[Footnote 63: This letter, addrest to Unwin, and dated "October 30, 1784," refers to Cowper's poem "The Task."] EDWARD GIBBON Born in 1737, died in 1794; educated at Oxford, but was not graduated; became a Catholic, but soon renounced that faith; sent by his father to Lausanne, Switzerland, for instruction by a Calvinist minister in 1753; there met and fell in love with, but did not marry, Susanne Curchod; served in the militia, becoming a colonel in 1759-70; traveled in France and Italy in 1763-65; elected to Parliament in 1764; settled permanently in Lausanne in 1783; published the first volume of his "Decline and Fall" in 1776, and the last in 1778; wrote also "Memoirs of My Life and Writings." I THE ROMANCE OF HIS YOUTH[64] I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this word I do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit of chivalry and is interwoven with the texture of French manners. I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and tho my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content, with a small salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Crassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal and even learned education on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause.