The Weird Little Figure Which Supported an Immense! and-Famous Intellect srtctaL 10 me Mtoe, MOULD"
Last Tuesday saw the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edward Gibson" "And directly the sentence read most. renders" will Ses MSnne Decline and Poll?" and quite prepared to leave it at that, and yet, Gibbon, with all his faults one of the finest historians that has ever been produced. Of course has since, been proved that all the conclusions which he drew in. his historical writing are not entirely correct, but in assessing the merit of the man, the material avallable and the "existing "methods of critical research have to be taken into ace count, and when that is done It has to be admitted that Gibbon was far in advance of any historical writer of his time, or the ages which hac preceded him, not Mecessary to deal with much of the life story of this remark-fable man, nor to dwell at any rear Jength upon his monumental achieve ments, though it might serve to consider the type of man he was and to watch how a great mind grew in an enfeebled body, and how a youth of als rly mental processes. became ton Probably the groatest marshaller of facts by Jhe time his manhood. was full upon hil He was @ delicate child, and in his youth his Life seemed to hang by Slender a thread that it was time time. again despaired of. His mother id little for him, domestic cares, infirm ities and "an occasional plunge Into fashionable dissipation seemed to have occupied all her time, and was cher spinster sister, Catherine Porten, who became the "rue mother of his mind as well as of his health." "Many" anxious and solitary days," wrote Gibbon, "did she consume with patient trial of every mode of relief Bnd" amusement. Many wakeful nights did she sit at my bedside in trembling expectation that each hour would be my last"
'There is a brief picture of her, in healthier moments, instructing him in the rudimentary arts of reading, welling and arithmetic, doing it all's gently that "were,' not the error corrected by analogy," he would have considered in later years. that hig ability In those subjects was innate, Away to the "Varsity his ninth year during," neid turned, and on his own confession his progress was slow and unsatisfactory. He was timid and reserved, while his kef strength and activity" di qualiged him Inthe sports feld. But acquired some knowledge of Latin syntax, "painfully construed and darkly' understood." "His maternal grandfather at Putney had him under fils caro and there he read voractous-Jy, accumulating large quantities of disjointed fact, which lumbered up his small brain, and. yet provided him with the jumping off place for the rear work he was ly to per isa fascinating picture in its sway, The weakling, having noth the nature of an organized educa-on, groping along the avenues of knowledge, garnering all kin facts for his enormous ragbag of a ind, until towards his sixteenth yeas Nature ceased to persecute him, Wile lad ug give Mi the Tae Solence of rude health, at least allowed him to boast afterwards that "tow persons have been so exempt from real or imaginary ills" And 480 at the age of 15 years we find him matriculating as a" gentleman commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford, Apeil 1782, arriving at the univer-ally, to quote his own words "with a stock of information which might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of Ignorance of which a schoolboy might be ashamed.
Ho disliked the University just a much as the University disliked him. He fell into gay courses, ciety because, it may be supposed," the University "did not give him the mental. fare of which he stood in heed. The defects in the system to which he subsequently referred, and ome' of which have only. recently been removed, have no. particular relevance in discussing Gibbon's case. He was just og unfitted for a varsity education, as the University was unsuited to him, "To: the University of Oxford," he says, "T acknowledge no obligation: and she will as cheerfully enounce me for a son as T am willing to disclaim her for a mother. fourteen months at Magdalen College; they Proved the fourteen "months the ost "idle and unprofitable of my whole lite And then he contracted religion. He was passing through those peculiar years of adolescence, years of strange Tancles and weird enthusiasms, And eventually he becomes converted to the Church of Rome, a fact which he announces to his dismayed father in eller, which Lord Shemteld described' as having "been "written with all the pomp, the dignity and self-sallstaction of a martyr." "He was a very human boy, and one of the forerunners of those youths of thirty" years ago who posed asthe nest holes of the "varsity, or the young men of to-day whose enthusiasms Tead them to take a vicarious interest in Communism, His father, furious at his son's {Juvenile aposiasy—an apostasy which not last, however, for Gibbon eventually" became" completely Irrellgious—sent him to Lausanne to study under a Calvinist minister, one Pavililard, who seems to have had much more good sense and tact than Gibbons father ever thought of hav= Ing, And so the young Edward goes to Lausanne, to a tutor who knew but English, while Gibbon. knew years later he contemplated writing "the Decline and Fall" in that gue.
Whaiever else Pavilliard brought to him, he certainly organized a dis ciplined system of reading, and the young man engaged upon a course of instruction which repaired the damage of former years and reduced to order 'a. mind which up to then knew noth~ Ing but disorder, amounting to cheos.
Tt Is stil the fault of even modern education. that it does not induce in every child a system of well ordered thinking. Indeed, with all the educa Monal systems there are in existence at the resent. time, well designed for achieving just that result, it is astonishing how much loose thinking there Is. amongst people who otherwise might be considered reasonably well educated,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.