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The aspect of the next session of parliament was stormy and perilous; county meetings, petitions, and committees of correspondence, announced the public discontent; and instead of voting with a triumphant majority, the friends of government were often exposed to a struggle, and sometimes to a defeat. The house of Commons adopted Mr Dunning's motion, "That the influence of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished:" and Mr Burke's bill of reform was framed with skill, introduced with eloquence, and supported by numbers. Our late president, the American secretary of state, very narrowly escaped the sentence of proscription; but the unfortunate Board of Trade was abolished in the committee by a small majority (207 to 199) of eight votes. The storm, however, blew over for a time a large defection of country gentlemen eluded the sanguine hopes of the patriots: the lords of Trade were revived; administration recovered their strength and spirit; and the flames of London, which were kindled by a mischievous madman, admonished all thinking men of the danger of an appeal to the people. In the premature dissolution which followed this session of parliament I lost my seat. Mr Elliot was now deeply engaged in the measures of opposition, and the electors of Liskeard" are commonly of the same opinion as Mr Elliot.

In this interval of my senatorial life, I published

distress. My attempts to dispose of a part of my landed property have hitherto been disappointed, and are not likely at present to be more successful; and my plan of expense, though moderate in itself, deserves the name of extravagance, since it exceeds my real income. The addition of the salary which is now offered will make my situation perfectly easy; but I hope you will do me the justice to believe that my mind could not be so, unless I were satisfied of the rectitude of my own conduct.

*The borough which Mr Gibbon had represented in parliament.

the second and third volumes of the Decline and Fall My ecclesiastical history still breathed the same spirit of freedom; but Protestant zeal is more indifferent to the characters and controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. My obstinate silence had damped the ardour of the polemics. Dr Watson, the most candid of my adversaries, assured me that he had no thoughts of renewing the attack; and my impartial balance of the virtues and vices of Julian was generally praised. This truce was interrupted only by some animadversions of the Catholics of Italy, and by some angry letters from Mr Travis, who made me personally responsible for condemning, with the best critics, the spurious text of the three heavenly wit

nesses.

The piety or prudence of my Italian translator has provided an antidote against the poison of his original. The fifth and seventh volumes are armed with five letters from an anonymous divine to his friends, Foothead and Kirk, two English students at Rome; and this meritorious service is commended by monsignor Stonor, a prelate of the same nation, who discovers much venom in the fluid and nervous style of Gibbon. The critical essay at the end of the third volume was furnished by the abbate Nicola Spedalieri, whose zeal has gradually swelled to a more solid confutation in two quarto volumes.-Shall I be excused for not having read them?

The brutal insolence of Mr Travis's challenge can only be excused by the absence of learning, judgment, and humanity; and to that excuse he has the fairest or foulest pretension. Compared with archdeacon Travis, Chelsum and Davies assume the title of respectable enemies.

The bigoted advocate of popes and monks may be turned over even to the bigots of Oxford; and the wretched Travis still smarts under the lash of the merciless Porson. I consider Mr Porson's answer to archdeacon Travis as the most acute and accurate

piece of criticism which has appeared since the days of Bentley. His strictures are founded in argument, enriched with learning, and enlivened with wit; and his adversary neither deserves nor finds any quarter at his hands. The evidence of the three heavenly witnesses would now be rejected in any court of justice but prejudice is blind, authority is deaf, and our vulgar bibles will ever be polluted by this spurious text: "sedet æternumque sedebit." The more learned ecclesiastics will indeed have the secret satisfaction of reprobating in the closet what they read in the church.

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I perceived, and without surprise, the coldness and even prejudice of the town; nor could a whisper escape my ear, that, in the judgment of many readers, my continuation was much inferior to the original attempts. An author who cannot ascend will always appear to sink: envy was now prepared for my reception; and the zeal of my religious was fortified by the malice of my political enemies. Bishop Newton, in writing his own life, was at full liberty to declare how much he himself and two eminent brethren were disgusted by Mr Gibbon's prolixity, tediousness, and affectation. But the old man should not have indulged his zeal in a false and feeble charge against the historian who had faithfully and even cautiously ren

* Extract from Mr GIBBON's Common place Book. Thomas Newton, bishop of Bristol and dean of St Paul's, was born at Lichfield on the 21st of December 1703, O. S. (1st January 1704, N. S.) and died the 14th of February 1782, in the 79th year of his age. A few days before his death he finished the memoirs of his own life, which have been prefixed to an edition of his posthumous works, first published in quarto, and since (1787) re-published in six volumes octavo.

