country; and the Académie des Inscriptions, the guardian of classical studies, ranking only third in the Royal Societies of Paris. He submitted the manuscript to the revision of Dr. Maty; who, though born in Holland, might be called a Frenchman, and who was settled in London. Dr. M. had been the editor and in a great measure the writer of eighteen volumes of the Journal Britannique, published from January 1750 to December 1755; and, "far different from his angry son, he handled," says Mr. G., "the rod of criticism with the kindness and reluctance of a parent."

Of this juvenile composition, (printed in 1761,) Mr. G. distributed a number of copies among his friends, and received of course a great many compliments. With the public, it succeeded on the Continent, but not in England. The chief fault of the essay, as the author acknowleged afterward, consisted in an obscurity and abruptness which always fatigue and may often elude the attention of the reader; and which must be admitted to have been, in most cases, the consequence of affectation, or of the desire of expressing a common idea with sententious or oracular brevity. Such, says. Mr. G., was the consequence of imitating Montesquieu. To this fault must be added a total want of method or connection: - but what could be expected from a writer at the age of twentytwo? Still, when Mr. G. looked back, in his advanced years, to this essay, he could not help feeling, like Sir Joshua Reynolds, that his improvement in a long interval had fallen much short of what he had conceived it to have been.

The war with France having led to the establishment of the militia on a scale of considerable extent, Mr. G. and his father took their shares in this new kind of military duty. His service lasted several years, and proved a considerable interruption to his literary pursuits: but it had the effect of rubbing off the rust of the closet, and of giving him a practical knowlege of life; while the attention which it led him to give to the study of tactics, and particularly to the "Mémoires Militaires" of Guischardt, was not without its use in the subsequent labours of his celebrated history. Before the time came for disembodying the militia, Mr. G. had risen from the rank of a Captain of grenadiers in the Hampshire regiment to that of Lieutenant-Colonel-Commandant.

In January 1763, Mr. G. undertook a continental journey. He passed several months at Paris, and dedicated his morninghours to the inspection of churches and palaces, of royal manufactures, and of collections of books and pictures; in which he declares Paris to be as much superior to London as the country and country-seats of France are beneath those of

England.

England. The causes of the magnificence of the French capital are the wealth of the church, and the unauthorized application of public money by the sovereign. Mr. G. had taken various introductions to French literati, but found them in a great measure unnecessary, one acquaintance leading to another; so that he became known to a wider circle in Paris in three months than he had formed in London in three years. He could not help making the remark that the authors and artists of Paris, when he conversed with them alone in a morning-visit, were much less vain and more reasonable than he observed them to be in a large circle.

He next revisited Lausanne, after an absence of five years, and found little alteration among the friends of his youth. He lived here, not with his preceptor, Pavillard, but at a boarding-house kept by a man of rank, M. de Meseray, whose manners were such as to give him the appearance of a nobleman spending his fortune in entertaining his friends. It was at this house and at this time that Mr. G. became acquainted with Mr. Holroyd, afterward Lord Sheffield, and began an intimacy which lasted thirty years. He now prepared for a tour to Italy, by studying the travels of Nardini, Donatus, and others, with the fourth volume of the Roman Antiquities of Grævius; and he afterward dissected the Italia Antiqua of Cluverius, who examined on foot almost every scene noticed by antient writers. Mr. G. also read descriptions of Italy by Strabo, Pliny, and Pomponius Mela; D'Anville's Mesures Itinéraires, Bergier's Histoire des grand Chemins de l'Empire Romain; and the works of Addison and Spanheim. He then proceeded on his tour, with all the benefits of thorough preparation. He passed four months in Rome, under the guidance of Byers, the antiquary; and, though exposed to occasional embarrassment from not speaking the language, he reaped, on the whole, a rich harvest of information from his travels in Italy. The result of his previous study is given in the volume now published under the title of "Nomina Gentesque antiquæ Italia," a geographical and historical composition in French, divided into sixteen sections, treating of nearly as many portions of the Italian peninsula.

This

comprehensive abstract occupies above a hundred pages, and is, perhaps, the most complete monument of his attentive and careful habits that is contained in his miscellaneous works. We have heard it recommended as a fit object for a separate publication, for the use of the more advanced boys in our schools, and as a substitute for the accurate but dull geographical work of Dr. Adam. Mr. G. has interspersed his local notices by liberal quotations from the classics, which

B 4

would

would relieve, to a youthful mind, the tedium of topographical description: but, to fit his work for the purpose just mentioned, an index and a translation either into English or Latin would be necessary.

Mr. G. returned home in 1765, and lived, as before, with his father, from whom he received the most affectionate treatment but he was on the whole uncomfortable at finding himself drawing to his thirtieth year without having embraced a profession, or given a settled aim to his pursuits. He now, therefore, determined to turn his thoughts to a publication on some historical topic. His attention was for some time fixed on the life of Sir Walter Raleigh; and, on relinquishing this plan, he devoted himself with considerable ardour to an historical composition on the early part of the history of Swisserland. He had formed, when at Lausanne, a close intimacy with a Swiss gentleman named Deyverdun, who was now in England; and the imagination of both these young candidates for fame kindled at the hope of delineating, in animated colouring, the dawn of Swiss liberty. They continued more or less occupied with this subject during two years, and made a considerable progress in their task; the result of which is now given to the public in an historical tract occupying nearly sixty pages, which is not, like most of the materials in these volumes, a series of memoranda, but a composition prepared and finished, as far as it went, for the public eye. Mr. Hume, to whom Gibbon submitted the manuscript, was justified in remarking that the style was too lofty for English readers, and bore too evident marks of an imitation of French models: but, on comparing it with the subsequent productions of Mr. G., it will be found marked by fewer of those deviations from simplicity than his far-famed history. Among the passages most deserving of attention in this fragment of Swiss history, is the account (p. 113.) of the conspiracy formed by three spirited citizens in 1307 for the independence of their country; and of the memorable conflict at Morgarten in 1315, in which a band of intrepid peasants, favoured by localities of no common kind, succeeded in repelling and routing the army of the Duke of Austria.

