his Memoirs to show the length and quality of
his pedigree, which he traces back to the times of the Second and
Third Edwards. Noting the fact, we pass on to a nearer ancestor, his
grandfather, who seems to have been a person of considerable energy
of character and business talent. He made a large fortune, which he
lost in the South-Sea Scheme, and then made another before his death.
He was one of the Commissioners of Customs, and sat at the Board with
the poet Prior; Bolingbroke was heard to declare that no man knew
better than Mr. Edward Gibbon the commerce and finances of England.
His son, the historian's father, was a person of very inferior stamp.
He was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, travelled on the
Continent, sat in Parliament, lived beyond his means as a country
gentleman, and here his achievements came to an end. He seems to have
been a kindly but a weak and impulsive man, who however had the merit
of obtaining and deserving his son's affection by genial sympathy and
kindly treatment.

Gibbon's childhood was passed in chronic illness, debility, and
disease. All attempts to give him a regular education were frustrated
by his precarious health. The longest period he ever passed at school
were two years at Westminster, but he was constantly moved from one
school to another. This even his delicacy can hardly explain, and it
must have been fatal to all sustained study. Two facts he mentions of
his school life, which paint the manners of the age. In the year 1746
such was the strength of party spirit that he, a child of nine years
of age, "was reviled and buffeted for the sins of his Tory ancestors."
Secondly, the worthy pedagogues of that day found no readier way of
leading the most studious of boys to a love of science than corporal
punishment. "At the expense of many tears and some blood I purchased
the knowledge of the Latin syntax." Whether all love of study would
have been flogged out of him if he had remained at school, it is
difficult to say, but it is not an improbable supposition that this
would have happened. The risk was removed by his complete failure of
health. "A strange nervous affection, which alternately contracted his
legs and produced, without any visible symptom, the most excruciating
pain," was his chief affliction, followed by intervals of languor and
debility. The saving of his life during these dangerous years Gibbon
unhesitatingly ascribes to the more than maternal care of his aunt,