GIBBON. 285 



during five of the most important years of his life. In 

 the Latin Classics he made a great and easy progress ; he 

 began the study of the Greek; he learned the outlines 

 of general knowledge, and as much of natural science as 

 he ever had any taste or capacity to master. His active 

 mind had even entered into speculations connected with 

 literary subjects; and he corresponded with Crevier, 

 Gesner, and other men of letters, on points connected 

 with the higher departments of classical learning. French 

 literature occupied naturally a considerable share of his 

 attention in a country where that language alone was 

 spoken, and where Voltaire resided. At the private 

 theatre of the patriarch he was a frequent attendant, 

 and heard the poet declaim his own fine verse ; but he 

 confesses that he was never distinguished in the number 

 of the admirers who crowded those assemblies, or in the 

 more select circle which frequented the hospitable table 

 of the great poet. 



Beside his study of the Classics and of the French 

 authors, he exercised himself in composition, and ac- 

 quired great facility both in writing English and French, 

 and even Latin, by translating and retranslating from 

 the three languages. But the chief portion of his time 

 was devoted to a careful perusal of the great Latin 

 authors, all of whom he most diligently examined with 

 the aid of their commentators, and all of whom he 

 abstracted generally in his journal. After carefully 

 going through Cicero's whole works with the variorum 

 notes of Verburgius's folio edition, he completed the other 

 and more laborious branch of this extensive plan during 

 the last twenty-seven months of his residence at Lau- 

 sanne. There is hardly upon record so diligent a pre- 



