308 GIBBON. 



election, gave him two days of his free and private 

 society." From ten in the morning to ten at night they 

 passed their time together. The conversation never 

 flagged for a moment; there was little of politics in it, 

 but he gave such a character of Pitt as one great man 

 should give of another, his rival. Of books they talked 

 much, from the History to Homer and the 'Arabian 

 Nights ;' much about the country and about " my garden/ 7 

 says Gibbon, " which he understands far better than I do." 

 Let us dwell on the picture he has sketched with truth 

 of one of the most amiable of great men : " He seemed 

 to feel and to envy the happiness of my situation, while 

 I admired the powers of a superior man, as they are 

 blended in his attractive character with the softness and 

 simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was 

 ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevo- 

 lence, vanity, or falsehood."'* 



This sketch, which adorns the * Life', is shaded by a 

 dark touch or two in the ' Correspondence/ He cries out 

 loudly against the female accompaniment of the great 

 statesman's travels ; asks if Fox will never learn the im- 

 portance of character, and, strangely enough, contrasts 

 him with his other friend of lesser fame certainly, though 



* The likeness would be improved by substituting pride for 

 vanity, but still more by leaving both substantives out. It was 

 the saying of Fox himself, that "praise was good for the Fox 

 family ;" but such portion of this weakness as he had was of a very 

 harmless, inoffensive, even amiable cast. Another littleness of the 

 kind was his great love of great people, agreeably to the aristocratic 

 propensities of Whigs. He would speak amusingly enough of " my 

 friend the Duke of this," and " my friend Lord John that," when 

 designating persons whose title to the distinction rested on their 

 place in the peerage almost alone. 



