GIBBON AND FANNY BURNEY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—.Mr. Forster, in the second of his singularly interesting articles, writes of the famous author of the Decline and Fall as being, at one period of his life, " a severe and unattractive young man." Very probably he may have shown a severity, which perhaps was not uncalled for, in maintaining discipline as an officer in the Hampshire regiment of militia, but his general attitude towards life can hardly be called austere, witness his active membership of that delightful " Societk du Printemps " at Lausanne.
That the. historian, like many other great men, was unattractive in personal appearance must, I think, be admitted, for even his picture, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, cannot
conceal that extreme rotundity of face which was so unkindly commented upon by Fanny Burney in one of her letters : " Mr. Gibbon," she says, " has cheeks of such prodigious chubbiness, that they envelop his nose so completely, as to
render it, in profile, absolutely invisible." - But, in other respects, his long friendship with Lord and Lady Sheffield, M. Deyverdun, and several other people sug- gests that he could hardly have been an altogether " unattractive " man.—I am, Sir, &c., WALTER CLICK. Hartfield Square, Eastbourne.
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