" One is often tempted, in reading Gibbon's Memoirs, to regret
that he adopted the austere plan which led him "to condemn the
practice of transforming a private memorial into a vehicle of satire
or praise." As he truly says, "It was assuredly in his power to amuse
the reader with a gallery of portraits and a collection of anecdotes."
This reserve is particularly disappointing when a striking and
original figure like Voltaire passes across the field, without an
attempt to add one stroke to the portraiture of such a physiognomy.
Gibbon had now (1758) been nearly five years at Lausanne, when his
father suddenly intimated that he was to return home immediately. The
Seven Years War was at its height, and the French had denied a passage
through France to English travellers. Gibbon, or more properly his
Swiss friends, thought that the alternative road through Germany might
be dangerous, though it might have been assumed that the Great
Frederick, so far as he was concerned, would make things as pleasant
as possible to British subjects, whose country had just consented to
supply him with a much-needed subsidy.
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