(J. B. B.)
[1] The celebrated William Law had been for some time the private tutor of this Edward Gibbon, who is supposed to have been the original of the rather clever sketch of “Flatus” in the Serious Call.
[2] The Journal for 1755 records that during that year, besides writing and translating a great deal in Latin and French, he had read, amongst other works, Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares, his Brutus, all his Orations, his dialogues De amicitia and De seneciute, Terence (twice), and Pliny’s Epistles. In January 1756 he says: “I determined to read over the Latin authors in order, and read this year Virgil, Sallust, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Quintus Curtius, Justin, Florus, Plautus, Terence and Lucretius. I also read and meditated Locke Upon the Understanding.” Again in January 1757 he writes: “I began to study algebra under M. de Traytorrens, went through the elements of algebra and geometry, and the three first books of the Marquis de l’Hôpital’s Conic Sections. I also read Tibullus, Catullus, Propertius, Horace (with Dacier’s and Torrentius’s notes), Virgil, Ovid’s Epistles, with Meziriac’s commentary, the Ars amandi and the Elegies; likewise the Augustus and Tiberius of Suetonius, and a Latin translation of Dion Cassius from the death of Julius Caesar to the death of Augustus. I also continued my correspondence, begun last year, with M. Allamand of Bex, and the Professor Breitinger of Zürich, and opened a new one with the Professor Gesner of Göttingen. N.B.—Last year and this I read St John’s Gospel, with part of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the Iliad, and Herodotus; but, upon the whole, I rather neglected my Greek.”
[3] The affair, however, was not finally broken off till 1763. Mdlle Curchod soon afterwards became the wife of Necker, the famous financier; and Gibbon and the Neckers frequently afterwards met on terms of mutual friendship and esteem.
[4] The Essai, in a good English translation, now appears in the Miscellaneous Works. Villemain finds in it “peu de vues, nulle originalité surtout, mais une grande passion littéraire, l’amour des recherches savantes et du beau langage.” Sainte-Beuve’s criticism is almost identical with Gibbon’s own; but though he finds that “la lecture en est assez difficile et parfois obscure, la liaison des idées échappe souvent par trop de concision et par le désir qu’a eu le jeune auteur d’y faire entrer, d’y condenser la plupart de ses notes,” he adds, “il y a, chemin faisant, des vues neuves et qui sentent l’historien.”
[5] Her letters to Walpole about Gibbon contain some interesting remarks by this “aveugle clairvoyante,” as Voltaire calls her; but they belong to a later period (1777).
[6] For a very full list of publications in answer to Gibbon’s attack on Christianity reference may be made to the Bibliographer’s Manual, pp. 885-886 (1858). Of these the earliest were Watson’s Apology (1776), Salisbury’s Strictures (1776) and Chelsum’s (anonymous) Remarks (1776). In 1778 the Few Remarks by a Gentleman (Francis Eyre), the Reply of Loftus, the Letters of Apthorpe and the Examination of Davies appeared. Gibbon’s Vindication (1779) called forth a Reply by Davies (1779), and A Short Appeal to the Public by Francis Eyre (1779). Laughton’s polemical treatise was published in 1780, and those of Milner and Taylor in 1781. Chelsum returned to the attack in 1785 (A Reply to Mr Gibbon’s Vindication), and Sir David Dalrymple (An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes, &c.) made his first appearance in the controversy in 1786, Travis’s Letters on I John v. 7 are dated 1784; and Spedalieri’s Confutazione dell’ esame del Cristianismo fatto da Gibbon was published at Rome (2 vols. 4to) in the same year. It is impossible not to concur in almost every point with Gibbon’s own estimate of his numerous assailants. Their crude productions, for the most part, were conspicuous rather for insolence and abusiveness than for logic or learning. Those of Bishop Watson and Lord Hailes were the best, but simply because they contented themselves with a dispassionate exposition of the general argument in favour of Christianity. The most foolish and discreditable was certainly that of Davies; his unworthy attempt to depreciate the great historian’s learning, and his captious, cavilling, acrimonious charges of petty inaccuracies and discreditable falsification gave the object of his attack an easy triumph.
[7] In 1775 he writes to Holroyd: “I am still a mute; it is more tremendous than I imagined; the great speakers fill me with despair; the bad ones with terror.”
[8] An anonymous pamphlet, entitled Observations on the three last volumes of the Roman History, appeared in 1788; Disney’s Sermon, with Strictures, in 1790; and Whitaker’s Review, in 1791. With regard to the second of the above complaints, surprise will probably be felt that it was not extended to portions of the text as well as to the notes.