294 GIBBON. 



1780, and he also had the good taste to cultivate the 

 society of abler and more lettered men, in consequence 

 probably of his intimacy with Gibbon, who, during the 

 twenty years of his life passed in England after his 

 return from Italy, was domesticated in the Holroyd 

 family. He was also returned to Parliament by Bris- 

 tol, after Burke's opposition to the American war had 

 caused his rejection by that city; and having mar- 

 ried one of Lord North's amiable and gifted daughters, 

 he supported the measures of that able, though unfor- 

 tunate statesman, and was by him raised to the Irish 

 peerage. Whatever may have been his deficiencies as a 

 political writer, in his personal and domestic character he 

 was blameless ; and the constancy of his attachment to 

 his celebrated friend was a source of comfort and of 

 credit to both. 



On his return in June, 1765, Gibbon resumed the 

 domestic relations which his travels had only interrupted, 

 and found great satisfaction in the friendship of his own 

 family, especially of his step-mother, an amiable, kindly, 

 and sensible woman. His only real business, however, 

 was the yearly attendance on his militia regiment, in 

 which he rose successively to the rank of Major and 

 Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant. But though this occu- 

 pation only lasted a month, he found it became intoler- 

 able, and in 1770 resigned his commission. He describes 

 these five years between his return and his father's death, 

 which happened soon after his resignation, as the most 

 irksome of his life. And the void which he felt from 

 want of regular and professional employment, he has 

 described in such a way, that the record thus left ought for 

 ever to deter men from embracing a merely literary life, 



