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Extracts From The Memoirs Of The Life And Writings Of Edward Gibbon, Esq.
to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius , of Marsham and Newton which I could seldom study in the orig inals ; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagmt with the Hebrew computation . I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition , that might have puzzled a doctor , and a degree of ignorance , of which a school-boy would have been ashamed . "
At fifteen years of age , our author went to Magdalen College , Oxford ; where he continued only fourteen months , being forced to quit it on account of his conversion to Popery . His strictures on the conduct and discipline of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge , are very severe ; and we are sorry to add , in some instances , too
true . " Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the fabulous and real antiquities of our sister universities , a question which has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among their fanatic sons . In the mean while it will be acknowledged , that these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of all the prejudices and infirmities of The schools of Oxford and Cambrid were founded in
age . ge a dark age of false and barbarous science ; and they are still tainted with the vices of their orig in . Their primitive discipline was adapted to the education of priests and monks ; and the government still remains in the hands of the clergy , an order of men whose manners are remote from the present world , and whose eyes are dazzled by the liht of hilosoph The legal incorporation of these societies
g p y . , by the charters of popes and kings , had g iven them a monopoly of the public instruction ; and the spirit of monopolists is narrow , lazy , and oppressive : their work is more costly and less productive than that of independent artists ; and the new improvements , so eagerly grasped by the competition of freedom , are admitted with slow and sullen reluctance in those proud corporations , above the fear of a scarcel
rival , and below the confession of an error . We may y hope that ' any reformation will be a voluntary act ; and so deeply are they rooted in law and prejudice , that even the omnipotence of parliament would shrink from an inquiry into the state and abuses of the two universities . " Gibbon is successful in the vindication of his character
Mr . very ' from that inconstancy , which has been charged upon it by his ene mies , in his early conversion to the Church of Rome : for when he abjured the " errors of heresy , " he could not be more than sixteen years old : a period when the human mind is very liable to error in
relig ious matters . ' " For my own part ( says he ) I am proud of an honest sacrifice of interest to conscience . I can never blush , if my tender mind was entangled in the sop histry that seduced the acute and manly understandings of CHILLINGWORTH and BAYLE , who afterwards emerged from superstition to scepticism . " ( TO BE CONTINUED . )
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.
to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius , of Marsham and Newton which I could seldom study in the orig inals ; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagmt with the Hebrew computation . I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition , that might have puzzled a doctor , and a degree of ignorance , of which a school-boy would have been ashamed . "
At fifteen years of age , our author went to Magdalen College , Oxford ; where he continued only fourteen months , being forced to quit it on account of his conversion to Popery . His strictures on the conduct and discipline of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge , are very severe ; and we are sorry to add , in some instances , too
true . " Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the fabulous and real antiquities of our sister universities , a question which has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among their fanatic sons . In the mean while it will be acknowledged , that these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of all the prejudices and infirmities of The schools of Oxford and Cambrid were founded in
age . ge a dark age of false and barbarous science ; and they are still tainted with the vices of their orig in . Their primitive discipline was adapted to the education of priests and monks ; and the government still remains in the hands of the clergy , an order of men whose manners are remote from the present world , and whose eyes are dazzled by the liht of hilosoph The legal incorporation of these societies
g p y . , by the charters of popes and kings , had g iven them a monopoly of the public instruction ; and the spirit of monopolists is narrow , lazy , and oppressive : their work is more costly and less productive than that of independent artists ; and the new improvements , so eagerly grasped by the competition of freedom , are admitted with slow and sullen reluctance in those proud corporations , above the fear of a scarcel
rival , and below the confession of an error . We may y hope that ' any reformation will be a voluntary act ; and so deeply are they rooted in law and prejudice , that even the omnipotence of parliament would shrink from an inquiry into the state and abuses of the two universities . " Gibbon is successful in the vindication of his character
Mr . very ' from that inconstancy , which has been charged upon it by his ene mies , in his early conversion to the Church of Rome : for when he abjured the " errors of heresy , " he could not be more than sixteen years old : a period when the human mind is very liable to error in
relig ious matters . ' " For my own part ( says he ) I am proud of an honest sacrifice of interest to conscience . I can never blush , if my tender mind was entangled in the sop histry that seduced the acute and manly understandings of CHILLINGWORTH and BAYLE , who afterwards emerged from superstition to scepticism . " ( TO BE CONTINUED . )