Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
5,714 words
How fares the Truth now? — Ill?
— Do pens but slily further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
— Thomas Hardy, “Lausanne, In Gibbon’s Old Garden: 11-12 p.m.”
The 110th anniversary of the completion of the Decline and Fall at the same hour and place
Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, England on May 8, 1737. He was the sole survivor of a family with seven children; he had five brothers and one sister who all died in infancy. (more…)