[62] This paragraph is from another letter to Unwin, written three weeks later—May 23, 1781.
[63] This letter, addrest to Unwin, and dated "October 30, 1784," refers to Cowper's poem "The Task."
EDWARD GIBBON
Born in 1737, died in 1794; educated at Oxford, but was not graduated; became a Catholic, but soon renounced that faith; sent by his father to Lausanne, Switzerland, for instruction by a Calvinist minister in 1753; there met and fell in love with, but did not marry, Susanne Curchod; served in the militia, becoming a colonel in 1759-70; traveled in France and Italy in 1763-65; elected to Parliament in 1764; settled permanently in Lausanne in 1783; published the first volume of his "Decline and Fall" in 1776, and the last in 1778; wrote also "Memoirs of My Life and Writings."
I
THE ROMANCE OF HIS YOUTH[64]
I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this word I do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit of chivalry and is interwoven with the texture of French manners. I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and tho my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment.