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EDWARD GIBBON

Edward Gibbon was an English writer and historian. He was born in 1737 at Putney and died in 1794. He was the son of a gentleman of an ancient Kentish family. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he remained for fourteen mouths. Having declared himself a Roman Catholic, his father placed him under the care of Pavillard, a learned Calvinistic minister at Lausanne, by whom he was reconverted to the Protestant faith. His residence at Lausanne was highly favourable to his progress in knowledge and the formation of regular habits of study. The belles-lettres and the history of the human mind chiefly occupied his attention. In 1758 he returned to England, and immediately began to lay the foundation of a copious library; and soon after composed in the French language his Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature (published in 1761).

In 1763 he visited Paris and Lausanne, and he journeyed in Italy during 1764. It was here that the idea of writing his great history occurred to him as he sat musing among the ruins of the capitol at Rome, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter. In 1770 he published a pamphlet entitled Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the AEneid. In 1774 he obtained a seat in parliament for Liskeard, and was a silent supporter of the North administration and its American politics for eight years.

In 1776 the first quarto volume of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published, and at once made a public reputation for its author. In 1778 he drew up on behalf of the English government a Memoire Justificatif in answer to the manifesto of the French court, and for this service he was made one of the lords of trade. On the retirement of North he lost his appointment, and soon after withdrew to Lausanne in 1783, where, in the course of four years, he completed the three remaining volumes of his history, which were published together in 1788.

In 1793 he returned to England, where he died on the 16th of January, 1794. His history, though not without its defects, has great merits. Its style, if at times somewhat stiff and pompous, has the energy and elevation required for so great a theme; his learning is vast and thorough, and his insight into human nature in every variety of circumstances in remote countries and epochs is that of a great and philosophical historian. In 1796 his friend Lord Sheffield published two quarto volumes of his miscellaneous works, of which the most valuable part is the Memoirs of his Life and Writings.
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