Memoirs

Gibbon's autobiography was published in 1796, two years after

his death, by his friend, Lord Sheffield, under the title

"Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., with Memoirs of

His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself." "After completing

his history," says Mr. Birrell, "Gibbon had but one thing left

him to do in order to discharge his duty to the universe. He

had written a magnificent history of the Roman Empire; it

remained to write the history of the historian. It is a most

studied performance, and may be boldly pronounced perfect. It

is our best, and best known, autobiography." That the writing

was studied is shown by the fact that six different sketches

were left in Gibbon's handwriting, and from all these the

published memoirs were selected and put together. The memoir

was briefly completed by Lord Sheffield. Bagehot described the

book as "the most imposing of domestic narratives." Truly, it

was impossible for Gibbon to doff his dignity, but through the

cadenced formality of his style the reader can detect a happy

candour, careful sincerity, complacent temper, and a loyalty

to friendship that recommend the man as truly as the writer.

(See also HISTORY.)

_I.--Birth and Education_

I was born at Putney, in the county of Surrey, April 27, in the year

1737, the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, Esq., and Jane

Porten.

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. So feeble was my constitution, so precarious my

life, that in the baptism of each of my brothers my father's prudence

successively repeated my Christian name of Edward, that, in the case of

the departure of the eldest son, this patronymic appellation might be

still perpetuated in the family.

To preserve and to rear so frail a being the most tender assiduity was

scarcely sufficient, and my mother's attention was somewhat diverted by

an exclusive passion for her husband and by the dissipation of the

world; but the maternal office was supplied by my aunt, Mrs. Catherine

Porten, at whose name I feel a tear of gratitude trickling down my

cheek.

After this instruction at home, I was delivered at the age of seven into

the hands of Mr. John Kirkby, who exercised for about eighteen months

the office of my domestic tutor, enlarged my knowledge of arithmetic,

and left me a clear impression of the English and Latin rudiments. In my

ninth year, in a lucid interval of comparative health, I was sent to a

school of about seventy boys at Kingston-upon-Thames, and there, by the

common methods of discipline, at the expense of many tears and some

blood, purchased a knowledge of the Latin syntax. After a nominal

residence at Kingston of nearly two years, I was finally recalled by my

mother's death. My poor father was inconsolable, and he renounced the

tumult of London, and buried himself in the rustic solitude of Buriton;

but as far back as I can remember, the house of my maternal grandfather,

near Putney Bridge, appears in the light of my proper and native home,

and that excellent woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, was the true mother of

my mind, as well as of my health.

At this time my father was too easily content with such teachers as the

different places of my residence could supply, and it might now be

apprehended 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 most wonderfully vanished.

Without preparation or delay, my father carried me to Oxford, and I was

matriculated in the university as a gentleman commoner of Magdalen

College before I had accomplished the fifteenth year of my age. As often

as I was tolerably exempt from danger and pain, reading, free desultory

reading, had been the employment and comfort of my solitary hours, and I

was allowed, without control or advice, to gratify the wanderings of an

unripe taste. My indiscriminate appetite subsided by degrees into the

historic line; and I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition that

might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a

schoolboy would have been ashamed.

The happiness of boyish years I have never known, and that time I have

never regretted. To the university of Oxford I acknowledge no

obligation. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College, and they proved

the fourteen months the most idle and profitless of my whole life. The

sum of my improvement there is confined to three or four Latin plays. It

might at least be expected 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. 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.

Translations of two famous works of Bossuet achieved my conversion, and

surely I fell by a noble hand.

No sooner had I settled my new religion than I resolved to profess

myself a Catholic, and on June 8, 1753, I solemnly abjured the errors of

heresy. An elaborate controversial epistle, addressed to my father,

announced and justified the step which I had taken. My father was

neither a bigot nor a philosopher, but his affection deplored the loss

of an only son, and his good sense was astonished at my departure from

the religion of my country. In the first sally of passion, he divulged a

secret which prudence might have suppressed, and the gates of Magdalen

College were for ever shut against my return.