Pp. 173, 174. "Some books were published in 1781, which employed some of the bishop's leisure hours, and during his illness. Mr Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' he read throughout; but it by no means

U

dered Dr Burnet's meaning by the alternative of sleep or repose. That philosophic divine supposes

answered his expectations, for he found it rather a prolix and tedious performance; his matter uninteresting, and his style affected; his testimonies not to be depended upon, and his frequent scoffs at religion offensive to every sober mind. He had before been convicted of making false quo. tations, which should have taught him more prudence and caution. But, without examining his authorities, there is one which must necessarily strike every man who has read Dr Burnet's treatise de Statû Mortuorum.' In vol. iii. p. 99, Mr G. has the following note:- Burnet (de S. M. p. 56-84) collects the opinions of the Fathers, as far as they assert the sleep or repose of human souls till the day of judgment. He afterwards exposes (p. 91) the inconveniences which must arise if they possessed a more active and sensible existence.' Who would not from hence infer that Dr B. was an advocate for the sleep or insensible existence of the soul after death? Whereas his doctrine is directly the contrary. He has employed some chapters in treating of the state of human souls in the interval between death and the resurrection; and after various proofs from reason, from scripture, and the Fathers, his conclusions are, that human souls exist after their separation from the body, that they are in a good or evil state according to their good or ill behaviour, but that neither their happiness nor their misery will be complete or perfect before the day of judgment. His argumentation is thus summed up at the end of the 4th chapter-Ex quibus constat primo, animas superesse extincto corpore; secundo, bonas bene, malas male, se habituras; tertio, nec illis summam felicitatem, nec his summam miseriam, accessuram esse ante diem judicii." (The bishop's reading the whole was a greater compliment to the work than was paid to it by two of the most eminent of his brethren for their learning and station. The one entered upon it, but was soon wearied, and laid it aside in disgust: the other returned it upon the bookseller's hands; and it is said that Mr G. himself happened unluckily to be in the shop at the same time.)

Does the bishop comply with his own precept in the next page? (p. 175.) "Old age should lenify, should soften, men's manners, and make them more mild and gentle; but

that, in the period between death and the resurrection, human souls exist without a body, endowed

often has the contrary effect, hardens their hearts, and makes them more sour and crabbed."-He is speaking of Dr Johnson.

Have I ever insinuated that preferment-hunting is the great occupation of an ecclesiastical life? (Memoirs passim ;) that a minister's influence and a bishop's patronage are sometimes pledged eleven deep? (p. 151;) that a prebendary considers the audit week as the better part of the year? (p. 127;) or that the most eminent of priests, the pope himself, would change their religion, if anything better could be offered them? (p. 56.) Such things are more than insinuated in the bishop's life, which afforded some scandal to the church, and some diversion to the profane laity.

None of the attacks from ecclesiastical antagonists were more malignant and illiberal than some strictures published in the English Review, October 1788, &c. and afterwards reprinted in a separate volume, with the signature of John Whitaker, in 1791. I had mentioned them to Mr Gibbon when first published; but so far was he from supposing them worth his notice, that he did not even desire they should be sent to him, and he actually did not see them till his late visit to England a few months before his death. If Mr Whitaker had only pointed his bitterness against Mr Gibbon's opinions, perhaps no inquiry would have been made into the possible source of his collected virulence and deliberate malignity.

I have in my possession very amicable letters from the Rev. Mr Whitaker to Mr Gibbon, written some time after he had read the offensive 15th and 16th chapters of the Decline and Fall. When Mr Gibbon came to England, in 1787, he read Whitaker's "Mary Queen of Scots," and I have heard him VERY incautiously express his opinion of it. Some good-natured friend mentioned it to Mr Whitaker. It must be an extraordinary degree of resentment that could induce any person, of a liberal mind, to scrape together defamatory stories, true or false, and blend them with the defence of the most benign religion, whose precepts inculcate the very opposite practice. Religion receives her greatest injuries from those champions of the church

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