Whenever I advance anything that seems to
require corroboration, I have been careful to give my authority.]
He is at some pains in his Memoirs to show the length and quality of
his pedigree, which he traces back to the times of the Second and
Third Edwards. Noting the fact, we pass on to a nearer ancestor, his
grandfather, who seems to have been a person of considerable energy
of character and business talent. He made a large fortune, which he
lost in the South-Sea Scheme, and then made another before his death.
He was one of the Commissioners of Customs, and sat at the Board with
the poet Prior; Bolingbroke was heard to declare that no man knew
better than Mr. Edward Gibbon the commerce and finances of England.
His son, the historian's father, was a person of very inferior stamp.
He was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, travelled on the
Continent, sat in Parliament, lived beyond his means as a country
gentleman, and here his achievements came to an end. He seems to have
been a kindly but a weak and impulsive man, who however had the merit
of obtaining and deserving his son's affection by genial sympathy and
kindly treatment.
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