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GIBBON
by
JAMES COTTER MORISON, M.A.
Lincoln College, Oxford
English Men of Letters
Edited by John Morley
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 AENEID.--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 his aunt,
Catherine Porten, on writing whose name for the first time in his
Memoirs, "he felt a tear of gratitude trickling down his cheek." "If
there be any," he continues, "as I trust there are some, who rejoice
that I live, to that dear and excellent woman they must hold
themselves indebted. Many anxious and solitary hours and days did she
consume in the patient trial of relief and amusement; many wakeful
nights did she sit by my bedside in trembling expectation that every
hour would be my last." Gibbon is rather anxious to get over these
details, and declares he has no wish to expatiate on a "disgusting
topic." This is quite in the style of the _ancien regime_. There was
no blame attached to any one for being ill in those days, but people
were expected to keep their infirmities to themselves. "People knew
how to live and die in those days, and kept their infirmities out of
sight. You might have the gout, but you must walk about all the same
without making grimaces. It was a point of good breeding to hide one's
sufferings."[2] Similarly Walpole was much offended by a too faithful
publication of Madame de Sevigne's _Letters_. "Heaven forbid," he
says, "that I should say that the letters of Madame de Sevigne were
bad. I only meant that they were full of family details and mortal
distempers, to which the most immortal of us are subject." But Gibbon
was above all things a veracious historian, and fortunately has not
refrained from giving us a truthful picture of his childhood.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: George Sand, quoted in Taine's _Ancien Regime_, p. 181.]
Of his studies, or rather his reading--his early and invincible love
of reading, which he would not exchange for the treasures of India--he
gives us a full account, and we notice at once the interesting fact
that a considerable portion of the historical field afterwards
occupied by his great work had been already gone over by Gibbon before
he was well in his teens. "My indiscriminate appetite subsided by
degrees into the historic line, and since philosophy has exploded all
innate ideas and natural propensities, I must ascribe the choice to
the assiduous perusal of the _Universal History_ as the octavo volumes
successively appeared. This unequal work referred and introduced me to
the Greek and Roman historians, to as many at least as were accessible
to an English reader. All that I could find were greedily devoured,
from Littlebury's lame _Herodotus_ to Spelman's valuable _Xenophon_,
to the pompous folios of Gordon's _Tacitus_, and a ragged _Procopius_
of the beginning of the last century." Referring to an accident which
threw the continuation of Echard's _Roman History_ in his way, he
says, "To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine were
absolutely new, and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over
the Danube, when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me
from my intellectual feast.... I procured the second and third
volumes of Howell's _History of the World_, which exhibit the
Byzantine period on a larger scale. Mahomet and his Saracens soon
fixed my attention, and some instinct of criticism directed me to the
genuine sources. Simon Ockley first opened my eyes, and I was led from
one book to another till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental
history. Before I was sixteen I had exhausted all that could be
learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks,
and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot and
to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's _Abulfaragius_." Here is
in rough outline a large portion at least of the _Decline and Fall_
already surveyed. The fact shows how deep was the sympathy that Gibbon
had for his subject, and that there was a sort of pre-established
harmony between his mind and the historical period he afterwards
illustrated.
Up to the age of fourteen it seemed that Gibbon, as he says, was
destined to remain through life an illiterate cripple. But as he
approached his sixteenth year, a great change took place in his
constitution, and his diseases, instead of growing with his growth and
strengthening with his strength, wonderfully vanished. This unexpected
recovery was not seized by his father in a rational spirit, as
affording a welcome opportunity of repairing the defects of a hitherto
imperfect education. Instead of using the occasion thus presented of
recovering some of the precious time lost, of laying a sound
foundation of scholarship and learning on which a superstructure at
the university or elsewhere could be ultimately built, he carried the
lad off in an impulse of perplexity and impatience, and entered him as
a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College just before he had completed
his fifteenth year (1752, April 3). This was perhaps the most unwise
step he could have taken under the circumstances. Gibbon was too young
and too ignorant to profit by the advantages offered by Oxford to a
more mature student, and his status as a gentleman commoner seemed
intended to class him among the idle and dissipated who are only
expected to waste their money and their time. A good education is
generally considered as reflecting no small credit on its possessor;
but in the majority of cases it reflects credit on the wise solicitude
of his parents or guardians rather than on himself. If Gibbon escaped
the peril of being an ignorant and frivolous lounger, the merit was
his own.
At no period in their history had the English universities sunk to a
lower condition as places of education than at the time when Gibbon
went up to Oxford. To speak of them as seats of learning seems like
irony; they were seats of nothing but coarse living and clownish
manners, the centres where all the faction, party spirit, and bigotry
of the country were gathered to a head. In this evil pre-eminence both
of the universities and all the colleges appear to have been upon a
level, though Lincoln College, Oxford, is mentioned as a bright
exception in John Wesley's day to the prevalent degeneracy. The
strange thing is that, with all their neglect of learning and
morality, the colleges were not the resorts of jovial if unseemly boon
companionship; they were collections of quarrelsome and spiteful
litigants, who spent their time in angry lawsuits. The indecent
contentions between Bentley and the Fellows of Trinity were no
isolated scandal. They are best known and remembered on account of the
eminence of the chief disputants, and of the melancholy waste of
Bentley's genius which they occasioned. Hearne writes of Oxford in
1726, "There are such differences now in the University of Oxford
(hardly one college but where all the members are busied in law
business and quarrels not at all relating to the promotion of
learning), that good letters decay every day, insomuch that this
ordination on Trinity Sunday at Oxford there were no fewer (as I am
informed) than fifteen denied orders for insufficiency, which is the
more to be noted because our bishops, and those employed by them, are
themselves illiterate men."[3] The state of things had not much
improved twenty or thirty years later when Gibbon went up, but perhaps
it had improved a little. He does not mention lawsuits as a favourite
pastime of the Fellows. "The Fellows or monks of my time," he says,
"were decent, easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder:
their days were filled by a series of uniform employments--the chapel,
the hall, the coffee-house, and the common room--till they retired
weary and well satisfied to a long slumber. From the toil of reading,
writing, or thinking they had absolved their consciences. Their
conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics,
personal anecdotes, and private scandal. Their dull and deep potations
excused the brisk intemperance of youth, and their constitutional
toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty to the House of
Hanover." Some Oxonians perhaps could still partly realise the truth
of this original picture by their recollections of faint and feeble
copies of it drawn from their experience in youthful days. It seems to
be certain that the universities, far from setting a model of good
living, were really below the average standard of the morals and
manners of the age, and the standard was not high. Such a satire as
the _Terrae Filius_ of Amhurst cannot be accepted without large
deductions; but the caricaturist is compelled by the conditions of his
craft to aim at the _true seeming_, if he neglects the true, and with
the benefit of this limitation the _Terrae Filius_ reveals a deplorable
and revolting picture of vulgarity, insolence, and licence. The
universities are spoken of in terms of disparagement by men of all
classes. Lord Chesterfield speaks of the "rust" of Cambridge as
something of which a polished man should promptly rid himself. Adam
Smith showed his sense of the defects of Oxford in a stern section of
the _Wealth of Nations_, written twenty years after he had left the
place. Even youths like Gray and West, fresh from Eton, express
themselves with contempt for their respective universities. "Consider
me," says the latter, writing from Christ Church, "very seriously,
here is a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves
Doctors and Masters of Arts, a country flowing with syllogisms and
ale; where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown." Gray, answering
from Peterhouse, can only do justice to his feelings by quoting the
words of the Hebrew prophet, and insists that Isaiah had Cambridge
equally with Babylon in view when he spoke of the wild beasts and wild
asses, of the satyrs that dance, of an inhabitation of dragons and a
court for owls.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: _Social Life at the English Universities_. By Christopher
Wordsworth. Page 57.]
Into such untoward company was Gibbon thrust by his careless father at
the age of fifteen. That he succumbed to the unwholesome atmosphere
cannot surprise us. He does not conceal, perhaps he rather
exaggerates, in his Memoirs, the depth of his fall. As Bunyan in a
state of grace accused himself of dreadful sins which in all
likelihood he never committed, so it is probable that Gibbon, in his
old age, when study and learning were the only passions he knew,
reflected with too much severity on the boyish freaks of his
university life. Moreover there appears to have been nothing coarse or
unworthy in his dissipation; he was simply idle. He justly lays much
of the blame on the authorities. To say that the discipline was lax
would be to pay it an unmerited compliment. There was no discipline at
all. He lived in Magdalen as he might have lived at the Angel or the
Mitre Tavern. He not only left his college, but he left the
university, whenever he liked. In one winter he made a tour to Bath,
another to Buckinghamshire, and he made four excursions to London,
"without once hearing the voice of admonition, without once feeling
the hand of control." Of study he had just as much and as little as he
pleased.
"As soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his disciple in
school learning, he proposed that we should read every morning from
ten to eleven the comedies of Terence. During the first weeks I
constantly attended these lessons in my tutor's room; but as they
appeared equally devoid of profit and pleasure, I was once tempted to
try the experiment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with
a smile. I repeated the offence with less ceremony: the excuse was
admitted with the same indulgence; the slightest motive of laziness or
indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or abroad was
allowed as a worthy impediment, nor did my tutor appear conscious of
my absence or neglect." No wonder he spoke with indignation of such
scandalous neglect. "To the University of Oxford," he says, "I
acknowledge no obligation, and she will as readily renounce me for a
son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen
months at Magdalen College; they proved the most idle and unprofitable
of my whole life. The reader will pronounce between the school and the
scholar." This is only just and fully merited by the abuses denounced.
One appreciates the anguish of the true scholar mourning over lost
time as a miser over lost gold. There was another side of the question
which naturally did not occur to Gibbon, but which may properly occur
to us. Did Gibbon lose as much as he thought in missing the scholastic
drill of the regular public school and university man? Something he
undoubtedly lost: he was never a finished scholar, up to the standard
even of his own day. If he had been, is it certain that the
accomplishment would have been all gain? It may be doubted. At a later
period Gibbon read the classics with the free and eager curiosity of a
thoughtful mind. It was a labour of love, of passionate ardour,
similar to the manly zeal of the great scholars of the Renaissance.
