Description of Marginalia by Macaulay on Edward Gibbon's 'Vindication' - the marginalia responds to the passage 'Fame is the motive, it is the reward, of our labours: nor can I easily comprehend how it is possible that we should remain cold and indifferent with regard to the attempts which are made to deprive us of the most valuable object of our possessions, or at least, of our hopes.' Macaulay writes: 'But what if you are confident that these attempts will be vain, and that your book will fix its own place?'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Byron to Robert Charles Dallas, 21 January 1808: 'As for my reading, I believe I may aver without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical department, so that few nations exist or have existed with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted from Herodotus down to Gibbon.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
'Working class readers continued to enjoy Macaulay's drama and accessibility long after professional historians had declared him obsolete. Kathleen Woodward read Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Macaulay's History of England twice through over factory work, with such absorption she once injured a finger, leaving "an honourable scar".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kathleen Woodward Print: Book
In the evening, between 8+9, read from pp 263-307, vol I, Gibbon's Miscellaneous works. He died in London [...] 16 January
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
In the afternoon at 3.40, down the old bank to the library...No Miss Browne. I could have said, changing only the gender, (as Gibbons wrote toDeyverdum, vol. 604/703...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards Print: Book
I suppose I had read Hume's England when I wrote last; and I need not repeat my opinion of it. My perusal of the continuation - eight volumes, of history as it is called, by Tobias Smollett MD and others was a much harder and more unprofitable task. Next I read Gibbon's decline and fall of the Roman empire - a work of immense research and splendid execution.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
'Began Gibbon's account of his life; I think he is but a bad biographer having given little amiability to his own character, which is not increased by his noble commentator. [John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
'I have now finished the morceau so highly reccomended by my nephew, the account of Gibbon's life and writings by himself and confess myself greatly disappointed, not indeed in the style which is like himself in the history, but I am disappointed in not being able to discover one single amiable trait. [continues at length]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
'An account of a Bill having past for the suspension of the habeas Corpus Act [...] I cannot refrain from quoting from one of Gibbons letters to Lord Sheffield in 1792 [quotes]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
'I have read the greater part of the History of James I and Mrs. Montagues?s essay on Shakespeare, and a great deal of Gibbon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
[Entry from Commonplace Book]: 'Christianity, diffusion of, assisted by the general scepticism of the pagan world combined with the necessity of some belief in the vulgar mind. Gibbon. Roman Empire, Vol 2, Ch 15, pp. 205-6'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Davy Harrop Print: Book
'During these twelve months [inprison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a freethinker if I had not been one before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
'Rose at seven, purposely to proceed in Gibbon's Miscell. Works- which I began yesterday. - read the whole of his own memoirs- 185 pages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'The finishing of the first volume of Gibbon is all I have been able to accomplish comfortably from my last memoranda. Every morning this week has been taken up in copying a Book for Mr Humphreys ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
?Another great book which I bought in those days was Gibbon?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (Bohn?s edition in seven volumes). Relative to my means, the price was rather stiff, but by getting one volume at a time, as I could afford to pay for it, this difficulty was surmounted. ? Vividly do I remember bringing the final volume home. With youthful glee I read till a late hour. I slept little that night; the book haunted my dreams. I awoke about four on the bright summer Sunday morning and went into the fields to read till breakfast-time. The stately, majestic march of Gibbon?s periods had some attraction for me even then; but the "Decline and Fall", it must be admitted, was hard reading for an unlettered collier lad. Yet I plodded on until I had finished the book which, besides its direct teachings, brought me many indirect advantages.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
'The Dundee Factory Boy claimed that while an apprentice shoemaker, he read, "books on nearly all the disputed questions in theology and metaphysics, books on history, belle lettres, and science. I even read the celebrated Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire three times from beginning to end".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Read Gibbon on the revival of Greek learning'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: UnknownManuscript: Unknown
'Reading Gibbon Vol 1 in connection with Mosheim. Read about the Dionysia. Also Gieseler, on the condition of the world at the appearance of Christianity'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but writes not history but romance). The best thing of that kind I met by accident at Athens in a Convent Library in old and not "very choice Italian". I forget the title - but it was a history in some thirty tomes of all Conjurazioni whatsoever from Catiline's down to Count Fiesco of Lavagna's in Genoa and Braganza's in Lisbon. I read it through (having nothing else to read) & having nothing to compare it withal, thought it perfection'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 September 1837: 'I read Gibbon. It makes me dread a single literary life, so selfish, so vain and blind, as ths great man grew to be!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 September 1837: 'Read Gibbon's correspondence. Selfish, vain creature! -- beyond almost all I ever read of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 10 September 1837: 'Read Gibbon. Selfish, vain, unhappy man! [goes on to discuss Gibbon]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'I was too much engaged with Gibbon to bestow time on reading "Causes and Consequences"; Mr E. However, read it & was pleased with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'I was too much engaged with Gibbon to bestow time on reading "Causes and Consequences"; Mr E. However, read it & was pleased with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Evans Print: Book
'Took Gibbon to the library. I have not had time to read more than one chapter being engaged with Bowyers. I can procure it another time.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Sunday 28th November
?Decline and fall? (Edward Gibbon).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Tuesday 7th December.
