Search -
Memoires of the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon, Esq
Memoires of the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon Esq Author:Edward Gibbon Subtitle: A Collection of the Most Instructive and Amusing Lives Ever Published, Written by the Parties Themselves : With Brief Introductions, and Compendious Sequels, Carrying on the Course of Events to the Death of Each Writer General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1827 Original Publisher: Hunt u. Clarke Notes: Thi... more »s is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The preceding Letters intimate that, in return for my visit to Lausanne in J791, Mr Gibbon engaged to pass a year with me in England; and that the war, which rendered travelling exceedingly inconvenient, especially to a person who, from bodily infirmities, required every accommodation, prevented his undertaking so formidable a journey at the time proposed. The call of friendship, however, was sufficient to make him overlook every personal consideration, when he thought his presence might prove a consolation. I must ever regard it as the most endearing proof of his sensibility, and of his possessing the true spirit of friendship, that after relinquishing the thought of his intended visit, he hastened to England, in spite of increasing impediments, to soothe me by the most generous sympathy, and to alleviate my domestic affliction: neither his great corpulency, nor his extraordinary bodily infirmities, nor any other consideration, could prevent him a moment from resolving on an undertaking that might have deterred the most active young man. With an alertness by no means natural to him, he almost immediately undertook a circuitous journey, along the frontiers of an enemy worse than savage, within the sound of their cannon, within the range of the light troops of the different armies, and through roads ruined by the enormous machinery of war. Th...« less