Excerpt from Memoirs of Edward Gibbon, Esq.: With an Essay The story of Gibbon's life as he himself tells it was first given to the world by his friend, Lord Sheffield, who included it among the author's Miscellaneous Works in an edition published after his death. He had left six sketches of several periods of his life; he was apparently quite satisfied with none of them; they varied in form, and were written Without regard to order of time. Lord Sheffield put them together, scru pulously respecting the text, and where they were too meagre, he sup plied material from the author's journals, and himself appended the notes, signed with an S. In this edition. He continued Gibbon's life from the point at which the Memoir leaves it, up to the time of his death, and he published with it a large number of his letters, running in date from 1756 to 1793; he preferred thus to let the author, as far as possible, tell his own story. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.