Some Notes on Edward Gibbon's
Mémoire
Justificatif
Robert R. Rea
To few literary figures has been given the enjoyment of such
thorough bibliographical coverage as Miss J. E. Norton provided in
her Bibliography of the Works of Edward Gibbon (1940).
Among
the most significant contributions of this volume is the
clarification of much of the detail surrounding the publication of
Gibbon's chief digression into political propaganda, a
semi-official "white-book" entitled Mémoire Justificatif pour
servir de réponse a l'exposé, &c. de la cour de
France
(1779). The excellence of Miss Norton's work and the prominent
character of her subject combine to make further additions to the
textual and bibliographical analysis of this pamphlet
desirable.
I.
Three forms of the Mémoire Justificatif have
previously been noted. The first edition was published under
governmental supervision sometime between August 10, 1779, when
Gibbon submitted to Lord Weymouth his "first, imperfect Essay, in
this kind of Composition,"[1] and
October 7, when the General Evening Post noticed its
appearance in print.[2] The
title-page of this edition gives no information concerning printer,
publisher, or distributor. A second issue of the first edition was
produced for the bookseller Peter Elmsley by the printers T.
Harrison and S. Brooke. Norton (p. 30) found this issue first
mentioned in the Morning Chronicle of December 24, but
earlier publication seems quite certain. Gibbon wrote on October 27
that Elmsley had already "desired to print a new Edition which he
has swelled by the addition of the French Manifesto."[3] This supplement entitled
Exposé des Motifs de la Conduite du Roi de France,
relativement à l'Angleterre was separately paginated and
bound so as to precede Gibbon's pamphlet. A reputed second edition
incorporating English translations of the documents was printed by
Harrison and Brooke and advertised in 1780 by the houses of Davies,
Longman, and Dodsley (Norton, pp. 30-31).
The true second edition appears, however, to be one which, by
virtue of its extreme rarity, has escaped Gibbon's bibliographers
altogether.[4] This new edition may
be described as follows:
EXPOSÉ | DES | MOTIFS | De la Conduite du Roi de
FRANCE,
rela-|tivement à l'ANGLETERRE. | [short rule] | MEMOIRE |
JUSTIFICATIF | POUR SERVIR DE | RÉPONSE | À
l'EXPOSÉ,
&c. | De la Cour de FRANCE. | [double rule] | LONDRES: | Et a
DUBLIN chez GUILLAUME HALLHEAD, No. 63, | Damestreet. |
[short
rule] | M.DCC.LXXIX.
4°: A-B4
2A-D4.
A1a [p. 1], title; A1b [p. 2], a notice concerning publication;
A2a-B4b, pp. 3-16, text of the Exposé;
2A1a-D4b, pp.
1-32, text of the Mémoire. Size: 11 3/16" x 8 3/4"
(uncut
copy).
HT] MEMOIRE JUSTIFICATIF | pour servir de Résponse
à
l'Exposé, &c. de la | Cour de FRANCE.
That the new edition was printed subsequent to the second issue of
the first edition is patent from half a dozen instances in which
the typographical and textual corrections of the Elmsley issue are
incorporated in the Hallhead pamphlet. Although the pagination is
the same in both cases, the typesetting and spacing differ on four
pages. In the Elmsley
Mémoire the short notice
explaining
publication is headed "Avis du Libraire." The publisher of the new
edition chose to omit that phrase and re-worded the paragraphs
which followed. The elimination of "Avis du Libraire" and the
capitalization of the word "De" in the title strongly suggest that
the new edition was set directly from a copy partially described by
Norton (p. 35) as a variant of the second issue located in the
private collection of Lord Rothschild.
II.
In addition to its appearance in pamphlet form, Gibbon's
Mémoire was reprinted in contemporary newspapers,
periodicals, and in the author's Miscellaneous Works edited
by Lord Sheffield (Norton, pp. 33, 35). As the Norton
Bibliography mentions only the Annual Register
as an
English periodical source, two additions to this category may be
cited. The Mémoire Justificatif is to be found in the
London Magazine, XLVIII (1779), 582ff., and in John
Almon's
Remembrancer; or, impartial repository of public events,
VIII (1779), 374ff. These are among the most accessible
contemporary sources of the work in this country but they should be
used with care. In both the Annual Register and
Remembrancer versions the last four pages of the original
pamphlet are transposed into the middle of the text and a half page
is omitted. This error, obviously the result of a compositor's
carelessness, leaves the text in the
London Magazine the only reliable source of its type.
III.
