Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon ( 8 May 173716 January 1794 ) was an English historian and Member of Parliament . His most important work , " The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " , was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 . The " Decline and Fall " is known for the quality and irony of its prose , its use of primary sources , and its open criticism of organised religion . Early life : 1737 – 1752 . Edward Gibbon was born in 1737 , the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove , in the town of Putney , Surrey . He had six siblings : five brothers and one sister , all of whom died in infancy . His grandfather , also named Edward , had lost all of his assets as a result of the South Sea Bubble stock market collapse in 1720 , but eventually regained much of his wealth , so that Gibbon ' s father was able to inherit a substantial estate . As a youth , Gibbon ' s health was under constant threat . He described himself as " a puny child , neglected by my Mother , starved by my nurse " . At age nine , he was sent to Dr . Woddeson ' s school at Kingston upon Thames ( now Kingston Grammar School ) , shortly after which his mother died . He then took up residence in the Westminster School boarding house , owned by his adored " Aunt Kitty " , Catherine Porten . Soon after she died in 1786 , he remembered her as rescuing him from his mother ' s disdain , and imparting " the first rudiments of knowledge , the first exercise of reason , and a taste for books which is still the pleasure and glory of my life " . By 1751 , Gibbon ' s reading was already extensive and certainly pointed toward his future pursuits : Laurence Echard ' s " Roman History " ( 1713 ) , William Howel ( l ) ' s " An Institution of General History " ( 1680 – 85 ) , and several of the 65 volumes of the acclaimed " Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time " ( 1747 – 1768 ) . Oxford , Lausanne , and a religious journey : 1752 – 1758 . Following a stay at Bath in 1752 to improve his health , at the age of 15 Gibbon was sent by his father to Magdalen College , Oxford , where he was enrolled as a gentleman - commoner . He was ill - suited , however , to the college atmosphere and later rued his 14 months there as the " most idle and unprofitable " of his life . Because he himself says so in his autobiography , it used to be thought that his penchant for " theological controversy " ( his aunt ' s influence ) fully bloomed when he came under the spell of the deist or rationalist theologian Conyers Middleton ( 1683 – 1750 ) , the author of " Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers " ( 1749 ) . In that tract , Middleton denied the validity of such powers ; Gibbon promptly objected , or so the argument used to run . The product of that disagreement , with some assistance from the work of Catholic Bishop Jacques - Bénigne Bossuet ( 1627 – 1704 ) , and that of the Elizabethan Jesuit Robert Parsons ( 1546 – 1610 ) , yielded the most memorable event of his time at Oxford : his conversion to Roman Catholicism on 8 June 1753 . He was further " corrupted " by the ' free thinking ' deism of the playwright / poet couple David and Lucy Mallet ; and finally Gibbon ' s father , already " in despair , " had had enough . David Womersley has shown , however , that Gibbon ' s claim to having been converted by a reading of Middleton is very unlikely , and was introduced only into the final draft of the " Memoirs " in 1792 – 93 . Bowersock suggests that Gibbon fabricated the Middleton story retrospectively in his anxiety about the impact of the French Revolution and Edmund Burke ' s claim that it was provoked by the French " philosophes " , so influential on Gibbon . Within weeks of his conversion , the youngster was removed from Oxford and sent to live under the care and tutelage of Daniel Pavillard , Reformed pastor of Lausanne , Switzerland . It was here that he made one of his life ' s two great friendships , that of Jacques Georges Deyverdun ( the French language translator of Goethe ' s " The Sorrows of Young Werther " ) ; the other being John Baker Holroyd ( later Lord Sheffield ) . Just a year and a half later , after his father threatened to disinherit him , on Christmas Day , 1754 , he reconverted to Protestantism . " The various articles of the Romish creed , " he wrote , " disappeared like a dream " . He remained in Lausanne for five intellectually productive years , a period that greatly enriched Gibbon ' s already immense aptitude for scholarship and erudition : he read Latin literature ; travelled throughout Switzerland studying its cantons ' constitutions ; and aggressively mined the works of Hugo Grotius , Samuel von Pufendorf , John Locke , Pierre Bayle , and Blaise Pascal . Thwarted romance . He also met the one romance in his life : the daughter of the pastor of Crassy , a young woman named Suzanne Curchod , who would later become the wife of Louis XVI ' s finance minister Jacques Necker , and the mother of Madame de Staël . The two developed a warm affinity ; Gibbon proceeded to propose marriage , but ultimately wedlock was out of the question , blocked both by his father ' s staunch disapproval and Curchod ' s equally staunch reluctance to leave Switzerland . Gibbon returned to England in August 1758 to face his father . There could be no refusal of the elder ' s wishes . Gibbon put it this way : " I sighed as a lover , I obeyed as a son . " He proceeded to cut off all contact with Curchod , even as she vowed to wait for him . Their final emotional break apparently came at Ferney , France in the spring of 1764 , though they did see each other at least one more time a year later . First fame and the grand tour : 1758 – 1765 . Upon his return to England , Gibbon published his first book , " Essai sur l ' Étude de la Littérature " in 1761 , which produced an initial taste of celebrity and distinguished him , in Paris at least , as a man of letters . From 1759 to 1770 , Gibbon served on active duty and in reserve with the South Hampshire militia , his deactivation in December 1762 coinciding with the militia ' s dispersal at the end of the Seven Years ' War . The following year he embarked on the Grand Tour ( of continental Europe ) , which included a