'MR. WHITAKER to EDWARD GIBBON, Esq.

• Dear Sir, Manchester, April 21st, 1776. 'I have just finished your History and I sit down to thank you for it a second time. You have laid open the interior principles of the Roman Constitution with great learning, and shewn their operation on the general body of the Empire with great judgment. Your work therefore will do you high honour. You never speak feebly, except when you come upon British ground, and never weakly, except when you attack Christianity. In the former case, you seem to me to want information. And, in the latter, you plainly want the common candour of a citizen of the world for the religious system of your country. Pardon me, Sir, but, much as I admire your abilities, greatly as I respect your friendship, I cannot bear without indignation your sarcastic slyness upon Christianity, and cannot see without pity your determined hostility to the Gospel.'

MR. WHITAKER to EDWARD GIBBON, Esq.

* Dear Sir, Manchester, May 11th, 1776. • You have received my animadversions upon your History with candour. I was particularly pointed, I believe, in what I said concerning the religious part of it. I wrote from my feelings at the time; and was perhaps the less inclined to suppress those feelings from friendliness, because I had two favours to beg of you. I hope, I shall ever be attached, with every power of my judgment and my affection, to that glorious system of truth, which is the vital principle of happiness to my soul in time and in eternity. And in this I act not from any "restraints of profession." I should despise myself, if I did. I act from the fullest conviction of a mind, that has been a good deal exercised in inquiries into truth, and that has shewn (I fancy) a strong spirit of rational scepticism in rejecting and refuting a variety of opinions, which have passed current for ages in our national history.

With regard to what I said concerning your British accounts, I meant not to blame you, either for not saying all that you knew concerning our island, or for not bringing in the intimations of Richard on Ossian. I blamed you only for not noticing some particulars, that made a necessary part of your narration, and are mentioned by the best authorities. And I remember particularly, that in your description of the Empire about the time of Severus, and in your short intimations concerning the state of the towns within it, you specify only London and York as remarkable towns in Britain, though Tacitus and Dio give us such an account of Camulodunum, and though Chester appears from an inscription and a coin to have been then a colony. And in the description of those two which you mention you take no notice, I think, of the sweet and pleasant situation of London, so strikingly marked by Tacitus, and of the Temple of Bellona, and of the Palatium or Domus Palatina, in York, so expressly specified by Spartian.

These were some of the remarks that forced themselves upon my mind, as I read your work. Others also arose of a different

nature

nature and inferior importance, as that the native language of Gaul and Britain was driven by the Romans to the hills and mountains; that the Druids borrowed money upon bonds payable in the other world, &c.

These, however, if never so true, are but trifles light as air in my estimation, when they are compared with what I think the great blot of your work. You have there exhibited Deism in a new shape, and in one that is more likely to affect the uninstructed million, than the reasoning form which she has usually worn. You seem to me like another Tacitus, revived with all his animosity against Christianity, his strong philosophical spirit of sentiment, and more than his superiority to the absurdities of heathenism. And you will have the dishonour (pardon me, Sir,) of being ranked by the folly of scepticism, that is working so powerfully at present, among the most distinguished deists of the age. I have long suspected the tendency of your opinions. I once took the liberty of hinting my suspicions. But I did not think the poison had spread so universally through your frame. And I can only deplore the misfortune, and a very great one I consider it, to the highest and dearest interests of man among all your readers.

These must be very numerous. I see you are getting a second edition already. I give you joy of it. And I remain, with an equal mixture of regret and regard,

'Your obliged Friend and Servant, J. WHITAKER.' A correspondence of a less amicable nature soon took place between Mr. G. and one of those indignant antagonists, who had been roused to reply to the passages in which the historian attempts to account for the progress of Christianity without the intervention of any other than human aid.

EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. to the REV. DR. CHELSUM. Sir, Bentinck-street, Feb. 20th, 1778. The officious readiness of offering any printed criticism to the notice of a stranger, who is himself the object of it, must be received either as a compliment or an insult. When Dr. Watson, the Divinity Professor of Cambridge, was so obliging as to send me his candid and ingenious apology, I thought it incumbent on me to acknowledge his politeness, and, with suitable expressions of regard, to solicit the pleasure of his acquaintance. A different mode of controversy calls for a different behaviour; and I should deem myself wanting in a just sense of my own honour, if I did not immediately return into the hands of Mr. Batt your most extraordinary present of a book, of which almost every page is stained with the epithets, I shall take leave to say the undeserved epithets, of ungenerous, unmanly, indecent, illiberal, partial, and in which your adversary is repeatedly charged with being deficient in common candour; with studiously concealing the truth, violating the faith of history, &c. This consideration will not however prevent me from procuring a copy of your Remarks, with the intention of correcting any involuntary mistakes, (and I cannot be

conscious

conscious of any other,) which in so large a subject your industry, or that of your colleagues, may very possibly have observed. But I must not suffer myself to be diverted from the prosecution of an important work, by the invidious task of controversy and recrimination. Whatever faults in your performance I might fairly impute to want of attention, or excess of zeal, be assured, Sir, that they shall sleep in peace; and you may safely inform your readers, that Suidas was a heathen four centuries after the heathenism of the Greeks had ceased to exist in the world.

'I am, Sir, Your obedient humble Servant, E. GIBBON.' The REV. DR. CHELSUM to EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. • Sir, Oxford, March 6th, 1778. 'Permit me to assure you, with the utmost sincerity, that no insult, such as, I collect from your letter, you attribute to me, was ever intended by me.

* I had reason to think, from several circumstances, that my not having sent my Remarks to you in their first form, had been considered by you as a want of attention, and I was very ready to pay what others gave me reason to expect would be received as a mark of civility. I do not mean here to refer to Mr. Batt.

