Valedictory

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Stone, Ian R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2016
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Gibbon; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247416000504; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247416000504

Towards midnight on 27 June 1787, it was clear, serene and moonlit, Edward Gibbon, certainly the greatest historian of his own, and possibly of any other, era laid down his pen after having written the last lines of his masterpiece The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire . He did this in the agreeable surroundings of the summer house in his garden at Lausanne overlooking the lake. He commented that his first emotion was the recovery of his freedom after so many years of unremitting labour but soon ‘a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave’ of the ‘old and agreeable companion’ that his book had become to him over the years (Murray 1896: 333–334).