ; and as our Genealogy was never a topic of family conversation, it might seem probable that my grandfather, the Director of the South Sea Company, was himself a son of the Earth, who by his industry — his honest industry perhaps — had raised himself from the Work-house or the Cottage. 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. hanger, a lively and ingenious Scholar, while he resided at Lausanne as preceptor to the Hereditary prince of Brimswick. On his return to his proper station of librarian to the Ducal library of Wolfenhuttel, he accidentally found among some litterary rubbish a; small, old English Volume of Heraldry, in- scribed with the name of John Gibbon. From the title only, Mr. Langer judged that it might be an acceptable present to his friend : and he judged rightly, for I soon convinced myself that the author was not only my name- sake, but my kinsman. To his book I am indebted for the best and most curious information; but in my last visit to England I was tempted to indulge a curiosity which had been excited by this odd discovery. Some Wills, parish-registers, and monumental inscriptions were consulted at my request, and my enquiries were assisted by Mr. Brooke, ,>ihe Somerset Herald, whose knowledge deserves my applause, and whose friendly industry is entitled to my thanks. The first authentic record of my family shall be given EARLY KENTISH TRADITIONS. 357 in the disqualifying words of John Gibbon, Blue-mantle Poursuivant, who will soon become an acquaintance of the reader. After renouncing the vanities of this world, and closing by an et csetera the mention of some titles and alliances, Ne videar vanitati Genealogicae nimis- nimium indulgere. " Et genuB et proavos et quse non fecimus Ipsi Vix ea nostra voco " — he adds with a modest cunning, "Nedum mentionem sum facturus Gibbonos terras tenuisse et possedisse in Bolvenden, Anno 1326, vicesimo Edwardi secundi, Gib- honorum familise meminit, Villare Anglicanum, pp. 72, 73, 120, 206, 296, ter 891, et inter errata prioris tabulae ad p. 299 respicientia." He afterwards mentions their possessions in the neighbouring parish of Benenden ; and I have endeavoured to form some idea of the ancient state of the Country in which they appear to have been seated since the beginning of the fourteenth Century. The adjacent hundreds of Eolvenden and Tenterden form one of the most southern districts of Kent, with Sussex to the West, the isle of Oxney to the south, and Komney Marsh to the East. A part of the maritime coast has been gradually acquired by the retiring of the sea ; since the village of Newenden, now at the distance of some miles, is supposed by Cambden to be the Roman Ande- rida, a town and harbour which had been chosen for a naval station against the incursions of the Saxon pyrates. The more inland tract, still denominated the Weald, was a portion of the great forest of Anderida, which over- spread the adjacent coimties of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire, and long aiforded a retreat to the fugitive Britons. By the wise policy of Edward III., a Cloth 358 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir A. manufactory, long since decayed, was established in the towns of Cranbroke, Tenterden, and Benenden, and the rude natives were instructed by a colony of Flemings about the time of the first appearance of my ancestors. From that period to the present day the Gibbons have flourished, or at least subsisted, near five hundred years in the same district of Kent. Their rank in society is defined by the appellation of Esquire, in an age when that title was less promiscuously bestowed. The property of the elder branch, the Gibbons of Eolvenden, now amounts to about five hundred pounds a year, without much encrease, as it should seem, or much diminution of their ancient patrimony. They do not appear to have "been distinguished by the virtues or vices of an active spirit. From father to son they succeded each other in Tural obscurity ; and if I am asked about their lives and characters, I can only answer — " Go ! search it there, where to be born and dye Of rich and poor makes all the history." One only of the name left behind him a monument more conspicuous than the gravestone of a parish church- yard. In a grant of the thirteenth year of the reign of Edward III. (a.d. 1340) John Gibbon is styled Marmarius, (Marmorarius) Regis, the King's chief Marbler, master- mason, or Surveyor of his stone-works : no contemptible office, says Blue-mantle, who is jealous of the honour of his namesake. "For Weaver (p. 582) of his funeral monuments tells you, that such a one, a Marmorarius was Armiger lUustrissimi principis Eichardi secundi Eegis Anglise." It is more than supposed (says he) that John Gibbon was the principal architect in the building Queensborough Castle. At a time when the English JOHN GIBBON, MAllMORABIUS. 