The most interesting of the textual variations to be found in
the several editions of the pamphlet is that concerning the affair
of La Belle Poule. This French vessel was engaged in the
first naval action of the war when, in company with two smaller
ships, Licorne and Pallas, she ran afoul
Admiral
Keppel's British squadron off Brest, June 18, 1778. The Frenchman
was ordered to stand to by one of Keppel's frigates, but replied to
the warning bow shot with a broadside. In the ensuing encounter
La Belle Poule was able to withdraw into the safety of Brest
harbor, but her escorts were taken.[5] Gibbon dealt with this affair in the
Mémoire Justificatif, but erroneously described "les
circonstances de la prise de la Belle Poule et de deux
autres frégates."[6] This
factual
mistake was corrected in the second issue and carried into the
second edition as a more modest statement
concerning "les circonstances du combat avec la Belle Poule
et de la prise des deux frégates."[7] Though not an especially
significant
error, this slip of Gibbon's pen and its correction is peculiarly
interesting, as almost the same sort of error was made by his
French protagonist Caron de Beaumarchais whose airy treatment of
cold naval facts led to considerable embarrassment at the hands of
outraged politicians.[8]
IV.
The author of the Mémoire Justificatif was quite
pleased with his handiwork. He remarked that "it has . . . been
communicated as a State paper . . . to all the Ministers and Courts
of Europe, and as far as I can understand it has been received with
some degree of approbation" (Prothero, I, 372). He even mentioned
a Turkish translation to Lord Sheffield who declared that, "At
Petersburgh and Vienna it was currently observed by the Corps
Diplomatique, that the English Ministry had published a Memorial
written not only with great and more than usual ability, but also
in French, so correct, that they must have employed a Frenchman"
(Sheffield, I, xix-xx). Gibbon's high opinion of his own prowess (a
characteristic not limited to the present problem) has been widely
upheld despite an embarrassing lack of substantiation from the
Continent. Norton's efforts uncovered only a translation of an
English newspaper version at the Quai D'Orsay, and no other
official foreign notice of
the Mémoire has come to light. Certainly Gibbon's
pamphlet circulated abroad, but as Madame du Deffand, who refused
to read it, informed Horace Walpole, "Il n'a pas un grand
succès."[9] A portion of the
honors claimed by Gibbon must be attributed to the simultaneous
publication under remarkably similar circumstances of another
anonymous pamphlet bearing the same short title. This was Sir James
Marriott's Mémoire Justificatif de la conduite de la Grande
Bretagne, en arrêtant les navires étrangers et les munitions
de guerre, destinées aux insurgens de l'Amerique (Londres:
Imprimé par T. Harrison et S. Brooke, MDCCLXXIX). The
Marriott
pamphlet, which Norton found attributed to Gibbon in the French
archives, was an able statement of maritime law written by a judge
of the Admiralty court. Printed at the expense of the English
government and circulated by Sir Joseph Yorke, ambassador at the
Hague, it was directed to "all
the Maritime Neutral Courts, with great success."[10] A comparison of the subject matter
in
the two Mémoires strongly suggests that Marriott's
would
have been of far more interest to Russian or Turk than Gibbon's
pamphlet, and should receive long overdue recognition.
V.
A concluding word may be devoted to the question of Gibbon's
motives for writing the Mémoire Justificatif. Early
and
late commentators have carelessly implied or stated that the
historian received his place at the Board of Trade for penning this
pamphlet.[11] The origin of this idea
is laid at the feet of John Wilkes by Gibbon's bibliographer (p.
26) with little consideration for either eighteenth-century
politics or the clear implications of Wilkes's statements. It is
evident from simple chronological study that Gibbon did not receive
his post as a reward for having written the Mémoire
Justificatif.[12] Gibbon would
scarcely have written in anticipation of payment. "I will never
make myself the Champion of a party," he declared. Such
prostitution
of pen was beneath him. But having accepted office, and in large
part for financial reasons, he could no less afford to refuse the
"very polite request" to become "the Advocate of my Country against
a foreign enemy" (Prothero, I, 371-372). The political morality of
the eighteenth century allowed a man of letters who accepted
pension or place to become the anonymous mistress of a mercenary
government, but did not demand a public display of the
relationship. John Wilkes was not in error when he noted the
plethora of literary state papers
"since the ministerial
purchase" of Gibbon's pen. He rightly viewed the
Mémoire
Justificatif as no more than the product of the ardent zeal of
"a very late ministerial convert," a task "commanded by a
task-master more cruel than those of Egypt." He did not baldly
assert that "Gibbon was made a Lord Commissioner of Trade as a
reward for writing it," as Norton implies (p. 26), but to the
contrary deplored that "a lord of trade [had] been
employed to traffic in the grossest abuse" of political
polemic.
[13] True, Wilkes blamed
Gibbon for accepting a position at the hands of a government of
which the historian disapproved, but his attack upon the author of
the
Mémoire Justificatif was a reaction to the
undignified prostration of Clio before Mammon after the goddess's
prayers had been answered. For that Wilkes need not be so heartily
condemned—nor Gibbon so glibly exonerated.
Notes