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Gibbon's unfinished History: the French Revolution and English political vocabularies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

David Womersley
David Womersley
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Oxford
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Abstract

On Gibbon's death his papers contained an incomplete and unpublished essay on the genealogy of the European dynasty of which the British royal family was a branch, entitled The antiquities of the house of Brunswick. This article explains why Gibbon began this work, and why he laid it aside. Beginning by describing the nature and purpose of literature on Hanoverian genealogy in the earlier eighteenth century, and proceeding to relate the content of the Antiquities to the politics of Blackstone and Hume, the article identifies the Antiquities as a distinctively ancien régime defence of British political life and institutions which was elicited from Gibbon by the early months of the French revolution. The abandonment of the Antiquities is then explained as part of Gibbon's shocked response to the deepening gravity of events in France after the September massacres. In the polarized political atmosphere which ensued, the literary finesse of the Antiquities ran the risk of being confused with disaffection. That risk was increased when Gibbon and The decline and fall began to be used by radicals as auxiliaries in their attack on England's ancien régime. The textual history of the Antiquities allows us to perceive the rapidity with which the connotations and ownership of certain political vocabularies in England changed during the early 1790s.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 63 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

page 63 note 1 In the Memoirs: Peter Ghosh has attempted a reconstruction of Gibbon's actual ‘hesitant shuffle’ towards his subject (‘Gibbon's dark ages: some remarks on the genesis of The Decline and Fall ‘Journal of Roman Studies, LXXXIII (1983), 1–23)Google Scholar.

page 63 note 2 The autobiography of Edward Gibbon, ed. Murray, J. (1896), p. 170.Google Scholar

page 64 note 3 For an authoritative modern theory of the status of the remaining manuscript fragments, see Patricia , Craddock's comments in The English essays of Edward Gibbon, ed. Craddock, P. B. (Oxford, 1972). pp. 59497Google Scholar

page 64 note 4 For , Gibbon's brief comments on this enterprise, see The letters of Edward Gibbon, ed. Norton, J. E., 3 vols. (1956), III, 203, 211.Google ScholarEnglish essays, p. 400.

page 64 note 5 ‘La succession de la maison de Brunswick au trone de la Grande Bretagne sera très assurément la partie la plus intéressante de mon travail’ (Letters, III, 204).

page 64 note 6 The re-application of the phrase ‘French disease’ (for which Burke's Reflections is ‘a most admirable medicine’) is Gibbon's own (Letters, III, 216).

page 64 note 7 The phrase is , Bolingbroke's, and is taken from his Idea of a patriot king (Works, 8 vols., 1809, IV, 364)Google Scholar.

page 65 note 8 This whole question has been illuminated by the research of Jonathan Clark; see his English society 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 119–98,Google Scholar ‘The survival of the dynastic idiom, 1688–1760: an essay in the social history of ideas’.

page 65 note 9 Nelson, Gilbert, King GEORGEs right asserted (1717), pp. 25, 28–9.Google Scholar

page 65 note 10 Such as Defoe, Daniel, in his ironical pamphlet Reasons against the succession of the house of Hanooct (1713)Google Scholar; see especially sigs. Gv and Gar.

page 65 note 11 , Clark, English society, p. 132.Google Scholar On the propositional slipperiness - and consequent durability - of hereditary and divine right conviction (‘a quasi-religious act of allegiance which could not easily be dispensed with, any more than could a religious faith or an obligation of personal honour’), see p. I 43.

page 65 note 12 Sir Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the laws of England, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1770), I, 197.Google Scholar

page 65 note 13 Russell, Lord John, An essay on the history of the English government and constitution (1823), p. 212Google Scholar; quoted in , Clark, English society, p. 120, n.7Google Scholar.

page 65 note 14 John Toland, Anglia libera (1701), sig. G3V; An examine of the expediency of bringing over immediately the body of Hanoverian troops taken into our pay (1746), sig. Bv.

page 66 note 15 For the ridicule, see Defoe's Reasons against the succession of the house of Hanover, sigs. C2v-3r; for the re-definition, Toiand's Anglia libera, where we learn that ‘there is no Titl e equal to their [the people's] Approbation, which is the only divine Right of all Magistracy, for the Voice of the People is the Voice of God’ (sig. C5V).