359 coast was infested by the French and Flemings, this strong and stately fortress was erected on the west side of the isle of Sheppey, to guard the entrance of the river Medway. It was denominated from the heroic Qtieen, Philippa of Hainault, and it is praised by the royal founder as a castle in a pleasant situation, a terror to his enemies and a comfort to his subjects. The reward which he bestowed on the Architect bespeaks him no vulgar mechanic. By a grant, which is still exstant, Edward III. invested John Gibbon with the profits of the passage between Sandwich and Stonar, in the isle of Thanet. I know not how long this favour was enjoyed by the Architect or his family, but it has long since been abolished by the lapse of time. In the primitive institution a coat of arms was the symbol of real armour, a representation of the shield and helmet of the Warrior. His motto was the cry of battle, at whose well-known sound the followers were accustomed to charge and rally under the banner of their Chief. In these days of freedom the unmeaning badge of vanity is assumed by all and disputed by none; and every man who has money to buy a carriage may blazon, if he please, his fancied arms on the pannels. But there was an inter- mediate period in which the Gentry of England was discriminated by the use of armorial coats, when the science of quarters and colours was defined by the College of Heralds, and when a plebeian usurper would have been rejected and punished by the Court of the Earl-Marshal. I do not challenge the honours of ancient chivalry ; but as early as the reign of Elizabeth the Gibbons of Kent were entitled to the same arms which I now claim by descent, though I may not perhaps describe them with 360 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoir A. the accuracy of technical language. " A Lyon, rampant, gardant, between three scallop-shells, silver on a field azure." They are thus translated by the Bluemantle- poursuivant in his Latin verses which he subjoins to a picture of the arms — " Symbola vera super data sunt auctoris honesti ; Erectus Leo stans inter conchylla terna (Ora sua obvertens) onus album, cserula parma est." He records a whimsical instance of the revenge of his Godfather, Edmond Gibbon, who, with the license of Sir William Segar, King-at-arms, exchanged the three scallop-shells for three Ogresses. " He assumed this new coat out of distaste against three ladies, his kinswomen, daughters of Gervase Gibbon, of the Pump. Frances married Sir Eobert Points, Knight of the Bath ; Elianor married to Sir John Crook : and Grizeld married to Sir John Lawrence, Knight and Baronet, who lies buried at Chelsy in Middlesex, in a chappel belonging to (and re- edified by) herself, with a fair mural monumental remem- brance. The falling out was about the will of Edmund Gibbon, founder of the free school in Benenden, the next parish to Kolvenden aforesaid." The three Ladies were uncourteously described under the form of Gigantic cannibals, and their adversary reserved the Lyon as the emblem of his own warfare and defence against the female monsters. But this unchristian vindictive spirit was re- nounced by Edmond Gibbon himself or by his heir : he lyes buried in the Temple Church, London (in the walks or western part) ; with a fair monument, against a pillar ; and the harmless scallop-shells are restored to their place in the first quarter of his armorial coat. My lineal ancestor in the fifth degree, Eobert Gibbon GIBBON'S ANCESTBY. 