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HIS BIRTH.

I was born at Putney, in the county of Surrey, the 27th of April, in the year one thousand seven hundred and thirtyseven; the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, Esq., and of Judith Porten. My lot might have been that of a slave, a savage, or a peasant; nor can I reflect without pleasure on the bounty of Nature, which cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honorable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune.

* So feeble was my constitution, so precarious my life, that, in the baptism of my brothers, my father's prudence successively repeated my Christian name of Edward, that, in case of the departure of the eldest son, this patronymic appellation might be still perpetuated in the family. To preserve and rear so frail a being, the most tender assiduity was scarcely sufficient; the care of my mind was too frequently neglected for the care of my health: compassion always suggested an excuse for the indulgence of the master, or the idleness of the pupil; and the chain of my education was broken, as often as I was recalled from the school of learning to the bed of sickness.

HIS EDUCATION.-DEATH OF HIS MOTHER.

As soon as the use of speech had prepared my infant reason for the admission of knowledge, I was taught the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic. In my childhood I was praised for the readiness with which I could multiply and divide, by memory alone, two sums of several figures: such praise encouraged my youthful talent.

At the age of seven I was delivered into the hands of Mr. John Kirkly, who exercised, about eighteen months, the office of domestic tutor. In my ninth year I was sent to Kingston-uponThames, to a school of about seventy boys, which was kept by Dr. Wooddeson. My studies were too frequently interrupted by sickness; and after a residence here of nearly two years, I was recalled, December, 1747, by my mother's death. I was too young to feel the importance of my loss; and the image of her person and conversation is faintly imprinted in my memory. My poor father was inconsolable. I can never forget the scene of our

History, and relaxing the stately march which he maintains throughout that work, into a more natural and easy pace, this enchanting writer, with an ease, spirit, and vigor peculiar to himsel', conducts his readers through a sickly childhood, a neglected and desultory education, and a youth wasted in the unpromising and unscholarlike occupation of a militia officer, to the period when he resolutely applied the energies of his genius to a severe course of voluntary study, which in the space of a few years rendered him a consummate master of Roman antiquity, and lastly produced the History o the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'" 2 X

58*

first interview, some weeks after the fatal event; the awful silence, the room hung with black, the mid-day tapers, his sighs and tears; his praises of my mother, a saint in heaven; his solemn adjuration that I would cherish her memory and imitate her vir tues; and the fervor with which he kissed and blessed me as the sole surviving pledge of their loves.

In his twelfth year he went to Westminster School, where he resided for three years, and then went to Oxford. His reading while here was very mul tifarious and extensive, but, turning Papist, his father removed him at the age of sixteen and sent him to Lausanne, in Switzerland, and placed him under the tuition of a Calvinistic minister, by the name of Pavilliard. Here he spent five years, during which time he made astonishing proficiency in his studies, and he ever spoke of his excellent instructor in terms of the highest affection and respect. He thus speaks of

HIS FIRST LOVE.

I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this word I do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit of chivalry, and is interwoven with the texture of French manners. I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love was disappointed of suc cess, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content, with a small salary and laborious duty, in the ob scure lot of minister of Crassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal and even learned edu cation on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoisele Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversa tion, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a

more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make her two or three visits at her father's house. I passed some happy days there, in the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honorably encouraged the connection. In a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom; she listened to the voice of truth and passion; and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity: but on my return to England, I soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself; and my love subsided in friendship and esteem. The minister of Crassy soon afterwards died; his stipend died with him; his daughter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young ladies, she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her mother; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation and a dignified behavior. A rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to discover and possess this inestimable treasure; and in the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The genius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe. In every change of prosperity and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom of a faithful friend; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and perhaps the legislator, of the French monarchy.1

After spending nearly five years at Lausanne, he returned to England in May, 1758. The following is his account of

HIS INTERVIEW WITH HIS FATHER.

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 at our last parting still dwelt on my memory; nor could I form any notion of his character or my probable reception They were both more agreeable than I could expect. The domestic discipline of our ancestors has been relaxed by the philosophy and softness of the age; and if my father remembered that he had trembled before a stern parent, it was only to adopt with his own son an opposite mode of behavior. He received me as

1 It is curious to speculate on the effect which a union with a female of such pure dignity of cha racter and calm religious principle, might have had on the character and opinions of Gibbon.

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 were expressive of the most cordial affec tion; and our lives would have passed without a cloud, if his economy had been equal to his fortune, or if his fortune had been equal to his desires.

The time spent at his father's Gibbon devoted to study, except about two years and a half, in which he was doing duty in a situation which bore no affinity to any other period of his studious and social life-as a militia officer. Parliament had resolved to raise a national militia, and he and his father offered their names as major and captain in the Hampshire regiment. A short time before this he had published his first work, "An Essay upon the Study of Literature," which was well received. After the militia was dis banded, (December, 1762,) he resumed his studies, and determined to write upon some historical subject. He went to Paris, where he passed some time -visited Lausanne again, and there studied, preparatory to his Italian jour ney-travelled into Italy, and returned to England in 1765. In 1770 he lost his father; and as soon as he could, after this event, he arranged his circumstances so as to settle in London. The following is his account of

HIS PUBLICATION OF HIS HISTORY.

No sooner was I settled in my house and library, than I undertook the composition of the first volume of my history. At the outset all was dark and doubtful-even the title of the work, the true era of the Decline and Fall of the Empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narrative; and I was often tempted to cast away the labor 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 rhetorical declamation: three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect. In the remainder of the way I advanced with a more equal and easy pace; but the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have been reduced, by three successive revisals, 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 practice of reading the manuscript to my 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 performance; no one has so deeply medi
tated on the subject; no one is so sincerely interested in the event.
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 friend Mr. Elmsly, I agreed upon easy terms with Mr. Tho
mas 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 cor-
rected in the printed sheet. So moderate were our hopes, that
the original impression had been stinted to five hundred, till the
number was doubled by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan. Dur-
ing this awful interval I was neither elated by the ambition of
fame, nor depressed by the apprehension of contempt. My dili-
gence and accuracy were attested by my own conscience. His-
tory is the most popular species of writing, since it can adapt
itself to the highest or the lowest capacity. I had chosen an illus-
trious subject. Rome is familiar to the schoolboy and the states-
man; and my narrative was deduced from the last period of
classical reading. I had likewise flattered myself that an age of
light and liberty would receive, without scandal, an inquiry into
the human causes of the progress and establishment of Chris-
tianity.1

After publishing two more volumes of his History, he went to Lausanne, the place endeared to him by early recollections, there to settle for the rest of his life, and complete his great work. The following are his remarks on

THE COMPLETION OF HIS HISTORY.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias,

1 Gibbon's attack on Christianity in his otherwise great work is as mean as it is unjust. It was most triumphantly answered by the Rev. Dr. Watson, in his "Apology for Christianity, in a series of Letters to Edward Gibbon, author of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Mr. Whitaker, also the historian of Manchester, thus rebuked him in a letter:

"You never speak feebly except when you come upon British ground, and never weakly except when you attack Christianity. In the former case you seem to me to want information: and in the latter, you plainly want the common candor of a citizen of the world for the religious system of your country. Pardon me, sir, but, as much as I admire your abilities, I cannot bear without indignation, your sarcastic slyness upon Christianity, and cannot see, without pity your determined hos tility to the Gospel."

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