share, or at least I sympathise with, his pleasure. He appears contented with my progress, and has already told several people that he does not despair of making me a gardener. Be that as it may, you will be glad to hear that I am, by my own choice, infinitely more in motion and in the open air than I ever have been formerly; yet my perfect liberty and leisure leave me many studious hours, and as the circle of our acquaintance retire into the country, I shall be much less engaged in company and diversion. I have seriously resumed the prosecution of my History; each day and each month adds something to the completion of the great work. The progress is slow, the labour continual, and the end remote and uncertain; yet every day brings its amusement as well as labour; and though I dare not fix a term even in my own fancy, I advance with the pleasing reflection that the business of publication, should I be detained here so long, must enforce my return to England and restore me to the best of mothers and friends. In the meanwhile, with health and competence, a full independence of mind and action, a delightful habitation, a true friend, and many pleasant acquaintance, you will allow that I am rather an object of envy than of pity; and if you were more conversant with the use of the French language, I would seriously propose to you to repose yourself with us in this fine country. My indirect intelligence, on which I sometimes depend with more implicit faith than on the kind dissimulation of your friendship, gives me reason to hope that the last winter has been more favourable to your health than the preceding one. Assure me of it yourself honestly and truly, and you will afford me one of the most lively pleasures. No. CXXXIX. EDWARD GIBBON, Esq., to the Right Hon. LORd Sheffield. LAUSANNE, May 10, 1786. By the difference, I suppose, of the post of France and Germany, Sir Stanier's letter, though first written, is still on the road, and yours, which I received yesterday morning, brought me the first account of poor Mrs. Porten's departure. There are few events that could afflict more deeply, and I have been ever since in a state of mind more deserving of your pity than of your reproaches. I certainly am not ignorant that we have nothing better to wish for ourselves than the fate of that best-humoured woman, as you very justly style her; a good understanding and an excellent heart, with health, spirits, and a competency to live in the midst of her friends till the age of fourscore, and then shut her eyes without pain or remorse. Death can have deprived her only of some years of weakness, perhaps of misery; and, for myself, it is surely less painful to lose her at present than to find her in my visit to England next year sinking under the weight of age and infirmities, and perhaps forgetful of herself and of the persons once the dearest to her. All this is perfectly true; but all these reflections will not dispel a thousand sad and tender remembrances that rush upon my mind. To her care I am indebted in earliest infancy for the preservation of my life and health. I was a puny child, neglected by my mother, starved by my nurse, and of whose being very little care or expectation was entertained; without her maternal vigilance I should either have been in my grave, or imperfectly lived a crooked, rickety monster, a burden to myself and others. To her instructions I owe the first rudiments of knowledge, the first exercise of reason, and a taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life; and though she taught me neither language nor science, she was certainly the most useful preceptor I ever had. As I grew up, an intercourse of thirty years endeared her to me as the faithful friend and agreeable companion. You have seen with what freedom and confidence we lived together, and have often admired her character and conversation, which could alike please the young and the old. All this is now lost-finally, irrecoverably lost! I will agree with my lady that the immortality of the soul is at some times a very comfortable doctrine. A thousand thanks to her for her constant kind attention to that poor woman who is no more. I wish I had as much to applaud and as little to reproach in my own behaviour towards Mrs. Porten since I left England; and when I reflect that my letters would have soothed and comforted her decline, I feel more deeply than I can express the real neglect and seeming indifference of my silence. To delay a letter from the Wednesday to the Saturday, and then from the Saturday to the Wednesday, appears a very slight offence; yet in the repetition of such delay weeks, months, and years will elapse, till the omission may become irretrievable and the consequence mischievous or fatal. After a long lethargy I had roused myself last week, and wrote to the three old ladies; my letter for Mrs. Porten went away last post, Saturday night, and yours did not arrive till Monday morning. Sir Stanier will probably open it, and read the true picture of my sentiments for a friend who, when I wrote, was already extinct. There is something sad and awful in the thought; yet, on the whole, I am not sorry that even this tardy epistle preceded my knowledge of her death. But it did not precede, you will observe, the information of her dangerous and declining state, which I conveyed in my last letter, and her anxious concern that she should never see or hear from me again. This idea, and the hard thoughts which you must entertain of me, press so much on my mind, that I must frankly acknowledge a strange, inexcusable supineness, on which I desire you would make no comment, and which in some measure may account for my delays in corresponding with you. The unpleasant nature of business, and the apprehension of finding something disagreeable, tempted me to postpone from day to day, not only the answering, but even the opening your penultimate epistle; and when I received your last yesterday morning the seal of the former was still unbroken. Oblige me so far as to make no reflections; my own may be of service to me hereafter. Thus far, except the last sentence, I have run on with a sort of melancholy pleasure, and find my heart much relieved by unfolding it to a friend. And the subject so strongly holds me, so much disqualifies me for other discourse, either serious or pleasant, that here I would willingly stop, and reserve all miscellaneous matter for a second volunteer epistle. But we both know how frail are promises, how dangerous are delays, and there are some pecuniary objects on which I think it necessary to give you an immediate, though now tardy, explanation. I do not return you any formal thanks for I have really a hundred things to say of myself, of you and co., of your works, of mine, of my books in Downing Street, of Lausanne, of politics, &c. &c. After this some epistolary debts must and shall be paid; and to proceed with order, I have fixed this day fortnight, May 25th, for the date and despatch of your second epistle. Give me credit once more. Pray does my lady think herself absolved from all obligation of writing to me? To her at least I am not in arrear. Adieu. THE END. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. MORLEY'S UNIVERSAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY. Complete in Sixty-Three Volumes, ONE SHILLING each, cloth, cut edges; or 1s. 6d. Parchment Back, uncut edges. 1. SHERIDAN'S PLAYS. 2. PLAYS FROM MOLIÈRE. By ENGLISH DRAMATISTS. 3. MARLOWE'S FAUSTUS AND GOETHE'S FAUST. 4. CHRONICLE OF THE CID. 5. RABELAIS' GARGANTUA, AND THE HEROIC DEEDS OF PANTAGRUEL. 6. THE PRINCE. By MACHIAVELLI. 7. BACON'S ESSAYS. 8. DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR. 9. LOCKE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT; with SIR ROBERT FILMER'S PATRIARCHA. 10. BUTLER'S ANALOGY OF RELIGION, 11. DRYDEN'S VIRGIL. 12. SIR WALTER SCOTT'S DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT. 13. HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 14. COLERIDGE'S TABLE-TALK; with THE ANCIENT MARINER AND CHRISTABEL. 15. BOCCACCIO'S DECAMERON. 16. STERNE'S TRISTRAM SHANDY. 17. HOMER'S ILIAD. Translated by GEORGE CHAPMAN. 18. MEDIEVAL TALES. 19. JOHNSON'S RASSELAS; and VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE. 20. PLAYS AND POEMS. By BEN JONSON. 21. HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN. 22. BUTLER'S HUDIBRAS. 23. IDEAL COMMONWEALTHS; MORE'S UTOPIA; BACON'S NEW ATLANTIS; and CAMPANELLA'S CITY OF THE SUN, 24. CAVENDISH'S LIFE OF WOLSEY. 25 & 26. DON QUIXOTE (Two Volumes). 27. BURLESQUE PLAYS AND POEMS. 28. DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY. LONGFELLOW's Translation. 29. GOLDSMITH'S VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, PLAYS, AND POEMS. 30. FABLES AND PROVERBS FROM THE SANSKRIT, 31. CHARLES LAMB'S ESSAYS OF ELIA, |