This appetite had not been blunted by enforced toil in a prescribed
groove. How much of that zest for antiquity, of that keen relish for
the classic writers which he afterwards acquired and retained through
life, might have been quenched if he had first made their acquaintance
as school-books? Above all, would he have looked on the ancient world
with such freedom and originality as he afterwards gained, if he had
worn through youth the harness of academical study? These questions do
not suggest an answer, but they may furnish a doubt. Oxford and
Cambridge for nearly a century have been turning out crowds of
thorough-paced scholars of the orthodox pattern. It is odd that the
two greatest historians who have been scholars as well--Gibbon and
Grote--were not university-bred men.
As if to prove by experiment where the fault lay, in "the school or
the scholar," Gibbon had no sooner left Oxford for the long vacation,
than his taste for study returned, and, not content with reading, he
attempted original composition. The subject he selected was a curious
one for a youth in his sixteenth year. It was an attempt to settle the
chronology of the age of Sesostris, and shows how soon the austere
side of history had attracted his attention. "In my childish balance,"
he says, "I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of
Marsham and of Newton; and my sleep has been disturbed by the
difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation."
Of course his essay had the usual value of such juvenile productions;
that is, none at all, except as an indication of early bias to serious
study of history. On his return to Oxford, the age of Sesostris was
wisely relinquished. He indeed soon commenced a line of study which
was destined to have a lasting influence on the remainder of his
course through life.
He had an inborn taste for theology and the controversies which have
arisen concerning religious dogma. "From my childhood," he says, "I
had been fond of religious disputation: my poor aunt has often been
puzzled by the mysteries which she strove to believe." How he carried
the taste into mature life, his great chapters on the heresies and
controversies of the Early Church are there to show. This inclination
for theology, co-existing with a very different temper towards
religious sentiment, recalls the similar case of the author of the
_Historical and Critical Dictionary_, the illustrious Pierre Bayle,
whom Gibbon resembled in more ways than one. At Oxford his religious
education, like everything else connected with culture, had been
entirely neglected. It seems hardly credible, yet we have his word for
it, that he never subscribed or studied the Articles of the Church of
England, and was never confirmed. When he first went up, he was judged
to be too young, but the Vice-Chancellor directed him to return as
soon as he had completed his fifteenth year, recommending him in the
meantime to the instruction of his college. "My college forgot to
instruct; I forgot to return, and was myself forgotten by the first
magistrate of the university. Without a single lecture, either public
or private, either Christian or Protestant, without any academical
subscription, without any episcopal ordination, I was left by light of
my catechism to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, where
I was admitted without question how far or by what means I might be
qualified to receive the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was
productive of the worst mischiefs." What did Gibbon mean by this last
sentence? Did he, when he wrote it, towards the end of his life,
regret the want of early religious instruction? Nothing leads us to
think so, or to suppose that his subsequent loss of faith was a heavy
grief, supported, but painful to bear. His mind was by nature
positive, or even pagan, and he had nothing of what the Germans call
_religiositaet_ in him. Still there is a passage in his Memoirs where
he oddly enough laments not having selected the _fat slumbers of the
Church_ as an eligible profession. Did he reflect that perhaps the
neglect of his religious education at Oxford had deprived him of a
bishopric or a good deanery, and the learned leisure which such
positions at that time conferred on those who cared for it? He could
not feel that he was morally, or even spiritually, unfit for an office
filled in his own time by such men as Warburton and Hurd. He would not
have disgraced the episcopal bench; he would have been dignified,
courteous, and hospitable; a patron and promoter of learning, we may
be sure. His literary labours would probably have consisted of an
edition of a Greek play or two, and certainly some treatise on the
Evidences of Christianity. But in that case we should not have had the
_Decline and Fall_.
The "blind activity of idleness" to which he was exposed at Oxford,
prevented any result of this kind. For want of anything better to do, he
was led to read Middleton's _Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers
which are Supposed to have Subsisted in the Christian Church_. Gibbon
says that the effect of Middleton's "bold criticism" upon him was
singular, and that instead of making him a sceptic, it made him more of
a believer. He might have reflected that it is the commonest of
occurrences for controversialists to produce exactly the opposite result
to that which they intend, and that as many an apology for Christianity
has sown the first seeds of infidelity, so an attack upon it might well
intensify faith. What follows is very curious. "The elegance of style
and freedom of argument were repelled by a shield of prejudice. I still
revered the character, or rather the names of the saints and fathers
whom Dr. Middleton exposes; nor could he destroy my implicit belief
that the gift of miraculous powers was continued in the Church during
the first four or five centuries of Christianity. But I was unable to
resist the weight of historical evidence, that within the same period
most of the leading doctrines of Popery were already introduced in
theory and practice. Nor was my conclusion absurd that miracles are the
test of truth, and that the Church must be orthodox and pure which was
so often approved by the visible interposition of the Deity. The
marvellous tales which are boldly attested by the Basils and
Chrysostoms, the Austins and Jeromes, compelled me to embrace the
superior merits of celibacy, the institution of the monastic life, the
use of the sign of the cross, of holy oil, and even of images, the
invocation of saints, the worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory
in prayers for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of
the body and the blood of Christ, which insensibly swelled into the
prodigy of transubstantiation." In this remarkable passage we have a
distinct foreshadow of the Tractarian movement, which came seventy or
eighty years afterwards. Gibbon in 1752, at the age of fifteen, took up
a position practically the same as Froude and Newman took up about the
year 1830. In other words, he reached the famous _via media_ at a bound.
But a second spring soon carried him clear of it, into the bosom of the
Church of Rome.
He had come to what are now called Church principles, by the energy of
his own mind working on the scanty data furnished him by Middleton. By
one of those accidents which usually happen in such cases, he made the
acquaintance of a young gentleman who had already embraced
Catholicism, and who was well provided with controversial tracts in
favour of Romanism. Among these were the two works of Bossuet, the
_Exposition of Catholic Doctrine_ and the _History of the Protestant
Variations_. Gibbon says: "I read, I applauded, I believed, and surely
I fell by a noble hand. I have since examined the originals with a
more discerning eye, and shall not hesitate to pronounce that Bossuet
is indeed a master of all the weapons of controversy. In the
_Exposition_, a specious apology, the orator assumes with consummate
art the tone of candour and simplicity, and the ten horned monster is
transformed at his magic touch into the milk-white hind, who must be
loved as soon as she is seen. In the _History_, a bold and well-aimed
attack, he displays, with a happy mixture of narrative and argument,
the faults and follies, the changes and contradictions of our first
Reformers, whose variations, as he dexterously contends, are the mark
of historical error, while the perpetual unity of the Catholic Church
is the sign and test of infallible truth. To my present feelings it
seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in
transubstantiation. But my conqueror oppressed me with the sacramental
words, '_Hoc est corpus meum_,' and dashed against each other the
figurative half meanings of the Protestant sects; every objection was
resolved into omnipotence, and, after repeating at St. Mary's the
Athanasian Creed, I humbly acquiesced in the mystery of the Real
Presence."
Many reflections are suggested on the respective domains of reason and
faith by these words, but they cannot be enlarged on here. No one,
nowadays, one may hope, would think of making Gibbon's conversion a
subject of reproach to him. The danger is rather that it should be
regarded with too much honour. It unquestionably shows the early and
trenchant force of his intellect: he mastered the logical position in
a moment; saw the necessity of a criterion of faith; and being told
that it was to be found in the practice of antiquity, boldly went
there, and abided by the result. But this praise to his head does not
extend to his heart. A more tender and deep moral nature would not
have moved so rapidly. We must in fairness remember that it was not
his fault that his religious education had been neglected at home, at
school, and at college. But we have no reason to think that had it
been attended to, the result would have been much otherwise. The root
of spiritual life did not exist in him. It never withered, because it
never shot up. Thus when he applied his acute mind to a religious
problem, he contemplated it with the coolness and impartiality of a
geometer or chess player, his intellect operated _in vacuo_ so to
speak, untrammelled by any bias of sentiment or early training. He had
no profound associations to tear out of his heart. He merely altered
the premisses of a syllogism. When Catholicism was presented to him in
a logical form, it met with no inward bar and repugnance. The house
was empty and ready for 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
a whole year after he had been exposed to the Protestant dialectics of
Pavillard he still, as the latter observed with much regret, continued
to abstain from meat on Fridays. There is something slightly
incongruous in the idea of Gibbon _fasting_ out of religious scruples,
but the fact shows that his religion had obtained no slight hold of
him, and that although he had embraced it quickly, he also accepted
with intrepid frankness all its consequences. His was not an intellect
that could endure half measures and half lights; he did not belong to
that class of persons who do not know their own minds.
However it is not surprising that his religion, placed where he was,
was slowly but steadily undermined. The Swiss clergy, he says, were
acute and learned on the topics of controversy, and Pavillard seems to
have been a good specimen of his class. An adult and able man, in
daily contact with a youth in his own house, urging persistently but
with tact one side of a thesis, could hardly fail in the course of
time to carry his point. But though Gibbon is willing to allow his
tutor a handsome share in the work of his conversion, he maintains
that it was chiefly effected by his own private reflections. And this
is eminently probable. What logic had set up, logic could throw down.
He gives us a highly characteristic example of the reflections in
question. "I still remember my solitary transport at the discovery of
a philosophical argument against the doctrine of transubstantiation:
that the text of Scripture which seems to inculcate the Real Presence
is attested only by a single sense--our sight; while the real presence
itself is disproved by three of our senses--the sight, the touch, and
the taste." He was unaware of the distinction between the logical
understanding and the higher reason, which has been made since his
time to the great comfort of thinkers of a certain stamp. Having
reached so far, his progress was easy and rapid. "The various articles
of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream, and after a full
conviction, on Christmas-day, 1754, I received the sacrament in the
church of Lausanne. It was here that I suspended my religious
inquiries, acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and
mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and
Protestants." He thus had been a Catholic for about eighteen months.
Gibbon's residence at Lausanne was a memorable epoch in his life on
two grounds. Firstly, it was during the five years he spent there that
he laid the foundations of that deep and extensive learning by which
he was afterwards distinguished. Secondly, the foreign education he
there received, at the critical period when the youth passes into the
man, gave a permanent bent to his mind, and made him a continental
European rather than an insular Englishman--two highly important
factors in his intellectual growth.
