Sheffield in his will forbade the publication of further papers, and Dean Milman was only allowed to inspect them on condition of not publishing anything.
Of editions of the ‘Decline and Fall’ may be mentioned the Oxford edition in 8 vols. 8vo (revised and compared with original manuscripts), 1828; that by H. H. Milman, 12 vols. 8vo, 1838, 1839; that by Dr. W. Smith (including notes of Milman and Guizot), 8 vols. 8vo, 1854, 1855; in Bohn's 'British Classics,' 7 vols. sm. 8vo, 1853–5, and in 1 vol. royal 8vo, 1840. An edition by Thomas Bowdler [q. v.], 'for families and young persons,' appeared in 1840; an abridgement by Charles Hereford in 1789; and the 'Student's Gibbon,' by Dr. W. Smith, in 1857. French, German, and Italian translations appeared during Gibbon's life and subsequently; there are also translations into Polish, modern Greek, and Magyar. The French translation, revised and annotated by M. and Mme. Guizot, appeared in 1812.
[Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works as above; Egerton Brydges's Autobiography, i. 227, ii. 17; Gent. Mag. for 1794, i. 5, 94, 178, 199, 382; M. d'Haussonville's Salon de Mme. Necker (1882), i. 34–84 (reprinted from a series of articles in the Revue des deux Mondes, 1880, 1881; Boswell's Johnson; Walpole's Letters; Colman's Eccentricities for Edinburgh (for some absurd anecdotes); Mme. du Deffand's Letters to Horace Walpole (1810), iii. 261, 265, 274, 278, 283, 286, 301 (on his visit to Paris in 1777); Letters of Gibbon in Campbell's Loughborough (Lives of the Chancellors) and Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ii. 145, 385; Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, viii. 431–72; J. C. Morison's Gibbon in Men of Letters Series.]
GIBBON, JOHN (1629–1718), writer on heraldry, eldest son of Robert Gibbon, draper, of London, fourth son of Robert Gibbon of Rolvenden, Kent, by his wife Mary, daughter of Lionel Edgar of Framsden, Suffolk (Visitation of London, 1633–5 (Harl. Soc.) i. 310), was born on 3 Nov. 1629. He was brother of Edward Gibbon's great-grandfather, Matthew Gibbon. On 11 Dec. 1639 he was admitted a pupil of Merchant Taylors' School (Robinson, Register, i. 145), whence he proceeded to Jesus College, Cambridge, but did not take a degree. On his father's death in 1643 he inherited, as he tells us, an estate in Kent, but, being mostly marsh land, it was never worth very much to him (Day Fatality). In another of his works he celebrates the 'retired content' which he enjoyed at Allesborough in Worcestershire, in the house of Thomas, lord Coventry, where he was employed as a 'servant' or domestic tutor (Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam, p. 19). Gibbon visited Europe as a soldier and a traveller, acquired good knowledge of French and Spanish, passed some time ‘very happily’ in Jersey, crossed the Atlantic, and resided ‘a great part of anno 1659 till February the year following … in Virginia, being most hospitably entertained by the Honourable Colonel Rich. Lee, sometimes secretary of state there’ (ib. pp. 155, 156). In Virginia his passion for heraldry found gratification at a war-dance of the native Indians. Their little shields of bark and their naked bodies were painted with the colours and symbols of his favourite science, showing ‘that heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of humane race’ (ib. pp. 156–7). Gibbon returned home after the Restoration, and on 9 Feb. 1664–5 took up his abode in the house belonging to the senior brother in St. Katharine's Hospital, near the Tower, where he resided till 11 May 1701 (Stowe, Survey, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. i. p. 204). He received a patent for the office of Blue Mantle pursuivant at arms on 10 Feb. 1668, through the influence of Sir William Dugdale, then Norroy, but was not actually created such until 25 May 1671 (Noble, Hist. of College of Arms, p. 293), when, as he relates, ‘it was my hard hap to become a member of the Heralds Office when the ceremony of funerals (as accompanied with officers of arms) began to be in the wane. … In eleven years time I have had but five turns,’ which out of gratitude he commemorates at length (Introductio, &c., p. 161). He never received further promotion, as he injured himself by his arrogance towards his less learned superiors in the college, whose shortcomings he had an unpleasant habit of registering in the margins of the library books, which he also filled with calculations of his own nativity. He firmly believed his destiny so fixed by the stars which presided at his birth that good or ill behaviour could never alter it (Noble, ut supra, p. 363). Among his friends, however, he could number Dugdale, Ashmole, Dr. John Betts, and Dr. Nehemiah Grew, ‘and in the society of such men,’ remarks Edward Gibbon, ‘he may be recorded without disgrace as the member of an astrological club’ (Autobiography). In religion and politics he was a high tory. In the latter end of the reign of Charles II he wrote in the support of the Duke of York. Upon James's return from Flanders in 1679 he published a little essay entitled ‘Dux bonis omnibus appellens, or The Swans Welcome.’ Another whimsical piece was ‘Day Fatality; or, some Observations of Days lucky and unlucky; concluding with some Remarks upon the fourteenth of October, the auspicious Birth--