visit to Rome . In his autobiography Gibbon vividly records his rapture when he finally neared " the great object of [ my ] pilgrimage " : . . . at the distance of twenty - five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the " eternal City " . After a sleepless night , I trod , with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum ; each memorable spot where Romulus " stood " , or Tully spoke , or Caesar fell , was at once present to my eye ; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation . And it was here that Gibbon first conceived the idea of composing a history of the city , later extended to the entire empire , a moment known to history as the " Capitoline vision " : It was at Rome , on the fifteenth of October 1764 , as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol , while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter , that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind . Womersley ( " Oxford Dictionary of National Biography " , p . 12 ) notes the existence of " good reasons " to doubt the statement ' s accuracy . Elaborating , Pocock ( " Classical History , " ¶ # 2 ) refers to it as a likely " creation of memory " or a " literary invention " seeing as how Gibbon , in his autobiography , claimed his journal dated the reminiscence to 15 October , when in fact the journal gives no date . " The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " : 1776 – 1788 . Gibbon returned to England in June 1765 . His father died in 1770 , and after tending to the estate , which was by no means in good condition , there remained quite enough for Gibbon to settle fashionably in London at 7 Bentinck Street , independent of financial concerns . By February 1773 , he was writing in earnest , but not without the occasional self - imposed distraction . He took to London society quite easily , joined the better social clubs , including Dr . Johnson ' s Literary Club , and looked in from time to time on his friend Holroyd in Sussex . He succeeded Oliver Goldsmith at the Royal Academy as ' professor in ancient history ' ( honorary but prestigious ) . In late 1774 , he was initiated a freemason of the Premier Grand Lodge of England . And , perhaps least productively in that same year , he was returned to the House of Commons for Liskeard , Cornwall through the intervention of his relative and patron , Edward Eliot . He became the archetypal back - bencher , benignly " mute " and " indifferent , " his support of the Whig ministry invariably automatic . Gibbon ' s indolence in that position , perhaps fully intentional , subtracted little from the progress of his writing . After several rewrites , with Gibbon " often tempted to throw away the labours of seven years , " the first volume of what would become his life ' s major achievement , " The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " , was published on 17 February 1776 . Through 1777 , the reading public eagerly consumed three editions for which Gibbon was rewarded handsomely : two - thirds of the profits amounting to approximately £1 , 000 . Biographer Leslie Stephen wrote that thereafter , " His fame was as rapid as it has been lasting . " And as regards this first volume , " Some warm praise from David Hume overpaid the labour of ten years . " Volumes II and III appeared on 1 March 1781 , eventually rising " to a level with the previous volume in general esteem . " Volume IV was finished in June 1784 ; the final two were completed during a second Lausanne sojourn ( September 1783 to August 1787 ) where Gibbon reunited with his friend Deyverdun in leisurely comfort . By early 1787 , he was " straining for the goal " and with great relief the project was finished in June . Gibbon later wrote : It was on the day , or rather the night , of 27 June 1787 , between the hours of eleven and twelve , that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer - house in my garden . . . . I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom , and perhaps the establishment of my fame . But my pride was soon humbled , and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion , and that , whatsoever might be the future date of my history , the life of the historian must be short and precarious . Volumes IV , V , and VI finally reached the press in May 1788 , publication having been delayed since March to coincide with a dinner party celebrating Gibbon ' s 51st birthday ( the 8th ) . Mounting a bandwagon of praise for the later volumes were such contemporary luminaries as Adam Smith , William Robertson , Adam Ferguson , Lord Camden , and Horace Walpole . Smith remarked that Gibbon ' s triumph had positioned him " at the very head of [ Europe ' s ] literary tribe . " Later years : 1789 – 1794 . The years following Gibbon ' s completion of " The History " were filled largely with sorrow and increasing physical discomfort . He had returned to London in late 1787 to oversee the publication process alongside Lord Sheffield . With that accomplished , in 1789 it was back to Lausanne only to learn of and be " deeply affected " by the death of Deyverdun , who had willed Gibbon his home , La Grotte . He resided there with little commotion , took in the local society , received a visit from Sheffield in 1791 , and " shared the common abhorrence " of the French Revolution . In a letter to Lord Sheffield on 5 February 1791 , Gibbon praised Burke ' s " Reflections on the Revolution in France " : " Burke ' s book is a most admirable medicine against the French disease , which has made too much progress even in this happy country . I admire his eloquence , I approve his politics , I adore his chivalry , and I can even forgive his superstition . . . The French spread so many lyes about the sentiments of the English nation , that I wish the most considerable men of all parties and descriptions would join in some public act declaring themselves satisfied with , and resolved to support , our present constitution " . In 1793 , word came of Lady Sheffield ' s death ; Gibbon immediately left Lausanne and set sail to comfort a grieving but composed Sheffield . His health began to fail critically in December , and at the turn of the new year , he was on his last legs . Gibbon is believed to have suffered from an extreme case of scrotal