GIBBON

the historian, was bom in 1737. While he was at Oxford he declared himself a Romanist, so his father sent him to a celebrated Calvin is tic divine in Lausanne, where he was re-converted and formed a valuable habit of regular study. It was during a visit to Italy in 1764 that the idea of his great History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire occurred to him, and the first volume was published in 1776. The other three volumes, which were written at Lausanne, were published in 1788, and he died in * 794-