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Title: Memoirs of My Life and Writings

Author: Edward Gibbon

Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6031]
Posting Date: March 29, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS ***

Produced by P. J. Riddick

MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS

By Edward Gibbon

In the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an arduous
and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of my leisure
in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and literary life.
Truth, naked unblushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history,
must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative. The style
shall be simple and familiar; but style is the image of character; and
the habits of correct writing may produce, without labour or design, the
appearance of art and study. My own amusement is my motive, and will
be my reward: and if these sheets are communicated to some discreet and
indulgent friends, they will be secreted from the public eye till the
author shall be removed beyond the reach of criticism or ridicule.

A lively desire of knowing and of recording our ancestors so generally
prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common principle
in the minds of men. We seem to have lived in the persons of our
forefathers; it is the labour and reward of vanity to extend the term
of this ideal longevity. Our imagination is always active to enlarge the
narrow circle in which Nature has confined us. Fifty or an hundred years
may be allotted to an individual, but we step forward beyond death with
such hopes as religion and philosophy will suggest; and we fill up the
silent vacancy that precedes our birth, by associating ourselves to
the authors of our existence. Our calmer judgment will rather tend to
moderate, than to suppress, the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The
satirist may laugh, the philosopher may preach; but Reason herself will
respect the prejudices and habits, which have been consecrated by the
experience of mankind.

Wherever the distinction of birth is al