"Decline and Fall? ? Vol. 2'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'At Winchester I was able to get the first volume of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall", but had no time to finish it. On another occasion at another prison I read the whole work through from beginning to end.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have been reading little except Coxe's travels in Switzerland, Poland, Russia &c, Humes history together with part of Smollet[t], Gibbon &c. Coxe is an intelligent man, and communicates in a very popular manner considerable information concerning the countries thro' which he passed - Hume you know to be distinct & impartial: but he has less sympathy than might be expected with the heroic patriots - the Hampdens & the Sidneys that glorify the pages of English history. I fear Smollett is going to be a confused creature. I have read but a volume of Gibbon - and I do not like him - his style is flowery - his sarcasms wicked - his notes oppressive, often beastly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Looked into Gibbon's "Miscellaneous Works"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished Gibbon's "Memoirs of himself"--an exquisite morceau of literature...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Gibbon's "Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature": an ostentatious performance...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'In the evening S[helley] C[lary] and H[ogg] sleep - read Gibbon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Shelley reads Gibbon alloud to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read Gibbon (end of I vol) S. reads Livy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'talk with Hogg - and read Gibbon but very little (30) in the evening work & S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'S reads Gibbon aloud to me (160) - Weeks calls - Hogg comes - work - S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[italics] 'The Maie 3th vol. of Gibbon 607. Virgils Georgics'. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[italics] 'S. remains at home. reads Livy - [scored out] p.532 2d vol. [end scored out] Maie reads very little of Gibbon - We read and are delighted with Lara - the finest of Lord B's poems. S. reads Lara aloud in the evening. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[italics]'S. Livy p.532 - Cumis, (adeo minimis etiam rebum prava religio inserit Deos) mures in aede Jovis aurum rosisse 556. 2 vol. Maie says that if we had met the Emperor Julian in private life he would have appeared a very ordinary man The fables of Aesop in Greek. - Boethius consolation of philosophy - how in the reign of Theodoric [underlined] a Christian? [end underlining] gr - Lord Bacon's works - Gibbon likes Boethius - [end italics] Mary reads Gibbon (100).'
[italic text is by PBS, non-italic by MG]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'in the evening Hogg reads Gibbon to me (393)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
'Hogg reads Gibbon to me - go to Bullocks Museum - see the birds - return at 4 - work and H reads Gibbon aloud (finish 4 volume)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
Shelley reads Livy and then reads Gibbon with me till dinner'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'[italics to indicate Shelley's hand] Easter Monday. Maie finished the 5th vol. of Gibbon [...] In the evening read - S finishes Livy (p920 vol 3.) & 1/2 past 12 at night'.[end italics]
[& a mistake for at??]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'after dinner read l'esprit des nations 132 Shelley read[s] Italian - read 15 lines of Ovids metamo[r]phosis with Hogg - [italics to indicate Shelley's hand] The Assassins - Gibbon Chap. LXIV - all that can be known of the assassins is to be found in Memoires of the Acad[e]my of Inscriptions tom. xvii p127-170'.[end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read Ovid with Hogg (fin. 2nd fable). Shelley reads Gibbon and pastor fido with Clary - in the evening read Esprit des Nations (72). S. reads Pastor Fido (102) and Gibbon (vol 12 - 364) and the story of Myrrha in Ovid'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'[italics to denote Shelley's hand] Mary reads the 3rd fable of ovid. S & Clare read Pastor Fido. S. Reads Gibbon - (To recollect the life of Rienzi - Fortifiocca)[end italics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Jefferson reads Don Quixote - C. reads Gibbon - S. finishes the 17th canto of Orlando Furioso - Read Voltaire's Essay on Nations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Shelley reads Curt - & Plutarch - read Pamela and Shelley read[s] Gibbon after tea'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'In the evening I finish Curtius. S. reads & finishes Plutarchs life of Alexander. After tea S. reads the XXth chapter of Gibbon to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read Locke & the life of Lorenzo - Shelley reads it and finishes it - In the evenng he reads 25th chap. of Gibbon - read several odes of Horace'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. finishes the plays of Aeschylus - finishes the Hist. of Caubul - writes - reads three chap. of Gibbon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley writes - reads Plato's Convivium - Gibbon aloud - Read several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tacitus and Hume. S reads Gibbon - read G[e]orgics - 194'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S reads Gibbon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 16th Canto of Ariosto - Read Gibbon - S. reads the Memorabilia of Zenophon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 25 Canto of Ariosto - Gibbon & 6 & 7 odes of Horace - S. reads the Lysistratae of Aristophanes - finishes Gibbon - and reads Hume's England in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'I have finished the second voluime of Gibbon the article on Christianity is real capital - Goethe gets no easier. I am near the end of Egmont which I like infinitely better than then two following pieces - At last I am beginning to recognise the Goethe you admire -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'I am busy with the fourth volume of Gibbon and Machiavelli's discourses on Livy. He is the only Italian that has interested me - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 15 April 1910:
