Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/597

Rh GIBBON 'l‘wo years before the publication of this ﬁrst volume Gibbon was elected member of parliament for Liskeard (1774). His political duties did not suspend his prosecution of his history, except on one occasion, and for a little while, in 1779, when he undertook, on behalf of the ministry, a task which, if well performed, was also, it must be added, well rewardetl. The French Government had issued a mani- festo preparatory to a declaration of war, and Gibbon was solicited by Chancellor Thurlow and Lord Weyniouth, secretary of state, to answer it. In compliance with this request he produced the able Jlémoire Justg'ﬁcat{f, com- posed in French, and delivered to the courts of Europe ; and shortly afterwards he received a seat at the Board of Trade and Plantations,——little 1nore than a sinecure in itself, but with a very substantial salary of nearly £800 per annu111. His acceptance displeased some of his former political associ- ates, and he was accused of “ descrting his party.” In his Jlcmoir, indeed, Gibbon denies thathehad ever enlisted with the Whigs. A note of Fox, however, on the margin of a copy of The Decline (mcl1"r_(ll records a very distinctremembrance of the historian’s previous vituperation of the ministry; within a fortnight of the date of his acceptance of office, he is there alleged to have said that “there was no salvation for this country until six heads of the principal persons in ad- ministration were laid upon the table.” Lord Sheflield merely replies, somewhat weakly it must be said, that his friend never intended the words to be taken literally. .Iore to the point is the often—quoted passage from Gibbon’s letter to Deyverdun, where the frank revelation is made : “ You have not forgotten that I went into parliament with- out patriotism and without ambition, and that all my views tended to the convenient and respectable place of a lord of trade.” In April 1781 the second and third quartos of his ][istor_2/ were published. They excited no controversy, and were comparatively little talked about—so little, indeed, as to have extorted from him a half murmur about “ cold- ness and prejudice.” The volumes, however, were bought and read with silent avidity. lIcanwhile public events were developing in a manner that had a considerable inﬂu- ence upon the manner in which the remaining years of the historian’s life were spent. At the general election in 1780 he had lost his seat for Liskeard, but had subse- quently been elected for Lymington. The ministry of Lord North, however, was tottering, and soon after fell; the Board of Trade was abolished by the passing of Bu1;ke’s bill in 1782, and Gibbon’s salary vanished with it,-—no triﬂe, for his expenditure had been for three years on a scale somewhat disproportionate to his private fortune. He did not like to depend on states1nen’s promises, which are pro- verbitlly uncertain of fulﬁlment ; he as little liked to retrench ; and he was wearied of parliament, where he had never given any but silent votes. Urged by such consider- ations, he once more turned his eyes to the scene of his early exile, where he might live on his decent patrimony in a style which was impossible in England, and pursue 1111e211b:n'1-assed his literary studies. He therefore resolved to fix himself at Lausanue. A word only is necessary on his parliamentary career. .'either nature nor acquired habits qualiﬁed him to be an orator ; his late entrance on public life, his natural timi-;lity, his feeble voice, his limited command of idiomatic English, and even, as he candidly confesses, his literary fame, were all obstacles to success. “After a ﬂeeting, illus-ive hope, prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute‘. . . . I was not armed by nature and education with the intrepid energy of mind and ' in 1775 he writes to Holroyd, “ I am still a m11te; it is more frclnendous than I imagined; the great speakers fill me with dc<pair; the bad ones 'lIll terror. ' 5 79 voice——‘ Vincentem strepitus et natum rebus agendis.’ Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice.” His 1'epugna11Ce to public life had been strongly expressed to his father in a letter of a very early date, i11 which he begged that the money which a seat iii the House of Commons would cost might be expended in a mode more agreeable to him. Gibbon was eight—and-thirty when he entered parliament; and the obstacles which even at an earlier period he had not had courage to encounter were hardly likely to be vanquished then. Nor had he much political sagacity. He was better skilled i11 investigating the past than in divining the f uturc. While Burke and Fox and so many great statesmen pro- claimed the consequences of the collision with America, Gibbon saw nothing but colonies in rebellion, and a pater- nal Govermnent justly incensed. His silent votes were all given on that hypothesis. In a similar manner, while he abhorred the French Revolution when it came, he seems to have had no apprehension, like Chesterfield, Burke, or even Horace Walpole, of its approach; nor does he appear to have- at all suspected that it had had anything to do with the speculations of the philosophic coteries in which he had taken such delight. But while it maybe doubted whether his presence in Parliament was of any direct utility to the legislative business of the country, there can be no question of the present advantage which he derived fro1n it in the prosecution of the great work of his life,———an advantage of which he was fully conscious when he wrote : “ The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the ﬁrst and most essential virtue of an historian.” Having sold all his property except his library—to him equally a necessary and a luxury—Gibbon repaired to- Lausanne in September 1783, and took up his abode with his early friend Deyverdun, now a resident there. Per- fectly free from every engagement but those which his own tastes imposed, easy in his circumstances, commanding just as much society, and that as select, as he pleased, with the noblest scenery spread out at his feet, no situation can l)e imagined more favourable for the prosecution of his lit- erary enterprise ; a hermit in his study as long as he chose, he found the most delightful recreation always ready for him at the threshold. “ In London,” says he, “ I was lost in the crowd ; I ranked with the ﬁrst families in Lausannc, and my style of prudent expense enabled me to maintain a fair balance of reciprocal civilities. . . . Instead of a small house between a street anda stable-yard, I began to occupy ‘a spacious and convenient mansion, connected on the north side with the city, and open on the south to a beau- tiful and boundless horizon. A garden of four acres had been laid out by the taste of M. Deyverdun _: from the garden a rich scenery of meadows and vineyards descends to the Leman Lake, and the prospect far beyond the lake is crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy.” In this enviable retreat, it is no wonder that a year should have been suffered to roll round before he vigorously rc- sumed his great work,—and with many men it would never have been resumed in such a paradise. We may remark in passing that the retreat was often enlivened, or in- vaded, by friendly tourists from England, whose " frequent incursions” into Switzerland our recluse seems half to lament as an evil. Among his more valued visitors were M. and Mme. Necker; Mr Fox also gave him two welcome “ days of free and private society” in 1788. Differing as they did in politics, Gibbon’s testimony to the genius and character of the great statesman is highly honourable 1.» both: “Perhaps no human being,” he says, “ was ever more perfectly exempt from the tai11t of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood.” _ When once fairly resented at his task, he proceeded in this delightful retreat leisurel_v, yet rapidly, to its comple-