Note 225 — 589.

Gibbon's library at Lausanne was bought, in 1796, from Lord Sheffield by Beckford for £950. Beckford shut himself up in it "for six weeks, from early in the morning until night, only now and then taking a ride," and read himself "nearly blind" (Cyrus Redding's "Recollections of the Author of Vathek," New Monthly Magazine, vol. lxxi. p. 307). Growing tired of it, he gave it to Dr. Scholl, a physician at Lausanne. Miss Berry, who visited the library in July, 1803 (Journals and Letters, vol. ii. p. 260), says, "It is, of all the libraries I ever saw, that of which I should most covet the possession—that which seems exactly everything that any gentleman or gentlewoman fond of letters could wish." "Gibbon's library," says Henry Mathews in 1818 (Diary of an Invalid, p. 318), "still remains, but it is buried and lost to the world. It is the property of Mr. Beckford, and lies locked up in an uninhabited house at Lausanne." In 1830 the library was divided into two parts. Half was sold for £500 to an English gentleman; the other half went at the same price to a bookseller at Geneva. The half which was sold to an English purchaser was, in 1876 (Notes and Queries, 5th series, vol. v. p. 425), still kept together in the possession of a Swiss gentleman near Geneva.