page 66 note 16 Memoirs of the house of Hanover (1713), sig. A2v; Jones, David, The history of the most serene house of Brunswick-Lunenburgh (1975).Google Scholar sig A3r. Compare also A king and no king (1716), p. 8:Google Scholar ‘have we not a Prince on the Throne immediately descended from the Royal Blood of England (even the Line of the STUARTS) (if that be of such value to you) Great Grandson to King James the First, and great Nephew to King Charles I. just of the same Degree of Consanguinity with the late Queen of blessed memory; the next Protestant Prince of the whole World that is allied to us?’ Other examples may be found in works selling at a variety of prices from 3d to 25: An historical account of our present sovereign George-Lewis (1714), The glory of the protestant line, exemplified …in his most excellent MAJESTY, GEORGE (1714) and The whole life, birth and character of his most serene highness Geoge [sic] Lewis Elector of Hanover (n.d.).

page 66 note 17 King George's title asserted (1716).

page 66 note 18 It was this work of which George Ballantyne provided a partial, verbatim reprint in his A vindication of the hereditary right of his present majesty, King George II (1743)

page 66 note 19 ‘But wou'd not have it understood, that by the following Argument I insinuate, That the Supreme Divine Right of his late, and present Majesty King GEORGE the Second, and his Heirs to the Crown of Great-Britain, is principally founded upon their strict Hereditary Right to the Crown of England and Ireland: No, that is founded upon the Acts of the States and the Supreme Legislative Power of the Nation, in their settling the Crown upon the Princess Sophia, and her Heirs, being Protestants’ (sig. C2r).

page 66 note 20 Sig. B4 r

page 67 note 21 Sig. K2r. In Ballantyne's reprint the pamphlet's ironic strategy is made plain on its title page:‘a full Answer to all the Arguments of the NONJURORS,… in their OWN WAY, and upon their OWN PRINCIPLES.’

page 67 note 22 English loyalty opposed to Hanoverian ingratitude (1744), sig. A4.V.

page 67 note 23 The true and ancient hereditary right, sig. H r. Compare also ‘Thus I have shewn the Descent and Pedigree of this most Noble and Illustrious House, by which it is evident that we have the Promise of a Race of Virtuous Princes to Rule over us in their Posterity’ (Memoirs of the house of Hanover, sig. C3V). Other examples may be found in An examine of the expediency, sig. C4r; Toland, Anglia libera, sigs. F4r-v; Harris, J., Considerations on the birth-day of his most sacred majesty king GEORGE (1715), p. 29Google Scholar; Browne, J., An oration upon the king's happy arrival (1714), p. 7Google Scholar.

page 67 note 24 An ode presented to the king (1714), p. 4Google Scholar; A poem upon his majesties accession (1714), pp. 3, 4Google Scholar; Chapman, R., Britannia rediviva (1714), p. 10Google Scholar; The succession, p. 4.

page 67 note 25 Jones, sigs. A2v-3r.

page 67 note 26 Jones, sig. A2r-v.

page 68 note 27 Henry Rimius, Memoirs of the house of Brunswick (1750), pp. iii, 2.

page 68 note 28 The history of the Lutheran church, or, the religion of our present sovereign king George agreeable to the tenets of the church of England (1715), pp. 4–5;Google Scholar cf. also The glory of the royal protestant line, exemplified (1714) and The whole life, birth and character of his most serene highness Lewis, Geoge (n.d.), p. 7.Google Scholar

page 68 note 29 After Rimius the bibliography of Hanoverian genealogy runs as follows: Reid, William Hamilton, A concise history of the kingdom of Hanover, and of the house of Brunswick (1816)Google Scholar; Sir Halliday, Andrew, Annals of the house of Hanover (1826)Google Scholar; Thornton, P. M., The Brunswick accession (1887)Google Scholar.

