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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
For the last two centuries Edward Gibbon has been regarded—either favourably or disparagingly - as the Enlightenment's greatest celebrant of the ‘triumph of human reason’. He has been almost invariably portrayed as an essentially optimistic believer in rational man's potential for social progress and moral advancement. Much of Gibbon's modern reputation as the Enlightenment's historian par excellence is due to early and widespread acceptance of certain assumptions about his religious sentiments. There has been a strong tendency to assume that Gibbon stood in the vanguard of what Peter Gay has called ‘modern paganism’: ‘The French philosophes and British infidels like Hume or Gibbon rejected revealed religion so vehemently and so completely that the Christian contribution to their ideas was modest and subterranean; they were usually unaware of it’. Gibbon has been traditionally seen as a vocal deist, while the account of the rise and consolidation of the Christian church contained within The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire (1776–88) has often been thought intrinsically anti-christian.
1 Bond, H., The literary art of Edward Gibbon (Oxford, 1960), p. 160.Google Scholar
2 Gay, P., The Enlightenment: an interpretation (London, 1966), 1, 326.Google Scholar
3 Trevor-Roper, H. R., ‘Edward Gibbon, an appreciation’, in The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, ed. and abr. Trevor-Roper, H. R. (New York, 1963), p. 666Google Scholar. Arnaldo Momigliano, who formerly accepted Gibbon as an enlightened anti-christian sceptic, also appears to be having second thoughts. See the discussion following M. Baridon's ‘Le style ďune pensée: politique et esthétique dans le decline and fall‘ in Gibbon et Rome, à la lumière de l’historiographie moderne (Lausanne, 1977), pp. 99–100Google Scholar, where dissatisfaction emerges with the identification of Gibbon's ‘leading moral and religious ideas’ with those of Voltaire he made in his influential article ‘Gibbon's contribution to historical method’ (1954), reprinted in Momigliano, A., Studies in historiography (London, 1969 edn), pp. 40–55. My own interest in Gibbon's religion was stimulated by the suggestion of P. L. Rose that a convincing intellectual biography of the historian requires further understanding of the relations between such an important aspect of the man's personality as his religious sentiments and his historical writings.Google Scholar
4 Chadwick, O., ‘Gibbon and the church historians’, in Edward Gibbon and the decline and fall of the Roman empire, eds. Bowersock, G. W., Clive, J. and Graubard, S. R. (London, 1976), pp. 221, 223.Google Scholar
5 Swain, J. S., Edward Gibbon the historian (London, 1966), p. 65.Google Scholar
6 Swain, Gibbon, p. 65.
7 Jordan, D., Gibbon and his Roman empire (Urbana, 1971), p. 157.Google Scholar
8 Gay, P., ‘Gibbon: a modern cynic amongst ancient politicians’, in his Style in history (London, 1974), pp. 15–56. The note appears on p. 223.Google Scholar
9 Hutton, E., ‘The conversion of Edward Gibbon’, Nineteenth century, CXL, I (1932), 336, identifies the Jesuit who baptised Gibbon as Father Bernard Baker. He writes: ‘Baker (1698–1773). He entered the Society in 1721 at Watten, near St Omer. He did his higher studies at Liège and was professed of the four vows in 1739....1740 he is described as procurator to the London mission… [until] 1773 the year of his death, although in the Catalogue for 1769 he is marked as senis fractus, “a broken-down old man”. For most, or perhaps all, of this time he was chaplain to the Sardinian ambassador, though it is improbable that he was domiciled at the chapel in Lincoln's Inn Fields’.Google Scholar
10 Perry, T. W., Public opinion, propaganda and politics in eighteenth century England (Harvard, 1962), PP. 2–3.Google Scholar
11 Abbey, C. J. and Overton, J. H., The English church in the eighteenth century (London, 1878 edn), p. 396, also quoted by Perry, Public opinion, p. 2.Google Scholar
12 A detailed account of Cameron's execution appears in The gentleman's magazine, XXIII (1753), 292–3Google Scholar, while biographical information about Cameron and his jacobite activities appears in The dictionary of national biography, eds. Stephen, L. and Lee, S. (Oxford, 1963–4 edn), III, 739–40, and more recently Lord Amulree, ‘Dr Archibald Cameron’Google Scholar, Medical history, xv (1971), 230–40Google Scholar. For details of his arrest and trial see The gentleman's magazine, XXIII (1753), 198, 246, 257–8.Google Scholar
13 H. Walpole, Memoirs of the reign of George II, ed. Lord Holland (3 vols., 1846 edn), II, 333–53. For some idea of the credence given these rumours of foreign sponsored Jacobite intrigue see Horace Walpole's correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, eds. Lewis, W. S., Smith, W. H. and Lam, G. L. (11 vols., London 1960), IV, 363–89Google Scholar. The progress, complexity and ultimate failure of Jacobite ambitions in the early 1750s has been carefully reconstructed from the remaining solid evidence by Petrie, C., ‘The Elibank Plot 1752–3’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, series, 4, XIV (1931), 175–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Norton's, J. E. edition of The letters of Edward Gibbon (3 vols., London 1956), I, 402–7, provides a substantial account of the financial affairs and difficulties of Gibbon's father.Google Scholar
15 Sheffield's recollection of how Gibbon described the letter to him. E. Gibbon, The miscellaneous works of Edward Gibbon esq., ed. John, Lord Sheffield (2 vols., 1796), I, 46.
16 A biographical sketch of Pavillard appears in Read's, J. M.Historic studies in Vaud, Berne and Savoy, from Roman times to Voltaire, Rousseau and Gibbon (2 vols., London, 1897), II, 272–4.Google Scholar
17 Now preserved in ‘Miscellaneous papers of Edward Gibbon and John, Lord Sheffield’, Gibbon papers, British Library, Add. MSS 34887, fos. 106–13 v, 116–21 v.
18 Gibbon, Letters, ed. Norton, I, 3.
19 Draft B. ‘My own life’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874. fos. 36–6 v.
20 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 33 v.
21 Read, Historic studies, II, 325–48, provides a fair account of Gibbon's affair with Curchod, although Herold, J. C., in his life of Madame de Staël entitled Mistress to an age (London, 1759), pp. 10–22 ff., presents a thorough and quite perceptive account of a rather strange romance.Google Scholar
22 Album studiosorum Academiae Lausannensis (2 vols., Lausanne, 1937), II (1602–1837), n. 6384.Google Scholar
23 The definitive intellectual study of de Crousaz remains J. de la Harpe's Jean-Pierre de Crousaz et le conflit des idées au siècle des lumières (Geneva, 1955).Google Scholar
24 Examen de l’essai de m. Pope sur l’homme (Lausanne, 1737)Google Scholar and Commentaire sur le traduction en vers de m. l’abbé du Resnel de l’essai de M. Pope sur l’homme (Lausanne, 1738). English translation of the former by Elizabeth Carter in 1738, the latter by Samuel Johnson in 1742.Google Scholar
25 Gibbon, Misc. works, I, 45.
26 ‘Last will and testament of Edward Gibbon Esq.’, 1 Oct. 1791, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 347I5, fo. 15.
27 See Gibbon, , Memoirs of my life and writings, ed. Bonnard, G. A. (London 1966), p. xxviii.Google Scholar
28 Gibbon, Letters, III, 240.
29 Ibid., III, 264.
30 Ibid., III, 312.
31 Draft A: ‘The memoirs of the life of Edward Gibbon, with various observations and excursions by himself’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 6 v.
32 Gibbon, The misc. works, I, 1.
33 Recollection of Frederic Harrison, Autobiographic memoirs (2 vols., London, 1911), II, 94. Harrison was responsible for the Royal Historic society's 1894 Gibbon commemoration and for persuading the recluse third Earl of Sheffield to sell the Gibbon papers to the nation in late July 1895.Google Scholar
34 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. xxiv.
35 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. xxiv.
36 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 31 v.
37 Draft C: ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of Edward Gibbon’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 62 v. Not a great deal is known about Lewis. He was not John Lewis, as suggested by E. Hutton in ‘The conversion of Edward Gibbon’, but William Lewis, described by F. T. Wood in his ‘Notes on London booksellers 1700–50’, Notes and queries, s. 13. xi (1931), 188, as follows: ‘The publisher of the Essay on criticism. He was a noted Catholic bookseller in Convent Garden (see Disraeli's Quarrels and calamities of authors). According to his son, who died at Knightsbridge on August 7, 1802, he was at school with Pope. As early as 1708 he had a shop at the Dolphin in Russel Street and he lived to be one of the oldest booksellers in London’.
