Memoirs of My Life and Writings

Memoirs of My Life and
Writings

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Title: Memoirs of My Life and Writings
Author: Edward Gibbon
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6031] [Yes, we are more than one

year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 23, 2002]
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MEMOIRS ***

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MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS
by
Edward Gibbon

In the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an arduous
and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of my
leisure in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and literary life.
Truth, naked unblushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history,
must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative. The style
shall be simple and familiar; but style is the image of character; and the
habits of correct writing may produce, without labour or design, the
appearance of art and study. My own amusement is my motive, and
will be my reward: and if these sheets are communicated to some
discreet and indulgent friends, they will be secreted from the public eye
till the author shall be removed beyond the reach of criticism or
ridicule.
A lively desire of knowing and of recording our ancestors so generally
prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common
principle in the minds of men. We seem to have lived in the persons of
our forefathers; it is the labour and reward of vanity to extend the term
of this ideal longevity. Our imagination is always active to enlarge the
narrow circle in which Nature has confined us. Fifty or an hundred
years may be allotted to an individual, but we step forward beyond

death with such hopes as religion and philosophy will suggest; and we
fill up the silent vacancy that precedes our birth, by associating
ourselves to the authors of our existence. Our calmer judgment will
rather tend to moderate, than to suppress, the pride of an ancient and
worthy race. The satirist may laugh, the philosopher may preach; but
Reason herself will respect the prejudices and habits, which have been
consecrated by the experience of mankind.
Wherever the distinction of birth is allowed to form a superior order in
the state, education and example should always, and will often, produce
among them a dignity of sentiment and propriety of conduct, which is
guarded from dishonour by their own and the public esteem. If we read
of some illustrious line so ancient that it has no beginning, so worthy
that it ought to have no end, we sympathize in its various fortunes; nor
can we blame the generous enthusiasm, or even the harmless vanity, of
those who are allied to the honours of its name. For my own part, could
I draw my pedigree from a general, a statesman, or a celebrated author,
I should study their lives with the diligence of filial love. In the
investigation of past events, our curiosity is stimulated by the
immediate or indirect reference to ourselves; but in the estimate of
honour we should learn to value the gifts of Nature above those of
Fortune; to esteem in our ancestors the qualities that best promote the
interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less
truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings will
instruct or delight the latest posterity. The family of Confucius is, in my
opinion, the most illustrious in the world. After a painful ascent of eight
or ten centuries, our barons and princes of Europe are lost in the
darkness of the middle ages; but, in the vast equality of the empire of
China, the posterity of Confucius have maintained, above two thousand
two hundred years, their peaceful