GIBBON

GIBBON (Edward, Esq.), the celebrated historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was born at Putney in the county of Surrey on the 27th of April 1737. He was the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, Esq. and Judith Porten, the youngest daughter of a merchant of London. The family of Gibbon appears to be ancient and honourable; and our author delights to trace his pedigree from John Gibbon architect to King Edward III. who possessed lands in the hundred and parish of Rolvenden, in the district which is now called the Weald of Kent. In that district the elder branch of the family still adheres to its native soil, without much increase or diminution of property; but the fortunes of the younger branch, from which sprung the subject of this memoir, were fluctuating. It is not, however, with his family, but with himself, that we are concerned. So feeble was his constitution, and so precarious his life during his childish years, that at the baptism of each of his brothers (and they were five in number) his father's prudence successively repeated the name of Edward, that, in case of the death of the eldest son, this patronymick appellation might still be perpetuated in the family. His brothers and a sister were all snatched away in their infancy; and, in terms of affectionate gratitude, he attributes his own preservation to the more than maternal care of a maiden aunt, his mother's eldest sister. "Many anxious and solitary days (says he) did that dear and excellent woman consume in the patient trial of every mode of relief and amusement. Many wakeful nights did she sit by my bed-side in trembling expectation that each hour would be my last. Suffice it to say, that while every practitioner from Sloane and Ward to the Chevalier Taylor was successively summoned to torture or relieve me, the care of my mind was too frequently neglected for that of my health. Compassion always suggested an excuse for the indulgence of the master, or the idleness of the pupil; and the chain of my education was broken as often as I was called from the school of learning to the bed of sickness." His education seems indeed to have been far from systematical. At the age of seven he was delivered into the hands of Mr John Kirkby, who exercised about eighteen months the office of his domestic tutor, and of whom he writes in terms of respect. This man had been an indigent curate in Cumberland, and when forced by distress to leave his native country, he was introduced by his learning and his virtue to the family of Mr Gibbon, from whom he might have found at least a temporary shelter, had not an act of indiscretion again driven him into the world. One day reading prayers in the parish church, he most unluckily forgot the name of King George; and his patron, a loyal subject, dismissed him with some reluctance and a decent reward. As our author describes his ancestors as hereditary Tories, and some of them as Jacobites, we think it not improbable that Mr Kirkby may have been accustomed to omit the name of the King when reading prayers in the family; for otherwise he would have pronounced it mechanically in the church. Be this as it may, our author, upon the dismissal of his tutor, was sent to Kingston upon Thames, to a school of seventy boys kept by Dr Wooddeson and his assistants. He does not represent himself either as happy or as having made great progress at that school. The want of strength and activity disqualified him for the sports of the field; his companions reviled him for the sins of his Tory ancestors; and his studies were frequently interrupted by sickness. After a real or nominal residence of near two years at Kingston, he was finally recalled (Dec. 1747) by the death of his mother. By this time he was well acquainted with Pope's Homer, the Arabian Nights Entertainments, Dryden's Virgil, and a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses; and the entertainment which he received from these books gave him a taste for desultory reading. After living a year with his maternal aunt, during which period he read many books on religious subjects too deep for the comprehension of a boy, he was in January 1749 entered in Westminster school, of which Dr John Nicoll was at that time head master. "There (says he) in the space of two years, interrupted by danger and debility, I painfully climbed into the third form; and my ripe age was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin and the rudiments of the Greek tongue. Instead of audaciously mingling in the sports, the quarrels, and the connections of our little world, I was still cherished at home under the maternal wing of my aunt, who now lived in College-street; and my removal from Westminster long preceded the approach of manhood." He was first carried to Bath for the recovery of his health; then to Winchester, where he lived in the house of a physician; then to Bath again, where he read with a clergyman some odes of Horace and some episodes of Virgil; after which an unsuccessful trial was made to renew his attendance at Westminster school. "It might now be apprehended (says he) that I should continue for life an illiterate cripple; but as I approached my sixteenth year, Nature displayed in my favour her mysterious energies: my constitution was fortified and fixed; and my disorders, instead of growing with my growth, and strengthening with my strength, most wonderfully vanished." In consequence of this he was carried to Oxford; and before he had accomplished his fifteenth year, was, on April 3. 