hing
season of the ensuing year would be lost. A month had barely elapsed
before Gibbon with his precious cargo started for England. He went
straight to his printers. The printing of the fourth volume occupied
three months, and both author and publisher were warned that their
common interest required a quicker pace. Then Mr. Strahan "fulfilled
his engagement, which few printers could sustain, of delivering every
week three thousand copies of nine sheets." On the 8th of May, 1788,
the three concluding volumes were published, and Gibbon had discharged
his debt for the entertainment that he had had in this world.

He returned as speedily as he could to Lausanne, to rest from his
labours. But he had a painful greeting in the sadly altered look of
his friend Deyverdun. Soon an apoplectic seizure confirmed his
forebodings, and within a twelvemonth the friend of his youth, whom he
had loved for thirty-three years, was taken away by death (July 4,
1789).[14]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: The letter in which Gibbon communicated the sad news to
Lord Sheffield was written on the 14th July, 1789, the day of the
taking of the Bastille. So "that evening sun of July" sent its beams
on Gibbon mourning the dead friend, as well as on "reapers amid
peaceful woods and fields, on old women spinning in cottages, on ships
far out on the silent main, on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles,
where high-rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with
double-jacketed Hussar officers."]

Gibbon never got over this loss. His staid and solid nature was not
given to transports of joy or grief. But his constant references to
"poor Deyverdun," and the vacancy caused by his loss, show the depth
of the wound. "I want to change the scene," he writes, "and, beautiful
as the garden and prospect must appear to every eye, I feel that the
state of my mind casts a gloom over them: every spot, every walk,
every bench recalls the memory of those hours, those conversations,
which will return no more.... I almost hesitate whether I shall run
over to England to consult with you on the spot, and to fly from poor
Deyverdun's shade, which meets me at every turn." Not that he lacked
attached friends, and of mere society and acquaintance he had more
than abundance. He occupied at Lausanne a position of almost
patriarchal dignity, "and may be said," writes Lord Sheffield, "to
have almost given the law to a set of as willing subjects as any man
ever presided over."