Excerpt from The Life and Letters of Edward Gibbon: With His History of the Crusades; Verbatim Reprint, With Copius Index by W. J. Day

Wolfenbuttel, he accidentally found among some literary rubbish a small old English volume of heraldry, inscribed with the name of yalm Gibbon. From the title only Mr. Langer judged that it might be an acceptable present to his friend and be judged rightly. His manner is quaint and affected; his order is confused: but he displays some wit, more reading, and still more enthusiasm: and if an enthusiast be often absurd, he is never languid. An English text is perpetually interspersed with Latin sentences in prose and verse but in his own poetry he claims an exemption from the laws of prosody. Amidst a profusion of genealogical knowledge, my kinsman could not be forgetful of his own name; and to him I am indebted for almost the whole of my information concerning the Gibbon family. From this small work the author expected immortal fame.

Such are the hopes of authors In the failure of those hopes john Gibbon has not been the first of his profession, and very possibly may not be the last of his name. His brother Matthew Gibbon, the draper, had one daughter and two sons - my grandfather Edward, who was born in the year 1666, and Thomas, afterwards Dean of Carlisle. According to the mercantile creed, that the best book is a profitable ledger, the writings of john the herald would be much less precious than those of his nephew Edward but an author professes at least to write for the public benefit; and the slow balance of trade can be pleasing to those persons only, to whom it is advantageous. The suc cessful industry of my grandfather raised him above the level of his immediate ancestors; he appears to have launched into various and extensive dealings even his opinions were subordinate to his interest and I find him in Flanders clothing King William's troops, while he would have contracted with more pleasure, though not perhaps at a cheaper rate, for the service of King james. During his residence abroad, his concerns at home were managed by his mother Hester, an active and notable woman. Her second husband was awidower of the name of Acton they united the children of their first nuptials. After his marriage with the daughter of Richard Acton, goldsmith in Leaden hall-street, he gave his own sister to Sir Whitmore Acton, of Aldenham; and I am thus connected, by a triple alliance, with that ancient and loyal family of Shropshire baronets. It consisted about that time of seven brothers, all of gigantic stature; one of whom, a pigmy of six feet two inches, confessed himself the last and least of the seven add ing, in the true spirit of party, that such men were not born since the Revolution. Under the Tory administration of the four last years of Queen Anne (1710 - 1714) Mr. Edward Gibbon was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Customs he sat at that Board with Prior; but the merchant was better qualified for his station than the poet; since Lord Bolingbroke has been heard to declare, that he had never conversed with a man, who more clearly understood the commerce and finances of England. In the year 1716 he was elected one of the Directors of the South Sea Company; and his books exhibited the proof that, before his acceptance of this fatal office, he had acquired an independent fortune of sixty thousand pounds.

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