_II.--A Happy Exile_

It was necessary for my father to form a new plan of education, and

effect the cure of my spiritual malady. After much debate it was

determined to fix me for some years at Lausanne, in Switzerland, under

the roof and tuition of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister. Suddenly

cast on a foreign land, I found myself deprived of the use of speech and

hearing, incapable of asking or answering a question in the common

intercourse of life. Such was my first introduction to Lausanne, a place

where I spent nearly five years with pleasure and profit.

This seclusion from English society was attended with the most solid

benefits. Before I was recalled home, French, in which I spontaneously

thought, was more familiar than English to my ear, my tongue, and my

pen. My awkward timidity was polished and emboldened; M. Pavilliard

gently led me from a blind and undistinguishing love of reading into the

path of instruction. He was not unmindful that his first task was to

reclaim me from the errors of popery, and I am willing to allow him a

handsome share of the honour of my conversion, though it was principally

effected by my private reflections.

It was now that I regretted the early years which had been wasted in

sickness or idleness or mere idle reading, and I determined to supply

this defect. My various reading I now digested, according to the precept

and model of Mr. Locke, into a large commonplace book--a practice,

however, which I do not strenuously recommend. I much question whether

the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time,

and I must agree with Dr. Johnson that what is twice read is commonly

better remembered than what is transcribed.

I hesitate from the apprehension of ridicule when I approach the

delicate subject of my early love. I need not blush at recollecting the

object of my choice, and, though my love was disappointed of success, I

am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and

exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Curchod were

embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her father lived

content with a small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of

minister of Crassy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed

a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. In her

short visit to Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, the erudition of

Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of

such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. At Crassy and

Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity, but on my return to England I

discovered that my father would not hear of this alliance. After a

painful struggle I yielded. 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.

_III.--To England and Authorship_

In the spring of the year 1758 my father signified his permission that I

should immediately return home. The whole term of my absence from

England was four years ten months and fifteen days. The only person in

England whom I was impatient to see was my Aunt Porten, the affectionate

guardian of my tender years. It was not without some awe and

apprehension that I approached my father; but he received me as a man

and a friend. All constraint was banished at our first interview, and

afterwards we continued on the same terms of easy and equal politeness.

Of the next two years, I passed about nine months in London, and the

rest in the country. My progress in the English world was in general

left to my own efforts, and those efforts were languid and slow. But my

love of knowledge was inflamed and gratified by the command of books,

and from the slender beginning in my father's study 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. In this place I may

allow myself to observe that I have never bought a book from a motive of

ostentation, and that every volume before it was deposited on the shelf

was either read or sufficiently examined.

The design of my first work, the "Essay on the Study of Literature," was

suggested by a refinement of vanity--the desire of justifying and

praising the object of a favourite pursuit. I was ambitious of proving

that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the

study of ancient literature.

My father fondly believed that the proof of some literary talents might

introduce me to public notice. The work was printed and published under

the title "Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature." It is not surprising

that a work of which the style and sentiments were so totally foreign

should have been more successful abroad than at home. I was delighted by

the warm commendations and flattering predictions of the journals of

France and Holland. In England it was received with cold indifference,

little read, and speedily forgotten. A small impression was slowly

dispersed.

_IV.--Soldiering and Travel_

An active scene now follows which bears no affinity to any other period

of my studious and social life. On June 12, 1759, my father and I

received our commissions as major and captain in the Hampshire regiment

of militia, and during two and a half years were condemned to a

wandering life of military servitude. My principal obligation to the

militia was the making me an Englishman and a soldier. In this peaceful

service I imbibed the rudiments of the language and science of tactics,

which opened a new field of study and observation. The discipline and

evolutions of a modern 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 Roman Empire.

I was detained above four years by my rash engagement in the militia. I

eagerly grasped the first moments of freedom; and such was my diligence

that on my father consenting to a term of foreign travel, I reached

Paris only thirty-six hours after the disbanding of the militia. Between

my stay of three months and a half in Paris and a visit to Italy, I

interposed some months of tranquil simplicity at Lausanne. My old

friends of both sexes hailed my voluntary return--the most genuine proof

of my attachment. The public libraries of Lausanne and Geneva liberally

supplied me with books, from which I armed myself for my Italian

journey. On this tour I was agreeably employed for more than a year.