361 of KolTenden, Esquire, was Captain of the Kentish militia ; 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 Eose his wife, daughter of George Whetnal of East-Peckham, Esq'^ By this last marriage John Gibbon the Herald — did his modesty allow him — might connect his family with many respectable names of the Gentry of England : " Omitto Bercleos de Beauston, Hextallos, EUenbriggos, Claverleos, et Whetnallos Cestrenses, Equestri dignitate olim nobUes." Peckham, the seat of the Whetnalls of Kent, is mentioned — not, indeed, much to its honour — in the Memoires du Comte de Grammont ; a classic work, the delight of every man and woman of taste to whom the Erench language is familiar. It was at Peckham, la triste Peckham, that the fair and inanimate Whitnell (poupee jusqu'a la mort resta la blanche Whitnell) passed so many gloomy hours with an husband qui aimoit mieux feuilleter de vieux livres que de jeunes appas. It was there that she received the visit of Mademoiselle Hamilton, her cousin ; that she sighed in the absence of George Hamilton ; that she felt the propriety of reward- ing a faithful lover. Tf her marriage had preceded our alliance, I would not so confidently boast of my descent from the Whetnals of Peckham. Yet it is from this union that I claim the most illustrious of my ancestors, James, Lord Say and Sele, who, in the reign of Henry VI., was Governor of Dover, Warden of the Cinq-ports, Constable of the Tower, Lord Chamberlain and Lord High Treasurer of England. After the marriage of Queen Margaret he was accused by 362 gibbon's autobiography. [Memoir a. the commons of delivering Maine and Anjou to the French ; and to appease the popular discontent, this favourite and perhaps innocent Minister was sequestered from his office and then committed to the Tower. But neither his dignity nor his disgrace could save him from the blind rage of the Kentish Insurgents and their leader, Jack Cade. Lord Say was dragged from the asylum of his prison, and after a mock-tryal at Guild-hall, more illegal, than any act of which he was accused, his head was struck off, and borne in triumph about the street. The charge against him, as it is stated by Jack Cade in the words of Shakespeare, cannot, I believe, be strictly maintained ; but it is of such a nature as would make a man of letters proud of his descent from a martyr of learning. " Thou hast most traiterously " (says the rude clown) " corrupted the youth of the reahn, in erecting a grammar school : and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but 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 that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no christian ear can endure to hear." The name of the Lord Treasurer, beheaded in the year 1450, was Fiennes, and his family, which is still enrolled in the British, . had been settled in England from the time of King Stephen. From the Co-heiress of a family still more ancient and honourable than his own, he inherited the Barony of Say, to which he was restored in full parliament. Elizabeth, his daughter, married William Cromer, twice Sheriff of Kent, and the son of a Lord Mayor of London. Their son, Sir James Cromer, was the LONDON GIBBONS. 363 father of Anne, the wife of William Whetnal of Peckham; George, their son, was the father of the above-mentioned Eose, the mother of Margaret Phillips, the wife of Kobert Gibbon of Eolvenden. And thus, through the medium of four female alliances, I derive my lineage in the eleventh degree from the Lord Treasurer. But, alas! these honours are obliterated, and my scutcheon is irretrievably stained if we adopt the lofty prejudices of French and German nobility, I cannot deny that the younger branch of the Gibbons of Kent migrated, in the reign of James I. from the Country to the City, and that they persevered during three genera- tions in the profession of trade. Robert, the younger son of the above-mentioned Robert Gibbon of Rolvenden, Esq'", became a citizen of London and a member of the Cloth-workers' company. His son Matthew was a Linnen- draper in Leadenhall street in the parish of St. Andrew, Undershaft ; and the son of Matthew, Edward Gibbon, my grandfather, was engaged in various branches of foreign and domestic commerce before he was elected a Director of the South sea Company. These facts I can relate without a blush : the good-sense of the English has embraced a system more conducive to national prosperity ; the character of a merchant is not esteemed incompatible with that of a Gentleman, and the first names of the peerage are enrolled in the books of our trading Corpora- tions. The descent of landed property to the eldest son is secured by the common law, and though Kent, under the name of Gavelkind, retains a more equal partition, this provincial custom is defeated by the practise of settlements and entails. The pride and indolence of younger brothers might frequently acquiesce in the life 364 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoik A. of a William Wimble, so incomparably described by the