He says that he went up to Oxford with a "stock of erudition which
might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a
schoolboy might have been ashamed." Both erudition and ignorance were
left pretty well undisturbed during his short and ill-starred
university career. At Lausanne he found himself, for the first time,
in possession of the means of successful study, good health, calm,
books, and tuition, up to a certain point: that point did not reach
very far. The good Pavillard, an excellent man, for whom Gibbon ever
entertained a sincere regard, was quite unequal to the task of forming
such a mind. There is no evidence that he was a ripe or even a fair
scholar, and the plain fact is that Gibbon belongs to the honourable
band of self-taught men. "My tutor," says Gibbon, "had the good sense
to discern how far he could be useful, and when he felt that I
advanced beyond his speed and measure, he wisely left me to my
genius." Under that good guidance he formed an extensive plan of
reviewing the Latin classics, in the four divisions of (1) Historians,
(2) Poets, (3) Orators, and (4) Philosophers, in "chronological series
from the days of Plautus and Sallust to the decline of the language
and empire of Rome." In one year he read over the following authors:
Virgil, Sallust, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus,
Suetonius, Quintus Curtius, Justin, Florus, Plautus, Terence, and
Lucretius. We may take his word when he says that this review, however
rapid, was neither hasty nor superficial. Gibbon had the root of all
scholarship in him, the most diligent accuracy and an unlimited
faculty of taking pains. But he was a great scholar, not a minute one,
and belonged to the robust race of the Scaligers and the Bentleys,
rather than to the smaller breed of the Elmsleys and Monks, and of
course he was at no time a professed philologer, occupied chiefly with
the niceties of language. The point which deserves notice in this
account of his studies is their wide sweep, so superior and bracing,
as compared with that narrow restriction to the "authors of the best
period," patronised by teachers who imperfectly comprehend their own
business. Gibbon proceeded on the common-sense principle, that if you
want to obtain a real grasp of the literature, history, and genius of
a people, you must master that literature with more or less
completeness from end to end, and that to select arbitrarily the
authors of a short period on the grounds that they are models of
style, is nothing short of foolish. It was the principle on which
Joseph Scaliger studied Greek, and indeed occurs spontaneously to a
vigorous mind eager for real knowledge.[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Vix delibatis conjugationibus Graecis, Homerum cum
interpretatione arreptum uno et viginti diebus totum didici. Reliquos vero
poetas Graecos omnes intra quatuor menses devoravi. Neque ullum oratorem aut
historicum prius attigi quam poetas omnes tenerem.--_Scaligeri Epistolae,
Lib. 1. Epis. 1._]
Nor did he confine himself to reading: he felt that no one is sure of
knowing a language who limits his study of it to the perusal of
authors. He practised diligently Latin prose composition, and this in
the simplest and most effectual way. "I translated an epistle of
Cicero into French, and after throwing it aside till the words and
phrases were obliterated from my memory, I retranslated my French into
such Latin as I could find, and then compared each sentence of my
imperfect version with the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman
orator." The only odd thing in connection with this excellent method
is that Gibbon in his Memoirs seems to think it was a novel discovery
of his own, and would recommend it to the imitation of students,
whereas it is as old as the days of Ascham at least. There is no
indication that he ever in the least degree attempted Latin verse, and
it is improbable that he should have done so, reading alone in
Lausanne, under the slight supervision of such a teacher as Pavillard.
The lack of this elegant frivolity will be less thought of now than it
would some years ago. But we may admit that it would have been
interesting to have a copy of hexameters or elegiacs by the historian
of Rome. So much for Latin. In Greek he made far less progress. He had
attained his nineteenth year before he learned the alphabet, and even
after so late a beginning he did not prosecute the study with much
energy.
M. Pavillard seems to have taught him little more than the rudiments.
"After my tutor had left me to myself I worked my way through about
half the _Iliad_, and afterwards interpreted alone a large portion of
Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardour, destitute of aid and emulation,
gradually cooled, and from the barren task of searching words in a
lexicon I withdrew to the free and familiar conversation of Virgil and
Tacitus." This statement of the Memoirs is more than confirmed by the
journal of his studies, where we find him, as late as the year 1762,
when he was twenty-five years of age, painfully reading Homer, it
would appear, for the first time. He read on an average about a book a
week, and when he had finished the _Iliad_ this is what he says: "I
have so far met with the success I hoped for, that I have acquired a
great facility in reading the language, and treasured up a very great
stock of words. What I have rather neglected is the grammatical
construction of them, and especially the many various inflections of
the verbs." To repair this defect he wisely resolved to bestow some
time every morning on the perusal of the Greek Grammar of Port Royal.
Thus we see that at an age when many men are beginning to forget their
Greek, Gibbon was beginning to learn it. Was this early deficiency
ever repaired in Greek as it was in Latin? I think not. He never was
at home in old Hellas as he was in old Rome. This may be inferred from
the discursive notes of his great work, in which he has with admirable
skill incorporated so much of his vast and miscellaneous reading. But
his references to classic Greek authors are relatively few and timid
compared with his grasp and mastery of the Latin. His judgments on
Greek authors are also, to say the least, singular. When he had
achieved the _Decline and Fall_, and was writing his Memoirs in the
last years of his life, the Greek writer whom he selects for especial
commendation is Xenophon. "Cicero in Latin and Xenophon in Greek are
indeed the two ancients whom I would first propose to a liberal
scholar, not only for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for
the admirable lessons which may be applied almost to every situation
of public and private life." Of the merit of Xenophon's sentiments,
most people would now admit that the less said the better. The warmth
of Gibbon's language with regard to Xenophon contrasts with the
coldness he shows with regard to Plato. "I involved myself," he says,
"in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato, of which perhaps
the dramatic is more interesting than the argumentative part." That
Gibbon knew amply sufficient Greek for his purposes as an historian no
one doubts, but his honourable candour enables us to see that he was
never a Greek scholar in the proper sense of the word.
It would be greatly to misknow Gibbon to suppose that his studies at
Lausanne were restricted to the learned languages. He obtained
something more than an elementary knowledge of mathematics, mastered
De Crousaz' _Logic_ and Locke's _Essay_, and filled up his spare time
with that wide and discursive reading to which his boundless curiosity
was always pushing him. He was thoroughly happy and contented, and
never ceased throughout his life to congratulate himself on the
fortunate exile which had placed him at Lausanne. In one respect he
did not use his opportunities while in Switzerland. He never climbed a
mountain all the time he was there, though he lived to see in his
later life the first commencement of the Alpine fever. On the other
hand, as became a historian and man of sense, the social and political
aspects of the country engaged his attention, as well they might. He
enjoyed access to the best society of the place, and the impression he
made seems to have been as favourable as the one he received.
The influence of a foreign training is very marked in Gibbon,
affecting as it does his general cast of thought, and even his style.
It would be difficult to name any writer in our language, especially
among the few who deserve to be compared with him, who is so
un-English, not in a bad sense of the word, as implying objectionable
qualities, but as wanting the clear insular stamp and native flavour.
If an intelligent Chinese or Persian were to read his book in a French
translation, he would not readily guess that it was written by an
Englishman. It really bears the imprint of no nationality, and is
emphatically European. We may postpone the question whether this is a
merit or a defect, but it is a characteristic. The result has
certainly been that he is one of the best-known of English prose
writers on the Continent, and one whom foreigners most readily
comprehend. This peculiarity, of which he himself was fully aware, we
may agree with him in ascribing to his residence at Lausanne. At the
"flexible age of sixteen he soon learned to endure, and gradually to
adopt," foreign manners. French became the language in which he
spontaneously thought; "his views were enlarged, and his prejudices
were corrected." In one particular he cannot be complimented on the
effect of his continental education, when he congratulates himself
"that his taste for the French theatre had abated his idolatry for the
gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy
as the first duty of Englishmen." Still it is well to be rid of
idolatry and bigotry even with regard to Shakespeare. We must remember
that the insular prejudices from which Gibbon rejoiced to be free were
very different in their intensity and narrowness from anything of the
kind which exists now. The mixed hatred and contempt for foreigners
which prevailed in his day, were enough to excite disgust in any
liberal mind.
The lucid order and admirable literary form of Gibbon's great work are
qualities which can escape no observant reader. But they are
qualities which are not common in English books. The French have a
saying, "Les Anglais ne savent pas faire un livre." This is unjust,
taken absolutely, but as a general rule it is not without foundation.
It is not a question of depth or originality of thought, nor of the
various merits belonging to style properly so-called. In these
respects English authors need not fear competition. But in the art of
clear and logical arrangement, of building up a book in such order and
method that each part contributes to the general effect of the whole,
we must own that we have many lessons to learn of our neighbours. Now
in this quality Gibbon is a Frenchman. Not Voltaire himself is more
perspicuous than Gibbon. Everything is in its place, and disposed in
such apparently natural sequence that the uninitiated are apt to think
the matter could not have been managed otherwise. It is a case, if
there ever was one, of consummate art concealing every trace, not only
of art, but even of effort. Of course the grasp and penetrating
insight which are implied here, were part of Gibbon's great endowment,
which only Nature could give. But it was fortunate that his genius was
educated in the best school for bringing out its innate quality.
It would be difficult to explain why, except on that principle of
decimation by which Macaulay accounted for the outcry against Lord
Byron, Gibbon's solitary and innocent love passage has been made the
theme of a good deal of malicious comment. The parties most
interested, and who, we may presume, knew the circumstances better
than any one else, seem to have been quite satisfied with each other's
conduct. Gibbon and Mdlle. Curchod, afterwards Madame Necker, remained
on terms of the _most_ intimate friendship till the end of the
former's life. This might be supposed sufficient. But it has not been
so considered by evil tongues. The merits of the case, however, may be
more conveniently discussed in a later chapter. At this point it will
be enough to give the facts.
