Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/653

GIB withdrew from the city to a place in its vicinity, near Colinton, and preached openly and unflinchingly against the rebellion, praying fervently, as usual, for the royal family, and all this, as he says himself, "often within hearing of a party of the rebel guard" When the famous question of the Burgess oath agitated the associate synod, he became the champion of the party who, from their interpretation of the oath, deemed the taking of it unlawful, and was bound up with all their high-handed measures. After the separation he was acknowledged head of the Antiburghers; while on account of his influence in consultation, his eloquence in debate, his peculiar force of character, and success in bearing down all opposition to his views, he was occasionally termed Pope Gib. The new church erected for him in Nicholson Street, Edinburgh, in 1753, is said to have been usually filled on Sabbath with an audience of two thousand persons. In 1765 the general assembly of the Church of Scotland stigmatized the secession as a movement "which threatened the peace of the country." Mr. Gib replied at once in a dignified style, telling what the seceders had done in days of danger, and what loyalty they had boldly and unanimously displayed during the rebellion of 1745. In 1774 he published his "Display of the Secession Testimony," and in 1784 "Sacred Contemplations, with an appendix on Liberty and Necessity, in reply to Lord Kames." These works exhibit Mr. Gib's abilities, his acuteness and breadth of mind, his great powers of reasoning, and his profound knowledge of polemical divinity as taught on the continent, especially in Holland. His style of thought was no less bold and masterly than it was singularly lucid and fervid. His love of truth was so tenacious that it sometimes assumed the appearance of dogmatism; his intolerance of what he deemed error was never disguised; and his handling of an opponent was distinguished more for its unsparing honesty than its gentleness. Mr. Gib died on the 18th June, 1788, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and forty-eighth of his ministry, and was buried in the Grey Friars churchyard, a handsome monument being erected by his congregation to the memory of their minister.—J. E.  GIBB,, a Scottish civil engineer and contractor, and son of a contractor, was born at Kirkcows, near Falkirk, in 1776, and died in November, 1850. In his youth he was employed at first as a contractor's assistant, and afterwards as an assistant engineer on various important works, chiefly of John Rennie and Telford. Telford placed him as resident engineer of the harbour of Aberdeen, a work of great magnitude and difficulty, about the year 1809. About six years afterwards he resigned that post to undertake the business of contractor, in which capacity he finished the harbour works of Aberdeen, and executed many other works for John Rennie, Telford, Robert Stevenson (of Edinburgh), Sir William Cubitt, and other engineers, with great skill and success. Amongst these may be mentioned the repairs of the Crinan canal, various harbours on the east coast of Scotland, the Glasgow and Carlisle turnpike road (a perfect specimen of road-making, involving stone bridges of great height, such as that of Cartland Craigs, near Lanark, over the glen of the Mouss), various lighthouses, turnpike road bridges (including the Dean bridge near Edinburgh), railway viaducts, additional harbour works at Aberdeen, and Telford's "Glasgow Bridge," the lowest over the River Clyde, and a model of its class. Gibb was specially skilful in works connected with rivers and harbours.—W. J. M. R.  GIBBON,, one of the most illustrious of the English historians, born at Putney, April 27, 1737; died January 16, 1794. His father, who was also named Edward, was of an old Kentish family, but in reduced circumstances, their property having been dissipated by the explosion of the South Sea bubble. The elder Gibbon sat in parliament for many years as representative of the borough of Petersfield, and afterwards of Southampton. His more distinguished son was the first and only surviving child out of a family of seven, the others having died in infancy. His constitution was so delicate that his life was repeatedly despaired of; but, owing to the tender nursing of a maiden aunt, it was spared. When nine years old he was placed at a school kept by Dr. Woodeson at Kingston-on-Thames, but his delicate and precarious health prevented his deriving much instruction during the period he resided there. On the death of his mother in 1747, he returned home, where he remained for two years, after which he entered Westminster school. His studies were so frequently interrupted by illness, that he made but slow progress; and after two years his father removed him to Bath, where the full restoration of his health was eventually attained. In 1752 Gibbon matriculated as a gentleman commoner at Magdalen college, Oxford. In his "Autobiographic Memoirs" he describes himself at this time to have had "a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy might have been ashamed;" nor does his residence at the university appear to have greatly replenished his imperfect scholastic attainments. During his second year at Oxford his reading took a religious turn, and the study of Bossuet's Variations of Protestantism, and Exposition of Catholic Doctrine, effected his conversion to the Roman catholic religion. The consequence of this change was his expulsion from the university. His father was indignant at his son's change of religion, and placed him under the care of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne in Switzerland, in the hopes of his reclaiming him from Roman catholicism. In this his new tutor was speedily successful; and Gibbon publicly renounced, in 1754, the faith which he had adopted but twelve months before. While with M. Pavilliard Gibbon made rapid progress in his studies, and acquired a perfect knowledge of the French language; he also formed the acquaintance of Voltaire. He about this time met a young lady, Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, to whom he became passionately attached, but he was obliged to submit to his father's disapproval of a marriage with her; and the young lady subsequently became the wife of M. Necker, the celebrated financier. This disappointment impelled him to redouble his attention to his literary pursuits. In 1758 he returned to England, residing with his family either at Petersfield or in London. During his absence in Switzerland his father had married a second time, and Gibbon appears to have had a sincere regard and esteem for his stepmother, who had been a Miss Patton. In 1761 he published his first work, written in French, and entitled an "Essaie sur l'Etude de la Litterature." It received but slight notice in England, though on the continent it was favourably viewed. About the same time Gibbon conceived a taste for the army, and obtained a commission as a captain in the Hampshire militia. For two years and a half he spent what he describes as "a wandering life of military servitude, which terminated in the disbanding of the regiment in 1763." According to the custom of the times, it was considered essential to the education of an English gentleman to make the tour of the continent, and accordingly Gibbon started on his travels, furnished with letters of recommendation to persons of influence in France and elsewhere. At Paris he found that the fame of his "Essaie" had preceded him, and he was cordially received by the great French litterateurs. After a residence of some months in Paris, he revisited Lausanne, and afterwards went to Rome. While there, he says in his "Memoirs," it was "on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst 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." In the following year Gibbon returned home to England, and the next five years he describes as having been the least satisfactory of his life, affording few incidents worthy of record; a portion of each he spent with his regiment, in which he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, though he observes that he was disgusted with "the inn, the wine, and the company." In 1767 he published a work entitled "Mémoires Littéraires de la Grand Bretagne," in the preparation of which he was associated with M. Deyverdun, a young Swiss gentleman with whom he had become acquainted at Lausanne. The book, however, received but slender approval. His next production, "Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Æneid," was more successful. His father died in 1770, and left him in comparatively easy circumstances; and for the next five years Gibbon employed himself in preparing for his grand historical account of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. In 1774 he was returned for the borough of Liskeard, through the influence of his kinsman Lord Elliot; but he did not let his parliamentary duties interfere with his literary labours. The first volume of the "Decline and Fall" appeared on the 17th February, 1776, and was received with unbounded admiration. Its literary success was immediate; but the public were not slow to discern, nor tardy to censure, the sceptical tendency of the "celebrated chapters" in which the historian shadowed forth his ironical scruples as to the truths of christianity. The entire of the first edition was sold in a few days, and others followed in rapid 