1752, matriculated a gentleman-commoner of Magdalen college. For the honour of that celebrated university, we would fain hope that the account which Mr Gibbon gives of Magdalen college is greatly exaggerated. He represents his tutors as wholly regardless of his morals or his studies. Speaking of the first and best of them, for he had two, he says, "No plan of study was recommended for my use; no exercises were prescribed for his inspection; and, at the most precious season of youth, whole days and weeks were suffered to elapse without labour or amusement, without advice or account." We shall make no other remark on this passage, than that from gentlemen, who must have been contemporary with Mr Gibbon at Magdalen, we have received different accounts of the college; and it is surely a very singular circumstance, that at this period of idleness, our author should have become enamoured of Sir John Marsham's Canon Chronicus, and have conceived the idea of writing an Essay on the Age of Sefostris. Such, however, was the case. Not only was the essay planned, but part of it was written; and though he never finished it, he declares, that his solution of some difficulties in chronology was not devoid of ingenuity; but he goes on to vilify Oxford. "It might at least be expected (says he), that an ecclesiastical school should inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our venerable mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference: an heretic, or unbeliever, was a monster in her eyes; but she was always, or often, or sometimes (A), remiss in the spiritual education of her own children. Without a single lecture, either public or private, either Christian or Protestant, without any academical subscription, without any Episcopal confirmation, I was left by the dim light of my catechism to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, where I was admitted, without a question, how far, or by what means, I might be qualified to receive the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was productive of the worst mischiefs. From my childhood I had been fond of religious disputation; nor had the elastic spring been totally broken by the weight of the atmosphere of Oxford. The blind activity of idleness urged me to advance without armour into the dangerous mazes of controversy; and, at the age of sixteen, I bewildered myself in the errors of the church of Rome." Thus anxious is our author to account for his reconciliation to the Romish church by the negligence of the tutors of his college. This event took place on the 8th of June 1753, when, at the feet of a priest in London, he solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy. An elaborate controversial epistle, approved by his director, and addressed to his father, announced and justified the step he had taken; and the old gentleman, in the first fall of passion, divulging the secret, the gates of Magdalen college were shut against the convert. It was necessary therefore to form a new plan of education; and our young Catholic, by the advice of Mr Eliot (afterwards Lord Eliot), was settled, on the 30th of June, under the roof and tuition of Mr Paviliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne in Switzerland. He represents his situation there as at first extremely uncomfortable. He could not avoid contrasting a small chamber, ill contrived and ill furnished, with his elegant apartment in Magdalen college; and M. Paviliard being entrusted with the management of his expenses, he felt himself degraded from the rank of gentleman-commoner to that of a school-boy. He began, however, gradually to be reconciled to his fate; and his love of reading returned, which, he says, had been chilled by the air of Oxford. He rapidly acquired the French language; and of his tutor he says, "My obligations (A) Surely always and sometimes are words of very different import: why are they used then, in this sentence, as synonymous? to the lessons of Mr Pavillard gratitude will not suffer me to forget. He was endowed with a clear head and a warm heart; his innate benevolence had assuaged the spirit of the church; he was rational, because he was moderate: in the course of his studies, he had acquired a just, though superficial knowledge of most branches of literature; by long practice he was skilled in the arts of teaching; and he laboured with assiduous patience to know the character, gain the affection, and open the mind of his English pupil." Under the tuition of this amiable preceptor he describes his progress in the French and Latin classics, in history, geography, logic, and metaphysics, as uncommonly rapid; and he allows to the same man a handsome share of the honour of reclaiming him from the errors of popery. The various discriminating articles of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream; and, after a full conviction, on Christmas-day 1754, he received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne. Thus had our author communicated with three different societies of Christians before the completion of his eighteenth year; and as such changes from church to church are always dangerous, we need not wonder, that, in a mind so ill-furnished as Mr Gibbon's then was for theological investigations, they paved the way for his last change to Deism. At present, however, he suspended his religious inquiries, acquiescing (as he says) with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants. He continued to prosecute his studies with ardour. Under Mr Pavillard he learned the Greek alphabet, the grammar, and the pronunciation of the language according to the French accent; and soon made himself master of the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Xenophon. During two winters he attended the private lectures of M. de Traytorrens, who explained the elements of algebra and geometry as far as the conic sections of the Marquis de l'Hôpital; but in mathematics he was content (he says) to receive the passive impression of his professor's lectures, without any active exercise of his own powers. In the writings of Grotius and Puffendorf he studied the duties of a man, the rights of a citizen, the theory of justice, and the laws of peace and war, which have had some influence on the practice of modern Europe. "Locke's treatise on