his conversation, who does not call to mind Porson's malicious description of his historic manner?—

Though his style is, in general, correct and elegant, he sometimes draws out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms, he too often dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short, we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine, that he had as much to say upon a ribbon as upon a Raphael.'

The same acute critic, indeed, had before admitted that his style was emphatic and expressive, his sentences harmonious;' but this was inadequate eulogy; however overloaded, and measured at times almost to monotony, the style of Gibbon deserves the higher praise of animation, which keeps the attention constantly awake -of descriptive richness, which makes both manners and local scenery live before the imagination-of energy, which deeply impresses his more sententious truths upon the memory. Gibbon may be overlaboured, but he is rarely diffuse, and never dull; he may overstrain the attention, but he never permits us to sleep; he may want simplicity, but he never wants force.

But the style is not the only part in which the character of the man colours and impregnates that of the historian. M. Villemain, in one of his eloquent lectures on the literature of the eighteenth century, has pursued this parallel with his usual cleverness and ingenuity. We shall interweave, as we proceed, some of his lively and sensible remarks. The circumstances of Gibbon's early life, apparently the most unfavourable, contributed to form his character and to mark his destination :-the feeble constitution, which debarred him from the sports and gaieties of youth, but had no effect on the indefatigable mind, which seemed to endure any degree of exertion: the neglected education, which threw him back on that which, for the strong and active understanding, is the best system of discipline-self-instruction ;—even his position in society, above want or the necessity of professional exertion, yet neither encumbered by the possession nor distracted by the enjoyment of wealth. Thus the sickly and studious boy is found, at fifteen years old, writing a critical history on the reign of Sesostris-holding learned disputations with Marsham and Petavius—and at the next step plunged into the depths of theological M. Gibbon, he is a very sensible man, who has a great deal of conversation, an infinity of knowledge, you will add perhaps, an infinity of cleverness (d'esprit)—I am not quite decided on that point. He sets too much value on our talents for society (nos agréments), shows too much desire of acquiring them; it is constantly on the tip of my tongue to say to him, "Don't put yourself to so much trouble; you deserve the honour of being a Frenchman."

controversy.

controversy. Precisely at the period of the greatest general indifference to polemic dispute-when the war of Papist and Protestant had sunk into profound, it might then appear unawakening, slumber-the quiescent university of Oxford is startled with the intelligence of the conversion of a young student in the most Protestant college of Magdalene; and this convert was the future sceptic-the writer against whose hostility to the whole fabric, not only of Roman Catholic, but of Christian religion, the pulpit of the university was hereafter to ring its loudest alarums. Nor was this change brought about by any secret or active emissary of the Church of Rome-it was the work of his own mind. The poring and inquisitive youth had discovered in the possession of a young friend the powerful but then forgotten works of Parsons the Jesuit, and, in his even then insatiate ardour for historic research, had encountered Bossuet's splendid and most artful view of the weaknesses, the contradictions, the excesses, and the crimes which stain so many names among the first Reformers. Thus, with a cold temperament and an ardent imagination, while he thought that he was surrendering his reason to argument, most likely yielding unknowingly to the fascinations of style, (in which we may observe that old Parsons, as far as the vigorous though unpolished English of Queen Elizabeth's days may be compared to the exquisite and finished French of Louis the Fourteenth's, is no vulgar master,) Gibbon already betrayed that latent turn of mind which led him hereafter to regret the extinction of the Paganism of Cicero and Virgil by the Christianity of Tertullian and Prudentius. Gibbon described to Lord Sheffield the letter which announced his conversion to his father as written with all the pomp, the dignity, the self-satisfaction of a martyr;' but, as M. Villemain observes, his mind was not formed to resign itself to painful sacrifices, or for resistance to authority. The dull life and even the meagre table of the house at Lausanne, to which he was banished, hastened his reconversion. You will pardon, gentlemen,' our lively lecturer proceeds, this minute circumstance; but the man who has thus made his début in life, and in his theological career, does not appear to me predisposed to comprehend the disinterested enthusiasm of the martyrs.'

Though, however, this rapid recantation of inconvenient tenets may not display great strength of character or moral firmness, yet boldness and originality of mind were both evinced and, no doubt, fostered by this extraordinary adventure. Though the will resigned itself to a calm acquiescence in opinions, on the profession of which depended his present peace and future prospects, the mind still asserted its freedom of inquiry; and this premature discipline in polemic controversy this precocious decision of the most pro

found

found religious questions by the cold and unimpassioned intellect, at a period of life when religion is rather felt than studied, and prevails by its moral beauty rather than by its logical truth-in short, this habit of considering Christianity in a spirit of controversy, as a subject of dispute between two rival parties, was little likely to elevate the mind to the perception of its real character; the exhausted reason would naturally collapse into a state of indifference. Just at this period the whole energies of Gibbon's powerful understanding were thrown, with irresistible reaction, upon his favourite studies in classical antiquity. From the worst part of theological reading-its fierce and disputatious polemics-he fell back upon all the literary splendour, all that can elevate the mind and fascinate the imagination in the poets and historians of Greece and Rome. Everything contributed to concentre the whole powers of Gibbon's intellect upon his beloved pursuits. The general dulness of Lausanne, though relieved by the society of a few accomplished and intellectual persons of both sexes, the straitness of his finances, and perhaps the latent pride of his disposition, as well as the weakness of his constitution, indisposed him to join the more adventurous amusements and riotous orgies of visiters from his own country. Among the ponderous volumes which filled the libraries of those days, he had no guide but his own insatiable curiosity; but that curiosity submitted to the severest method, and proceeded with a kind of innate regularity, not merely to acquire, but to store up its acquisitions for future use; for already some vague and undefined purpose was floating in his thoughts to which these labours were hereafter to become subsidiary.