page 68 note 30 Shebbeare, John, Utters on the English nation, 2 vols. (1755), I 22.Google Scholar The reasons for this shift have been explained by Clark, Jonathan (English society, pp. 50, 177. 184). It was noted by Gibbon who in his Memoirs commented that the tories had ‘insensibly’ transferred their loyalty to the house of HanoverGoogle Scholar (, Gibbon, Autobiography, p. 252).Google Scholar Over tea in 1773 Johnson, Samuel made essentially the same point:‘the family at present on the throne has now established as good a right as the former family, by the long consent of the people; and that to duturb this right might be considered as culpable’ (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Fleeman, J. D. (Oxford, 1976), p. 515)Google Scholar.

page 68 note 31 Almon, J., A review of the reign of George II (1762), pp. 258, 255.Google Scholar The popular foundations of the Hanoverian title are exposed in Almon's account of the central political transaction of the Glorious Revolution (p. 6): ‘they [the people] dethroned him [James II], and by declaring the throne vacant, excluded from hereditary right his infant son. The people appointed for his successor his eldest daughter Mary, who was married to the prince of Orange; but she declining to reign alone, and he to have any share in the government, unless invested with royalty for life, they were elected by the people king and queen.’

page 69 note 32 ‘After that defeat [of the Jacobites in 1745], the question of legitimacy was suddenly a non issue in British political thought; de facto and de iure merge after 1760’ (, Clark, English socuty, p. 50Google Scholar

page 69 note 33 , Gibbon, Autobiography, pp. 354–5.Google Scholar

page 69 note 34 , Rimius, Memoirs, p. 3.Google Scholar cf. also Jones, History, sigs. Br-v.

page 70 note 35 On images of royalty in the later eighteenth century, see Colley, Linda, ‘The apotheosis of George III: loyalty, royalty and the British nation 1760–1820’, Past and Present, CII, (1984), 94–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 70 note 36 , Gibbon, English essays, pp. 405–6.Google Scholar

page 70 note 37 , Gibbon, English essays, pp. 406–7.Google Scholar

page 70 note 38 This charge is frequently levelled at The decline and fall, most wittily by Porson: ‘nor does humanity ever slumber, unless when women are ravished, or the Christians persecuted’ (Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis (1790), p. xxviii). There are a number of echoes of the earlier work in Antiquities: Gibbon tells Langer that his interest in the house of Brunswick was kindled while working on The decline and fall (lettersGoogle Scholar, III, 204 and n. 7); and when Gibbon informs us that possesses ‘some experience of the way’ we can see him reminding us of the authority which has accrued to him as a result of writing The decline and fall (English essays, p. 404). But the different nature of the Antiquities means that features which the two works appear to share may not in fact be points of contact.

page 71 note 39 , Rimius, Memoirs, p. 25.Google Scholar

page 71 note 40 , Gibbon, English essays, pp. 468–9.Google Scholar

page 72 note 41 Cf. ‘even the claim of our legal descent must rest on a basis not perhaps sufficiently firm, the unspotted chastity of all our female progenitors’ (, Gibbon, Autobiography, p. 354)Google Scholar.

page 72 note 42 For instances of Gibbon's use of the characteristic vocabulary of genealogy, see English essays, pp. 399, 407, 420, 494.

page 72 note 43 , Gibbon, Autobiography, p. 8.Google Scholar Gibbon was composing his Memoirs at the same time as the Antiquities, and it seems that each work exerted an influence on the other.

page 72 note 44 , Gibbon, English essays, p. 493.Google Scholar Patricia Craddock considers this an early draft of the opening sentence, preferring die passage she prints on p. 398. Her arguments for doing so are to be found on pp. 595–97. The manuscripts furnish no conclusive evidence concerning priority, and so any argument will necessarily be internal and therefore probably inconclusive. That being so, I find that the balance of probability lies with this as Gibbon's final thought. In particular, the phrase ‘by the voice of a free people’ teems to me a careful, parliamentary revision of the earlier, simpler, less guarded and more popularly-elective ‘by a free people’. For comparison, see , Rimius, Memoirs, p. 439Google Scholar and The British hero (1715), pp. 36–7Google Scholar.

page 72 note 45 For , Gibbon on the sanction of ‘popular election’, see English essays, p. 429.Google Scholar

page 72 note 46 , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 190–1.Google Scholar Cf. , Gibbon, English essays, p. 67Google Scholar.