My determination was the result of a deference to the opinions of others; and it arose in no degree from an " officious readiness," to which you attribute it. I may be accused of an error in judgment, but I cannot justly be accused of any greater offence.

'Concerned as I am at my mistake, I am most of all concerned that so esteemed a friend as Mr. Batt should have been employed in a very unpleasant mediation between us.

As it is the sole object of this letter to give you every possible assurance of my having intended a compliment in what has unfortunately been received as an insult, I should have concluded here, but that I am anxious to do myself the justice of pointing out to you, that you have unwarily imputed to me one expression (as I apprehend) wholly without foundation.

'On the most diligent recollection I cannot remember that I have any where said (and I am sure I never intended to say) that you have "studiously" concealed the truth.'

'I am, Sir, Your obedient humble Servant, J. CHELSUM.' It was fashionable with the courtly part of the clergy to say that they had not read the offensive parts, and the admirers of sincerity must be not a little mortified on being obliged to class Dr. Robertson (M. R. vol. xx. p. 442.) in this inglorious assemblage. "Had I been aware," says Gibbon with all imaginable composure, (Memoirs, p. 153.)" of the attachment of the majority of my readers to Christianity, I would have softened the obnoxious chapters." He made, however, no replies except to Mr. Davies of Oxford, who attacked his sincerity. His rejoinder to that gentleman was printed with the first part of his Miscellaneous Works, and was much praised for its erudition but blamed for its diffuseness.

In

In 1776, after having published his book, Gibbon made an excursion to Paris. He was wonderfully caressed by the literati there, yet found means to consult at considerable leisure the Bibliothèque du Roi, and that of the Abbey of St. Germain. He had now become fully aware of the value of time, and was less eager in making new acquaintances : -"the society of men of letters," he says, "I neither courted nor declined." Two years nearly elapsed between the appearance of his first volume and his beginning to prepare the second for the press. This long interval was passed partly in parliamentary attendance, Mr. G. having become a member of the House of Commons, and partly in researches connected with his history. He was the writer of the "Mémoire Justificatif" circulated by our ministry in 1778, in answer to the manifesto issued by the court of France on taking part in the American war; and he speaks with no little self-complacency on this diplomatic performance, which was evidently too long and diffuse for an official document. He was afterwards made a commissioner of the Board of Trade, a place affording a clear annual salary of 750l., which appointment he owed chiefly to the friendship of Lord Loughborough, and which he enjoyed about three years. Burke ridiculed the perpetual vacation of this Board, and the Opposition blamed Mr. G. for taking the place, but he says expressly in his Memoirs that he "never was connected with the Opposition." He was not, however, though it was currently reported, the writer of a pamphlet in 1779, intitled "The History of Opposition;" that production having proceeded from the pen of Macpherson.

On resuming, in 1778, the task of historical composition, Mr. G. found it much easier than at the outset; he wrote more in the course of the day; and, which was equally important, he did not cancel so much. On publishing the second and third volumes, also, he excited less disapprobation, his comments on religious subjects being more guarded, and protestant clergymen being less alive to the characters and controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. He was attacked, however, by Archdeacon Travis in a vehement style; and Porson's famous answer was considered by Gibbon as the most acute and accurate piece of criticism since the days of Bentley. A very general sentiment prevailed with the public that these two volumes were inferior to the first; an impression ascribed in the outset by Mr. G. to the want of novelty, and to the circumstance that "an author who cannot ascend will always appear to sink:" but he confessed eventually that the second and third volumes are more prolix and less entertaining than the first. Meantime, his parliamentary career had experienced

some

some interruption, it having been found necessary that he should not resume his seat at the general election of 1780. He was subsequently returned for Lymington, but Lord North's administration now drew to its close, and with it fell (in 1782) the appointments of the Board of Trade.

Gibbon, now unemployed in a public capacity, and arrived at a pausing point in the composition of his history, passed some time in the enjoyment of literary relaxation, and returned to the perusal of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and the tragic poets. Yet "in the luxury of freedom he began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry." He determined, therefore, to recommence his historical engagement: but, feeling the inadequacy of his income to the support of the style of indulgence, or, as he called it, comfort, to which he had been accustomed, he made some attempts to be employed as secretary in the negotiation about to take place with France.

'MR. GIBBON to LORD THUrlow. 'My Lord,

Without presuming to inquire into the state of public measures, which must be secret in order to be successful, I cannot but observe and congratulate, with the rest of my countrymen, the fair prospect of peace, or at least of negociation, which seems to be opening upon us.

I find it generally understood that the principal conduct of this important event will be entrusted to a minister whose eminent abilities have been long tried and distinguished. But a scene of business so various and extensive must afford several collateral and subordinate lines of negociation. If in any of these I should be thought qualified for public trust, I am ready to devote my time and my best industry to the service of my country, and shall think myself happy if I can discharge, in any degree, my debt of gratitude to his Majesty's government.

Your Lordship's experience of mankind has undoubtedly taught you to distrust and dislike ostentatious professions; yet I may affirm with the confidence of truth that if I consulted only my private interest and inclination, I should not be lightly tempted to interrupt the tranquillity and leisure, which I now enjoy, and in which I am never busy, and never idle.

The grateful recollection of your Lordship's indulgence on a former occasion has strongly solicited me to make this offer of my services. I should deem it no vulgar honour if they could ever deserve the approbation of a wise and intrepid statesman, who, in a divided country, has commanded the esteem and applause of the most hostile parties.

I am, with great respect, my Lord, &c.

The Lord Chancellor.'

'E. GIBBON.'

' LORD