Turin, Milan, Genoa, Parma, Modena, and Florence were visited, and here

I first acknowledged, at the feet of the Venus of Medici, that the

chisel may dispute the preeminence with the pencil, a truth in the fine

arts which cannot on this side of the Alps be felt or understood.

After leaving Florence, I passed through Pisa, Leghorn, and Sienna to

Rome. My temper is not very susceptible to 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 Romulus stood, or

Tully spoke, or Cæsar 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 observation.

It was in Rome, on October 15, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of

the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars 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. But my original plan was circumscribed to

the decay of the city rather than the empire; and though my reading and

reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and

several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the

execution of that laborious work.

_V.--History and Politics_

The five years and a half between my return from my travels and my

father's death are the portion of my life which I passed with the least

enjoyment, and which I remember with the least satisfaction. In the

fifteen years between my "Essay on the Study of Literature" and the

first volume of the "Decline and Fall," a criticism of Warburton on

Virgil and some articles in "Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne"

were my sole publications. In November, 1770, my father sank into the

grave in the sixty-fourth year of his age. 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 independent

life most adapted to my circumstances and inclination. I had now

attained the first of earthly blessings--independence. I was absolute

master of my hours and actions; and no sooner was I settled in my house

and library than I undertook the composition of the first volume of my

history. 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.

By the friendship of Mr. (now Lord) Eliot, who had married my first

cousin, I was returned member of parliament for the borough of Liskeard.

I took my seat at the beginning of the memorable contest between Great

Britain and America, 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 to acquiesce in

the humble station of a mute. But 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.

The first volume of my history, which had been somewhat delayed by the

novelty and tumult of a first session, was now ready for the press.

During the awful interval of awaited publication, I was neither elated

by the ambition of fame nor depressed by the apprehension of contempt.

My diligence and accuracy were attested by my own conscience. I likewise

flattered myself that an age of light and liberty would receive without

scandal an inquiry into the human causes of progress of Christianity.

I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work 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.

My book was on every table; nor was the general voice disturbed by the

barking of any profane critic. Let me frankly own that I was startled at

the first discharge of ecclesiastical ordnance; but I soon discovered

that this empty noise was mischievous only in intention, and every

feeling of indignation has long since subsided.

Nearly two years elapsed between the publication of my first and the

commencement of my second volume. The second and third volumes of the

"Decline and Fall" insensibly rose in sale and reputation to a level

with the first volume. So flexible is the title of my history that the

final era 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." The tumult of London and attendance at parliament were now

grown irksome, and when I had finished the fourth volume, excepting the

last chapter, I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman Lake.

_VI.--A Quiet Consummation_

My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be effected without

interrupting the course of my historical labours, and a full twelvemonth

was lost before I could resume the thread of regular and daily industry.

In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire and the

world are most rapid, various, and instructive. It was not till after

many designs and many trials that I preferred the method of grouping my

picture by nations; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is

surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicacity.

I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings

were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception; I shall now

commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the night of

June 27, 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 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 was soon humbled, and

a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken

an everlasting leave of an agreeable companion, and that whatsoever

might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must

be short and precarious.

The day of publication of my three last volumes coincided with the

fifty-first anniversary of my own birthday. The conclusion of my work

was generally read and variously judged. Upon the whole, the history of

"The Decline and Fall" seems to have struck root both at home and

abroad.

When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I must acknowledge that

I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life. I am endowed with a

cheerful temper. The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigour

from enjoyment, 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. I am disgusted with the affectation of men of

letters who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow.

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 otherwise have been entitled.

The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect

of futurity is dark and doubtful I shall soon enter into the period

which was selected by the judgment and experience of the sage Fontenelle

as the most agreeable of his long life. I am far more inclined to

embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose

any premature 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.

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