GIBBON. 283 



of ignorance, of which, he ingenuously confesses, a school- 

 boy would have been ashamed. 



Being entered a gentleman-commoner of his College, 

 he at once from a boy was transformed into a man, in so 

 far as regarded the persons with whom he associated, 

 the respect with which he was treated, and the indepen- 

 dence which he enjoyed. The picture which he has left 

 us of the studies at that time pursued, the discipline of 

 the place, and the assiduity of the teachers, is very far 

 indeed from flattering. The account given by Adam 

 Smith, and which has been the subject of so much 

 ignorant, so much prejudiced, and, I fear we must add, 

 so much interested vituperation, is more than fully borne 

 out by Gibbon's testimony. Under Dr. Waldegrave, his 

 first tutor, he learnt little; but he delighted in that 

 reverend person's conversation. Under the successor, 

 whose name is charitably withheld, he learnt nothing; 

 paying the salary and only receiving a single lesson. 

 The sum of his obligations to the University is stated to 

 be the reading, without any commentary or explanation, 

 three or four plays of Terence in fourteen months of 

 academical study. Meanwhile his habits became irre- 

 gular and expensive, and no effort whatever was made to 

 prevent him from falling into idle and even vicious courses, 

 or to reclaim him after he had gone astray. No care 

 whatever was given to his religious instruction; and 

 as he always had a turn for controversial discussion, he 

 soon fell, thus abandoned, into a snare too often spread 

 for neglected youth, too easily effectual to their ruin. 

 The study of Middleton's 'Free Inquiry/ made him con- 

 found the Protestant with the Popish dogmas ; and, 

 induced by Mr. Molesworth, a friend who had embraced 



