was
not enforced, but there were milder laws under which a priest might
suffer perpetual imprisonment and the proselyte's estate be transferred
to his nearest relations. Under such laws prosecutions were had and
convictions obtained. Little wonder was it when Gibbon apprised his
father in an "elaborate controversial epistle" of the serious step
which he had taken, that the elder Gibbon should be astonished and
indignant. In his passion he divulged the secret which effectually
closed the gates of Magdalen College to his son,[82] who was packed off
to Lausanne and "settled under the roof and tuition" of a Calvinist
minister.[83] Edward Gibbon passed nearly five years at Lausanne, from
the age of sixteen to that of twenty-one, and they were fruitful years
for his education. It was almost entirely an affair of self-training, as
his tutor soon perceived that the student had gone beyond the teacher
and allowed him to pursue his own special bent. After his history was
published and his fame won, he recorded this opinion: "In the life of
every man of letters there is an aera, from a level, from whence he soars
with his own wings to his proper height, and the most important part of
his education is that which he bestows on himself."[84] This was
certainly true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly
knew any French, but before he returned to England he thought
spontaneously in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it better than
he did his mother tongue.[85] He read Montesquieu frequently and was
struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothesis." Among the
books which "may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the
Roman Empire" were the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which he read "with
a new pleasure" almost every year. From them he said, "I learned to
manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of
ecclesiastical solemnity." As one thinks of his chapters in "The Decline
and Fall" on Julian, one is interested to know that during this period
he was introduced to the life and times of this Roman emperor by a book
written by a French abbe. He read Locke, Grotius, and Puffendorf, but
unquestionably his greatest knowledge, mental discipline, and peculiar
mastery of his own tongue came from his diligent and systematic study of
the Latin classics. He read nearly all of the historians, poets,
orators, and philosophers, going over for a second or even a third time
Terence, Virgi