GERARD, ALEXANDER (1728-1795).—­Philosophical writer, s. of Rev. Gilbert G., was ed. at Aberdeen, where he became Prof., first of Natural Philosophy, and afterwards of Divinity, and one of the ministers of the city.  As a prof. he introduced various reforms.  In 1756 he gained the prize for an Essay on Taste which, together with an Essay on Genius, he subsequently pub. These treatises, though now superseded, gained for him considerable reputation.

GIBBON, EDWARD (1737-1794).—­Historian, was b. at Putney of an ancient Kentish family.  His f. was Edward G., and his mother Judith Porten.  He was the only one of a family of seven who survived infancy, and was himself a delicate child with a precocious love of study.  After receiving his early education at home he was sent to Westminster School, and when 15 was entered at Magdalen Coll., Oxf., where, according to his own account, he spent 14 months idly and unprofitably.  Oxf. was then at its lowest ebb, and earnest study or effort of any kind had little encouragement.  G., however, appears to have maintained his wide reading in some degree, and his study of Bossuet and other controversialists led to his becoming in 1753 a Romanist.  To counteract this his f. placed him under the charge of David Mallet (q.v.), the poet, deist, and ed. of Bolingbroke’s works, whose influence, not unnaturally, failed of the desired effect, and G. was next sent to Lausanne, and placed under the care of a Protestant pastor, M. Pavilliard.  Various circumstances appear to have made G. not unwilling to be re-converted to Protestantism; at all events he soon returned to the reformed doctrines.  At Lausanne he remained for over four years, and devoted himself assiduously to study, especially of French literature and the Latin classics.  At this time also he became engaged to Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod; but on the match being peremptorily opposed by his f. it was broken off.  With the lady, who eventually became the wife of Necker, and the mother of Madame de Stael, he remained on terms of friendship.  In 1758 G. returned to England, and in 1761 pub. Essai sur l’Etude de la Litterature, translated into English in 1764.  About this time he made a tour on the Continent, visiting Paris, where he stayed for three months, and thence proceeding to Switzerland and Italy.  There it was that, musing amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome on October 15, 1764, he formed the plan of writing the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  He returned to England in 1765, and in 1770 his f. d., leaving him the embarrassed estate of Buriton, which had been his usual home when in England.  With a view to recovering his affairs, he left his estate and lived in London where, in 1772, he seriously set himself to realise the great plan which, since its conception, had never been out of his thoughts.  The first chapter was written three times, and the