government, (says he) instructed me in whig-principles, which are founded rather in reason than experience; but my delight was in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style and boldness of hypothesis were powerful to awaken and stimulate the genius of the age." We have been thus minute in our account of Mr Gibbon's studies, because it furnishes perhaps the most useful lesson which can be drawn from the whole history of his life. His education had been rendered irregular, and had been often interrupted by ill health and a feeble constitution; but as soon as he was able, and had an opportunity, he applied with ardour to the cultivation of letters, and his works bear witness that his labour was crowned with success. "This part of his story therefore (to use the words of Johnson) well deserves to be remembered. It may afford useful admonition and powerful encouragement to men whose abilities have been made, for a time, useless, and who, having lost one part of life in idleness, are tempted to throw away the remainder in despair." In the year 1757 Voltaire arrived at Lausanne, and our young student's desire to see the man who was at once a poet, an historian, and, as he deemed himself, the prince of philosophers, was ardent, and easily gratified. He was received by the vain and arrogant Frenchman with civility as an English youth, but could not boast of any peculiar notice or distinction. "The highest gratification (says he) which I received from Voltaire's residence at Lausanne, was the uncommon circumstance of hearing a great poet declaim his own productions on the stage. His declamation was fashioned to the pomp and cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of Nature." About this time Mr Gibbon became enamoured of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, the daughter of the minister of Crassy, in the mountains which separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In terms of rapture he describes this lady as possessed of every accomplishment which could adorn her sex. She listened to the voice of truth and passion; her parents honourably encouraged the connection; and our author indulged in the dream of felicity: but on his return to England, he discovered that his father would not hear of this strange connection, and that without his consent he was destitute and helpless. "After a painful struggle (says he) I yielded to my fate. I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son, and my wound was infinitely healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life." The lady consoled herself by giving her hand to M. Neckar, then a rich banker of Paris, afterwards the minister, and at last one of the destroyers of the French monarchy. In the spring of the year 1758 our author was recalled to England. On his arrival in London he hastened to the house of his aunt, Mrs Porten, who had been the guardian of his tender years; for though his father was in town awaiting his arrival, he knew not how he should be received by a parent who had parted with him in anger, and given him a stepmother in his absence. His reception was more agreeable than he expected. His father received him as a man and a friend; and the manners of Mrs Gibbon were such, that, after some reserve on his side, she and he easily adopted the tender names and genuine characters of mother and son; and, by the indulgence of these parents, he was left at liberty to consult his own taste or reason in the choice of place, of company, and of amusements. In London he had few acquaintances, and hardly any friends; and being accustomed to a very small society at Lausanne, he preferred the retirement of the country to the bustle of that over-grown metropolis, where he found hardly any entertainment but in the theatres. Before he left Lausanne he had begun a work on the study of ancient literature, which was suggested by the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. "In France (says he), to which my ideas were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris: The new appellation of Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipfius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear*, that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the P. Encyclop. judgment. &c. Gibbon. judgment. I was ambitious of proving by my own example, as well as by my precepts, that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the study of ancient literature." This laudable ambition continued; and in his father's house at Beriton in Hampshire he finished his Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature; which, after being revised by Mallet the poet and Dr. Maty of the British museum, was, in 1761, published in a small 12mo volume. The subjects of taste, criticism, and philosophy, which in this work came under our young author's consideration, could hardly promise much novelty of remark. Some former observations, however, he appears to have placed in a new and pleasing point of view; advancing, moreover, some ingenious conjectures, and displaying no inconsiderable erudition. Yet, by his own account, he was at this time almost a stranger to the writers of Greece; and when he quotes them, it is probable that the quotations are given at second hand. To this essay was prefixed a dedication to his father in the English language, which exhibits the author himself in a very amiable light; but if his reputation had depended solely upon this youthful attempt, the name of Gibbon would have been lost in oblivion. Yet he seems, even in his riper years, to have been delighted with it himself, and to have considered its merits as equal to those of his later productions; but Milton, it is said, preferred the Paradise Regained to the Paradise Lost. Before the publication of this essay, the author, at his own desire, had been appointed a captain in the South Hampshire militia, in which he served upwards of two years. At first, the