variety of amusements and occupations, partly in the country, and partly in London, where, in conjunction with other travelers, he established a weekly convivial meeting, under the name of the Roman Club. Alluding to this period of life, he says, 'I lamented that, at the proper age, I had not embraced the lucrative pursuits of the law or of trade, the chances of civil office or India adventure, or even the fat slumbers of the church.' His regret at the want of a profession arose, in a great measure, from an apprehension of being left, in his old age, without a sufficient maintenance; a fear that acted as a stimulus to his subsequent exertions.
He had already-made some progress in a History of the Revolutions of Switzerland, and, in conjunction with his friend Mr. Deyverdun, had produced two volumes of a literary journal, entitled Memoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne. The former, however, he committed to the flames, before it was finished, and the latter met with little encouragement. His next performance was more successful; it was a masterly refutation of Warburton's hypothesis that Virgil's description of Æneas' descent into the shades was an allegorical representation of the hero's initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries. About two years after the death of his father, he sat down steadily to the composition of the first volume of his celebrated history. 'At the outset,' he says, 'all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era of the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narrative; and I was often tempted to cast away the labor of seven years;' and, again, 'three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably certain of their effect.' At length, in 1776, previously to which he had been returned to parliament for the borough of Liskeard, through the influence of his cousin, Mr. Eliot, appeared the first quarto volume of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was received with a burst of applause, and almost immediately reached a third edition; but the most gratifying result to its author was the spontaneous approbation of Hume and Robertson. 'My book,' says Gibbon, 'was on every table, and almost on every toilette.' The two chapters, however, in which revealed religion was impugned, gave rise to various attacks; but he only thought fit to reply to one, by Mr. Davis, who called in question 'not the faith, but the fidelity of the historian.'
In parliament, our author was a silent supporter of ministers, and was employed by them to compose, in the French language, a manifesto against that government, which was sent as a state paper to all the courts of Europe, under the title of Memoire Justificatif. For this service he was appointed one of the lords commissioners of trade and the plantations, but on the retirement of the North administration, his place being abolished, he meditated a retirement to Lausanne, for the purpose of completing his History. Previously to his departure from England, the second and third volumes had appeared in 1781, in which he tells us, 'his Ecclesiastical History still breathed the same spirit of freedom;' but, 'that his obstinate silence, with regard to former attacks, had damped the ardor of the polemics.' In 1783, he sold every thing but his library, and proceeded to Lausanne; where, in conjunction with his friend, Mr. Deyverdun, he took an elegant and beautifully situated house, and devoted himself to the composition of his History, and the pleasures of the society which the place
