Gibbon | Page 7

a new
guest, or rather the first guest. If Gibbon anticipated the Tractarian
movement intellectually, he was farther removed than the poles are
asunder from the mystic reverent spirit which inspired that movement.
If we read the Apologia of Dr. Newman, we perceive the likeness and
unlikeness of the two cases. "As a matter of simple conscience," says
the latter, "I felt it to be a duty to protest against the Church of Rome."

At the time he refers to Dr. Newman was a Catholic to a degree Gibbon
never dreamed of. But in the one case conscience and heart-ties "strong
as life, stronger almost than death," arrested the conclusions of the
intellect. Ground which Gibbon dashed over in a few months or weeks,
the great Tractarian took ten years to traverse. So different is the mystic
from the positive mind.
Gibbon had no sooner settled his new religion than he resolved with a
frankness which did him all honour to profess it publicly. He wrote to
his father, announcing his conversion, a letter which he afterwards
described, when his sentiments had undergone a complete change, as
written with all the pomp, dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr. A
momentary glow of enthusiasm had raised him, as he said, above all
worldly considerations. He had no difficulty, in an excursion to London,
in finding a priest, who perceived in the first interview that persuasion
was needless. "After sounding the motives and merits of my conversion,
he consented to admit me into the pale of the Church, and at his feet on
the 8th of June 1753, I solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of
heresy." He was exactly fifteen years and one month old. Further
details, which one would like to have, he does not give. The scene even
of the solemn act is not mentioned, nor whether he was baptized again;
but this may be taken for granted.
The fact of any one "going over to Rome" is too common an
occurrence nowadays to attract notice. But in the eighteenth century it
was a rare and startling phenomenon. Gibbon's father, who was
"neither a bigot nor a philosopher," was shocked and astonished by his
"son's strange departure from the religion of his country." He divulged
the secret of young Gibbon's conversion, and "the gates of Magdalen
College were for ever shut" against the latter's return. They really
needed no shutting at all. By the fact of his conversion to Romanism he
had ceased to be a member of the University.
CHAPTER II.
AT LAUSANNE.

The elder Gibbon showed a decision of character and prompt energy in
dealing with his son's conversion to Romanism, which were by no
means habitual with him. He swiftly determined to send him out of the
country, far away from the influences and connections which had done
such harm. Lausanne in Switzerland was the place selected for his exile,
in which it was resolved he should spend some years in wholesome
reflections on the error he had committed in yielding to the fascinations
of Roman Catholic polemics. No time was lost: Gibbon had been
received into the Church on the 8th of June, 1753, and on the 30th of
the same month he had reached his destination. He was placed under
the care of a M. Pavillard, a Calvinist minister, who had two duties laid
upon him, a general one, to superintend the young man's studies, a
particular and more urgent one, to bring him back to the Protestant
faith.
It was a severe trial which Gibbon had now to undergo. He was by
nature shy and retiring; he was ignorant of French; he was very young;
and with these disadvantages he was thrown among entire strangers
alone. After the excitement and novelty of foreign travel were over, and
he could realise his position, he felt his heart sink within him. From the
luxury and freedom of Oxford he was degraded to the dependence of a
schoolboy. Pavillard managed his expenses, and his supply of
pocket-money was reduced to a small monthly allowance. "I had
exchanged," he says, "my elegant apartment in Magdalen College for a
narrow gloomy street, the most unfrequented in an unhandsome town,
for an old inconvenient house, and for a small chamber ill-contrived
and ill-furnished, which on the approach of winter, instead of a
companionable fire, must be warmed by the dull and invisible heat of a
stove." Under these gloomy auspices he began the most profitable, and
after a time the most pleasant, period of his whole life, one on which he
never ceased to look back with unmingled satisfaction as the
starting-point of his studies and intellectual progress.
The first care of his preceptor was to bring about his religious
conversion. Gibbon showed an honourable tenacity to his new faith,
and