ved
now. Secondly, his mother's place was occupied by a second wife, and
an involuntary but strong prejudice possessed him against his
step-mother. He was most agreeably disappointed in both respects. His
father "received him as a man, as a friend, all constraint was
banished at our first interview, and we ever after continued on the
same terms of easy and equal politeness." So far the prospect was
pleasant. But the step-mother remained a possible obstacle to all
comfort at home. He seems to have regarded his father's second
marriage as an act of displeasure with himself, and he was disposed to
hate the rival of his mother. Gibbon soon found that the injustice was
in his own fancy, and the imaginary monster was an amiable and
deserving woman. "I could not be mistaken in the first view of her
understanding; her knowledge and the elegant spirit of her
conversation, her polite welcome, and her assiduous care to study and
gratify my wishes announced at least that the surface would be smooth;
and my suspicions of art and falsehood were gradually dispelled by the
full discovery of her warm and exquisite sensibility." He became
indeed deeply attached to his step-mother. "After some reserve on my
side, our minds associated in confidence and friendship, and as Mrs.
Gibbon had neither children nor the hopes of children, we more easily
adopted the tender names and genuine characters of mother and son." A
most creditable testimony surely to the worth and amiability of both
of them. The friendship thus begun continued without break or coolness
to the end of Gibbon's life. Thirty-five years after his first
interview with his step-mother, and only a few months before his own
death, when he was old and ailing, and the least exertion, by reason
of his excessive corpulence, involved pain and trouble, he made a long
journey to Bath for the sole purpose of paying Mrs. Gibbon a visit. He
was very far from being the selfish Epicurean that has been sometimes
represented.

He had brought with him from Lausanne the first pages of a work which,
after much bashfulness and delay, he at length published in the French
language, under the title of _Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature_, in
the year 1761, that is two years after its completion. In one respect
this juvenile work of Gibbon has little merit. The style is at once
poor and stilted, and the general quality of remark eminently
commonplace, where it does not fall into paradox. On the other ha