Edward Gibbon's Life and Historical Method
The life of Edward Gibbon was a series of fortunate shipwrecks that transformed a sickly, neglected child into the preeminent historian of the Enlightenment. Born in 1737 to a family of fluctuating wealth, his early education was erratic, eventually leading to a disastrous stint at Oxford. The university, which he recalled as a place sunk in "port and prejudice," failed to engage his mind, leading the bored teenager to a rebellious conversion to Roman Catholicism. This act of spiritual defiance prompted his father to banish him to Lausanne, Switzerland, a move that would define his intellectual destiny.
In the care of a Calvinist minister, Daniel Pavilliard, the "statue was discovered in the block of marble." Gibbon traded his religious fervor for a methodical devotion to classical literature, logic, and the French language. It was here that he encountered the works of Pascal and Voltaire, and where he experienced his only great romance with Suzanne Curchod. When his father forbade the marriage, Gibbon famously "sighed as a lover, obeyed as a son," a choice that secured his financial future but consigned him to a life of scholarly bachelorhood.
Returning to England, Gibbon served in the Hampshire militia—an experience he claimed made the "historian of the Roman Empire not useless to the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers." However, the pivotal moment of his life occurred in October 1764. While musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol in Rome, the sound of barefooted friars singing vespers in what was once the Temple of Jupiter sparked the grand design: a history of the city’s decline and fall. This vision would occupy the next two decades, resulting in a work that bridged the gap between the meticulous research of the antiquarian and the sweeping vision of the philosopher.
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