Mdlle. Susanne Curchod was born about the year 1740; her father was
the Calvinist minister of Crassier, her mother a French Huguenot who
had preferred her religion to her country. She had received a liberal
and even learned education from her father, and was as attractive in
person as she was accomplished in mind. "She was beautiful with that
pure virginal beauty which depends on early youth" (Sainte-Beuve). In
1757 she was the talk of Lausanne, and could not appear in an assembly
or at the play without being surrounded by admirers; she was called La
Belle Curchod. Gibbon's curiosity was piqued to see such a prodigy,
and he was smitten with love at first sight. "I found her" he says
"learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment,
and elegant in manners." He was twenty and she seventeen years of age;
no impediment was placed in the way of their meeting; and he was a
frequent guest in her father's house. In fact Gibbon paid his court
with an assiduity which makes an exception in his usually unromantic
nature. "She listened," he says, "to the voice of truth and passion,
and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a
virtuous heart." We must remember that this and other rather glowing
passages in his Memoirs were written in his old age, when he had
returned to Lausanne, and when, after a long separation and many
vicissitudes, he and Madame Necker were again thrown together in an
intimacy of friendship which revived old memories. Letters of hers to
him which will be quoted in a later chapter show this in a striking
light. He indulged, he says, his dream of felicity, but on his return
to England he soon discovered that his father would not hear of this
"strange alliance," and then follows the sentence which has lost him
in the eyes of some persons. "After a painful struggle I yielded to my
fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." What else he was to do
under the circumstances does not appear. He was wholly dependent on
his father, and on the Continent at least parental authority is not
regarded as a trifling impediment in such cases. Gibbon could only
have married Mdlle. Curchod as an exile and a pauper, if he had openly
withstood his father's wishes. "All for love" is a very pretty maxim,
but it is apt to entail trouble when practically applied. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, who had the most beautiful sentiments on paper, but who in
real life was not always a model of self-denial, found, as we shall
see, grave fault with Gibbon's conduct. Gibbon, as a plain man of
rather prosaic good sense, behaved neither heroically nor meanly.
Time, absence, and the scenes of a new life, which he found in
England, had their usual effect; his passion vanished. "My cure," he
says, "was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and
cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship
and esteem." The probability, indeed, that he and Mdlle. Curchod would
ever see each other again, must have seemed remote in the extreme.
Europe and England were involved in the Seven Years War; he was fixed
at home, and an officer in the militia; Switzerland was far off: when
and where were they likely to meet? They did, contrary to all
expectation, meet again, and renewed terms not so much of friendship
as of affection. Mdlle. Curchod, as the wife of Necker, became
somewhat of a celebrity, and it is chiefly owing to these last-named
circumstances that the world has ever heard of Gibbon's early love.
While he was at Lausanne Gibbon made the acquaintance of Voltaire, but
it led to no intimacy or fruitful reminiscence. "He received me with
civility as an English youth, but I cannot boast of any peculiar
notice or distinction." Still he had "the satisfaction of hearing--an
uncommon circumstance--a great poet declaim his own productions on the
stage." One is often tempted, in reading Gibbon's Memoirs, to regret
that he adopted the austere plan which led him "to condemn the
practice of transforming a private memorial into a vehicle of satire
or praise." As he truly says, "It was assuredly in his power to amuse
the reader with a gallery of portraits and a collection of anecdotes."
This reserve is particularly disappointing when a striking and
original figure like Voltaire passes across the field, without an
attempt to add one stroke to the portraiture of such a physiognomy.
Gibbon had now (1758) been nearly five years at Lausanne, when his
father suddenly intimated that he was to return home immediately. The
Seven Years War was at its height, and the French had denied a passage
through France to English travellers. Gibbon, or more properly his
Swiss friends, thought that the alternative road through Germany might
be dangerous, though it might have been assumed that the Great
Frederick, so far as he was concerned, would make things as pleasant
as possible to British subjects, whose country had just consented to
supply him with a much-needed subsidy. The French route was preferred,
perhaps as much from a motive of frolic as anything else. Two Swiss
officers of his acquaintance undertook to convey Gibbon from France as
one of their companions, under an assumed name, and in borrowed
regimentals. His complete mastery of French removed any chance of
detection on the score of language, and with a "mixture of joy and
regret" on the 11th April, 1758, Gibbon left Lausanne. He had a
pleasant journey, but no adventures, and returned to his native land
after an absence of four years, ten months, and fifteen days.
CHAPTER III.
IN THE MILITIA.
The only person whom, on his return, Gibbon had the least wish to see
was his aunt, Catherine Porten. To her house he at once hastened, and
"the evening was spent in the effusions of joy and tenderness." He
looked forward to his first meeting with his father with no slight
anxiety, and that for two reasons. First, his father had parted from
him with anger and menace, and he had no idea how he would be received
now. Secondly, his mother's place was occupied by a second wife, and
an involuntary but strong prejudice possessed him against his
step-mother. He was most agreeably disappointed in both respects. His
father "received him as a man, as a friend, all constraint was
banished at our first interview, and we ever after continued on the
same terms of easy and equal politeness." So far the prospect was
pleasant. But the step-mother remained a possible obstacle to all
comfort at home. He seems to have regarded his father's second
marriage as an act of displeasure with himself, and he was disposed to
hate the rival of his mother. Gibbon soon found that the injustice was
in his own fancy, and the imaginary monster was an amiable and
deserving woman. "I could not be mistaken in the first view of her
understanding; her knowledge and the elegant spirit of her
conversation, her polite welcome, and her assiduous care to study and
gratify my wishes announced at least that the surface would be smooth;
and my suspicions of art and falsehood were gradually dispelled by the
full discovery of her warm and exquisite sensibility." He became
indeed deeply attached to his step-mother. "After some reserve on my
side, our minds associated in confidence and friendship, and as Mrs.
Gibbon had neither children nor the hopes of children, we more easily
adopted the tender names and genuine characters of mother and son." A
most creditable testimony surely to the worth and amiability of both
of them. The friendship thus begun continued without break or coolness
to the end of Gibbon's life. Thirty-five years after his first
interview with his step-mother, and only a few months before his own
death, when he was old and ailing, and the least exertion, by reason
of his excessive corpulence, involved pain and trouble, he made a long
journey to Bath for the sole purpose of paying Mrs. Gibbon a visit. He
was very far from being the selfish Epicurean that has been sometimes
represented.
He had brought with him from Lausanne the first pages of a work which,
after much bashfulness and delay, he at length published in the French
language, under the title of _Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature_, in
the year 1761, that is two years after its completion. In one respect
this juvenile work of Gibbon has little merit. The style is at once
poor and stilted, and the general quality of remark eminently
commonplace, where it does not fall into paradox. On the other hand,
it has an interesting and even original side. The main idea of the
little book, so far as it has one, was excellent, and really above the
general thought of the age, namely, the vindication of classical
literature and history generally from the narrow and singular
prejudice which prevailed against them, especially in France. When
Gibbon ascribes the design of his first work to a "refinement of
vanity, the desire of justifying and praising the object of a
favourite pursuit," he does himself less than justice. This first
utterance of his historic genius was prompted by an unconscious but
deep reaction against that contempt for the past, which was the
greatest blot in the speculative movement of the eighteenth century.
He resists the temper of his time rather from instinct than reason,
and pleads the cause of learning with the hesitation of a man who has
not fully seen round his subject, or even mastered his own thoughts
upon it. Still there is his protest against the proposal of
D'Alembert, who recommended that after a selection of facts had been
made at the end of every century the remainder should be delivered to
the flames. "Let us preserve them all," he says, "most carefully. A
Montesquieu will detect in the most insignificant, relations which the
vulgar overlook." He resented the haughty pretensions of the
mathematical sciences to universal dominion, with sufficient vigour to
have satisfied Auguste Comte. "Physics and mathematics are at present
on the throne. They see their sister sciences prostrate before them,
chained to their chariot, or at most occupied in adorning their
triumph. Perhaps their downfall is not far off." To speak of a
positive downfall of exact sciences was a mistake. But we may fairly
suppose that Gibbon did not contemplate anything beyond a relative
change of position in the hierarchy of the sciences, by which history
and politics would recover or attain to a dignity which was denied
them in his day. In one passage Gibbon shows that he had dimly
foreseen the possibility of the modern inquiries into the conditions
of savage life and prehistoric man. "An Iroquois book, even were it
full of absurdities, would be an invaluable treasure. It would offer a
unique example of the nature of the human mind placed in circumstances
which we have never known, and influenced by manners and religious
opinions, the complete opposite of ours." In this sentence Gibbon
seems to call in anticipation for the researches which have since been
prosecuted with so much success by eminent writers among ourselves,
not to mention similar inquirers on the Continent.
But in the meantime Gibbon had entered on a career which removed him
for long months from books and study. Without sufficiently reflecting
on what such a step involved, he had joined the militia, which was
embodied in the year 1760; and for the next two and a half years led,
as he says, a wandering life of military servitude. At first, indeed,
he was so pleased with his new mode of life that he had serious
thoughts of becoming a professional soldier. But this enthusiasm
speedily wore off, and our "mimic Bellona soon revealed to his eyes
her naked deformity." It was indeed no mere playing at soldiering that
he had undertaken. He was the practical working commander of "an
independent corps of 476 officers and men." "In the absence, or even
in the presence of the two field officers" (one of whom was his
father, the major) "I was intrusted with the effective labour of
dictating the orders and exercising the battalion." And his duty did
not consist in occasional drilling and reviews, but in serious
marches, sometimes of thirty miles in a day, and camping under canvas.
One encampment, on Winchester Downs, lasted four months. Gibbon does
not hesitate to say that the superiority of his grenadiers to the
detachments of the regular army, with which they were often mingled,
was so striking that the most prejudiced regular could not have
hesitated a moment to admit it. But the drilling, and manoeuvring, and
all that pertained to the serious side of militia business interested
Gibbon, and though it took up time it gave him knowledge of a special
kind, of which he quite appreciated the value. He was much struck, for
instance, by the difference between the nominal and effective force of
every regiment he had seen, even when supposed to be complete, and
gravely doubts whether a nominal army of 100,000 men often brings
_fifty_ thousand into the field. What he found unendurable was the
constant shifting of quarters, the utter want of privacy and leisure
it often entailed, and the distasteful society in which he was forced
to live. For eight months at a stretch he never took a book in his
hand. "From the day we marched from Blandford, I had hardly a moment I
could call my own, being almost continually in motion, or if I was
fixed for a day, it was in the guardroom, a barrack, or an inn." Even
worse were the drinking and late hours; sometimes in "rustic" company,
sometimes in company in which joviality and wit were more abundant
than decorum and common sense, which will surprise no one who hears
that the famous John Wilkes, who was colonel of the Buckingham
militia, was not unfrequently one of his boon companions. A few
extracts from his journal will be enough. "To-day (August 28, 1762),
Sir Thomas Worsley," the colonel of the battalion, "came to us to
dinner. Pleased to see him, we kept bumperising till after
roll-calling, Sir Thomas assuring us every fresh bottle how infinitely
sober he was growing." September 23rd. "Colonel Wilkes, of the
Buckingham militia, dined with us, and renewed the acquaintance Sir
Thomas and myself had begun with him at Reading. I scarcely ever met
with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit
and humour, and a great deal of knowledge.... This proved a very
debauched day; we drank a great deal both after dinner and supper; and
when at last Wilkes had retired, Sir Thomas and some others (of whom I
was not one) broke into his room and made him drink a bottle of claret
in bed." December 17. "We found old Captain Meard at Arlesford with
the second division of the Fourteenth. He and all his officers supped
with us, which made the evening rather a drunken one." Gibbon might
well say that the militia was unfit for and unworthy of him.
