inglorious. Upon the whole (though I still believe I shall try), I doubt whether Nature, not that in some instances I am ungrateful, has given me the talents of an orator, and I feel that I came into parliament much too late to exert them. -M. (3) page 154. Mr. Strahan's letter does great credit to his prophetic discernment WILLIAM STRAHAN, ESQ. TO EDW. GIBBON, ESQ. SIR, I was desirous of taking an early opportunity of paying my respects to you, to return you my best thanks for the pleasure I have received from the perusal of your work, which I have read almost as far as it is advanced. My opinion of it, I shall beg leave, with all submission, to lay before you in a few words. The language is the most correct, most elegant, and most expressive I have ever read; but that, in my mind, is its least praise. The work abounds with the justest maxims of sound policy, which while they show you to be a perfect master of your subject, discover your intimate knowledge of human nature, and the liberality of your sentiments. Your characters, in particular, are drawn in a masterly manner; with the utmost accuracy and precision; and, as far as I am able to judge, in strict conformity to historic truth. In short, so able and so finished a performance hath hardly ever before come under my inspection: and though I will not take upon me absolutely to pronounce in what manner it will be received at first by a capricious and giddy public, I will venture to say, it will ere long make a distinguished figure among the many valuable works that do honour to the present age; will be translated into most of the modern languages, and will remain a lasting monument of the genius and ability of the writer. I am with the greatest esteem and respect, Sir, Your most obedient and faithful servant, (4) page 155. WILL. STRAHAN. Mr. Whitaker, the Historian of Manchester, seems to have been the only one of his correspondents who ventured to remonstrate in plain and vigorous language against the Anti Christian tendency of the work. As Mr. Whitaker's name will occur again, it is but justice to insert those passages of his letters which express his sentiments on this point. MR. WHITAKER TO EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. Manchester, April 21st. 1776. DEAR SIR, I have just finished your History: and I sit down to thank you for it a second time. You have laid open the interior principles of the Roman Constitution with great learning, and shown their operation on the general body of the empire with great judgment, Your work therefore will do you high honour. You never speak feebly, except when you come upon British ground, and never weakly except when you attack Christianity. In the former case, you seem to me to want information. And, in the latter, you plainly want the common candour of a citizen of the world for the religious system of your country. Pardon me, Sir, but, much as I admire your abilities, greatly as I respect your friendship, I cannot bear without indignation your sarcastic slyness upon Christianity, and cannot see without pity your determined hostility to the Gospel. But I leave the subject to beg a favour of you. After so open a declaration, I pay a great compliment to the friendliness of your spirit, to solicit from you any favour. MR. WHITAKER TO EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. "DEAR SIR, Manchester, May 11th, 1776. "I thank you for your franks. And I thank you still more for your friendly return to my last. You received my application to you about the business in parliament, with your usual kindness. I wrote to others of my friends in the House at the same time. And I carried the great point which I aimed up. You also received my animadversions upon your History with candour. I was particularly pointed, I believe, in what I said concerning the religious part of it. I wrote from my feelings at the time; and was perhaps the less inclined to suppress those feelings from friendliness, because I had two favours to beg of you. I hope I shall ever be attached, with every power of my judgment and my affection, to that glorious system of truth, which is the vital principle of happiness to my soul in time and in eternity. And in this I act not from any "restraints of profession." I should despise myself, if I did. I act from the fullest conviction of a mind, that has been a good deal exercised in inquiries into truth, and that has shown (I fancy) a strong spirit of rational scepticism in rejecting and refuting a variety of opinions, which have passed current for ages in our national history. "These however, if never so true, are but trifles light as air in my estimation, when they are compared with what I think the great blot of your work. You have there exhibited Deism in a new shape, and in one that is more likely to affect the uninstructed million, than the reasoning form which she has usually worn. You seem to me like another Tacitus, revived with all his animosity against Christianity, his strong philosophical spirit of sentiment, and more than his superiority to the absurdities of heathenism. And you will have the dishonour (pardon me, Sir) of being ranked by the folly of scepticism, that is working so powerfully at present, among the most distinguished deists of the age. I have long suspected the tendency of your opinions. I once took the liberty of hinting my suspicions. But I did not think the poison had spread so universally through your frame. And I can only deplore the misfortune, and a very great one I consider it, to the highest and dearest interests of man among all your readers *. If the letters of Mr. Whitaker had been perused previously to the publication of the former edition, this manly and spirited declaration in favour of the principles of the Established Church, and against the perversion of those opinions which constitute the greatest comfort and consolation of the Christian world, would not have been then withheld from the public.-S. "These must be very numerous. I see you are getting a second edition already. I give you joy of it. And I remain, with an equal mixture of regret and regard, Your obliged Friend and Servant, Mr. Nicholls, in his Lit. Anecd. iii. 102. has a story of Gibbon's submitting the MS. to Whitaker, without the two last chapters.-M. (5) page 155. EXTRACT OF. A LETTER FROM DR. ROBERTSON TO MR. STRAHAN, DATED EDINBURGH COLLEGE, MARCH 15. 