how he had the misfortune to offend him. Burke appeared very reluctant to speak, but, after a good deal of pressing, said 'that he was really ashamed to keep up an intimacy with one who could be guilty of such monstrous indiscretions as Goldsmith had just exhibited in the square.' Goldsmith, with great earnestness, protested he was unconscious of what was meant. 'Why,' said Burke, 'did you not exclaim, as you were looking up at those women, What stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring with such admiration at those painted Jezebels, while a man of my talents passes by unnoticed?' Goldsmith was horror-struck, and said, 'Surely, surely, my dear friend, I did not say so.' 'Nay,' replied Burke, 'If you had not said so, how should I have known it?' 'That's true,' answered Goldsmith, with great humility: 'I am very sorry; it was very foolish: I do recollect that something of that kind passed through my mind, but I did not think I had uttered it.'
EDWARD GIBBON.
This celebrated historian, the son of a gentleman who for some time represented
the borough of Petersfield in parliament, was born at Putney, on
the 27th of April, 1737. After having received the elements of instruction
at a day school, and under a private tutor, he was, in 1746, sent to an
academy at Kingston-upon-Thames; and from thence, in 1748, to Westminster,
where he entered the school, and resided in a boarding-house kept
by his aunt. His delicate health soon occasioned his removal from Westminster
school, though he subsequently attempted to renew his attendance
there, after having passed some time at Bath and Winchester, by the advice
of his physicians. In his fifteenth year, he was placed under the care
of the Rev. Mr. Philip Francis, the translator of Horace: and, on the 3d
of April, 1752, he was matriculated as a gentleman commoner of Magdalen
College, Oxford. Here, according to his own account, 'he spent fourteen
months, the most unprofitable of his whole life,' and appears to have been
conspicuous only for his dissipation and extravagance. Such a mode of
passing his time he attributes less to his own inclination, than to the negligence
of his tutors, whom he charges with recommending no plan of study
for his use, and prescribing no exercises for his inspection. 'I was not,'
he says, 'devoid of capacity or application;' and insinuates that he might
have arrived at academical distinction, 'in the discipline of a well-constituted
university, under the guidance of skillful and vigilant professors.'
His departure from Oxford was hastened by his adoption of the catholic faith, his conversion to which he attributed to a perusal of Bossuet's Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine, and the History of the Protestant Variations. At a future period he observes: 'To my present feelings, it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation. But my conqueror oppressed me with the sacramental words, "this is my body;" and dashed against each other the figurative half-meanings of the protestant sects. Every objection was resolved into omnipotence; and, after repeating, at St. Mary's, the Athanasian creed, I humbly acquiesced in the mystery of the real presence.' On his arrival in London, he introduced himself to a priest, renounced the protestant, and was admitted a member of the Romish church, in June, 1753. His father was highly indignant at his religious conversion, and sent him, in consequence, to Lausanne in