Yet it is quite astonishing to see, as recorded in his journal, how
keen an interest he still managed to retain in literature in the midst
of all this dissipation, and how fertile he was of schemes and
projects of future historical works to be prosecuted under more
favourable auspices. Subject after subject occurred to him as eligible
and attractive; he caresses the idea for a time, then lays it aside
for good reasons. First, he pitched upon the expedition of Charles
VIII. of France into Italy. He read and meditated upon it, and wrote a
dissertation of ten folio pages, besides large notes, in which he
examined the right of Charles VIII. to the crown of Naples, and the
rival claims of the houses of Anjou and Aragon. In a few weeks he
gives up this idea, firstly, for the rather odd reason that the
subject was too remote from us; and, secondly, for the very good
reason that the expedition was rather the introduction to great events
than great and important in itself. He then successively chose and
rejected the Crusade of Richard the First; the Barons' War against
John and Henry III.; the history of Edward the Black Prince; the lives
and comparisons of Henry V. and the Emperor Titus; the life of Sir
Philip Sidney, and that of the Marquis of Montrose. At length he fixed
on Sir Walter Raleigh as his hero. On this he worked with all the
assiduity that his militia life allowed, read a great quantity of
original documents relating to it, and, after some months of labour,
declared that "his subject opened upon him, and in general improved
upon a nearer prospect." But half a year later he "is afraid he will
have to drop his hero." And he covers half a page with reasons to
persuade himself that he was right in doing so. Besides the obvious
one that he would be able to add little that was not already
accessible in Oldys' _Life of Raleigh_, that the topic was exhausted,
and so forth, he goes on to make these remarks, which have more
signification to us now than perhaps they had to him when he wrote
them. "Could I even surmount these obstacles, I should shrink with
terror from the modern history of England, where every character is a
problem and every reader a friend or an enemy: when a writer is
supposed to hoist a flag of party, and is devoted to damnation by the
adverse faction. Such would be _my_ reception at home; and abroad the
historian of Raleigh must encounter an indifference far more bitter
than censure or reproach. The events of his life are interesting; but
his character is ambiguous; his actions are obscure; his writings are
English, and his fame is confined to the narrow limits of our language
and our island. _I must embrace a safer and more extensive theme._"
Here we see the first gropings after a theme of cosmopolitan interest.
He has arrived at two negative conclusions: that it must not be
English, and must not be narrow. What it is to be, does not yet
appear, for he has still a series of subjects to go through, to be
taken up and discarded. The history of the liberty of the Swiss, which
at a later period he partially achieved, was one scheme; the history
of Florence under the Medici was another. He speaks with enthusiasm of
both projects, adding that he will most probably fix upon the latter;
but he never did anything of the kind.
These were the topics which occupied Gibbon's mind during his service
in the militia, escaping when he could from the uproar and vulgarity
of the camp and the guardroom to the sanctuary of the historic muse,
to worship in secret. But these private devotions could not remove his
disgust at "the inn, the wine, and the company" he was forced to
endure, and latterly the militia became downright insupportable to
him. But honourable motives kept him to his post. "From a service
without danger I might have retired without disgrace; but as often as
I hinted a wish of resigning, my fetters were riveted by the friendly
intreaties of the colonel, the parental authority of the major, and my
own regard for the welfare of the battalion." At last the
long-wished-for day arrived, when the militia was disbanded. "Our two
companies," he writes in his journal, "were disembodied (December
23rd, 1762), mine at Alton, my father's at Buriton. They fired three
volleys, lodged the major's colours, delivered up their arms, received
their money, partook of a dinner at the major's expense, and then
separated, with great cheerfulness and regularity. Thus ended the
militia." The compression that his spirit had endured was shown by the
rapid energy with which he sought a change of scene and oblivion of
his woes. Within little more than a month after the scene just
described, Gibbon was in Paris beginning the grand tour.
With that keen sense of the value of time which marked him, Gibbon
with great impartiality cast up and estimated the profit and loss of
his "bloodless campaigns." Both have been alluded to already. He
summed up with great fairness in the entry that he made in his journal
on the evening of the day on which he recovered his liberty. "I am
glad that the militia has been, and glad that it is no more." This
judgment he confirmed thirty years afterwards, when he composed his
Memoirs. "My principal obligation to the militia was the making me an
Englishman and a soldier. After my foreign education, with my reserved
temper, I should long have continued a stranger in my native country,
had I not been shaken in this various scene of new faces and new
friends; had not experience forced me to feel the characters of our
leading men, the state of parties, the forms of office, the operations
of our civil and military system. In this peaceful service I imbibed
the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened a
new field of study and observation. I diligently read and meditated
the _Memoires Militaires_ of Quintus Icilius, the only writer who has
united the merits of a professor and a veteran. The discipline and
evolution of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the
phalanx and the legion, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers
(the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the
Roman Empire." No one can doubt it who compares Gibbon's numerous
narratives of military operations with the ordinary performances of
civil historians in those matters. The campaigns of Julian,
Belisarius, and Heraclius, not to mention many others, have not only
an uncommon lucidity, but also exhibit a clear appreciation of the
obstacles and arduousness of warlike operations, which is rare or
unknown to non-military writers. Macaulay has pointed out that Swift's
party pamphlets are superior in an especial way to the ordinary
productions of that class, in consequence of Swift's unavowed but very
serious participation in the cabinet councils of Oxford and
Bolingbroke. In the same manner Gibbon had an advantage through his
military training, which gives him no small superiority to even the
best historical writers who have been without it.
The course of foreign travel which Gibbon was now about to commence
had been contemplated before, but the war and the militia had
postponed it for nearly three years. It appears that as early as the
year 1760 the elder Gibbon had conceived the project of procuring a
seat in Parliament for his son, and was willing to incur the
anticipated expense of L1500 for that object. Young Gibbon, who seems
to have very accurately gauged his own abilities at that early age,
was convinced that the money could be much better employed in another
way. He wrote in consequence, under his father's roof, a letter to the
latter which does such credit to his head and to his heart, that,
although it is somewhat long, it cannot with propriety be omitted
here.
EDWARD GIBBON TO HIS FATHER.
"DEAR SIR,
"An address in writing from a person who has the pleasure of
being with you every day may appear singular. However I have
preferred this method, as upon paper I can speak without a
blush and be heard without interruption. If my letter
displeases you, impute it, dear sir, to yourself. You have
treated me, not like a son, but like a friend. Can you be
surprised that I should communicate to a friend all my
thoughts and all my desires? Unless the friend approve them,
let the father never know them; or at least let him know at
the same time that however reasonable, however eligible, my
scheme may appear to me, I would rather forget it for ever
than cause him the slightest uneasiness.
"When I first returned to England, attentive to my future
interests, you were so good as to give me hopes of a seat in
Parliament. This seat, it was supposed, would be an expense
of fifteen hundred pounds. This design flattered my vanity,
as it might enable me to shine in so august an assembly. It
flattered a nobler passion: I promised myself that, by the
means of this seat, I might one day be the instrument of
some good to my country. But I soon perceived how little
mere virtuous inclination, unassisted by talents, could
contribute towards that great end, and a very short
examination discovered to me that those talents had not
fallen to my lot. Do not, dear sir, impute this declaration
to a false modesty--the meanest species of pride. Whatever
else I may be ignorant of, I think I know myself, and shall
always endeavour to mention my good qualities without vanity
and my defects without repugnance. I shall say nothing of
the most intimate acquaintance with his country and
language, so absolutely necessary to every senator; since
they may be acquired, to allege my deficiency in them would
seem only the plea of laziness. But I shall say with great
truth that I never possessed that gift of speech, the first
requisite of an orator, which use and labour may improve,
but which nature can alone bestow; that my temper, quiet,
retired, somewhat reserved, could neither acquire
popularity, bear up against opposition, nor mix with ease in
the crowds of public life; that even my genius (if you allow
me any) is better qualified for the deliberate compositions
of the closet than for the extempore discourses of
Parliament. An unexpected objection would disconcert me, and
as I am incapable of explaining to others what I do not
understand myself, I should be meditating when I ought to be
answering. I even want necessary prejudices of party and of
nation. In popular assemblies it is often necessary to
inspire them, and never orator inspired well a passion which
he did not feel himself. Suppose me even mistaken in my own
character, to set out with the repugnance such an opinion
must produce offers but an indifferent prospect. But I hear
you say it is not necessary that every man should enter into
Parliament with such exalted hopes. It is to acquire a title
the most glorious of any in a free country, and to employ
the weight and consideration it gives in the service of
one's friends. Such motives, though not glorious, yet are
not dishonourable, and if we had a borough in our command,
if you could bring me in without any great expense, or if
our fortune enabled us to despise that expense, then indeed
I should think them of the greatest strength. But with our
private fortune, is it worthwhile to purchase at so high a
rate a title honourable in itself, but which I must share
with every fellow that can lay out 1500 pounds? Besides,
dear sir, a merchandise is of little value to the owner when
he is resolved not to sell it.
