Gibbon, Edward

Gibbon, Edward (1737–94). Historian. After fourteen months at Magdalen College, Oxford, which the laziness of the dons made ‘the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life’, Gibbon converted to catholicism and had to leave. His enraged father sent him to Lausanne (Switzerland), under a Calvinist tutor, where he learned French, reverted to protestantism, and determined to write some great work. In 1773 he began serious work on Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the inspiration of which was a visit to Rome in 1764, described in his Memoirs. The following year he entered Parliament, was given minor office by Lord North, but never spoke: ‘the great speakers’, he wrote memorably, ‘fill me with despair, the bad ones with terror’. The first volume came out in 1776 and established him at once: the work was completed in 1788. The intrinsic merits of his book, its scholarship, silky style, and philosophic detachment, made it an enduring classic.