company of rustic and illiterate officers, and the bustle of a military life, were extremely disagreeable to him, as they interrupted his studies; but he admits, that his military services, his bloodless and inglorious campaigns, as he calls them, were, on the whole, beneficial, as they brought him acquainted with English manners, English parties, and English principles, to which his foreign education and reserved temper had hitherto kept him an entire stranger. In the camp and in quarters he had even found leisure, after the first seven or eight months of his service, to read a great deal of Greek, and to plan different historical works, to the composition of which he seems to have thought that he was born with an innate propensity. He always talks of himself as a philosopher; but surely a more unphilosophical persuasion than this has seldom been admitted. At the end of the war he went again abroad, and reached Paris on the 28th of January 1763, only 36 days after the disbanding of the militia in which he had borne the commission of a captain. In that metropolis he staid not long. He visited palaces, churches, gardens, and theatres, and was introduced to D'Alembert and Diderot, then considered as at the head of French science. From Paris he proceeded to Switzerland, and once more took up his residence at his favourite Lausanne. Voltaire's impieties had forced him from that town to his own castle at Ferney, where our author once visited him, without (he says) courting his more intimate acquaintance. The society in which Mr. Gibbon most delighted during his second residence at Lausanne was a very singular one. "It consisted of fifteen or twenty unmarried ladies of genteel families; the eldest perhaps about twenty, all agreeable, several handsome, and two or three of exquisite beauty. At each other's houses they assembled almost every day, without the controul, or even the presence of a mother or an aunt; they were trusted to their own prudence, among a crowd of young men of every nation in Europe. They laughed, they sung, they danced, they played at cards, they acted comedies; but in the midst of this carefree gaiety, they respected themselves, and were respected by the men; the invisible line between liberty and licentiousness was never transgressed by a gesture, a word, or a look, and their virgin chastity was never sullied by the breath of scandal or suspicion." We readily agree with our author that this singular institution was expressive of the innocent simplicity of Swiss manners; and we only regret that he had not the same respect for the ladies of his own country as for those frolic females of Switzerland. He would not, in that case, have stained some of his most brilliant pages with obscene ribaldry. We shall not follow him in his ramble through Italy, or repeat his remarks on the towns which he visited. It is sufficient, in such a sketch as this, to inform our readers, that it was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764, as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, that the idea of his great work first started into his mind. But his original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire. From carrying even this contracted plan into execution he was for some years diverted. On the 25th of June 1765 he arrived from Italy at his father's house in Hampshire, and found that he had filial duties to perform which interrupted his studies and disturbed his quiet. His father had involved himself in difficulties, from which he could be extricated only by selling or mortgaging part of his estate; and to such sale or mortgage our author cheerfully consented. He regrets on this occasion that he 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 it is to be hoped that, when he thought even of slumbering in the church, he had still some faith in revealed religion. He wasted some time in planning a history of the revolutions of Switzerland, and even wrote part of it in the French language, which, by the advice of friends, he however suppressed. We next find him engaged with a friend in a Journal entitled Mémoires Littéraires de la Grand Bretagne, of which two volumes for the years 1767 and 1768 were published, and a third almost completed, when his friend, a native of Switzerland, was engaged, through his interest, as travelling governor to Sir Richard Worsley, and the Journal was, of course, abandoned. He then entered the lists with Warburton; whose interpretation of the sixth book of the Aeneid he attacked with great petulance and with much success. The bishop of Gloucester was by this time in a state of great mental decay, which was peculiarly unfortunate for our author; for had his Lordship enjoyed his pristine vigour, he would probably have given Mr. Gibbon such a chastisement as might have made him more modest afterwards when writing the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. To that great work he now sat down seriously; and the history which he gives of his preparatory studies sufficiently accounts for the inaccuracy of his quotations. Through Through the darkness of the middle ages he explored his way in the annals and antiquities of Italy by the learned Muratori and other moderns; and seems to acknowledge that, from the beginning to the end of his work, he frequently contented himself with authorities furnished at second hand. At last, in 1776, the first volume of his history was published by Cadell the bookseller and Strahan the printer; and the success of it far surpassed his expectation. The encomiums lavished on it by Dr Robertson and Mr Hume in letters to the author, and the fulsome compliments which those three eminent historians paid to each other, are melancholy specimens of lettered littleness and vanity. The second and third volumes appeared in 1781; the fourth, fifth, and sixth in 1787; and Mr Gibbon's fame was established as a historian. The work was admired both by natives