"I should affront your penetration did I not suppose you now
see the drift of this letter. It is to appropriate to
another use the sum with which you destined to bring me into
Parliament; to employ it, not in making me great, but in
rendering me happy. I have often heard you say yourself that
the allowance you had been so indulgent as to grant me,
though very liberal in regard to your estate, was yet but
small when compared with the almost necessary extravagances
of the age. I have indeed found it so, notwithstanding a
good deal of economy, and an exemption from many of the
common expenses of youth. This, dear sir, would be a way of
supplying these deficiencies without any additional expense
to you. But I forbear--if you think my proposals reasonable,
you want no intreaties to engage you to comply with them, if
otherwise all will be without effect.
"All that I am afraid of, dear sir, is that I should seem
not so much asking a favour, as this really is, as exacting
a debt. After all I can say, you will remain the best judge
of my good and your own circumstances. Perhaps, like most
landed gentlemen, an addition to my annuity would suit you
better than a sum of money given at once; perhaps the sum
itself may be too considerable. Whatever you may think
proper to bestow on me, or in whatever manner, will be
received with equal gratitude.
"I intended to stop here, but as I abhor the least
appearance of art, I think it better to lay open my whole
scheme at once. The unhappy war which now desolates Europe
will oblige me to defer seeing France till a peace. But that
reason can have no influence on Italy, a country which every
scholar must long to see. Should you grant my request, and
not disapprove of my manner of employing your bounty, I
would leave England this autumn and pass the winter at
Lausanne with M. de Voltaire and my old friends. In the
spring I would cross the Alps, and after some stay in Italy,
as the war must then be terminated, return home through
France, to live happily with you and my dear mother. I am
now two-and-twenty; a tour must take up a considerable time;
and although I believe you have no thoughts of settling me
soon (and I am sure I have not), yet so many things may
intervene that the man who does not travel early runs a
great risk of not travelling at all. But this part of my
scheme, as well as the whole of it, I submit entirely to
you.
"Permit me, dear sir, to add that I do not know whether the
complete compliance with my wishes could increase my love
and gratitude, but that I am very sure no refusal could
diminish those sentiments with which I shall always remain,
dear sir, your most dutiful and obedient son and servant.
"E. GIBBON, JUN."
Instead of going to Italy in the autumn of 1760, as he fondly hoped
when he wrote this letter, Gibbon was marching about the south of
England at the head of his grenadiers. But the scheme sketched in the
above letter was only postponed, and ultimately realised in every
particular. The question of a seat in Parliament never came up again
during his father's life, and no doubt the money it would have cost
was, according to his wise suggestion, devoted to defray the expenses
of his foreign tour, which he is now about to begin.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ITALIAN JOURNEY.
Gibbon reached Paris on the 28th January, 1763; thirty-six days, as he
tells us, after the disbanding of the militia. He remained a little
over three months in the French capital, which on the whole pleased
him so well that he thinks that if he had been independent and rich,
he might have been tempted to make it his permanent residence.
On the other hand he seems to have been little if at all aware of the
extraordinary character of the society of which he became a spectator
and for a time a member. He does not seem to have been conscious that
he was witnessing one of the most singular social phases which have
yet been presented in the history of man. And no blame attaches to him
for this. No one of his contemporaries saw deeper in this direction
than he did. It is a remarkable instance of the way in which the
widest and deepest social movements are veiled to the eyes of those
who see them, precisely because of their width and depth. Foreigners,
especially Englishmen, visited Paris in the latter half of the
eighteenth century and reported variously of their experience and
impressions. Some, like Hume and Sterne, are delighted; some, like
Gibbon, are quietly, but thoroughly pleased; some, like
Walpole--though he perhaps is a class by himself--are half pleased and
half disgusted. They all feel that there is something peculiar in what
they witness, but never seem to suspect that nothing like it was ever
seen before in the world. One is tempted to wish that they could have
seen with our eyes, or, much more, that we could have had the
privilege of enjoying their experience, of spending a few months in
that singular epoch when "society," properly so called, the assembling
of men and women in drawing-rooms for the purpose of conversation, was
the most serious as well as the most delightful business of life. Talk
and discussion in the senate, the market-place, and the schools are
cheap; even barbarians are not wholly without them. But their
refinement and concentration in the _salon_--of which the president is
a woman of tact and culture--this is a phenomenon which never appeared
but in Paris in the eighteenth century. And yet scholars, men of the
world, men of business passed through this wonderland with eyes
blindfolded. They are free to enter, they go, they come, without a
sign that they have realised the marvellous scene that they were
permitted to traverse. One does not wonder that they did not perceive
that in those graceful drawing-rooms, filled with stately company of
elaborate manners, ideas and sentiments were discussed and evolved
which would soon be more explosive than gunpowder. One does not wonder
that they did not see ahead of them--men never do. One does rather
wonder that they did not see what was before their eyes. But wonder is
useless and a mistake. People who have never seen a volcano cannot be
expected to fear the burning lava, or even to see that a volcano
differs from any other mountain.
Gibbon had brought good introductions from London, but he admits that
they were useless, or rather superfluous. His nationality and his
_Essai_ were his best recommendations. It was the day of Anglomania,
and, as he says, "every Englishman was supposed to be a patriot and a
philosopher." "I had rather be," said Mdlle. de Lespinasse to Lord
Shelburne, "the least member of the House of Commons than even the
King of Prussia." Similar things must have been said to Gibbon, but he
has not recorded them; and generally it may be said that he is
disappointingly dull and indifferent to Paris, though he liked it well
enough when there. He never caught the Paris fever as Hume did, and
Sterne, or even as Walpole did, for all the hard things he says of the
underbred and overbearing manners of the philosophers. Gibbon had
ready access to the well-known houses of Madame Geoffrin, Madame
Helvetius and the Baron d'Holbach; and his perfect mastery of the
language must have removed every obstacle in the way of complete
social intercourse. But no word in his Memoirs or Letters shows that
he really saw with the eyes of the mind the singularities of that
strange epoch. And yet he was there at an exciting and important
moment. The Order of the Jesuits was tottering to its fall; the latter
volumes of the _Encyclopedia_ were being printed, and it was no
secret; the coruscating wit and audacity of the _salons_ were at their
height. He is not unjust or prejudiced, but somewhat cold. He dines
with Baron d'Holbach, and says his dinners were excellent, but nothing
of the guests. He goes to Madame Geoffrin, and pronounces her house an
excellent one. Such faint and commonplace praise reflects on the
eulogist. The only man of letters of whom he speaks with warmth is
Helvetius. He does not appear in this first visit to have known Madame
du Deffand, who was still keeping her _salon_ with the help of the
pale deep-eyed L'Espinasse, though the final rupture was imminent.
Louis Racine died, and so did Marivaux, while he was in Paris. The old
Opera-house in the Palais Royal was burnt down when he had been there
a little over a month, and the representations were transferred to the
Salle des Machines, in the Tuileries. The equestrian statue of Louis
XV. was set up in the Place to which it gave its name (where the Luxor
column now stands, in the Place de la Concorde) amidst the jeers and
insults of the mob, who declared it would never be got to pass the
hotel of Madame de Pompadour. How much or how little of all this
touched Gibbon, we do not know. We do know one thing, that his English
clothes were unfashionable and looked very foreign, the French being
"excessively long-waisted." Doubtless his scanty purse could not
afford a new outfit, such as Walpole two years afterwards, under the
direction of Lady Hertford, promptly procured. On the 8th of May he
hurried off to Lausanne.[5]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: The chronicle of events which occurred during Gibbon's
sojourn in Paris will be found in the interesting _Memoires de
Bachaumont._]
His ultimate object was Italy. But he wisely resolved to place a
period of solid study between the lively dissipation of Paris and his
classic pilgrimage. He knew the difference between seeing things he
had read about and reading about things after he had seen them; how
the mind, charged with associations of famous scenes, is delicately
susceptible of impressions, and how rapidly old musings take form and
colour, when, stirred by outward realities; and contrariwise, how slow
and inadequate is the effort to reverse this process, and to clothe
with memories, monuments and sites over which the spirit has not sent
a halo of previous meditation. So he settled down quietly at Lausanne
for the space of nearly a year, and commenced a most austere and
systematic course of reading on the antiquities of Italy. The list of
learned works which he perused "with his pen in his hand" is
formidable, and fills a quarto page. But he went further than this,
and compiled an elaborate treatise on the nations, provinces, and
towns of ancient Italy (which we still have) digested in alphabetical
order, in which every Latin author, from Plautus to Rutilius, is laid
under contribution for illustrative passages, which are all copied out
in full. This laborious work was evidently Gibbon's own guidebook in
his Italian travels, and one sees not only what an admirable
preparation it was for the object in view, but what a promise it
contained of that scrupulous thoroughness which was to be his mark as
an historian. His mind was indeed rapidly maturing, and becoming
conscious in what direction its strength lay.
His account of his first impressions of Rome has been often quoted,
and deserves to be so again. "My temper is not very susceptible of
enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm which I do not feel I have ever scorned
to affect. But at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither
forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I
first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless
night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable
spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once
present to my eye, and several days of intoxication were lost and
enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute examination." He
gave eighteen weeks to the study of Rome only, and six to Naples, and
we may rest assured that he made good use of his time. But what makes
this visit to Rome memorable in his life and in literary history is
that it was the occasion and date of the first conception of his great
work. "It was at Rome, on the 15th October, 1764, as I sat musing amid
the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline
and fall of the city first started to my mind." The scene, the
contrast of the old religion and the new, the priests of Christ
replacing the flamens of Jupiter, the evensong of Catholic Rome
swelling like a dirge over the prostrate Pagan Rome might well
concentrate in one grand luminous idea the manifold but unconnected
thoughts with which his mind had so long been teeming. Gibbon had
found his work, which was destined to fill the remainder of his life.
Henceforth there is a fixed centre around which his thoughts and
musings cluster spontaneously. Difficulties and interruptions are not
wanting. The plan then formed is not taken in hand at once; on the
contrary, it is contemplated at "an awful distance"; but it led him on
like a star guiding his steps, till he reached his appointed goal.
After crossing the Alps on his homeward journey, Gibbon had had some
thoughts of visiting the southern provinces of France. But when he
reached Lyons he found letters "expressive of some impatience" for his
return. Though he does not exactly say as much, we may justly conclude
that the elder Gibbon's pecuniary difficulties were beginning to be
oppressive. So the traveller, with the dutifulness that he ever showed
to his father, at once bent his steps northward. Again he passed
through Paris, and the place had a new attraction in his eyes in the
person of Mdlle. Curchod, now become Madame Necker, and wife of the
great financier.
