Gibbon

Gibbon, by James Cotter
Morison

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Title: Gibbon
Author: James Cotter Morison

Release Date: July 17, 2006 [eBook #18851]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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English Men of Letters

Edited by John Morley
GIBBON
by
JAMES COTTER MORISON, M.A. Lincoln College, Oxford

London: MacMillan and Co. 1878.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
GIBBON'S EARLY LIFE UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING
OXFORD
CHAPTER II.
AT LAUSANNE
CHAPTER III.
IN THE MILITIA
CHAPTER IV.
THE ITALIAN JOURNEY
CHAPTER V.
LITERARY SCHEMES.--THE HISTORY OF
SWITZERLAND.--DISSERTATION ON THE SIXTH
ÆNEID.--FATHER'S DEATH.--SETTLEMENT IN LONDON

CHAPTER VI.
LIFE IN LONDON.--PARLIAMENT.--THE BOARD OF
TRADE.--THE DECLINE AND FALL.--MIGRATION TO
LAUSANNE
CHAPTER VII.
THE FIRST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAST TEN TEARS OF HIS LIFE AT LAUSANNE
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL
CHAPTER X.
LAST ILLNESS.--DEATH.--CONCLUSION

GIBBON
CHAPTER I.
GIBBON'S EARLY LIFE UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING
OXFORD.
Edward Gibbon[1] was born at Putney, near London, on 27th April in
the year 1737. After the reformation of the calendar his birthday
became the 8th of May. He was the eldest of a family of seven children;
but his five brothers and only sister all died in early infancy, and he
could remember in after life his sister alone, whom he also regretted.
FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Gibbon's Memoirs and Letters are of such easy access that
I have not deemed it necessary to encumber these pages with references
to them. Any one who wishes to control my statements will have no
difficulty in doing so with the Miscellaneous Works, edited by Lord
Sheffield, in his hand. Whenever I advance anything that seems to
require corroboration, I have been careful to give my authority.]
He is at some pains in his Memoirs to show the length and quality of
his pedigree, which he traces back to the times of the Second and Third
Edwards. Noting the fact, we pass on to a nearer ancestor, his
grandfather, who seems to have been a person of considerable energy
of character and business talent. He made a large fortune, which he lost
in the South-Sea Scheme, and then made another before his death. He
was one of the Commissioners of Customs, and sat at the Board with
the poet Prior; Bolingbroke was heard to declare that no man knew
better than Mr. Edward Gibbon the commerce and finances of England.
His son, the historian's father, was a person of very inferior stamp. He
was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, travelled on the
Continent, sat in Parliament, lived beyond his means as a country
gentleman, and here his achievements came to an end. He seems to
have been a kindly but a weak and impulsive man, who however had
the merit of obtaining and deserving his son's affection by genial
sympathy and kindly treatment.
Gibbon's childhood was passed in chronic illness, debility, and disease.
All attempts to give him a regular education were frustrated by his
precarious health. The longest period he ever passed at school were two
years at Westminster, but he was constantly moved from one school to
another. This even his delicacy can hardly explain, and it must have
been fatal to all sustained study. Two facts he mentions of his school
life, which paint the manners of the age. In the year 1746 such was the
strength of party spirit that he, a child of nine years of age, "was reviled
and buffeted for the sins of his Tory ancestors." Secondly, the worthy
pedagogues of that day found no readier way of leading the most
studious of boys to a love of science than corporal punishment. "At the
expense of many tears and some blood I purchased the knowledge of
the Latin syntax." Whether all love of study would have been flogged

out of him if he had remained at school, it is difficult to say, but it is
not an improbable supposition that this would have happened. The risk
was removed by his complete failure of health. "A strange nervous
affection, which alternately contracted his legs and produced, without
any visible symptom, the most excruciating pain," was his chief
affliction, followed by intervals of languor and debility. The saving of
his life during these dangerous years Gibbon unhesitatingly ascribes to
the more than maternal care of