page 73 note 47 , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 212–13.Google Scholar

page 73 note 48 , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 191, 209.Google Scholar In 1765 , Gibbon pronounced divine right ‘an incomprehensible absurdity’ (English essays, p. 67)Google Scholar.

page 73 note 49 , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 195, 238, 336–7.Google Scholar This synthesis of Blackstone's commanded such wide assent, and was allowed to mediate to Englishmen the political content of their ‘Englishness’, because it drew so heavily on notions already long current, but never before brought together and expressed so acceptably: cf. e.g. Toland, Anglia libera, sigs. H7 r ff.; Certain propositions humbly offered to the consideration of a person presumed to think too favowrably of the present rebellion against KING GEORGE (1715), recto; The loyal church-man (1716); Nelson, Gilbert, King GEORGE'S right asserted (1717), pp. 25, 28–9;Google ScholarSomers, John, A brief history of the succession of the crown of England (1688/1689), P. 13Google Scholar.

page 73 note 50 For the dating of the notes on Blackstone, see , Gibbon, English essays, p. 558.Google Scholar Gibbon's library contained seventeenth- and earlier eighteenth-century works on the subject of monarchy, such as Hunton's, PhilipA treatise of monarchy (1680) andGoogle ScholarHarbin, George, The hereditary right of the crown of England asserted (1713)Google Scholar.

page 73 note 51 The decline and fall of the Roman empire, 6 vols. (1776–1788), I, 204–5:Google Scholar references to vol. I, are to the third, corrected edition of 1777. This is a very common position amongst eighteenth-century political men of letters: compare , Hume, ‘That politics may be reduced to a science’, Essays moral, political and literary, ed. Miller, E. F. (Indianapolis, 1985), p. 18Google Scholar; , Bolingbroke, The idea of a patriot king, Works, IV, 241Google Scholar; , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 192–3, 218Google Scholar; Belsham, W., Essays philosophical, historical and literary (1789), pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

page 73 note 52 Letters, III, 184. Compare The decline and fall, I, 72 with IV, 367–8; English essays, p. 520; , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 7Google Scholar; Toland, Anglia libera, sig. E5V.

page 73 note 53 The decline and fall, I, 11; compare , Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 33,Google ScholarJohnson, Samuel in Boswell's Life of Johnson, pp. 609–10, 621 andGoogle Scholar Toland, Anglia libera, sig. A4 v. For the origins of this principle, see Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, 1975), pp. 331–552Google Scholar

page 74 note 54 The pro-monarchical orientation of The decline and fall is visible, too, in small details of its interpretation. In the Esprit des loix Montesquieu had argued that in the Roman empire those at the centre had enjoyed liberty, while those in the provinces suffered tyranny. This view, full of implications damaging to monarchy, was later adopted by the radical Richard Price (Observations on the nature of civil liberty (1776), p. 29).Google Scholar Gibbon, however, reverses this, and argues that although the principate was liable to create tyranny, this was endured only by those at the centre, while the provinces enjoyed the benefits of stable government (The decline and fall, I, 166 and n.33: compare , Hume, Essays, p. 29Google Scholar and , Tacitus, Annals, I, 8)Google Scholar.

page 74 note 55 , Gibbon, Autobiography, pp. 314–15.Google Scholar It is noticeable that Gibbon gives this anecdote great emphasis.

page 74 note 56 It is this shortcoming which above all mars what is to date the only study of Gibbon's politics; Dickinson, H. T., ‘The politics of Edward Gibbon’, Literature and History, VIII, 4 (1978), 175–96Google Scholar

page 74 note 57 Consider Johnson's dinner table sally of 1777, that a poll amongst the nation would produce a majority for the Stuarts (‘the King who certainly has the hereditary right’), although no one would run any risk to restore the exiled family, because the English ‘have grown cold and indifferent upon the subject of loyalty’ (, Boswell, Life of Johnson, pp. 840–1)Google Scholar.

page 74 note 58 The decline and fall, IV, 354. Compare also his famous comment on Roman religion; ‘The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful’ (I, 34–5).Google Scholar English politics in the eighteenth century also required the endorsement of useful fictions.

