EDWARD, a historian of distinguished eminence, was born at Putney in the year 1737. He was the son of a gentleman of fortune and family distinction, who sat as a member in two separate parliaments. Edward when a boy, was of such an extremely delicate constitution, that his life was frequently despaired of. When at the school of Westminster, his progress was often retarded by repeated shocks of bad health. After being for a long time under the management of the best medical practitioners, his constitution was radically changed for the better, which induced his father to place him in Magdalen college as a gentleman commoner, that he might be pushed into manly acquisitions. This was prior to the completing of his fifteenth year. Before this time his reading had been of such a nature as to store his mind with much valuable historical knowledge, although his grammatical and philosophical knowledge at this time was not so extensive as that of some others at the same period of life. He says of himself, I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have been ashamed. Under such circumstances he was but ill prepared to receive the benefits of an university education, and this was no doubt the reason why he exclaimed so bitterly against the public and private instructions at Oxford.

He was fond of polemical divinity from his infancy, and during his leisure moments he turned his attention, when farther advanced, to the celebrated controversy between Papists and Protestants; and as he had not then acquired talents sufficient to enable him to combat error error and defend the truth, he fell a victim to the fo- phility of the church of Rome. His father, with a view to reclaim him from the love of what he consider- ed as the most destructive of all errors, sent him to Lausanne in Switzerland, and put him under the care of Mr Pavilliard, a clergyman of the Calvinistic per- suasion. This gentleman called his pupil Edward, "A little thin figure, with a large head, disputing, and urging with the greatest ability, all the best ar- guments that had ever been used in favour of Popery." The masterly exertions of Mr Pavilliard, who had to deal with a young man of solid reason and matured re- flection, accomplished the recantation of Mr Gibbon, and he received the sacrament in the Protestant church on the 25th of December 1754. At Lausanne, too, he made great progress in many branches of knowledge which he had hitherto neglected, and acquired a regu- lar habit of study. He became master of the French and Latin languages, and was a profound logician. He gave full scope to the exercise of reading excellent authors, which was his ruling passion. He did not appear fond of mathematics, and therefore soon relin- quished the study of them. At Lausanne he fell in love with a young lady, the daughter of a village cler- gyman, but he was frustrated in his hopes, and the lady became afterwards the wife of the celebrated Necker.

On his return home in April 1758, his father re- ceived him with every mark of tenderness and affection, and his mother-in-law found means to conciliate his good opinion and his confidence. It is a singular cir- cumstance that he should have taken a captain's com- mission in the army, a profession, one would have im- agined, for which he was very ill calculated. Indeed he soon evinced the truth of this, for his tent and quar- ters were frequently encumbered with the odd furni- ture of Greek and Latin authors. On the event of peace he resigned his commission, and paid a visit to Paris in the year 1763, where he resided a few months, and afterwards went to Lausanne, where he remained about a year, in order to prepare for a journey into Italy, which he accomplished in 1765. He thus speaks on the occasion of his entering Rome: "After a sleep- less night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the forum; each memorable spot, where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or en- joyed before I could descend to a cool and minute in- vestigation." On the 15th of October, he informs us, the idea of writing the decline and fall of Rome first came into his mind, when the bare-footed friars were ringing vespers in the temple of Jupiter.

In the year 1770 Mr Gibbon lost his father, and succeeded to an estate which was very much involved; yet he considered his circumstances as very well adapted to the great and extensive work he had undertaken to accomplish, which in his own opinion he had probably never finished, if he had been either poorer or richer than he was. He had an extensive circle of acquaint- ance in London, but the time necessarily devoted to their company, he made up by early rising and intense application. In the year 1774 he was chosen member of parliament for the borough of Liskeard, by the in- fluence of Lord Elliot, which threatened to give his studies a very serious interruption. He sat eight years in the house of commons without having the courage so much as once to open his mouth, notwithstanding he was such an elegant writer. When the first volume of his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," made its appearance in 1776, it met with a greater degree of applause than he expected; but by no praise was he so highly gratified as by that which the two great histori- ans of Scotland, Hume and Robertson, bestowed upon him. For his two chapters which relate to the spread of christianity he met with many antagonists, to whom he made no reply but to a Mr Davis, which was con- sidered as a masterpiece. There can be no doubt that Gibbon was a real enemy to revelation in the disguise of a believer, a conduct not so abominable as at first sight may appear, so long as penal laws exist against an open declaration of opinion.

Soon after the publication of the first volume of his history, he paid another visit to Paris, and did not ap- pear to be in much haste to complete his extensive work. In 1781, however, the second and third vol- umes of his history were given to the world; and, al- though in the estimation of many competent judges they were inferior to the first, they still were allowed to possess sufficient merit to support his reputation. Having lost his seat for Liskeard, the influence of min- istry brought him in as representative for Lymington, and on the dissolution of Lord North's ministry, he lost his office as one of the lords of trade, which was a serious diminution of his income. He again deter- mined to visit his favourite Lausanne, where he com- pleted the remaining volumes of his history; but when the revolutionary mania began to rage on the conti- nent, he quitted Lausanne, and sought for an asylum in England. He mortally hated innovations of every kind, whether necessary or not, as appears from the following exclamation: "I beg leave to subscribe my affection to Mr Burke's creed on the revolution of France. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and can almost excuse his reverence for church establishments."

During his consoling visit to Lord Sheffield, who had met with a trying domestic loss, his attention was called to the rapid progress of a distemper which had subsided for about 30 years. A mortification at last enfeebled, which terminated his existence on the 16th of January 1794, in the 67th year of his age. Mr Gib- bon gives himself a character which is perhaps pretty near the truth. "I am endowed with a cheerful tem- per, a moderate sensibility, and a natural disposition to repose rather than to activity: some mischievous appe- tites and habits have perhaps been corrected by philo- sophy or time. The love of study supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure." Mr Gibbon possessed the manners and sentiments of a gentleman in an eminent degree; he was easy in society, of which he was extremely fond, and beloved by all who had the pleasure of intimately knowing him.