The plan of a history of Swisserland was abandoned by Mr. Gibbon and his coadjutor, partly in consequence of their unacquaintance with German, the language in which most of the materials were to be sought, but more, we apprehend, on account of the limited interest of the subject. Without believing à la lettre that Mr. G. conceived the design of writing the history of Rome when contemplating the capitol, we can readily imagine that he aimed from an early period at sending

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forth

forth a work which might attract towards him the attention of the men of letters not only in England but in Europe. Much time and intermediate labour, however, were necessary to prepare himself for such a task; and a part of this interval was filled up by his contributions during two years to the Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne, a periodical work in French, planned by himself and his friend Deyverdun, with the view of keeping foreigners apprized of the state and progress of English literature. The first volume came out in 1767, and contained a review by Gibbon of Lord Lyttleton's Henry II., "a work in which sense and information are not illustrated by a single ray of genius." The second volume was published in 1768, and had among other papers a reply by Hume to "Walpole's Historic Doubts." The materials for the third volume were almost completed, when Deyverdun was enabled to change his situation for the better by going abroad to travel with a young pupil, and the undertaking was relinquished.

Mr. Gibbon's next publication was a disquisition in opposition to the hypothesis maintained by Warburton respecting the sixth book of the Æneid. He dwelt with pleasure on topics connected with a composition which he justly termed the "most pleasing and perfect of Latin poetry:" but, his antagonist being silent, the pamphlet attracted little notice, although it was praised by Heyné, by Hayley, and lately by Dr. Parr. "Warburton's book," says Mr. G., (Memoirs, p.139.) "has lost much of its first fame: its chief merit consists in the episodes on the Greek philosophy, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, &c. which are intitled to the praise of learning, imagination, and discernment."

At last, Mr. Gibbon bade adieu to minor essays, and directed his attention to the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." He was already familiar with the classics, down to Tacitus and Juvenal; and he now investigated, with the pen almost always in his hand, the original records, both Greek and Latin, down to Ammianus Marcellinus, from the reign of Trajan to the last emperors of Rome. Together with these he studied medals, and inscriptions of geography and chronology; and he found great advantage in fixing and arranging his scattered materials by the collections of Tillemont, a writer of character and accuracy. For the middle ages he studied Muratori, Sigonius, Maffei, Baronius, and Pagi. The Theodosian code, with the commentary of Godefroy, was highly useful to him in an historical light: it may be called, in fact, a full and capacious repository of the political state of the empire during the fourth and fifth centuries. This course of study began in

1771, but was for a long time mixed with collateral occupa tions. Mr. G. continued to read again and again the classics in Latin, French, Italian, and in some measure in Greek. He prepared in manuscript an essay on the Cyropædia, perused Blackstone three times, and made a copious and critical abstract of his work. After his father's death in 1770, he was obliged to occupy two years in finally retiring from a country life, and making a clear arrangement of his patrimony. He was never affluent, but considered himself as possessing the happy medium; being inclined to think that it would not have been his lot to become an historian had he been either richer or poorer. From the year 1772, he lived in London, and increased his library as well as the number of his connections, being chosen a member of several literary clubs.

It was now that he undertook in earnest to prepare his first volume for the press, and laboured in particular to form his style. He wrote his first chapter three times, always in quest of a middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation. He soon became tired of the practice of reading a manuscript to friends, under the conviction that an author is the best judge of his own performance; although he was still satisfied of the utility of occasional advice from such a veteran in literature as Hume.

The publication of the first volume took place in 1776. It was offered to Elmsley: but, that cautious disciple of the old school having declined the adventure, it was undertaken by Messrs. Strahan and Cadell. Mr. G. intended at first to publish only 500 copies, but this number was doubled by the "prophetic taste" of Mr. Strahan. The printed sheets discovered many blemishes of style which had been invisible in the manuscript, but the author was soon amply repaid for all his solicitude. The book attracted great notice, and the edition was sold, not indeed, as Mr. G. insinuates in his Memoirs, in a few days, but in the course of a few months: the magnitude of the subject, the novelty of the style, and the extent of research displayed, all concurring to excite the public attention. We have noticed in another place (M. R. vol. xx. p. 442.) several of the letters written on this occasion to the author. It is true that such addresses are often little more than complimentary effusions, and are sometimes found at variance (as in the case of Horace Walpole's epistolary panegyric on Dr. Robertson) with the real sentiments of the writer as eventually disclosed: but a notable exception from this train of flattery is afforded by the manly letters of one of our first-rate antiquaries, to the new historian.

'MR. WHIT