"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.