38 Draft D: ‘Without title’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 81.
39 Draft E: ‘My own life’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 87.
40 Draft F: ‘Without title’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 121. Gibbon's reluctance to go beyond hinting at the bookseller's identity (and perhaps his profession of ‘present ignorance’ of the priest's name and order) probably induced Sheffield to reproduce substantially the account of the affair which appeared in the second and the last draft in the first edition of The miscellaneous works (1796), without the additional information provided by the third draft. However, in the second edition of The misc. works (1814), Sheffield added this footnote: ‘His [the priest's] name was Baker, a Jesuit, and one of the chaplains of the Sardinian Ambassador. Mr Gibbon's conversion made some noise: and Mr Lewis was summoned before the Privy Council’. Bonnard notes this in his notes to the Memoirs, pp. 264–5. My examination of surviving documents in the Public Records Office in June, 1979 brought nothing to light; nor for that matter are there records of correspondence between the younger Lewis and Sheffield. (Again, see Bonnard, Memoirs, pp. 264–5.).
41 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.
42 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.
43 R. L. Poole, offprint of article ‘Gibbon's matriculation’ from The Oxford magazine (c. 1913?). Offprint signed and dated by author 7 Jan. 1914, Rare Book Collection, Australian National Library, Canberra.
44 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.
45 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.
46 Church, T., A vindication of the miraculous powers, which subsisted in the first three centuries of the Christian church (London, 1750)Google Scholar, and Dodwell, W., A free answer to Dr Middleton's free enquiry (London, 1749). See also Bonnard's note, Memoirs, p. 263.Google Scholar
47 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.
48 Ibid.. fo. 120 V.
49 Ibid.. fo. 120 v.
50 Ibid.. fo. 121.
51 Ibid.. fo. 30.
52 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 121 v. Bonnard, Memoirs, p. 265 suggests Gibbon has taken this phrase from Pierre Desmaizeaux's Life of William Chillingworth (London, 1725)Google Scholar, a work I have not been able to consult. Perhaps Desmaizeaux was in turn paraphrasing Chillingworth's ‘Additional discourse’ in The works of William Chillingworth D.D. (London, 1704 edn), p. 43.Google Scholar
53 Orr, R., Reason and authority: the thought of William Chillingworth (Oxford, 1967), p. 29. The motives underlying the divine's conversion are carefully treated, pp. 1–22 ff.Google Scholar
54 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 122.
55 See Heyd's, M. review article ‘A disguised atheist or a sincere Christian? The enigma of Pierre Bayle’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme el renaissance, xxxix, i (1977), 157–66.Google Scholar
56 A good example is his treatment of the emperor Constantine's character in chapter xviii of The decline and fall. See below.
57 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 122 v.
58 Ibid.. fo. 122 v.
59 Ibid.. fo. 31.
60 Gibbon, Memoirs, ed. Bonnard, p. 266.
61 Read, Historic studies, II, 281, a translation of the doyen Bridel's testimony as recorded by de Lalonde, B., in Le Léman, ou voyage pittoresque, historique et littéraire à Genève et dans le canton de Vaud (2 vols., Paris, 1856 edn), I, 28.Google Scholar
62 See Read, Historic studies, II, 281.
63 Douglas, S., The diaries of Sylvester Douglas, Lord Glenbervie, ed. Bickley, F. (2 vols., London 1927), I, 94.Google Scholar
64 Ibid.. I, 18–19.
65 Read, Historic studies, II, 286–7.
66 Ibid.. II, 7–8.
67 Ibid.. II, 417, 420–1.
68 Ibid.. II, 286.
69 Hayley, W., The life of George Romney esq. (Chichester, 1890), pp. 210–11.Google Scholar
70 ‘Think not my verse blindly to engage In rash defence of thy profaner page! Tho’ keen her spirit, her attachment fond, Bare service cannot suit with friendship's bond; Too firm from Duty's sacred path to turn, She breathes an honest sigh of deep concern. And pities Genius, when his wild career Gives faith a wound, or innocence a fear. Hayley, W., Essay on History (1780), ep. III, 371–8.Google Scholar
71 Read's translation of Gibbon to Deyverdun, 7 May 1776, in Historic studies, II, 320–1. Original French text appears in Gibbon, Letters, II, 104–8.Google Scholar
72 Gibbon, Letters, II, 320–1.
