in London
society and his solitary evenings were passed with his books, but he
consoled himself by thinking that he lost nothing by a withdrawal from a
"noisy and expensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation
without pleasure." At twenty-four he published his "Essay on the Study
of Literature," begun at Lausanne and written entirely in French. This
possesses no interest for the historical student except to know the bare
fact of the writing and publication as a step in the intellectual
development of the historian. Sainte-Beuve in his two essays on Gibbon
devoted three pages to an abstract and criticism of it, perhaps because
it had a greater success in France than in England; and his opinion of
Gibbon's language is interesting. "The French" Sainte-Beuve wrote, "is
that of one who has read Montesquieu much and imitates him; it is
correct, but artificial French."[96]

Then followed two and a half years' service in the Hampshire militia.
But he did not neglect his reading. He mastered Homer, whom he termed
"the Bible of the ancients," and in the militia he acquired "a just and
indelible knowledge" of what he called "the first of languages." And his
love for Latin abided also: "On every march, in every journey, Horace
was always in my pocket and often in my hand."[97] Practical knowledge
he absorbed almost insensibly. "The daily occupations of the militia,"
he wrote, "introduced me to the science of Tactics" and led to the study
of "the precepts of Polybius and Caesar." In this connection occurs the
remark which admirers of Gibbon will never tire of citing: "A familiar
view of the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a
clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legion; and the Captain of the
Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the
historian of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire."[98] The grand
tour followed his militia service. Three and a half months in Paris, and
a revisit to Lausanne preceded the year that he passed in Italy. Of the
conception of the History of the Decline and Fall, during his stay in
Rome, I have already spoken.

On his return to England, contemplating "the decline and fall of Rome at
an awful distance," he began, in collaboration with the Swiss Deyverdun,
his bosom friend, a history of Switzerland written in French. During the
winter of 1767, the first book of it was submitted to a literary society
of foreigners in London. As the author