:

'Gibbon, at the age of twenty,' observes M. Villemain, ' read successively those immense collections which would appal our present indolence for instance, the Antiquities of Grævius-a work which, in its original form, consisted of only twenty-five volumes in folio, but which, fortunately, was increased with fifteen more by Gronovius. He then read the History of Ancient Italy by Cluverius, a very short work of only two folio volumes, which nevertheless occupied him several months; then all the Latin poets; but he read them with that attention, that sagacity, which already revealed the historian in its love of studying every particular, the details of manners, the peculiarities of costume-ever seeking, in short, history in literature.'

We have made this extract partly to note its inaccuracy. It was not until his second visit to Lausanne, when he was several years. older, that Gibbon commenced the study of those voluminous works; but if employed on writings of less gigantic size, his industry at this early period was not less indefatigable, and the bias of his studies ran strongly in the same direction. In every branch of classical literature he was forcing his own way: he had opened a correspond

ence

ence on points of philology with Crevier, Breitinger, and Matthew Gesner, and his arguments and objections were received by those distinguished scholars with the respect due to the intelligence they already displayed. It was not merely the future historian, but the historian of Rome, which thus betrayed itself in those five years, during which, in the language of Byron, he was hiving wisdom in each studious hour,'-the historian who was to approach the noble subject of the height and consummation of the ancient moral and intellectual character in the culminating point of Roman greatness, with a mind impregnated and saturated with every kind of antiquarian knowledge; with a memory stored with the most minute details of the manners, usages, and opinions which formed or illustrated that character; and with an admiration, which not merely kindled into the highest enthusiasm of which his temperament was capable, but nourished a kind of latent jealousy and aversion to whatever was inimical or destructive to the glorious idol of his adoration.

The air of Switzerland was to a great degree impregnated with the philosophic spirit of the times, and the mind of Gibbon was in the state most suited to imbibe the infection. Of Voltaire, he says, Virgilium tantum vidi; but the incense with which the autocrat of literature was then approached, and the boyish enthusiasm of the yet unfledged author, which looked upon his admission to the private theatricals of Monrepos as the highest privilege, could not be without influence on the formation of his character and opinions. Voltaire, according to his own expression, he then rated above his real magnitude;' but he was probably unconscious how perpetually both his tone of mind, and even his manner of expression, in which he was ever endeavouring to point his stately and inflexible English with the light and graceful irony of the Frenchman, were betraying his early adoration of the Patriarch; and Voltaire little suspected that, in the plain and awkward English boy, whose memory had retained, and whose indiscretion made public, one of his fugitive poems, not yet intended for the vulgar ear, he was silently forming, not a disciple, yet a fellow-labourer, whose fame would cast at least his own historic reputation into the shade.

The uncongenial profession of a militia captain, which was embraced by Gibbon on his return to England, neither diverted the bias of his mind from his historical pursuits, nor relaxed his unwearied industry. Though the militia drum disturbed him' in the midst of an inquiry into ancient weights, measures, and coins, even these days of more than usual bodily activity and mental distraction were turned to account. In his marchings and countermarchings' from Winchester to Blandford, and from Blandford to Southampton,

Southampton, the young captain was studying the Mémoires Militaires of M. Guichardt; and, in his peaceful evolutions, laying in a store of military tactics hereafter to be applied to elucidate the campaigns of Julian and Belisarius.

It was during his journey to Italy, which followed this military episode, that the secret suggestions, which already excited him to the hope of rivalling Robertson and Hume, then at the dawn of their fame that those inward prophecyings refined into a more profound and settled consciousness of his vocation; and it is remarkable how the tone of feeling in which the first grand conception of his work expanded upon his imagination-stamped, as it were, indelibly upon his mind, and moulded up with his inmost moral being-coloured the whole character of his future work.

It was,' he says, 'at Rome, on the 15th 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.'-Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 198.

Perhaps' (observes M. Suard) it will not be difficult to trace, in the impressions from which the conception of the work arose, one of the causes of that war which Gibbon seems to have declared against Christianity; the design of which neither appears conformable to his character, little disposed to party-spirit-nor to that moderation of thought and sentiment which led him in all things, particular as well as general, to view the advantages as well as the evil consequences. But, struck with a first impression, Gibbon, in writing the history of the fall of the empire, saw in Christianity only an institution which had placed vespers, barefooted fryars, and processions, in the room of the magnificent ceremonies of the worship of Jupiter, and the triumphs of the Capitol.'

There is truth as well as ingenuity in this observation. The Christianity of which Gibbon had read was that of the angry polemical disputants of the two political creeds: that which he saw in the countries where he spent a great part of his life was the worn-out and decrepit Roman Catholicism of France and Italy; a system beyond which the general mind was far advanced, and which had not-and, alas! has not yet-been replaced by any purer or more living form of Christianity.

M. Villemain traces, in Gibbon's mute and unambitious parliamentary career, the coldness of his temperament,' and his deadness to all lofty and generous emotions.' This is not doing justice to Gibbon on all subjects but two-the virtue of women and the magnanimity of Christians-his mind was alive to the noblest feelings of our nature; and, though calmly, yet firmly and consistently, arrayed on the side of humanity, of justice, and the best interests of mankind. Porson, whom we have before quoted,