page 74 note 59 Essays, p. 129. Compare , Shebbeare, Letters, II, 12–13.Google Scholar

page 74 note 60 A political survey of Britain, 2 vols. (1775), II, 559.Google Scholar

page 75 note 61 Letters, II, 398, n. 2.

page 75 note 62 Sheffield saw the Antiquities as one of the two major literary legacies of his friend (the other was the Memoirs); Miscellaneous works, 2 vols. (1796), I, xGoogle Scholar (‘Among the most splendid passages of that unfinished work may be enumerated the characters of Leibnitz and Muratori’).

page 75 note 63 ‘There is no sovereign, no illustrious House on Earth, whose memorable Actions Authors in different Ages have more endeavoured to preserve from Oblivion, than those of the Most Serene House of BRUNSWICK’ (, Rimius, Memoirs, p. 1)Google Scholar.

page 75 note 64 English essays, p. 400.

page 76 note 65 English essays, pp. 400, 401, 404; cf. also 506.

page 76 note 66 English essays, p. 411. Compare also ‘an epitaph on the dead may prove somewhat more than a panegyric on the living’ (English essays, p. 504).

page 76 note 67 English essays, p. 482.

page 76 note 68 We can therefore see the practised ironist of The decline and fall at work in the bland modesty of this disclaimer to Langer, ‘[suis] je en droit de supposer que mes ecrits puissent contribuer à son [that of the house of Brunswick] honneur?’ (Letters, III, 205). It was never Gibbon's intention to write a work of royal compliment.

page 76 note 69 English essays, p. 404.

page 76 note 70 English essays, pp. 403–4.

page 76 note 71 English essays, p. 403.

page 77 note 72 English essays, p. 493.

page 77 note 73 English essays, p. 420.

page 77 note 74 English essays, p. 404. ‘Gratitude’ is a term charged with political resonance in the context of Hanoverian literature. Opponents to the Hanoverian succession were regularly accused of ingratitude, particularly in the 1740s; see The advantages of the Hanover succession, and English ingratitude (1744) and English loyalty opposed to Hanoverian ingratitude (1744).

page 77 note 75 English essays, pp. 506, 507.

page 77 note 76 For examples, see English essays, p. 434 (‘The French… Gallic chiefs’.) and p. 492 (‘The government… command of the silver mines’.).

page 77 note 77 English essays, pp. 506, 507.

page 77 note 78 An address (English essays, p. 535). It was composed probably some time late in 1793 (Letters, III, 340–3).

page 77 note 79 English essays, p. 399. For an example of such a compliment, see p. 400.

page 77 note 80 English essays, p. 431. For examples of such reversals, see English essays, pp. 412,415,430, 447, 448, 452, 458–59, 485, 489, 527 (the Persian tale). One suspects that this attitude towards royal genealogy was common amongst an élite, hegemonic oligarchy for whom questions of genealogy would often bear an immediate legal and financial importance (see Cannon, John, Aristocratic century (Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Stone, L. and Stone, J. C. Fatier, An open elite? England 1540–1880, abridged edition (Oxford, 1986), pp. 66–91).Google Scholar That very practical utility might throw a contrasting light over the essential vanity of royal genealogy in a period when monarchical title was known to be essentially parliamentary: Anderson, James, author of Royal genealogies (1732),Google Scholar had no takers for his project of a similarly ostentatious handling of aristocratic genealogies (sig. av); and Hervey despised George II for his interest in genealogy (, Hervey, Memoirs, ed. Sedgwick, R. (1952), pp. 71, 74–5, 154)Google Scholar.

page 78 note 81 , Hume, Essays, p. 511.Google Scholar

page 78 note 82 There is evidence to suggest that Hume was in Gibbon's thoughts immediately before and at the time of writing the Antiquities, particularly in the various drafts of the Memoirs (composed probably between 1789 and 1793)- Beginning draft B Gibbon refers to ‘the philosophic Hume’ as one of his ‘masters’ in autobiography (Autobiography, p. 104). In draft E, having transcribed Hume's letter of congratulation on the publication of the first volume of The decline and fall, he notes that Hume died ‘the death of a Philosopher’ (Autobiography, p. 313) - an example perhaps present to his mind when he wrote to Sheffield that Deyverdun ‘beheld his approaching dissolution with the firmness of a philosopher’ (letters, III, 157).