This perhaps will be the most convenient place to notice and estimate
a certain amount of rather spiteful gossip, of which Gibbon was the
subject in Switzerland about this time. Rousseau and his friend
Moultou have preserved it for us, and it is probable that it has lost
none of its pungency in passing through the hands of the latter. The
substance of it is this:--that in the year 1763, when Gibbon revisited
Lausanne, as we have seen, Susanne Curchod was still in a pitiable
state of melancholy and well nigh broken-hearted at Gibbon's manifest
coldness, which we know he considered to be "friendship and esteem."
Whether he even saw her on this visit cannot be considered certain,
but it is at least highly probable. Be that as it may: this is the
picture of her condition as drawn by Moultou in a letter to Rousseau:
"How sorry I am for our poor Mdlle. Curchod! Gibbon, whom she loves,
and to whom I know she has sacrificed some excellent matches, has come
to Lausanne, but cold, insensible, and as entirely cured of his old
passion as she is far from cure. She has written me a letter that
makes my heart ache." Rousseau says in reply, "He who does not
appreciate Mdlle. Curchod is not worthy of her; he who appreciates her
and separates himself from her is a man to be despised. She does not
know what she wants. Gibbon serves her better than her own heart. I
would rather a hundred times that he left her poor and free among you
than that he should take her off to be rich and miserable in
England." One does not quite see how Gibbon could have acted to the
contentment of Jean-Jacques. For not taking Mdlle. Curchod to
England--as we may presume he would have done if he had married
her--he is contemptible. Yet if he does take her he will make her
miserable, and Rousseau would rather a hundred times he left her
alone--precisely what he was doing; but then he was despicable for
doing it. The question is whether there is not a good deal of
exaggeration in all this. Only a year after the tragic condition in
which Moultou describes Mdlle. Curchod she married M. Necker, and
became devoted to her husband. A few months after she married Necker
she cordially invited Gibbon to her house every day of his sojourn in
Paris. If Gibbon had behaved in the unworthy way asserted, if she had
had her feelings so profoundly touched and lacerated as Moultou
declares, would she, or even could she, have acted thus? If she was
conscious of being wronged, and he was conscious--as he must have
been--of having acted basely, or at least unfeelingly, is it not as
good as certain that both parties would have been careful to see as
little of each other as possible? A broken-off love-match, even
without complication of unworthy conduct on either side, is generally
an effective bar to further intercourse. But in this case the
intercourse is renewed on the very first opportunity, and never
dropped till the death of one of the persons concerned.
Two letters have been preserved of Gibbon and Madame Necker
respectively, nearly of the same date, and both referring to this
rather delicate topic of their first interviews after her marriage.
Gibbon writes to his friend Holroyd, "The Curchod (Madame Necker) I
saw in Paris. She was very fond of me, and the husband particularly
civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to
supper, go to bed and leave me alone with his wife--what impertinent
security! It is making an old lover of mighty little consequence. She
is as handsome as ever, and much genteeler; seems pleased with her
wealth rather than proud of it. I was exalting Nanette d'Illens's good
luck and the fortune" (this evidently refers to some common
acquaintance, who had changed her name to advantage). "'What fortune,'
she said with an air of contempt:--'not above twenty thousand livres a
year.' I smiled, and she caught herself immediately, 'What airs I give
myself in despising twenty thousand livres a year, who a year ago
looked upon eight hundred as the summit of my wishes.'"
Let us turn to the lady's account of the same scenes. "I do not know
if I told you," she writes to a friend at Lausanne, "that I have seen
Gibbon, and it has given me more pleasure than I know how to express.
Not indeed that I retain any sentiment for a man who I think does not
deserve much" (this little toss of pique or pride need not mislead
us); "but my feminine vanity could not have had a more complete and
honest triumph. He stayed two weeks in Paris, and I had him every day
at my house; he has become soft, yielding, humble, decorous to a
fault. He was a constant witness of my husband's kindness, wit, and
gaiety, and made me remark for the first time, by his admiration for
wealth, the opulence with which I am surrounded, and which up to this
moment had only produced a disagreeable impression upon me."
Considering the very different points of view of the writers, these
letters are remarkably in unison. The solid fact of the daily visits
is recorded in both. It is easy to gather from Madame Necker's letter
that she was very glad to show Mr. Gibbon that for going farther and
not marrying him she had not fared worse. The rather acid allusion to
"opulence" is found in both letters; but much more pronounced in hers
than in his. Each hints that the other thought too much of wealth. But
he does so with delicacy, and only by implication; she charges him
coarsely with vulgar admiration for it. We may reasonably suspect that
riches had been the subject of not altogether smooth conversation
between them, in the later part of the evening, perhaps, after M.
Necker had retired in triumph to bed. One might even fancy that there
was a tacit allusion by Madame Necker to the dialogue recorded by
Gibbon to Holroyd, when his smile checked her indirect pride in her
own wealth, and that she remembered that smile with just a touch of
resentment. If so, nothing was more natural and comforting than to
charge him with the failing that he had detected in her. But here are
the facts. Eight months after her marriage, Madame Necker admits that
she had Gibbon every day to her house. He says that she was very
cordial. She would have it understood that she received him only for
the sake of gratifying a feminine vanity. For her own sake one might
prefer his interpretation to hers. It is difficult to believe that the
essentially simple-minded Madame Necker would have asked a man every
day to her house merely to triumph over him; and more difficult still
to believe that the man would have gone if such had been the object. A
little tartness in these first interviews, following on a relation of
some ambiguity, cannot surprise one. But it was not the dominant
ingredient, or the interviews must have ceased of their own accord. In
any case few will admit that either of the persons concerned would
have written as they did if Moultou's statement were correct. In
neither epistle is there any trace of a grand passion felt or
slighted. We discover the much lower level of vanity and badinage. And
the subsequent relations of Gibbon and Madame Necker all tend to prove
that this was the real one.
CHAPTER V.
LITERARY SCHEMES.--THE HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND.--DISSERTATION ON THE
SIXTH AENEID.--FATHER'S DEATH.--SETTLEMENT IN LONDON.
Gibbon now (June, 1765) returned to his father's house, and remained
there till the latter's death in 1770. He describes these five years
as having been the least pleasant and satisfactory of his whole life.
The reasons were not far to seek. The unthrifty habits of the elder
Gibbon were now producing their natural result. He was saddled with
debt, from which two mortgages, readily consented to by his son, and
the sale of the house at Putney, only partially relieved him. Gibbon
now began to fear that he had an old age of poverty before him. He had
pursued knowledge with single-hearted loyalty and now became aware
that from a worldly point of view knowledge is not often a profitable
investment. A more dejecting discovery cannot be made by the sincere
scholar. He is conscious of labour and protracted effort, which the
prosperous professional man and tradesman who pass him on their road
to wealth with a smile of scornful pity have never known. He has
forsaken comparatively all for knowledge, and the busy world meets him
with a blank stare, and surmises shrewdly that he is but an idler,
with an odd taste for wasting his time over books. It says much for
Gibbon's robustness of spirit that he did not break down in these
trying years, that he did not weakly take fright at his prospect, and
make hasty and violent efforts to mend it. On the contrary, he
remained steadfast and true to the things of the mind. With diminished
cheerfulness perhaps, but with no abatement of zeal, he pursued his
course and his studies, thereby proving that he belonged to the select
class of the strong and worthy who, penetrated with the loveliness of
science, will not be turned away from it.
His first effort to redeem the time was a project of a history of
Switzerland. His choice was decided by two circumstances: (1) his love
for a country which he had made his own by adoption; (2) by the fact
that he had in his friend Deyverdun, a fellow-worker who could render
him most valuable assistance. Gibbon never knew German, which is not
surprising when we reflect what German literature amounted to, in
those days; and he soon discovered that the most valuable authorities
of his projected work were in the German language. But Deyverdun was a
perfect master of that tongue, and translated a mass of documents for
the use of his friend. They laboured for two years in collecting
materials, before Gibbon felt himself justified in entering on the
"more agreeable task of composition." And even then he considered the
preparation insufficient, as no doubt it was. He felt he could not do
justice to his subject; uninformed as he was "by the scholars and
statesmen, and remote from the archives and libraries of the Swiss
republic." Such a beginning was not of good augury for the success of
the undertaking. He never wrote more than about sixty quarto pages of
the projected work, and these, as they were in French, were submitted
to the judgment of a literary society of foreigners in London, before
whom the MS. was read. The author was unknown, and Gibbon attended the
meeting, and thus listened without being observed "to the free
strictures and unfavourable sentence of his judges." He admits that
the momentary sensation was painful; but the condemnation was ratified
by his cooler thoughts: and he declares that he did not regret the
loss of a slight and superficial essay, though it "had cost some
expense, much labour, and more time." He says in his Memoirs that he
burnt the sheets. But this, strange to say, was a mistake on his part.
They were found among his papers after his death, and though not
published by Lord Sheffield in the first two volumes of his
Miscellaneous Works, which the latter edited in 1796, they appeared in
the supplemental third volume which came out in 1815. We thus can
judge for ourselves of their value. One sees at once why and how they
failed to satisfy their author's mature judgment. They belong to that
style of historical writing which consists in the rhetorical
transcription and adornment of the original authorities, but in which
the writer never gets close enough to his subject to apply the
touchstone of a clear and trenchant criticism. Such criticism indeed
was not common in Switzerland in his day, and one cannot blame Gibbon
for not anticipating the researches of modern investigators. But his
historical sense was aroused to suspicion by the story of William
Tell, which he boldly sets down as a fable. Altogether, one may
pronounce the sketch to be pleasantly written in a flowing,
picturesque narrative, and showing immense advance in style beyond the
essay on the Study of Literature. David Hume, to whom he submitted
it, urged him to persevere, and the advice was justified under the
circumstances, although one cannot now regret that it was not
followed.
After the failure of this scheme Gibbon, still in connection with
Deyverdun, planned a periodical work under the title of _Memoires
Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne_. Only two volumes ever appeared,
and the speculation does not seem to have met with much success.