swelling , probably a hydrocele testis , a condition which causes the scrotum to swell with fluid in a compartment overlying either testicle . In an age when close - fitting clothes were fashionable , his condition led to a chronic and disfiguring inflammation that left Gibbon a lonely figure . As his condition worsened , he underwent numerous procedures to alleviate the condition , but with no enduring success . In early January , the last of a series of three operations caused an unremitting peritonitis to set in and spread , from which he died . The " English giant of the Enlightenment " finally succumbed at 12 : 45 pm , 16 January 1794 at age 56 . He was buried in the Sheffield family graveyard at the parish church in Fletching , Sussex . Legacy . Gibbon ' s work has been criticised for its scathing view of Christianity as laid down in chapters XV and XVI , a situation which resulted in the banning of the book in several countries . Gibbon ' s alleged crime was disrespecting , and none too lightly , the character of sacred Christian doctrine , by " treat [ ing ] the Christian church as a phenomenon of general history , not a special case admitting supernatural explanations and disallowing criticism of its adherents " . More specifically , the chapters excoriated the church for " supplanting in an unnecessarily destructive way the great culture that preceded it " and for " the outrage of [ practicing ] religious intolerance and warfare " . Gibbon , though assumed to be entirely anti - religion , was actually supportive to some extent , insofar as it did not obscure his true endeavour – a history that was not influenced and swayed by official church doctrine . Although the most famous two chapters are heavily ironical and cutting about religion , it is not utterly condemned , and its truth and rightness are upheld however thinly . Gibbon , in letters to Holroyd and others , expected some type of church - inspired backlash , but the utter harshness of the ensuing torrents far exceeded anything he or his friends could possibly have anticipated . Contemporary detractors such as Joseph Priestley and Richard Watson stoked the nascent fire , but the most severe of these attacks was an " acrimonious " piece by the young cleric , Henry Edwards Davis . Gibbon subsequently published his " Vindication " in 1779 , in which he categorically denied Davis ' " criminal accusations " , branding him a purveyor of " servile plagiarism . " Davis followed Gibbon ' s " Vindication " with yet another reply ( 1779 ) . Gibbon ' s apparent antagonism to Christian doctrine spilled over into the Jewish faith , leading to charges of anti - Semitism . For example , he wrote : From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius , the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome , which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections . Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt , of Cyprus , and of Cyrene , where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives ; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of legions against a race of fanatics , whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government , but also of humankind . Gibbon is considered to be a son of the Enlightenment and this is reflected in his famous verdict on the history of the Middle Ages : " I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion . " However , politically , he aligned himself with the conservative Edmund Burke ' s rejection of the democratic movements of the time as well as with Burke ' s dismissal of the " rights of man . " Gibbon ' s work has been praised for its style , his piquant epigrams and its effective irony . Winston Churchill memorably noted , " I set out upon . . . Gibbon ' s " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " [ and ] was immediately dominated both by the story and the style . . . . I devoured Gibbon . I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all . " Churchill modelled much of his own literary style on Gibbon ' s . Like Gibbon , he dedicated himself to producing a " vivid historical narrative , ranging widely over period and place and enriched by analysis and reflection . " Unusually for the 18th century , Gibbon was never content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible ( though most of these were drawn from well - known printed editions ) . " I have always endeavoured , " he says , " to draw from the fountain - head ; that my curiosity , as well as a sense of duty , has always urged me to study the originals ; and that , if they have sometimes eluded my search , I have carefully marked the secondary evidence , on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend . " In this insistence upon the importance of primary sources , Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians : In accuracy , thoroughness , lucidity , and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject , the ' History ' is unsurpassable . It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive . . . . Whatever its shortcomings the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period . The subject of Gibbon ' s writing as well as his ideas and style have influenced other writers . Besides his influence on Churchill , Gibbon was also a model for Isaac Asimov in his writing of " The Foundation Trilogy " , which he said involved " a little bit of cribbin ' from the works of Edward Gibbon " . Evelyn Waugh admired Gibbon ' s style but not his secular viewpoint . In Waugh ' s 1950 novel " Helena " , the early Christian author Lactantius worried about the possibility of " ' a false historian , with the mind of Cicero or Tacitus and the soul of an animal , ' and he nodded towards the gibbon who fretted his golden chain and chattered for fruit . " J . C . Stobart , author of " The Grandeur that was Rome " ( 1911 ) , wrote of Gibbon that " The mere notion of empire continuing to decline and fall for five centuries is ridiculous . . . this is one of the cases which prove that History is made not so much by heroes or natural forces as by historians . " Notes . Most of this article , including quotations unless otherwise noted , has been adapted from Stephen ' s entry on Edward Gibbon in the " Dictionary of National Biography " .