Memoirs of My Life and Writings

Gibbon begins with an account of his ancestors before moving on to his birth and education, which was partly private and partly at Westminster School. He matriculated as a student at Oxford University, an institution which he found at a low ebb. To the university of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life. Of one of his tutors Gibbon says that he "well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform." Gibbon's father took alarm on learning that he had converted to Roman Catholicism and, in order to bring him back to the Protestant fold, sent him to live with a Calvinist minister in Lausanne.