page 78 note 83 He arrived in Lausanne on 27 Sept. 1783 (Letters, II, 372).

page 78 note 84 Letters, III, 11. For other references to the high society in which he moved, see Letters, III, 2, 9. IO, 17.

page 78 note 85 On the Fürstenbund see Blanning, T. C. W., ‘“That Horrid Electorate” or “Ma Patrie Germanique”? George III, Hanover and the Fürstenbund of 1785’, Historical Journal, XX (1977), 311–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 78 note 86 Letters, II, 284; see also, for Gibbon's awareness of the , Fürstenbund, Letters, III, 35. Blanning, P. 327Google Scholar.

page 79 note 87 Deyverdun's death was announced in a letter to Salomon de Sévery of 4 July, 1789 (Letters, III 156). Later in the same month, writing to Sheffield, he remarked on how he is eased by composition; ‘yet I am less unhappy, since I have thrown my mind upon paper’ (Letters, III, 165).

page 79 note 88 Letters, III, 164. For Gibbon's intellectual freedom, see Letters, III, 130–1.

page 79 note 89 Letters, III, 176 and 202–6.

page 79 note 90 Letters, III, 211.

page 79 note 91 Letters, III, 220, 242.

page 79 note 92 English essays, pp. 453 and 598 n. 33. The emperor could also conceivably be Joseph II.

page 79 note 93 Letters, III, 273.

page 79 note 94 Letters, III, 312.

page 80 note 95 Letters, III, 183–4; cf also 167. 171 and 176. By August 179a Gibbon wrote of that missed opportunity as a fact (Letters, III, 265).

page 80 note 96 Letters, III, 199.

page 80 note 97 Letters, III, 227.

page 80 note 98 See the very interesting letter of 12 Oct. 1790 to Jean David Levade, professor of theology and morals at the Seminaire of Lausanne: ‘Voici peut-etre l'example [sic] que vous cherchiez d'une revoltc à la fois juste et malheureuse, celle des Bohemiens (en 1618) contre la tyrannie civile et Ecclesiastique de la maison d'Autriche’ (Letters, III, 201).

page 80 note 99 Letters, III, 216.

page 80 note 100 For Gibbon's admiration for , Burke, see Letters, III, 210, 216, 243, 365Google Scholar (‘I passed a delightful day with Burke’). Letters, III, 216; cf. also 243.

page 81 note 101 The private Leters of Edward Gibbon, ed. Prothero, R. E., (hereafter Prothero) 2 vols. (1896), II 352Google Scholar

page 81 note 102 ‘I shall always remember with gratitude the friendly intentions of those who pushed me forwards into political life but I soon found by experience that it was a walk from whence I could derive neither benefit nor pleasure nor glory where it is not easy for a man of honour and delicacy to satisfy at the same time his public and his private connections,…’ (Letters, III, 19). For other, more openly disparaging remarks on English politics, see Letters, III, 12, 15, 21, 29.

page 81 note 103 Letters, III, 137–9.

page 81 note 104 Letters, III, 195. The coalition in question is that of 1783 between Fox and North.

page 81 note 105 Letters, III, 25.

page 81 note 106 ‘We are again spectators…’ (Letters, III, 306).

page 82 note 107 ‘Yet I am almost ashamed to complain or some stagnation of interest when I am witness to the natural and acquired philosophy of so many French who are reduced from riches not to indigence, but to absolute want and beggary. A Count d'Argout has just left us who possessed ten thousand a year in the Island of St Domingo, he is utterly burnt and ruined, and a brother whom he tenderly loved has been murdered by the Negroes’ (Letters, III, 240).

page 82 note 108 Letters, III, 265, 319.

page 82 note 109 Letters, III, 273, 275. Sheffield had informed Gibbon that ‘the late massacres are infinitely more execrable than any French or English paper have stated’ (Prothero, II, 322).

page 82 note 110 Letters, III, 277. Compare also Letters, III, 265, which suggests that Gibbon had felt this sense of separation from the known ways of the past in a milder form before September 1792.

