minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of
the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the
epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays
of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and
bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt at the headstrong
passions of Benevenuto Cellini, and the gay follies of Colley
Cibber. The confessions of St. Austin and Rousseau disclose the
secrets of the human heart; the commentaries of the learned Huet
have survived his evangelical demonstration; and the memoirs of
Goldoni are more truly dramatic than his Italian comedies. The
heretic and the churchman are strongly marked in the characters and
fortunes of Whiston and Bishop Newton; and even the dullness of
Michael de Marolles and Anthony Wood acquires some value from the
faithful representation of men and manners. That I am equal or
superior to some of these, the effects of modesty or affectation
cannot force me to dissemble.

My family is originally derived from the county of Kent. The
Southern district, which borders on Sussex and the sea, was formerly
overspread with the great forest Anderida, and even now retains the
denomination of the Weald or Woodland. In this district, and in the
hundred and parish of Rolvenden, the Gibbons were possessed of lands
in the year one thousand three hundred and twenty-six; and the elder
branch of the family, without much increase or diminution of
property, still adheres to its native soil. Fourteen years after
the first appearance of his name, John Gibbon is recorded as the
Marmorarius or architect of King Edward the Third: the strong and
stately castle of Queensborough, which guarded the entrance of the
Medway, was a monument of his skill; and the grant of an hereditary
toll on the passage from Sandwich to Stonar, in the Isle of Thanet,