THE ATHENÆUM PRESS SERIES

G. L. KITTREDGE AND C. T. WINCHESTER

GENERAL EDITORS

The

Athenæum Press Series.

This series is intended to furnish a

library of the best English literature

from Chaucer to the present time in a

form adapted to the needs of both the

student and the general reader. The

works selected are carefully edited, with biographical and critical introductions,

full explanatory notes, and other necessary apparatus.

MEMOIRS

OF THE

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

EDWARD GIBBON

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

OLIVER FARRAR EMERSON, A.M., PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH PHILOLOGY IN
WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

The Athenæum Press

1898

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY

OLIVER FARRAR EMERSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

LIBRARY

Leland Stanford, Jr.

UNIVERSITY

63143

PREFACE.

THIS book was begun some years ago to supply the lack of an accurate and adequately annotated edition of Gibbon's well-known autobiography. Not long after it was commenced, a reprint of the Gibbon manuscripts, which had been kept from the public for a century, was announced, and the editor gladly waited for the new light which they might throw on various problems. When The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon appeared, it became evident that no former edition of the Memoirs could longer be regarded as even a fairly accurate presentation of what Gibbon wrote. It was equally clear that the reprint of the manuscripts, invaluable as it will always be, made no attempt at uniting parts of the overlapping accounts into such a connected story of the historian's life as the student and the general reader will always require. Besides, there was not then, as there had never been, a critical examination of the various manuscript memoirs and their relations to each other. The field seemed clear, therefore, for a critical edition, and this the present editor has modestly attempted. Whatever may be the defects of the work, there is presented, for the first time, as accurate and complete an account of Gibbon's life as can be made from the several sketches left by the historian. For the first time, also, a critical introduction to the Memoirs has been written, and the annotation of them has been made fairly complete. Such a statement may seem to savor of self-praise, but the conditions which make it possible will