Beginnings: The Grand Tour

Edward Gibbon (1737–94), author of the epic six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, started his education on a sour note. Hindered by ill health, he was a poor student and the future classicist did not immediately take to Latin or Greek. Worse, although he loved to read, the boy was largely unimpressed with his tutors. As a result, when Gibbon matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, in April 1752 he was unprepared for his studies. On arrival the future historian found this most wealthy, prestigious, and ancient of Oxford colleges sorely lacking. He huffed, “these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of all the prejudices and infirmities of age. The schools of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous science and they are still tainted with the vices of their origin.”1 Much as critics of large research universities today decry the use of teaching assistants, Gibbon was disgusted by the fact that professors seldom taught while the tutors were wholly inadequate. In the end, his fourteen months at Oxford “proved … the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.”2 It was all too much. A show of protest was called for; Gibbon converted to Catholicism, eschewing the established Church of England. Given a prohibition on Catholic attendance at Oxford, he was summarily tossed out of college.