'Just now I am enthralled by Gibbon's Autobiography. There are passages in it that are more than "correct", and on the border line of beauty. What a giant he is -- greatest historian & greatest [...] name of the 18th century [italics]I[end italics] say; whether it is his greatness or his remoteness that makes his goings on with religion so queer I do not know.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 5 May 1917:
'I am anxious to re-read a little history and see how its solemn arrangement of "movements", which, while they bored me, used to impress, look now, in the light of actual experience. I have only tried Gibbon, whom nothing can disintegrate, but expect that everyone and everything else will shatter into dust.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I told him, that I had been present the day before when Mrs. Montagu, the literary lady, sat to Miss Reynolds for her picture ; and that she said, "she had bound up Mr. Gibbon's 'History' without the last two offensive chapters; for that she thought the book so far good, as it gave, in an elegant manner, the substance of the bad writers medii aevi, which the late Lord Lyttleton advised her to read." [Johnson retorts that she has not read these authors]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 16-21 January 1793: 'I do not know in the annals of history & barbarity any character which I so much abhor as that of the vain the vile Augustus — the death of Cicero the banishment of Ovid — the black boys & the incestuous daughter the total suppression of liberty these are blots which all the art of Flattery cannot hide from the eye of Reason. “With the same hand & probably with the same frame of mind did he sign the proscription of Cicero & the pardon of Cinna” — you remember Gibbons remark upon Augustuss appearance at the banquet in that very elegant piece of the virtuous Julian.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
From Harriet Grote's diary (1868):
'Mr. Grote [husband] said he had, in the course of the last few months, taken down Gibbon's work and read occasionally therein; and, he added, he had been penetrated with admiration of the exactitude and fidelity of the references [...] Grote had tested Gibbon's trustworthiness, on several points, by reference to ancient writers, and invariably found his statements correct and candid. Dr. William Smith said that he too had compared the references in Gibbon with the works cited, and that he was affected by the same feeling of respect and admiration [comments further on George Grote's enthusiasm for Gibbon].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From Harriet Grote's diary (1868):
'Mr. Grote [husband] said he had, in the course of the last few months, taken down Gibbon's work and read occasionally therein; and, he added, he had been penetrated with admiration of the exactitude and fidelity of the references [...] Grote had tested Gibbon's trustworthiness, on several points, by reference to ancient writers, and invariably found his statements correct and candid. Dr. William Smith said that he too had compared the references in Gibbon with the works cited, and that he was affected by the same feeling of respect and admiration [comments further on George Grote's enthusiasm for Gibbon].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Harris Print: Book
'January 3rd. Cloudy day. Went with Col Pasteurs to look over the French Hospital at the Imperial Hotel. Read the "Decline and Fall" all afternoon and evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Martin Wentworth Littlewood Print: Book
'I am sorry to say Sir E. [Eldon Gorst, British Agent and Consul General] has been rather bad this last week: a touch of the sun it is thought. I play the piano to him of an afternoon and read a little — Browning or Gibbon.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Down in the village street stood our motor, the
ceiling light switched on, brilliantly illuminating
the interior, and inside it, oblivious to the crowd
that pressed against the windows, reclined our
English mechanic (he who had driven the Ford until
its collapse), reading Gibbon.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown unknown Print: Book
'I would not, I could not, give up the rides and
rambles that took up so much of my time, but I
would try to overcome my disinclination to serious
reading. There were plenty of books in the house —
it was always a puzzle to me how we came to have
so many. I was familiar with their appearance on
the shelves — they had been before me since I
first opened my eyes — their shape, size, colours,
even their titles, and that was all I knew about
them. A general Natural History and two little
works by James Rennie on the habits and faculties
of birds was all the literature suited to my wants
in the entire collection of three or four hundred
volumes. For the rest I had read a few story-books
and novels: but we had no novels; when one came
into the house it would be read and lent to our
next neighbour five or six miles away, and he in
turn would lend to another twenty miles further
on, until it disappeared into space'. I made a
beginning with Rollin's "Ancient History" in two
huge quarto volumes; I fancy it was the large
clear type and numerous plates [...] that
determined my choice. Rollin the good old
priest, opened a new, wonderful world to me, and
instead of the tedious task I feared the reading
would prove,it was as delightful as it had
formerly been to listen to my brother's endless
histories of imaginary heroes and their wars and
adventures. Still athirst for history, after
finishing Rollin I began fingering other works of
that kind: there was Whiston's "Josephus", too
ponderous a book to be held in the hands when read
out of doors; and there was Gibbon in six stately
volumes. I was not yet able to appreciate the lofty
artificial style, and soon fell upon something
better suited to my boyish taste in letters - a
"History of Christianity" in, I think, sixteen or
eighteen volumes of a convenient size. [...] These
biographies sent me to another old book, "Leland
on Revelation", which told me much I was curious
to know about the mythologies and systems of
philosophy of the ancients [...]. Next came
Carlyle's "French Revolution", and at last Gibbon,
and I was still deep in the "Decline and Fall"
when disaster came to us, my father was
practically ruined.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
