University of Virginia Library

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:

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