[8] Gibbon's father married his second wife, Miss Dorothea Patton, in 1755.
You say that Mrs. Gibbon (Miss Patton) has set my father against the Mallets.[9] I do not know if 'tis so very good a sign. Since she was intimate with him when I was under Ward's[10] hands, I should think you must have heard something of her. Do make some inquiries about her and send them me. I wonder what will become of my poor cousin. She will be sold at last. Since they are in France, and that the war is going to break out, what if they should come to Lausanne?
[9] David Mallet, or Malloch, poet, playwright, and miscellaneous writer (1705-65), is best known for his ballad of _William and Margaret_, his unsubstantiated claim to the authorship of _Rule Britannia_, and his edition of Bolingbroke's works. Bolingbroke, said Dr. Johnson, had "spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity," and "left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger." Mallet was "a great declaimer in all the London coffee-houses against Christianity," and the obtrusion of his sceptical views made his household unpleasing to David Hume. To his house Gibbon was taken after his reception into the Church of Rome.
*Now for myself. As my father has given me leave to make a journey round Switzerland, we set out to-morrow. Buy a map of Switzerland, 'twill cost you but a shilling, and follow me. I go by Iverdun, Neufchâtel, Bienne or Biel, Soleure or Solothurn, Bâle or Basil, Bade, Zurich, Lucerne, and Bern. The voyage will be of about four weeks; so that _I hope to find a letter from you waiting for me_. As my father had given me leave to learn what I had a mind, I have learned to ride, and learn actually to dance and draw. Besides that, I often give ten or twelve hours a day to my studies. I find a great many agreeable people here; see them sometimes, and can say upon the whole, without vanity, that, tho' I am the Englishman here who spends the least money, I am he who is the most generally liked. I told you that my father had promised to send me into France and Italy. I have thanked him for it. But if he would follow my plan, he won't do it yet a while. I never liked young travellers; they go too raw to make any great remarks, and they lose a time which is (in my opinion) the most precious part of a man's life. My scheme would be, to spend this winter at Lausanne--for tho' 'tis a very good place to acquire the air of good company and the French tongue, we have no good professors--to spend (I say) the winter at Lausanne; go into England to see my friends a couple of months, and after that, finish my studies, either at Cambridge (for after what's past one cannot think of Oxford), or at a university in Holland. If you liked the scheme, _could you propose it to my father by Metcalf, or somebody else who has a certain credit over him_? I forgot to ask you whether, in case my father writes to tell me his marriage, would you advise me to compliment my mother-in-law? I think so. My health is so very regular that I have nothing to say about it.