page 82 note 111 Letters, III, 292.

page 82 note 112 Letters, III, 311. For Gibbon's earlier sanguine assumption (which had indeed been exemplified in the rest of his life) that the rhythm of private life was for the most part unaffected by public events, see The decline and fall, III, 640. For a similar expression, by , Johnson, see his False alarm (1770)Google Scholar in Political writings, ed. Greene, D. J. (New Haven, 1977), p. 334Google Scholar.

page 82 note 113 Prothero, II, 295.

page 82 note 114 Letters, III, 282, 276, 307, 287.

page 82 note 115 Letters, III, 299, 307.

page 83 note 116 Letters, III, 302–03.

page 83 note 117 Letters, III, 308, 325; cf. also 363, 310.

page 83 note 118 Prothero, II, 365.

page 83 note 119 letters, III, 4 and 145–6. Consider also his satisfaction in being able to indicate to Sheffield that he had received confidential insights into French politics from Necker (Letters, III, 10).

page 83 note 120 Letters, III, 199, 313, 350

page 83 note 121 Letters, III, 264, 285, 307, 313.

page 83 note 122 For his opposition to democracy, see Prothero, II, 253–4; for his denunciations of the French, Prothero, II, 307 (‘such execrable animals should be extirpated’); 321 (‘I consider the French affairs so far out of the line of common Politicks, that I wish the whole world to declare against them, and run them down as pestiferous wolves’); 364 (‘that torrent of evil which was pouring in upon us from France’).

page 83 note 123 Prothero, II, 320.

page 83 note 124 Prothero, II, 343. Sheffield's daughter had immediately before this written to Gibbon to say that ‘Papa…is more alarmed than ever I saw him’ (Prothero, II, 342).

page 83 note 125 Prothero, II, 351, 306.

page 84 note 126 Prothero, II, 305, 330. This could not be more clearly illustrated than in the conduct of the erstwhile allies, Fox, Sheridan and Burke in the House on 9 Feb. 1790 and 6 May 1791.

page 84 note 127 Prothero, II, 363. As examples of this one might cite the original support for, and subsequent opposition to, the revolution by, for instance, Richard Watson and Arthur Young.

page 84 note 128 Letters, III, 229–30.

page 84 note 129 Letters, III, 254, 311.

page 84 note 130 Letters, III, 257.

page 84 note 131 letters, III, 258; cf. also letters, III, 308.

page 84 note 132 Letters, III, 304, 325.

page 84 note 133 Letters, III, 261, 265, 321, 337.

page 84 note 134 Letters, III, 288 (cf. also 292, 298), 292, 311. The radical reading of Milton is most famously exemplified by Blake and Shelley. But it was shared by lesser figures: see, for instance, Pigott's, CharlesA political dictionary (1795),Google Scholar in which Milton is one of the pantheon of ‘true heroes’ who resisted ‘tyrannic power’ (p. 25). Gibbon was aware of Milton's actual politics. His library contained Toland's biography.

page 85 note 135 It is to be contrasted with what Lord Holland was to call ‘the childish love of Princes so prevalent in England’ amongst the lower orders (Colley, p. 94).

page 85 note 136 Letters, III, 20.

page 85 note 137 Letters, III, 136.

page 85 note 138 Letters, III 232.

page 85 note 139 Letters, III, 318.

page 85 note 140 Letters, III, 324–5.

page 85 note 141 Memoirs of the life of Sir Samuel Romoilly (1818), n, 300–1;Google Scholar quoted in Colley, p. 106.

page 86 note 142 Letters, III, 231.

page 86 note 143 The Brunswick manifesto (threatening Paris with total destruction unless the royal family were respected and protected) was signed at Coblentz on 25 July 1792. On 19 Aug. Brunswick crossed the frontier with Prussian forces, entering the Argonne forest on 8 Sept. The battle of Valmy (20 Sept.) put an end, for the time being, to hopes of a forcible re-establishment of the ancim régime.

page 86 note 144 Letters, III, 268, 269. This expectation was shared by those whose sympathies were on the other side: see Letters of William Wordsworth, ed. and sel. Hill, A. G. (Oxford, 1984), p. 11.Google Scholar No one thought that the French forces woul d be able to check, let alone defeat, the Prussian army.