1776. "Since my last I have read Mr. Gibbon's History 'with much attention, and great pleasure. It is a work of very high merit indeed. He possesses that industry of research, without which no man deserves the name of an historian. His narrative is perspicuous and interesting; his style is elegant and forcible, though in some passages I think rather too laboured, and in others too quaint. But these defects are amply compensated by the beauty of the general flow of language, and a very peculiar happiness in many of his expressions. I have traced him in many of his quotations (for experience has taught me to suspect the accuracy of my brother penmen ), and I find he refers to no passage but what he has seen with his own eyes. I hope the book will be as successful as it deserves to be. I have not yet read the two last chapters, but am sorry, from what I have heard of them, that he has taken such a tone in them as will give great offence, and hurt the sale of the book." There is something not quite honest in this prudential civility of Robertson. -M. CHAPTER IX. Mr. Gibbon makes a Second Visit to Paris.-His dispute with the Abbé Mably.-He enumerates and characterises the Writers who wrote against his 15th and 16th Chapters. By the desire of Ministry, he writes the Mémoire Justificatif.-By the Interest of Lord Loughborough is appointed one of the Lords of Trade.-Publishes his Second and Third Volumes of his History; their reception. Mentions Archdeacon Travis's Attack upon him, and commends Mr. Porson's Answer to the Archdeacon.Notices also Bishop Newton's Censure.-Proceeds in his History. My second excursion to Paris was determined by the pressing invitation of M. and Madame Necker, who had visited England in the preceding summer (1). On my arrival I found M. Necker Director-general of the finances, in the first bloom of power and popularity. His private fortune enabled him to support a liberal establishment; and his wife, whose talents and virtues I had long admired, was admirably qualified to preside in the conversation of her table and drawing-room. As their friend I was introduced to the best company of both sexes; to the foreign ministers of all nations, and to the first names and characters of France, who distinguished me by such marks of civility and kindness, as gratitude will not suffer me to forget, and modesty will not allow me to enumerate. The fashionable suppers often broke into the morning hours; yet I occasionally consulted the Royal Library, and that of the Abbey of St. Germain, and in the free use of their books at home, I had always reason to praise the liberality of those institutions. The society of men of letters I neither courted nor declined; but I was happy in the acquaintance of M. de Buffon, who united with a sublime genius the most amiable simplicity of mind and manners (2). At the table of my old friend, M. de Forcemagne, I was involved in a dispute with the Abbé de Mably; and his jealous irascible spirit revenged itself on a work which he was incapable of reading in the original. As I might be partial in my own cause, I shall transcribe the words of an unknown critic, observing only, that this dispute had been preceded by another on the English constitution at the house of the Countess de Froulay, an old Jansenist lady. "Vous étiez chez M. de Forcemagne, mon cher Théodon, le jour que M. l'abbé de Mably et M. Gibbon y dînèrent en grande compagnie. La conversation roula presque entièrement sur l'histoire. L'abbé, étant un profond politique, la tourna sur l'administration, quand on fut au dessert; et comme par caractère, par humeur, par l'habitude d'admirer Tite-Live, il ne prise que le système républicain, il se mit à vanter l'excellence des républiques, bien persuadé que le savant Anglais l'approuveroit en tout, et admireroit la profondeur de génie qui avoit fait deviner tous ces avantages à un Français. Mais M. Gibbon, instruit par l'expérience des inconvénients d'un gouvernement populaire, ne fut point du tout de son avis, et il prit généreusement la défense du gouvernement monarchique. L'abbé voulut le convaincre par Tite-Live, et par quelques arguments tirés de Plutarque en faveur des Spartiates. M. Gibbon, doué de la mémoire la plus heureuse, et ayant tous les faits présents à la pensée, domina bientôt la conversation; l'abbé se fâcha, il s'emporta, il dit des choses dures; l'Anglais, conservant le flegme de son pays, prenoit ses avantages, et pressoit l'abbé avec d'autant plus de succès que la colère le troubloit de plus en plus. La conversation s'échauffoit, et M. de Forcemagne la rompit en se levant de table, et en passant dans le salon, où personne ne fut tenté de la renouer." Supplément de la Manière d'écrire l'Histoire, p. 125, etc.1 Nearly two years had elapsed between the publication of my first and the commencement of my second volume; and the causes must be assigned of this long delay. 1. After a short holiday, I indulged my curiosity in some studies of a very different nature, a course of anatomy, which was demonstrated by Doctor Hunter, and some lessons of chemistry, which were delivered by Mr. Higgins. The principles of these sciences, and a taste for books of natural history, contributed to multiply my ideas and images; and the anatomist and chemist may sometimes track me in their own snow. 2. I dived, perhaps too deeply, into the mud of the Arian controversy; and many days of reading, thinking, and writing were consumed in the pursuit of a phantom. 3. It is difficult to arrange, with order and perspicuity, the various transactions of the age of Con Of the voluminous writings of the Abbé de Mably (see his Eloge by the Abbé Brizard), the Principes du droit public de l'Europe, and the first part of the Observation sur l'Histoire de France, may be deservedly praised; and even the Manière d'écrire l'Histoire contains several useful precepts and judicious remarks. Mably was a lover of virtue and freedom; but his virtue was austere, and his freedom was impatient of an equal. Kings, magistrates, nobles, and successful writers, were the objects of his contempt, or hatred, or envy; but his illiberal abuse of Voltaire, Hume, Buffon, the Abbé Reynal, Dr. Robertson, and tutti quanti, can be injurious only to himself. "Est-il rien de plus fastidieux (says the polite Censor) qu'un M. Gibbon, qui dans son éternelle Histoire des Empereurs Romains, suspend à chaque instant son insipide et lente narration, pour vous expliquer la cause des faits que vous allez lire?" (Manière d'écrire l'Histoire, p. 184. See another passage, p. 280.) Yet I am indebted to the Abbé de Mably for two such advocates as the anonymous French Critic and my friend Mr. Hayley. (Hayley's Works, 8vo. Edit. Vol. ii. p. 261–263.) |