and by foreigners, and translated into several of the languages of Europe. Dr Zimmermann represents the author as exceeding perhaps Hume and Robertson, who were historians of the first rank. "All the dignity (he adds), all the charms of historic style, are united in Gibbon: his periods are melody itself, and all his thoughts have nerve and vigour." This praise, however, must not be admitted without exception. Few writers, indeed, were possessed of such popular talents as our historian. The acuteness of his penetration, and the fertility of his genius, have been seldom equalled, and scarcely ever surpassed. He seizes, with singular felicity, on all the most interesting facts and situations, and these he embellishes with the utmost luxuriance of fancy and elegance of style. His periods are full and harmonious; his language is always well chosen, and is frequently distinguished by a new and peculiarly happy adaptation. His epithets, too, are in general beautiful and happy; but he is rather too fond of them. The uniform flatness of his diction sometimes imparts to his narrative a degree of obscurity, unless he descends to the miserable expedient of a note, to explain the minute circumstances. His style, on the whole, is much too artificial; and this gives a degree of monotony to his periods, which extends, we had almost said, to the turn of his thoughts. A more serious objection is his attack upon Christianity; the loose and disrespectful manner in which he mentions many points of morality regarded as important on the principles of natural religion; and the indecent allusions and expressions which too often occur in the work. An attack upon Christianity is not censurable merely as such; it may proceed from the purest and most virtuous motives: but, in that case, the attack will never be carried on in an insidious manner, and with improper weapons; and Christianity itself, so far from dreading, will invite every mode of fair and candid discussion. Our historian, it must be confessed, often makes, when he cannot readily find, an opportunity to insult the Christian religion. Such, indeed, is his eagerness in the cause, that he stoops to the most despicable pun, or to the most awkward perversion of language, for the pleasure of turning the scripture into ribaldry, or calling Jesus an impostor. Yet of the Christian religion has Mr Gibbon himself observed, that it "contains a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every duty and every condition of life." Such an acknowledgment, and from such a writer, too, ought to have due weight with a certain class of readers, and of authors likewise, and lead them seriously to consider, how far it is consistent with the character of good citizens, to endeavour, by fly insinuations, oblique hints, indecent sneer, and profane ridicule, to weaken the influence of so pure and benevolent a system as that of Christianity, acknowledged to be admirably calculated for promoting the happiness of individuals, and the welfare of society. Mr Hayley, in his poetical Essay on History, after a splendid panegyric on the arduous labours of his friend, laments the irreligious spirit by which he was actuated. Think not my verse means blindly to engageIn rash defence of thy profaner page!Though keen her spirit, her attachment fond,Base service cannot suit with Friendship's bond;Too firm from Duty's sacred path to turn,She breathes an honest sigh of deep concern,And pities Genius, when his wild careerGives Faith a wound, or Innocence a tear.Humility herself divinely mild,Sublime religion's meek and modest child,Like the dumb son of Cæsus, in the strife,Where force assail'd his father's sacred life,Breaks silence, and with filial duty warm,Bids thee revere her parent's hallowed form (a)! The part of the history which gave such offence to his own friend, as well as to the friends of the Christian religion in general, was the account which our historian has given of the progress and establishment of Christianity in the two last chapters of his first volume; in which he endeavours to prove, that the wonderful triumph of that religion over all the established religions of the earth, was not owing to any miraculous attestations to its truth, but to five secondary causes which he enumerates; and that Christianity, of course, could not be of divine origin. Several answers appeared on this occasion, written, as we may naturally suppose, with different degrees of temper and ability (c). One of them only, Mr Davis, who had undertaken to point out various instances of misrepresentation, inaccuracy, and even plagiarism in his account, did our historian condescend particularly to answer, and that in (a) Herodotus relates, that a Persian soldier, at the storming of Sardis, was preparing to kill Cæsus, whose person he did not know, and who, giving up all as lost, neglected to defend his own life. A son of the unfortunate monarch, who had been dumb from his infancy, and who never spoke afterward, found utterance in that trying moment, and preferred his father by exclaiming, 'O kill not Cæsus!' (c) Dr Chelfum, Dr Randolph, Dr Watson (bishop of Llandaff) Lord Hailes, Dr White, Mr Apthorpe, Mr Davis, and Mr Taylor, the author of 'The Letters of Ben Mordecai.' a tone of proud contempt and confident superiority. To this Mr Davis replied; and it is but justice to observe, that his reply bears evident marks of learning, judgment, and critical acumen, and that he has convicted our author of sometimes quoting inaccurately to serve a purpose. At his other answerers Mr Gibbon merely glanced, treating Dr Watson, however, with particular respect; but his posthumous memoirs shew how much he felt the attacks made on him by Lord Hailes, Dr White of Oxford, and Mr Taylor. To Dr Priestley, who, in his History of the Corruptions of Christianity, threw down his gauntlets at once to Bishop Hurd and the historian of the Roman empire, and who presented the latter with a copy of his book, declaring, at the same time, that he sent it not as a gift but as a challenge; he wrote in such terms as produced a correspondence, which certainly added not to the honour of the dissenting divine. At the beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America, our author was returned, by the interest of Mr Eliot (now Lord Eliot), for the borough of Liskeard, and supported, with many a sincere and silent vote, the rights, though not, perhaps, the interest, of the mother country. "After a fleeting illusive hope, prudence condemned me (says he) to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute. I was not armed by Nature and education with the intrepid energy of mind and voice. Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis. Timidity was fortified by pride; and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice." That pen, however, was useful to the ministry whom he could not support by his eloquence in the house. At the request of the Lord Chancellor and Viscount Weymouth, then secretary of state, he vindicated, in a very able manner, against the French manifesto, the justice of the British arms, and his Memoire Justificatif was delivered as a state paper to the courts of Europe. He was rewarded for this service with the place of one of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations; and kept it, till the board was abolished by Mr Burke's reform bill. For accepting this place he was severely, but most unjustly, blamed by some of the leaders of the opposition, as if he had deserted a party in which he had never enlisted, and to the principles of which he was rendered inimical both by family prepossession and by his own judgment. On the downfall of Lord North's administration, Mr Gibbon was of course in the opposition deprived of an office, without the salary of which he could not conveniently support the expence of living in London. The coalition was indeed soon formed, and his friends were again in power; but having nothing to give him immediately, they could not detain him in parliament or even in England. He was tired of the bustle of the metropolis, and sighed once more for the retirement of Lausanne, at which he arrived before the overthrow of the coalition ministry, and where he lived happily till the last years of his life. It was in this retreat that he wrote the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of his history; and he left it only for a year to superintend the publication of these volumes in London. This great work being concluded, he returned to the banks of the Leman lake, but found his enjoyments damped by the distress, and soon afterwards by the death, of his oldest and dearest Swiss friend. Lausanne had now lost much of its attraction; the French revolution had crowded it with unfortunate emigrants, who could not be cheerful themselves or excite the cheerfulness of others; and the demons of democracy had begun to poison the minds of the sober citizens with principles which Mr Gibbon had always held in abhorrence. Speaking of these principles and their effects in Switzerland, he adds, "I beg leave to subscribe my assent to Mr Burke's creed on the revolution of France. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for church establishments. While the aristocracy of Berne protects the happiness, it is superfluous to enquire whether it be founded in the rights of men: the economy of the state is liberally supplied without the aid of taxes; and the magistrates must reign with prudence and equity, since they are unarmed in the midst of an armed nation." It was against the beneficent and mild government of Berne that the emissaries of France contrived to excite the discontents of the people, by instilling into their simple and untutored minds their own wild notions of liberty and equality. From the effects of this Gallic phrenzy, which began to be very visible so early as the beginning of the year 1792, Mr Gibbon resolved to take shelter in England, and to abandon, for some time at least, what he called his paradise at Lausanne. Difficulties intervened, and forced him to postpone his journey from week to week, and from month to month; but on receiving the accounts of Lady Sheffield's death, he hastened to administer consolation to his friend, and arrived safe in London in the beginning of June 1793. He continued in good health and spirits through the whole of the summer; but his constitution had suffered much from repeated attacks of the gout, and from an incipient dropsy in his ancles. The swelling of his ancles, however, subsided; but it was only in consequence of the water flowing to another place; and being repeatedly tapped for a hydrocele, he at last sunk under it, and died at his lodgings in St James's street, London, on the 16th of January 1794. To draw a character at once general and just of this extraordinary man, would be difficult perhaps to one who had enjoyed the pleasure of his acquaintance, and must be impossible to those to whom his person was a stranger. Of the extent of his erudition there can be but one opinion; but various opinions may be held respecting the accuracy of his knowledge. Lord Sheffield, who knew him well, and loved him much, assures us, that his conversation was still more captivating than his writings: but this could not result from the brilliancy of his wit; for of wit he declares himself that he had none. His memory was capacious and retentive, his penetration uncommon, and his colloquial eloquence ready and elegant; so that he could illustrate almost any topic of conversation from the copious stores of his own mind. From his private correspondence, and a journal not written for the public eye, he appears to have been a dutiful son, a loyal subject, and an affectionate and steady friend; but it is difficult to reconcile with so much moral and political worth his unfair and unmanly sneers at the religion of his country.