e, the propriety of the Roman
orator." The only odd thing in connection with this excellent method
is that Gibbon in his Memoirs seems to think it was a novel discovery
of his own, and would recommend it to the imitation of students,
whereas it is as old as the days of Ascham at least. There is no
indication that he ever in the least degree attempted Latin verse, and
it is improbable that he should have done so, reading alone in
Lausanne, under the slight supervision of such a teacher as Pavillard.
The lack of this elegant frivolity will be less thought of now than it
would some years ago. But we may admit that it would have been
interesting to have a copy of hexameters or elegiacs by the historian
of Rome. So much for Latin. In Greek he made far less progress. He had
attained his nineteenth year before he learned the alphabet, and even
after so late a beginning he did not prosecute the study with much
energy.

M. Pavillard seems to have taught him little more than the rudiments.
"After my tutor had left me to myself I worked my way through about
half the _Iliad_, and afterwards interpreted alone a large portion of
Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardour, destitute of aid and emulation,
gradually cooled, and from the barren task of searching words in a
lexicon I withdrew to the free and familiar conversation of Virgil and
Tacitus." This statement of the Memoirs is more than confirmed by the
journal of his studies, where we find him, as late as the year 1762,
when he was twenty-five years of age, painfully reading Homer, it
would appear, for the first time. He read on an average about a book a
week, and when he had finished the _Iliad_ this is what he says: "I
have so far met with the success I hoped for, that I have acquired a
great facility in reading the language, and treasured up a very great
stock of words. What I have rather neglected is the grammatical
construction of them, and especially the many various inflections of
the verbs." To repair this defect he wisely resolved to bestow some
time every morning on the perusal of the Greek Grammar of Port Royal.
Thus we see that at an age when many men are beginning to forget their
Greek, Gibbon was beginning to learn it. Was this early deficiency
ever repaired in Greek as it was in Latin? I think not. He never was
at home in old Hellas as he was in old Rome. This may be inferred from
the discursive notes of his great work, in which he has with admirable
skill incorporate