page 86 note 145 Letters, III, 281, 283, 303. By April 1793 Brunswick was merely pitied as a failure (Letters, III. 5.

page 86 note 146 The decisive letter to Cadell is dated 28 Sept. 1792, eight days after the battle of Valmy (Letters, III, 273). It seems, however, to have taken Gibbon about ten days at the earliest to learn of even the most sensational events in France. For instance, he appears first to be aware of the murder of Mme de Lamballe on 12 Sept. 1792, ten days after its occurrence (Letters, III, 270).

page 86 note 147 The phrase is Sheffield's (Prothero, II, 365).

page 86 note 148 ‘A Lady’ [Miss Askew?], A review of the reigns ofGtorgt I. II. (Berwick, 1792), pp. vi–vii, 130–1.Google Scholar

page 87 note 149 Horsley, Samuel, Sermon… preached on 30 January 1793 (1793)Google ScholarWatson, Richard, Appendix to a sermon (1793),Google Scholar in Butler, Marilyn, ed., Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the revolution controversy (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 143, 147Google Scholar

page 87 note 150 For their response to the defeat of the duke of Brunswick, see Gerrald, Joseph, A convention the only means of saving usfrom ruin (1794), p. 23 andGoogle ScholarPigott, Charles, A political dictionary (1795), pp. 7, 74–5Google Scholar.

page 87 note 151 In March 1793 (Prothero, II, 374).

page 87 note 152 The correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. Copdand, T. W. et al., 10 vols. (Cambridge, 1958–1978), VII, 502 and n. 2.Google Scholar Gibbon's brush with Catholicism and the French connexions of his youth might also make him suspicious were they remembered in the 1790s, as also might his publishing the Essai sur l'étude de la litérature in French. It is interesting, in this context, that one of the aspects of his life that Gibbon is most at pains to stress in the Memoirs (which were of course composed at this time) is his firm Englishness.

page 87 note 153 Pigott, Charles, The jockey club (1792). P. 182 cf.Google ScholarLetters III 257–1

page 87 note 154 Essays, pp. 113–14; ‘On hereditary succession’.

page 88 note 155 Prothero, II, 368, n. 2 and Letters, III, 319, n. 4.

page 88 note 156 Another example or such appropriation is that of Adam Smith's Wealth of nations by Paine.

page 88 note 157 Thompson, E. P., The making ofthe English working class (Harmondsworth, 1980), pp. 96, 140.Google Scholar

page 88 note 158 Antipathy to royal show; , Pigott, Jockey club, pp. 2, 13:Google Scholar knowingness concerning royal fictions; , Genrald, Convention, p. 35:Google Scholar hostility to hereditary systems; , Pigott, Jockey club, passim, Political dictionary, p. 47,Google Scholar Wordsworth, ‘A letter to the bishop of LIandaff’: suspicion of German connexions; , Pigott, Political dictionary, p. 57, Sentiments on the interests of Great Britain (1787), article xii of the Address to the nation by the L.C.S.: merely parliamentary nature of monarchical tideGoogle Scholar; , Gerrald, Convention, pp. 39, 88–9,Google Scholar, Belsham, Memoirs of the kings of Great Britain, 2 vols. (1793), 87–8,Google ScholarEssays, p. 114. They are of course all to be found in part 2 of , Paine'sRights of man (1791)Google Scholar.

page 88 note 159 Common sense (1776), quoted in Thompson, p. 95: Prothero, II, 368.

page 89 note 160 The quotation is from Vindiciae gallicae (1791); Butler, p. 92.

page 89 note 161 Imitations of Horace, Ep. I. i, 1. 10. By 1796 the English oligarchic elite were sufficiently reassured (by the success of the associations and Pitt's repressive legislation, such as the Two Acts) that Sheffield could print the Antiquities in Gibbon's posthumous Miscellaneous works. And by he could even give presentation copies to George III and the duke of York (Norton, J. E., A bibliography of the works of Edward Gibbon (Oxford, 1940), p. 206)Google Scholar.