anty accounts of such men are compiled with diligence, and
perused with eagerness; and the student of every class may derive a
lesson, or an example, from the lives most similar to his own. My name
may hereafter be placed among the thousand articles of a Biographic
Britannica; and I must be conscious, that no one is so well qualified,
as myself, to describe the series of my thoughts and actions. The
authority of my masters, of the grave Thuanus, and the philosophic Hume,
might be sufficient to justify my design; but it would not be difficult
to produce a long list of ancients and moderns, who, in various forms,
have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most
interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings;
and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or
prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny,
of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they
themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir
William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we
smile without contempt at the headstrong passions of Benevenuto Cellini,
and the gay follies of Colley Cibber. The confessions of St. Austin and
Rousseau disclose the secrets of the human heart; the commentaries of
the learned Huet have survived his evangelical demonstration; and the
memoirs of Goldoni are more truly dramatic than his Italian comedies.
The heretic and the churchman are strongly marked in the characters and
fortunes of Whiston and Bishop Newton; and even the dullness of Michael
de Marolles and Anthony Wood acquires some value from the faithful
representation of men and manners. That I am equal or superior to some
of these, the effects of modesty or affectation cannot force me to
dissemble.

My family is originally derived from the county of Kent. The Southern
district, which borders on Sussex and the sea, was formerly overspread
with the great forest Anderida, and even now retains the denomination of
the Weald or Woodland. In this district, and in the hundred and parish
of Rolvenden, the Gibbons were possessed of lands in the year one
thousand three hundred and twenty-six; and the elder branch of the
family, without much increase or diminution of property, still adheres
to its native soil. Fourteen years after the first appearance of his
name, John Gibbon is recorded as the Marmorarius or architect of King
Edward the