je sens tout le prix de votre obligeante intention de la prendre chez vous dès le mois d'Avril: pour peu qu'elle ait de dispositions, elle ne peut que se perfectionner à une si bonne école; vous aurez sans doute la bonté de communiquer cet arrangement à Monsieur Deyverdun. J'apprends avec une véritable satisfaction qu'il se porte mieux, et qu'il passe bien des soirées dans une maison, où je me retrouve souvent par la foi, et l'espérance. Vous voudrez bien lui annoncer une lettre de ma part, peu après mon arrivée à Londres: mais je ne lui fais point d'excuses, puisque nous sommes également coupables. Adieu, Madame, le papier me manque: mes sentimens sont inépuisables. N° CCXIX. Dr. WILLIAM ROBERTSON to Mr. GIBBON. MY DEAR SIR, College of Edinburgh, Feb. 27th, 1788. THOUGH you have now been some time in London, yet as I heard of your welfare by different channels, and as I know from experience how much a man has to do who is printing three quartos, even after he thinks they are altogether ready for the press, I have hitherto forborne to interrupt you by any letter or inquiry of mine. But there is such a general impatience to see your new publication among people of letters here; and, as your friend, I am so frequently interrogated about the length it has advanced, and the time when it will appear, appear, that I begin to be ashamed of knowing nothing more about it than other people. I must request of you then to furnish me with such information as may both preserve my credit, and gratify my own curiosity. My expectations from this part of your work are, indeed, very high. Your materials begin to improve, and are certainly much more copious than during a great part of the period you have gone through. You have three or four events as great, and splendid, and singular, as the heart of an historian could wish to delineate. The contemporary writers will furnish you with all the necessary facts. To adorn them as elegant writers, or to account for them as philosophers, never entered into their heads. This they have left to you. Since you went to the continent I have not done so much as I wished. My health, until lately, has been more shattered; and as I advance in life, (I am now sixty-six,) though my faculties, I imagine, are still entire, yet I find my mind less active and ardent. I have, however, finished a very careful revise of all my works, and have given them the last polish they will receive from my hand. I have made some additions to each of them, and in the History of Scotland pretty considerable ones. I have desired Mr. Strahan to send to you a copy of them uniformly bound, and hope you will accept of them, as a memorial of my esteem and affection. You will see that I have got in Mr. Whitaker an adversary so bigotted and zealous, that though I have denied no article of faith, and am at least as orthodox as himself, yet he rails against me with VOL. II. E E all all the asperity of theological hatred. I shall ad here to my fixed maxim of making no reply. May I hope that when you see Lord Loughborough you will remember me to him with kindness and respect. Our friend Mr. Smith, whom we were in great danger of losing, is now almost perfectly reestablished. I have the honour to be, with great truth, your most faithful humble Servant, WILLIAM ROBERTSON. N° CCXX. Lord NORTH to EDWARD GIBBON, Esq. DEAR SIR, Grosvenor-street, May 1st, 1788. UPON the receipt of your books and the perusal of your preface,* my heart was too full to give you an immediate answer: so kind and honourable a testimony of your friendship and esteem would have afforded me the greatest pleasure in the moment of my highest health and political prospe Alluding to the following beautiful and just encomium in the Preface to the last three volumes of Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "Were I ambitious of any other patron than the public, I would inscribe this work to a Statesman who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfortunate administration, had many political opponents, almost without a personal enemy: who has retained in his fall from power many faithful and disinterested friends, and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigour of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper. Lord North will permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth, but even truth and friendship should be silent if he still dispensed the favours of the Crown." S. rity; judge then what I must feel upon receiving it in my retirement, while labouring under a calamity which would be severe, were it not for the goodness of my friends. I have it, thank God, in my power to return your kindness in the manner which will be most agreeable to you, by assuring you sincerely that nothing could have given me more real comfort and satisfaction than the notice that you have taken of me. I am, dear Sir, Most gratefully yours, NORTH. N° CCXXI. EDWARD GIBBON, Esq. to the Right Honourable Lord SHEFFIELD. Downing-street, June 21st, 1788. INSTEAD of the Historian you receive a short letter, in your eyes an indispensable tribute. This day, at length, after long delay and frequent expostulation, I have received the writings, which I am now in the act of signing, sealing and delivering, according to the lawyer's directions. * * * * I long to be at SheffieldPlace. You see my departure is not postponed a moment by idleness or pleasure, but the precise day still hangs on contingencies, and we must all be patient, if our wishes should be thwarted. I say our wishes, for I sincerely desire to be with you. I have had many dinners, some splendid and memorable, with Hastings last Thursday, with the Prince EE 2 Prince of Wales next Tuesday at Craufurd's. But the town empties, Texier is silent, and in an even ing, I desiderate the resources of a family or a club. Caplin has finished the Herculean labour, and seven majestic boxes will abdicate on Monday your hall. Severy has likewise dispatched his af fairs, and secured his companion Clarke, who is arrived in town; but his schemes are abridged by the inexorable rigour of Lord Howe, who has assured our great and fair intercessors, that by the King's order the dock-yards are shut against all strangers. We therefore give up Portsmouth, and content ourselves with two short trips; one to Stowe and Oxford, the other to Chatham; and if we can catch a launch and review, encore vit on. He (Severy, not Lord Howe) salutes with me the family. Adieu. Yours. N° CCXXII. EDWARD GIBBON, Esq. to the Right Honourable Lord SHEFField. Downing-street, Saturday. ACCORDING to your imperious law I write a line, to postpone my arrival till Friday, or perhaps Saturday, but I hope Friday, and I promise you that not a moment shall be wasted. And now let me add a cool word as to my final departure, which is irrevocably fixed between the tenth and fifteenth of July. After a full and free enjoyment of each other's society, let us submit, without a struggle, to reason and fate. It would be idle to pretend busi ness |