



Produced by P. J. Riddick






MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS

By Edward Gibbon



In the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an
arduous and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of
my leisure in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and
literary life.  Truth, naked unblushing truth, the first virtue of
more serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this
personal narrative.  The style shall be simple and familiar; but
style is the image of character; and the habits of correct writing
may produce, without labour or design, the appearance of art and
study.  My own amusement is my motive, and will be my reward: and if
these sheets are communicated to some discreet and indulgent
friends, they will be secreted from the public eye till the author
shall be removed beyond the reach of criticism or ridicule.

A lively desire of knowing and of recording our ancestors so
generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some
common principle in the minds of men.  We seem to have lived in the
persons of our forefathers; it is the labour and reward of vanity to
extend the term of this ideal longevity.  Our imagination is always
active to enlarge the narrow circle in which Nature has confined us.
Fifty or an hundred years may be allotted to an individual, but we
step forward beyond death with such hopes as religion and philosophy
will suggest; and we fill up the silent vacancy that precedes our
birth, by associating ourselves to the authors of our existence.
Our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate, than to suppress,
the pride of an ancient and worthy race.  The satirist may laugh,
the philosopher may preach; but Reason herself will respect the
prejudices and habits, which have been consecrated by the experience
of mankind.

Wherever the distinction of birth is allowed to form a superior
order in the state, education and example should always, and will
often, produce among them a dignity of sentiment and propriety of
conduct, which is guarded from dishonour by their own and the public
esteem.  If we read of some illustrious line so ancient that it has
no beginning, so worthy that it ought to have no end, we sympathize
in its various fortunes; nor can we blame the generous enthusiasm,
or even the harmless vanity, of those who are allied to the honours
of its name.  For my own part, could I draw my pedigree from a
general, a statesman, or a celebrated author, I should study their
lives with the diligence of filial love.  In the investigation of
past events, our curiosity is stimulated by the immediate or
indirect reference to ourselves; but in the estimate of honour we
should learn to value the gifts of Nature above those of Fortune; to
esteem in our ancestors the qualities that best promote the
interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less
truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings
will instruct or delight the latest posterity.  The family of
Confucius is, in my opinion, the most illustrious in the world.
After a painful ascent of eight or ten centuries, our barons and
princes of Europe are lost in the darkness of the middle ages; but,
in the vast equality of the empire of China, the posterity of
Confucius have maintained, above two thousand two hundred years,
their peaceful honours and perpetual succession.  The chief of the
family is still revered, by the sovereign and the people, as the
lively image of the wisest of mankind.  The nobility of the Spencers
has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough;
but I exhort them to consider the "Fairy Queen" as the most precious
jewel of their coronet.  I have exposed my private feelings, as I
shall always do, without scruple or reserve.  That these sentiments
are just, or at least natural, I am inclined to believe, since I do
not feel myself interested in the cause; for I can derive from my
ancestors neither glory nor shame.

Yet a sincere and simple narrative of my own life may amuse some of
my leisure hours; but it will subject me, and perhaps with justice,
to the imputation of vanity.  I may judge, however, from the
experience both of past and of the present times, that the public
are always curious to know the men, who have left behind them any
image of their minds: the most scanty accounts of such men are
compiled with diligence, and perused with eagerness; and the student
of every class may derive a lesson, or an example, from the lives
most similar to his own.  My name may hereafter be placed among the
thousand articles of a Biographic Britannica; and I must be
conscious, that no one is so well qualified, as myself, to describe
the series of my thoughts and actions.  The authority of my masters,
of the grave Thuanus, and the philosophic Hume, might be sufficient
to justify my design; but it would not be difficult to produce a
long list of ancients and moderns, who, in various forms, have
exhibited their own portraits.  Such portraits are often the most
interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their
writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the
minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials.  The lives of
the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the
epistles, which they themselves have given to the world.  The essays
of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and
bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt at the headstrong
passions of Benevenuto Cellini, and the gay follies of Colley
Cibber.