J. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion v.1 The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon

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.In the more retrospective of the two journal fragments he noted:�v Haskell, 1993, p.180, notes that, perhaps undeservedly, he was heartily disliked by almost everycontemporary who wrote about him , and goes on (pp.180 6) to consider his antiquarianlearning in relation to that of Gibbon (pp.186 93).�w MG, p.105.�x Letters, i, p.133.Paris and the gens de lettres 245Cette reputation me produisit cependant un petit desagr�ment.Elle me fitconsiderer uniquement comme homme de lettres; ce n est pas que cette qualit�ne soit peut-etre en elle-meme la premiere de la societe, mais j aurois voul� yjoindre celle d homme de condition � laquelle j avois des droits si legitimes.Jene voulois pas que l ecrivain fit totalement disparoitre le Gentilhomme.Cettevanit� ne me fait peut-etre point d honneur mais je n ecris pas un Panegyrique.Peut-etre que l orgueil me faisoit illusion, et que je cr�s voir des proc�d�s � monegard qui n existoient que dans mon imagination jalouse.En ce cas la, c estl aveu d un defaut de plus.�y[This reputation, however, is causing me some little discomfort.It means that Iam regarded simply as a man of letters.It is not that this is not a rank perhapsforemost in this society, but I would have preferred to join with it that of a manof quality, to which I have a legitimate claim.I do not want the gentleman to belost altogether in the author.This vanity perhaps does me no credit, but I amnot writing a panegyric.Perhaps I am deceived by pride, and imagine that I seebehaviour towards me that exists only in my jealous imagination.If so, I mustacknowledge one more fault in myself.]Gibbon was engaged in self-examination and self-criticism, but hewas also pointing to a fault-line in the social structure of EnglishEnlightenment.The gentlemen had taken over letters and were prac-tising them in order to demonstrate their independence of the clerisies,but there were many ways of being a man of quality or fine gentlemanwhich had nothing to do with letters.And erudition was a severe paideiawhich demanded a harsh, and therefore perhaps impolite, self-disciplineof those self-dedicated to it.Gibbon was and wanted to be a gentleman,but knew his vocation to be that of a scholar; he may have seen thedonnish or even monastic life-style of Caylus as a threat, a warning ofwhat he himself might become.At another point on his imaginativehorizon appeared the alternative threat of d Alembert, who in present-ing the gens de lettres as an �tat or a soci�t� had seemed to subject eruditionto the dictatorship of philosophy in a form alien to Gibbon.There is nomention of the Encyclop�distes in these fragments, unless they are hintedat in a note concerning a visit to Jean-Pierre de Bougainville, elderbrother of the navigator and a former secretary of the Acad�mie desInscriptions:La Conversation rouloit principalement sur les gens de lettres de ce pays.Engeneral il les regarde comme des hommes peu estimable et tr�s dangereux.�p[The conversation turned chiefly on the men of letters in this country.Ingeneral he thinks them little to be admired and very dangerous.]�y MG, p.106.�p MG, p.100.246 Paris and the defence of erudition, 1758 1763Are the gens de lettres separating themselves from the hommes de lettres, as asoci�t� aiming to be something more than un �tat reconnu? Bougainville,who died that year, may have been merely grumbling, but the percep-tion was to arise in a future not to be foreseen.The fragmentary journal, reinforced by an uncompleted id�e g�n-�rale , covers only a few days of the more than three months Gibbonspent in Paris, and the account we have of his life there is anything butexhaustive.In February 1763 we find him studying prominent buildingsas a traveller should and even listening to sermons and reportingcritically on their content and elocution.This he did in the company ofMadame Bontemps, to whom he had been recommended by LucyMallet and with whom he enjoyed an amiti� amoureuse a good deal lessintense than Hume s with Madame Boufflers, but like it in forming partof the education of a philosopher at Paris; he was intrigued to find her atonce libertine, d�vote, tolerant and the author of a prose translation ofJames Thomson s The Seasons.�� He dined regularly at the tables ofHelvetius and Holbach whose De l esprit he did not mind mentioning ina letter to his stepmother but says nothing of the conversation he heardthere.�� Here we find him in philosophe and in no small degree infidelcompany�� there is nothing to indicate to whom he owed the entr�e toit but there is no sign in these scanty documents of any intellectual orsocial tensions occurring, though the Memoirs have much to say on thissubject [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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