LIFE
This distinguished historian was born at Putney, in theoounty of Surrey , on the 27th of April, 1737. His father,Edward Gibbon , Esq. was of an ancient family at Burton,near Petersfield, in Hampshire , and had a seat in two Parlia-ments. Edward was the only child reared by his parents ;ami his constitution was so infirm in childhood, that his lifewas often despaired of. In his ninth year he was sent to theschool of Dr. Woodeson, at Kiugston-upon-Thames. Aftera residence of two years with this master, in which he ac-quired the rudiments of Latin , he returned to his friends;and he has recorded his twelfth year, in which he read a va-riety of English books of poetry, romance, history, and tra-vels, “ as the most propitious to the growth of his intellec-tual stature.” He then was entered at Westminster-school;but repeated attacks of ill health prevented him from makinga regular progress in the classical studies of the place ; andhe was more the nursling of an affectionate aunt, with whomhe boarded, than the adventurous school-boy. After severalchanges of situation, in which he was chiefly the object ofmedical care, his constitution began to acquire firmness; andhis father, with the idea of pushing him forwards to manlyacquisitions, placed him as a gentleman-commoner in Magda-len-college, Oxford, before he had completed his fifteenthyear. He had already imbibed an extraordinary portion ofhistorical knowledge by multifarious reading, which had stoodin the place of the grammatical and philological studies usedin a literary progress at that period of life, “ I arrived at