Gibbon "presumes to say that their merit was superior to their
reputation, though they produced more reputation than emolument." The
first volume is executed with evident pains, and gives a fair picture
of the literary and social condition of England at the time. The heavy
review articles are interspersed with what is intended to be lighter
matter on the fashions, foibles, and prominent characters of the day.
Gibbon owns the authorship of the first article on Lord Lyttelton's
history of Henry the Second, and his hand is discernible in the
account of the fourth volume of Lardner's work _On the Credibility of
the Gospel History_. The first has no merit beyond a faithful report.
The latter is written with much more zest and vigour, and shows the
interest that he already took in Christian antiquities. Other
articles, evidently from the pen of Deyverdun, on the English theatre
and Beau Nash of Bath, are the liveliest in the collection. The
magazine was avowedly intended for Continental readers, and might have
obtained success if it had been continued long enough. But it died
before it had time to make itself known.[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: Two volumes appeared of the _Memoires Litteraires_. Of
these only the first is to be found in the British Museum. It is a
small 12mo, containing 230 pages. Here is the Table des
Matieres:--(1) Histoire de Henri II., par Milord Lyttelton; (2) Le
Nouveau Guide de Bath; (3) Essai sur l'Histoire de la Societe Civile,
par M. Ferguson; (4) Conclusions des Memoires de Miss Sydney Bidulph;
Theologie (5) Recueil des Temoignages Anciens, par Lardner; (6) Le
Confessional; (7) Transactions Philosophiques; (8) Le Gouverneur, par
D. L. F. Spectacles, Beaux Arts, Nouvelles Litteraires.]
When the _Memoires Litteraires_ collapsed Gibbon was again left
without a definite object to concentrate his energy, and with his work
still to seek. One might wonder why he did not seriously prepare for
the _Decline and Fall_. It must have been chiefly at this time that it
was "contemplated at an awful distance," perhaps even with numbing
doubt whether the distance would ever be lessened and the work
achieved, or even begun. The probability is he had too little peace of
mind to undertake anything that required calm and protracted labour.
"While so many of my acquaintance were married, or in Parliament, or
advancing with a rapid step in the various roads of honour or fortune
I stood alone, immovable, and insignificant.... The progress and the
knowledge of our domestic disorders aggravated my anxiety, and I began
to apprehend that in my old age I might be left without the fruits of
either industry or inheritance." Perhaps a reasonable apprehension of
poverty is more paralysing than the reality. In the latter case prompt
action is so imperatively commanded that the mind has no leisure for
the fatal indulgence of regrets; but when indigence seems only
imminent, and has not yet arrived, a certain lethargy is apt to be
produced out of which only the most practical characters can rouse
themselves, and these are not, as a rule, scholars by nature. We need
not be surprised that Gibbon during these years did nothing serious,
and postponed undertaking his great work. The inspiration needed to
accomplish such a long and arduous course as it implied could not be
kindled in a mind harassed by pecuniary cares. The fervent heat of a
poet's imagination may glow as brightly in poverty as in opulence, but
the gentle yet prolonged enthusiasm of the historian is likely to be
quenched when the resources of life are too insecure.[7]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Scholarship has been frequently cultivated amidst great
poverty; but from the time of Thucydides, the owner of mines, to
Grote, the banker, historians seem to have been in, at least, easy
circumstances.]
It is perhaps not wholly fanciful to suspect that Gibbon's next
literary effort was suggested and determined by the inward
discomposure he felt at this time. By nature he was not a
controversialist; not that he wanted the abilities to support that
character, but his mind was too full, fertile, and fond of real
knowledge to take much pleasure in the generally barren occupation of
gainsaying other men. But at this point in his life he made an
exception, and an unprovoked exception. When he wrote his famous
vindication of the first volume of the _Decline and Fall_ he was
acting in self-defence, and repelling savage attacks upon his
historical veracity. But in his _Critical Observations on the Sixth
Book of the AEneid_ he sought controversy for its own sake, and became
a polemic--shall we say out of gaiety or bitterness of heart? That
inward unrest easily produces an aggressive spirit is a matter of
common observation, and it may well have been that in attacking
Warburton he sought a diversion from the worry of domestic cares. Be
that as it may, his _Observations_ are the most pungent and dashing
effusion he ever allowed himself. It was his first effort in English
prose, and it is doubtful whether he ever managed his mother tongue
better, if indeed he ever managed it so well. The little tract is
written with singular spirit and rapidity of style. It is clear,
trenchant, and direct to a fault. It is indeed far less critical than
polemical, and shows no trace of lofty calm, either moral or
intellectual. We are not repelled much by his eagerness to refute and
maltreat his opponent. That was not alien from the usages of the time,
and Warburton at least had no right to complain of such a style of
controversy. But there is no width and elevation of view. The writer
does not carry the discussion up to a higher level, and dominate his
adversary from a superior standpoint. Controversy is always ephemeral
and vulgar, unless it can rise to the discussion and establishment of
facts and principles valuable for themselves, independently of the
particular point at issue. It is this quality which has made the
master-works of Chillingworth and Bentley supereminent. The particular
point for which the writers contended is settled or forgotten. But in
moving up to that point they touched--such was their large discourse
of reason--on topics of perennial interest, did such justice, though
only in passing, to certain other truths, that they are gratefully
remembered ever after. Thus Bentley's dissertation on Phalaris is
read, not for the main thesis--proof of the spuriousness of the
letters--but for the profound knowledge and admirable logic with which
subsidiary positions are maintained on the way to it. Tried by this
standard, and he deserves to be tried by a high standard, Gibbon fails
not much, but entirely. The _Observations_ are rarely, if ever,
quoted as an authority of weight by any one engaged on classical or
Virgilian literature. This arises from the attitude of the writer, who
is nearly solely occupied with establishing negative conclusions that
AEneas was _not_ a lawgiver, that the Sixth AEneid is _not_ an allegory,
that Virgil had _not_ been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries when
he wrote it, and so forth. Indeed the best judges now hold that he has
not done full justice to the grain of truth that was to be found in
Warburton's clumsy and prolix hypothesis.[8] It should be added that
Gibbon very candidly admits and regrets the acrimonious style of the
pamphlet, and condemns still more "in a personal attack his cowardly
concealment of his name and character."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Conington, _Introduction to the Sixth AEneid_. "A reader
of the present day will, I think, be induced to award the palm of
learning and ingenuity to Warburton." "The language and imagery of the
sixth book more than once suggest that Virgil intended to embody in
his picture the poetical view of that inner side of ancient religion
which the mysteries may be supposed to have presented."--_Suggestion
on the Study of the AEneid_, by H. Nettleship, p. 13.]
The _Observations_ were the last work which Gibbon published in his
father's lifetime. His account of the latter's death (November 10,
1770) is feelingly written, and shows the affectionate side of his own
nature to advantage. He acknowledges his father's failings, his
weakness and inconstancy, but insists that they were compensated by
the virtues of the head and heart, and the warmest sentiments of
honour and humanity. "His graceful person, polite address, gentle
manners, and unaffected cheerfulness recommended him to the favour of
every company." And Gibbon recalls with emotion "the pangs of shame,
tenderness, and self-reproach" which preyed on his father's mind at
the prospect, no doubt, of leaving an embarrassed estate and
precarious fortune to his son and widow. He had no taste for study in
the fatal summer of 1770, and declares that he would have been ashamed
if he had. "I submitted to the order of nature," he says, in words
which recall his resignation on losing his mistress--"I submitted to
the order of nature, and my grief was soothed by the conscious
satisfaction that I had discharged all the duties of filial piety." We
see Gibbon very fairly in this remark. He had tenderness, steady and
warm attachments, but no passion.
Nearly two years elapsed after his father's death, before he was able
to secure from the wreck of his estate a sufficient competence to
establish himself in London. His house was No. 7, Bentinck Street,
near Manchester Square, then a remote suburb close to the country
fields. His housekeeping was that of a solitary bachelor, who could
afford an occasional dinner-party. Though not absolutely straitened in
means, we shall presently see that he was never quite at his ease in
money matters while he remained in London. But he had now freedom and
no great anxieties, and he began seriously to contemplate the
execution of his great work.
Gibbon, as we have seen, looked back with little satisfaction on the
five years between his return from his travels and his father's death.
They are also the years during which his biographer is able to follow
him with the least certainty. Hardly any of his letters which refer to
that period have been preserved, and he has glided rapidly over it in
his Memoirs. Yet it was, in other respects besides the matter of
pecuniary troubles, a momentous epoch in his life. The peculiar views
which he adopted and partly professed on religion must have been
formed then. But the date, the circumstance, and the occasion are left
in darkness. Up to December 18, 1763, Gibbon was evidently a believer.
In an entry in his private journal under that date he speaks of a
Communion Sunday at Lausanne as affording an "edifying spectacle," on
the ground that there is "neither business nor parties, and they
interdict even whist" on that day. How soon after this his opinions
began to change, it is impossible to say. But we are conscious of a
markedly different tone in the _Observations_, and a sneer at "the
ancient alliance between the avarice of the priests and the credulity
of the people" is in the familiar style of the Deists from Toland to
Chubb. There is no evidence of his familiarity with the widely
diffused works of the freethinkers, and as far as I am aware he does
not quote or refer to them even once. But they could hardly have
escaped his notice. Still his strong historic sense and solid
erudition would be more likely to be repelled than attracted by their
vague and inaccurate scholarship, and chimerical theories of the light
of Nature. Still we know that he practically adopted, in the end, at
least the negative portion of these views, and the question is, When
did he do so? His visit to Paris, and the company that he frequented
there, might suggest that as a probable date of his change of
opinions. But the entry just referred to was subsequent by several
months to that visit, and we may with confidence assume that no
freethinker of the eighteenth century would pronounce the austerities
of a Communion Sunday in a Calvinist town an edifying spectacle. It is
probable that his relinquishing of dogmatic faith was gradual, and for
a time unconscious. It was an age of tepid belief, except among the
Nonjurors and Methodists; and with neither of these groups could he
have had the least sympathy. His acquaintance with Hume, and his
partiality for the writings of Bayle, are more probable sources of a
change of sentiment which was in a way predestined by natural bias and
cast of mind. Any occasion would serve to precipitate the result. In
any case, this result had been attained some years before the< |
