Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Extracts From The Memoirs Of The Life And Writings Of Edward Gibbon, Esq.
tonans , to as many at least as were accessible to an English reader . All that I could find were greedily devoured , from Littlebury ' s lame Herodotus , and Spelman ' s valuable Xenophon , to the pempous folios of Gordon ' s Tacitus , and a ragged Procopius of the beginning of the last century . The cheap acquisition of so much knowledge confirmed my dislike to the stud y of languages ; and I argued with Mrs . Portenthatwere ! master of Greek and LatinI must
inter-, , , pret to myself in English the thoughts of the ori ginal , and that such extemporary versions must be inferior to the elaborate translations of professed scholars ; a sill y sophism , which could not easily be confuted by a person ignorant of any other language than her own . From the ancient I leaped to the modern world : many crude lumps of SpeedRapinMezerayDavilaMachiavelFather PaulBower
, , , , , , , & c . I devoured like so many novels ; and I swallowed ' with the same voracious appetite the descriptions of India" and China , of Mexico and Peru . " My first introduction to the historic scenes , which have since engaged so many years of my life , must be ascribed to an accident . In the summer of 1751 I accompanied father visit to Mr
, my on a . Hoare ' s , in Wiltshire ; but I was less delighted with the beauties of Stourhead , than with discovering in the library a common book , the Continuation of Echard ' s Roman History , which is indeed executed with more skill and taste than the previous work . To me the reigns of the
successors of Constantine were absolutely new ; and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube , when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantl y dragged me ftom my intellectual feast . This transient glance served rather to irritate than to appease my curiosity ; and as soon as I returned to Bath , I procured the second and third volumes of Howel ' s History of the World , which exhibit the
Byzantine period on a larger scale . Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention ; arid some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources . Simon Ockley , an original in every sense , first opened my eyes ; and I was led from one book to another , till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental history . Before I was sixteen , I had exhausted all that could be learned in
English of the Arabs and Persians , the Tartars and Turks '; and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot , and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock ' s Abulfaragius . Such vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think , to write , or to act ; and the only principle , that darted a ray of li ght into the indigested chaos , was an early and rational application to the order of time and laceThe
p . maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography ; - from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology ; the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson , ihe Annals of Usher and Prideaux , distinguished the connection of events , and engraved the multitude of names ancl dates in a clear and indelible series . But in the discussion of the first ages , I overleaped we bounds of modesty and use . In my childish balance I presumed
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Extracts From The Memoirs Of The Life And Writings Of Edward Gibbon, Esq.
tonans , to as many at least as were accessible to an English reader . All that I could find were greedily devoured , from Littlebury ' s lame Herodotus , and Spelman ' s valuable Xenophon , to the pempous folios of Gordon ' s Tacitus , and a ragged Procopius of the beginning of the last century . The cheap acquisition of so much knowledge confirmed my dislike to the stud y of languages ; and I argued with Mrs . Portenthatwere ! master of Greek and LatinI must
inter-, , , pret to myself in English the thoughts of the ori ginal , and that such extemporary versions must be inferior to the elaborate translations of professed scholars ; a sill y sophism , which could not easily be confuted by a person ignorant of any other language than her own . From the ancient I leaped to the modern world : many crude lumps of SpeedRapinMezerayDavilaMachiavelFather PaulBower
, , , , , , , & c . I devoured like so many novels ; and I swallowed ' with the same voracious appetite the descriptions of India" and China , of Mexico and Peru . " My first introduction to the historic scenes , which have since engaged so many years of my life , must be ascribed to an accident . In the summer of 1751 I accompanied father visit to Mr
, my on a . Hoare ' s , in Wiltshire ; but I was less delighted with the beauties of Stourhead , than with discovering in the library a common book , the Continuation of Echard ' s Roman History , which is indeed executed with more skill and taste than the previous work . To me the reigns of the
successors of Constantine were absolutely new ; and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube , when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantl y dragged me ftom my intellectual feast . This transient glance served rather to irritate than to appease my curiosity ; and as soon as I returned to Bath , I procured the second and third volumes of Howel ' s History of the World , which exhibit the
Byzantine period on a larger scale . Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention ; arid some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources . Simon Ockley , an original in every sense , first opened my eyes ; and I was led from one book to another , till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental history . Before I was sixteen , I had exhausted all that could be learned in
English of the Arabs and Persians , the Tartars and Turks '; and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot , and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock ' s Abulfaragius . Such vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think , to write , or to act ; and the only principle , that darted a ray of li ght into the indigested chaos , was an early and rational application to the order of time and laceThe
p . maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography ; - from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology ; the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson , ihe Annals of Usher and Prideaux , distinguished the connection of events , and engraved the multitude of names ancl dates in a clear and indelible series . But in the discussion of the first ages , I overleaped we bounds of modesty and use . In my childish balance I presumed