GIBBON. 297 



tutor to his successor, the late Earl ; and when a third 

 volume was nearly ready for publication he went abroad 

 with the care of Sir Richard Worsley, and did not return 

 till after the death of Gibbon's father. 



A third work also bears date in the same period of 

 listlessness and discontent. It was an answer to War- 

 burton's dream respecting the Sixth Book of the ^neid ; 

 and though tinged with a bitterness of spirit to which no 

 anonymous writer should give way, all competent judges 

 have admitted the victory over insolent and dogmatic 

 paradox to have been complete. This was his first pub- 

 lication in his native tongue, and, except his contributions 

 to the periodical work, it was his only appearance through 

 the press during the fifteen years that had elapsed since 

 his Essay came out. 



Thus there was no want of either study or literary 

 labour to diversify the learned leisure which yet he found 

 so irksome. The contrast is surpassingly remarkable, 

 which his description presents to the account which 

 D'Alernbert has left us, of the calm pleasures enjoyed by 

 him as long as he confined himself to geometrical pur- 

 suits. Shall we ascribe this diversity to the variety of 

 individual character and tastes; or to the difference in 

 the nature of those literary occupations ; or finally to the 

 peculiarities of French society, affording, as it does, daily 

 occupation too easy to weary, and pleasing relaxation too 

 temperate to cloy ? Perhaps partly to each of the three 

 causes, but most of all to the absorbing nature of the 

 geometrician's studies. It seems certain, however, that 

 no life of mere literary indulgence, of study unmingled 

 with exertion, and with continued, regular exertion, can 

 ever be passed in tolerable contentment; and that if the 

 student has not a regular, and, as it were, a professional 