Spectator : but a more rational pride must often prevail over their indolence, and urge them to seek in the World the comforts of independence. Since the auspicious reign of Elizabeth the commerce of England had opened a thousand channels of industry and wealth, and the more splendid ressources which now divert a Gentleman's younger sons from the mercantile profession were much less frequent and beneficial. After the reformation the Church assumed a graver and less attractive form, and though many might be content to sleep in the possession of a patrimonial living, the bench of bishops was long filled by indigent scholars, before the gentry, or at least the nobility, became fully sensible of the value of a calling which bestows riches and honours without requiring either genius or application. In every age the youth of England has been distinguished by a martial spirit, and the subjects of Elizabeth and her successors sought every occasion of danger and glory by sea and land. But these occasions were rare and voluntary ; nor could they afford such an ample and permanent provision as is now supplied by an hundred regiments, and an hundred ships of the line. Our civU establishment has gradually swelled to its present magnitude ; nor did India unfold her capacious bosom to the merit or fortune of every needy adventurer. The common alternative was the bar and the counter; but the success of a lawyer, unless he be endowed with superior talents, is difficult and doubtful ; the various occupations of commerce are adapted to the meanest capacity, and a modest competency is the sure reward of frugality and labour, since those humble virtues have so often sufficed for the acquisition of riches. MATTHEW GIBBON. 365 Eobert Gibbon the younger died in London in the year 1643, and his alliance may prove that he had not degraded himself by the profession of a Citizen and a clothier. He married the sister of Thomas Edgar, Esq", Justice of Peace and Eecorder of Ipswich, and their son, the Blue-mantle poursuivant, is well pleased to blazon his maternal with his paternal coat " Maternus clypeus comitatur jure paternum Cujus subsequitur Latia descriptio prosa." But this poetical vein was exhausted, and he is content to describe in Latin and English prose the modern arms of the Edgars, which they assumed by patent in the reign of Henry VIII., and afterwards to depict the armorial bearings of their ancient and primitive coat. But enough of these solemn trifles — I had rather observe that the Edgars, who spread into three branches, had flourished more than four hundred years in the County of Suffolk. The most eminent person of the race appears to have been Sir Gregory Edgar, a wealthy Serjeant-at-law, who died in the year 1506. " He took to wife Anne one of the daughters of Simon Wiseman, a man valiant and noble. This Woman was graced with modesty, manners, innocency, affability, and good parentage : and accept- able to all, and so liberal to the poor as was incredible." Such women at all times are rare, and it is a pleasure to descend from one of them. Of the life and character of Matthew Gibbon, the son of Eobert, I am totally ignorant, and must be content to repeat that he was a Linnen-draper in Leadenhall Street. After his decease, Hester, his relic, remarried with Eichard Acton, third son of Sir Walter Acton, Baronet, who exercised the same trade, in the same street ; and in 366 GIBBON'S AUTOBlOaEAPHY. [Memoik A. due time their union was confirmed by the marriage of the son of Hester and the daughter of Eichard by their former marriages. This lady, who survived both her husbands, and lived to a great age, was of an active and notable spirit. While her son, my Grandfather Edward Gibbon, was in Flanders, where he had a contract for supplying King "William's arms, his mother managed all his mercantile affairs at home ; and I have seen some of her letters, in a character no longer legible, and on business no longer interesting. Besides my grandfather, she had another son, Thomas Gibbon, who became Dean of Carlisle. In my childhood I have known his son, Williams Gibbon, a drunken Jacobite parson, who obtained by party-interest the Rectory of Bridewell. Another son, I know not whether elder or younger, of Matthew * Gibbon was John the Herald, without whose friendly aid I should be a stranger to my own family. In his book he has contrived to scatter many hints of his own life, and he thus records, in Latin verse, the important event of his birth, on the 3rd of November, of the year 1629— " Tertia lux Noni, mihi vitam contulit imbris, Anno millesimo Christi sexcentesimoque, Vigesimo nono (prse nonS vesperis horS,), Martyris et Caroli quarto sub Sole Beati." After passing through the studies of the Grammar school, a necessaiy step, John Gibbon became a member of Jesus College at Cambridge, and the blazon of its coat and crest, which he received from the President Dr. Sherman, is piously inserted in his work. With the same Gibbon evidently wrote " Matthew " here in error for "Robert." JOHN GIBBON. 