in some degree strange. And thus he was led to draw that
interesting picture of the literary recluse among the crowds of
London: “While coaches were rattling through Bond Street,
I have passed many a solitary evening in my lodging with my
books. My studies were sometimes interrupted with a sigh,
which I breathed towards Lausanne; and on the approach of
spring I withdrew without reluctance from the noisy and
extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation
without pleasure.” He renewed former acquaintance, however,
with the “poet” Mallet, and through him gained access to
Lady Hervey’s circle, where a congenial admiration, not to say
affectation, of French manners and literature made him a
welcome guest. It ought to be added that in each of the twenty-five
years of his subsequent acquaintance with London “the
prospect gradually brightened,” and his social as well as his
intellectual qualities secured him a wide circle of friends. In
one respect Mallet gave him good counsel in those early days.
He advised him to addict himself to an assiduous study of the
more idiomatic English writers, such as Swift and Addison—with
a view to unlearn his foreign idiom and recover his half-forgotten
vernacular—a task, however, which he never perfectly
accomplished. Much as he admired these writers, Hume
and Robertson were still greater favourites, as well from their
subject as for their style. Of his admiration of Hume’s style,
of its nameless grace of simple elegance, he has left us a strong
expression, when he tells us that it often compelled him to close
the historian’s volumes with a mixed sensation of delight and
despair.
In 1761 Gibbon, at the age of twenty-four, after many delays, and with many flutterings of hope and fear, gave to the world, in French, his maiden publication, an Essai sur l’étude de la littérature, which he had composed two years before. It was published partly in compliance with his father’s wishes, who thought that the proof of some literary talent might introduce him favourably to public notice, and secure the recommendation of his friends for some appointment in connexion with the mission of the English plenipotentiaries to the congress at Augsburg which was at that time in contemplation. But in yielding to paternal authority, Gibbon frankly owns that he “complied, like a pious son, with the wish of his own heart.”
The subject of this youthful effort was suggested, its author says, by a refinement of vanity—“the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit,” namely, the study of ancient literature. Partly owing to its being written in French, partly to its character, the Essai excited more attention abroad than at home. Gibbon has criticized it with the utmost frankness, not to say severity; but, after every abatement, it is unquestionably a surprising effort for a mind so young, and contains many thoughts which would not have disgraced a thinker or a scholar of much maturer age. His account of its first reception and subsequent fortunes in England deserves to be cited as a curious piece of literary history. “In England,” he says, “it was received with cold indifference, little read, and speedily forgotten. A small impression was slowly dispersed; the bookseller murmured, and the author (had his feelings been more exquisite) might have wept over the blunders and baldness of the English translation. The publication of my history fifteen years afterwards revived the memory of my first performance, and the essay was eagerly sought in the shops. But I refused the permission which Becket solicited of reprinting it; the public curiosity was imperfectly satisfied by a pirated copy of the booksellers of Dublin; and when a copy of the original edition has been discovered in a sale, the primitive value of half-a-crown has risen to the fanciful price of a guinea or thirty shillings.”[1]
Some time before the publication of the essay, Gibbon had entered a new and, one might suppose, a very uncongenial scene of life. In an hour of patriotic ardour he became (June 12, 1759) a captain in the Hampshire militia, and for more than two years (May 10, 1760, to December 23, 1762) led a wandering life of “military servitude.” Hampshire, Kent, Wiltshire and Dorsetshire formed the successive theatres of what he calls his “bloodless and inglorious campaigns.” He complains of the busy idleness in which his time was spent; but, considering the circumstances, so adverse to study, one is rather surprised that the military student should have done so much, than that he did so little; and never probably before were so many hours of literary study spent in a tent. In estimating the comparative advantages and disadvantages of this wearisome period of his life, he has summed up with the impartiality of a philosopher and the sagacity of a man of the world. Irksome as were his employments, grievous as was the waste of time, uncongenial as were his companions, solid benefits were to be set off against these things; his health became robust, his knowledge of the world was enlarged, he wore off some of his foreign idiom, got rid of much of his reserve; he adds—and perhaps in his estimate it was the benefit to be most prized of all—“the discipline and evolutions 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.”
It was during this period that he read Homer and Longinus, having for the first time acquired some real mastery of Greek; and after the publication of the Essai, his mind was full of projects for a new literary effort. The Italian expedition of Charles VIII. of France, the crusade of Richard I., the wars of the barons, the lives and comparisons of Henry V. and the emperor Titus, the history of the Black Prince, the life of Sir Philip Sidney, that of Montrose, and finally that of Sir W. Raleigh, were all of them seriously contemplated and successively rejected. By their number they show how strong was the impulse to literature, and by their character, how determined the bent of his mind in the direction of history; while their variety makes it manifest also that he had then at least no special purpose to serve, no preconceived theory to support, no particular prejudice or belief to overthrow.
The militia was disbanded in 1762, and Gibbon joyfully shook off his bonds; but his literary projects were still to be postponed. Following his own wishes, though with his father’s consent, he had early in 1760 projected a Continental tour as the completion “of an English gentleman’s education.” This had been interrupted by the episode of the militia; now, however, he resumed his purpose, and left England in January 1763. Two years were “loosely defined as the term of his absence,” which he exceeded by half a year—returning June 1765. He first visited Paris, where he saw a good deal of d’Alembert, Diderot, Barthélemy, Raynal, Helvétius, Baron d’Holbach and others of that circle, and was often a welcome guest in the saloons of Madame Geoffrin and Madame du Deffand.[2] Voltaire was at Geneva, Rousseau at Montmorency, and Buffon he neglected to visit; but so congenial did he find the society for which his education had so well prepared him, and into which some literary reputation had already preceded him, that he declared, “Had I been rich and independent, I should have prolonged and perhaps have fixed my residence at Paris.”
From France he proceeded to Switzerland, and spent nearly a year at Lausanne, where many old friendships and studies were resumed, and new ones begun. His reading was largely designed to enable him fully to profit by the long-contemplated Italian tour which began in April 1764 and lasted somewhat more than a year. He has recorded one or two interesting notes on Turin, Genoa, Florence and other towns at which halt was made on his route; but Rome was the great object of his pilgrimage, and the words in which he has alluded to the feelings with which he
- ↑ 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.”
- ↑ 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).
