to aay that such a succession of melancho- 
ds historian acknowledges, with grateful 
warmth, that even the maternal office was supplied by 
his aunt Mrs Catherine Porten, to whose gentle and un- 
remitted assiduities he does not hesitate to ascribe the 
screeners sar seepw acelin nang 
ter in a very amiable point of view. 
years of his death, he enjoyed an extraordin 
and uninterrupted course of health. In his pont A 
sery lessons, and at the day school at Putney, he shew- 
ed some quickness of apprahension, and such a readiness 
in arithmetical exercises, as leads him to ag that, 
had he persevered in such studies, he might have ac- 
quired eminence as a mathematician. At the age of se- 
ven, he was committed to the care of Mr Kirkby, a do- 
pore tutor, who ea with him eighteen months, 
id taught him, amo er things, elements of 
ve 5 "F Gibbon was sent in his 
ninth year to the mar school of Kingston-u 
Thames, where i Sua continued one among Secevtof 
boarders for two years, (with the exception of intervals 
occasioned by illness and vexations,) and from which 
he was removed home in uence of the death of 
his mother. As his grandfather Mr Porten’s house at 
Putney was near his father’s, he again enjoyed the so- 
ciety and kindness of his beloved aunt; and having ac- 
quired some taste for reading poetry and romance 
while at Kingston, she encou his taste, and sw 
plied him abundantly with books from her father’s li 
raty. Some months having thus elapsed, Mr Gibbon, 
senior, finding himself inconsolable for the death of his 
wife, removed from Putney, where every object was 
associated with afflicting remembrances; to the rustic 
and retired residence at Buriton, in Hamp- 
shire. Soon after, Mr Porten’s affairs fell into disorder, 
s0 that he judged it prudent to abscond for a time. Mr 
Porten’s unmarried daughter, Catherine, now found 
herself destitute, and ly with the design of being 
independent, but chiefly actuated by the motive of su- 
i ing her n 's education, and watching 
over his health, she resolved to open a boarding house 
for Westminster school ; and she and her young charge 
removed to her new house in College street, in Janua- 
ry 1749. In the autumn of 1750, she accompanied him 
to Bath; on account of his bad health, where her own 
avocations fini ime pelled her to leave him under the care of 
a faithful : 
After various changes of place, and the complete es- 
tablishment of his health, Gibbon was entered a 
man commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford, in April 
1752. At this ancient and far-famed seat of learning, 
he passed fourteen months, which, with bitterness of 
spirit, he declares to have been the most idle and un- 
le of his life. For this he does not blame himself, 
he declares he had now a keen appetite for know- 
ledge; but the relaxed discipline and customs of the 
university. He describes it as a place in which a 
man may keep terms, x Aa money, and acquire 
Bad fabits, hat ly unfit for stimulating genie to 
' exertion, or promoting the attainment of knowledge and 
which he 
some of the 
agent arenes ane reotiagg 
4 m was the . : 
“VOL, x. PART 1. 
GIBBON. 
comedies of Terence; and while he admits that some Gibbom 
265 
colleges may be better regulated than that to which 
he rs ie that many ones men have been edu- 
cated there, and that some practical improvements have 
been adopted since his time, ‘he still insists on the ne~ 
cessity, at the same time that he admits the difficulty of 
a great reformation. He even complains that his moral 
conduct, and religious instruction, were completely ne- 
glected; and that, without a single exhortation or lesson, 
e was left, by the dim light of his catechism, to grope 
his way to the chapel ee 2 communion table. His se- 
dentary. habits, atid infirm health in early life; had led 
him to indulge in desultory reading ; and though his 
father was a man of the world, who cared little about 
religious controversy, yet his pious aunt had taken 
pains to instruct him, and had encouraged him to ask 
questions and se objections, which she was not 
always well qualified to answer. At Oxford he read 
with avidity certain of the writings of Parsons the 
Jesuit, and of the learned and profound Bossuet, in de+ 
fence of the doctrines of the Catholic faith, and having 
formed an intimacy with a young man of the same col+ 
lege to which he belonged, who had imbibed opinions 
favourable to the Church of Rome, he actually became 
a proselyte, and with the zeal of a martyr he went to a 
Catholic priest in London, renounced the Protestant 
faith, and was admitted into the pale of the Romish 
church. 
He then wrote along letter to his father, explanatory 
of his new profession, and the’grounds of it. His fa« 
ther, equally indignant and amazed at the intelligence, 
somewhat imprudently spoke of his son’s change of re« 
ligion, and the gates of Magdalen College were thence« 
forth shut against him. This only added zeal to the 
faith of the young disciple, and his father, after much 
deliberation and sorrow, determined to exile him for 
some years from his vative country, and to fix him at 
Lausanne in Switzerland, under the roof of Mr Pavil- 
liard, a Calvinistic minister, in the hope that his errors 
would be corrected. Thither young Gibbon accord- 
ingly went, rejoicing that he was counted worthy to 
suffer for what he deemed the cause of truth. In his 
new situation, he enjoyed few of the comforts, and none 
of the luxuries to which he had been accustomed. His 
accommodation was mean, and the economy of the 
house by no means suited to the elegance of an English 
taste. et he soon became not merely reconci to, 
but even pleased with his situation. The conversation, 
the books, but above all, the kindness and confidence of 
his amiable host, promoted his intellectual improve- 
ment, and his happiness. His mind too was amply 
tified in its appetite for religious controversy ; and 
onsieur Pavilliard, who, in his letters to Mr Gibbon, 
senior, extols the progress of his pupil, informs him 
from time to time of the tenacity with which he held 
his opinions, and the obstinate perseverance with which 
he debated every point of his faith. At length the va« 
rious articles of the Romish creed vanished like a dream, 
and after full conviction, he was a communicant om 
Christnias day 1754, in the Presbyterian church of 
Lausanné. As this forms a most im: t part of Mr 
Gibbon’s life, and as it tends ht —_ i - on the sub« 
uent ticism which too ly is writings, 
we ave dete more fully on it than we should other- 
wise have done, The following oracular sentence con- 
tains the only allusion which he himself makes to its 
influence on his opinions. “ It was here that I sus~ 
pended my religious ‘inquiries, acquiescing with impli 
25 
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