367 gratitude he celebrates the retired content with which he was blessed at AUesborough, in Worcestershire, at the seat of his good Lord Thomas, Lord Corentry ; and from the comparison of his own felicity with that of Mr. Hobbes in the Devonshire family, I should guess that my kinsman exercised the office of a domestic tutor. From this peaceful retreat he launched into the World, and though he would not, or more probably could not, relate his battles and sieges, he finds or makes an oppor- timity of deciding a point of military discipline. " I remember " (says he) " when I was a soldier, I have heard some of the Veterani discourse concerning the fashion of belts, who averred that the shoulder-belt is very dangerous for a horseman ; for a strong man, taking advantage of it, easily dismounts his adversary, whereas the waist- or middle-belt prevents this inconvenience." He must have been soon released from the service, since he could indulge his curiosity in visiting foreign countries; he mentions France and the Netherlands with the pleasure and knowledge of a traveller, and expresses his gratitude to the Isle of Jersey, " ubi me quondam jucunde vixisse jam nunc juvat meminisse." But his excursions were not confined to Europe. " A great part of 1659, till February of the year following, I lived (says John Gibbon) in Virginia, being most hospitably entertained by the Honourable Colonel Eichard Lee, sometime Secretary of State there, and who, after the King's martyrdom, hired a Dutch vessel, freighted her himself, went to Brussels, surrendered up Sir William Barcklaie's old commission for the government of the province, received a new one from his present Majesty— a loyal action and well deserving my commendation." In that rising 368 GIBBON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Memoib A. colony he once saw a war-dance acted by the natives. The Dancers performed their martial evolutions, some- times retreating and sometimes advancing towards the Spectators, with ferocious countenances and brandishing their Tamahawks. But what most forcibly affected his eye and fancy was the painting of their shields and bodies, in which he recognized the regular blazon of colours and symbols. " Some of the dancers were painted from forehead to foot — Pcvrty per pale, Gules and salle ; others, pcvrty per /esse of the same colours : At which I exceedingly wondered, and concluded that Heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of human race. If so, it deserves a greater esteem than is nowadays put upon it." Such an idea, when applied to the vainest insti- tution of modern art, displays a degree of enthusiasm for a favourite study, which is at once ridiculous and respectable. I know of no purer felicity than that of a man who can gratify his taste in the exercise of his profession, and such was the good fortune of my kinsman after his return to England, his marriage, and his settlement (in February, 1665) in a house in the cloyster of St. Catherine's hospital, near the tower, which devolved to his nephew, my grandfather. In the year 1671 he was admitted into the College of Heralds by the style and title of Blue- Mantle Poursuivant ; and it is with a mixture of gratitude and pride that he owns his obligations to a Judge as well as a patron, the learned Sir William Dugdale, Garter King-at-Arms, and the first English Antiquarian of the age. He glories in the friendship of the curious Mr. Ashmole, and of respectable Physicians, Dr. John Betts and Dr. Nehemiah Grew ; and acknowledges the courteous BLUE-MANTLE POURSUIVANT. 369 encouragement which himself and his book received from Sir Stephen Fox, one of the Lords of the Treasury. This trusty servant of Charles II., in his exile and after his restoration, is compared to the faithful Achates ; and John Gibbon applies a prophecy of Solomon (" As-tu vWBS ASD BOSS, LnnxBP, STAUVOBS SXBEBI AKD OEARIIIO CBOBS.