Editing Edward Gibbon (section)

===First fame and the Grand tour: 1758–1765===
[[File:Keep of Portchester Castle, 2008.jpg|thumb|[[Portchester Castle]] came under Gibbon's command for a brief period while he was an officer in the South Hampshire Militia.<ref>{{harvnb|Goodall|2008|p=38}}</ref>]]
Upon his return to England, Gibbon published his first book, ''Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature'' in 1761, which produced an initial taste of celebrity and distinguished him, in Paris at least, as a man of letters.<ref>In the ''Essai'', the 24-year-old boldly braved the reigning philosoph[e]ic fashion to uphold the studious values and practices of the ''érudits'' (antiquarian scholars). Womersley, p. 11; and ''[[Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon#The Miscellaneous Works|The Miscellaneous Works]]'', 1st ed., vol. 2.</ref> 

On 12 June 1759 Gibbon was commissioned as a [[Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)|Captain]] in the [[South Hampshire Militia]] when that regiment was embodied during the [[Seven Years' War]] (his father served as the regiment's [[Major (United Kingdom)|Major]]). For the next three years he commanded the regiment's Grenadier Company in home defence. The militia was disembodied in December 1762 but he remained an officer in the regiment, resigning as a [[Lieutenant colonel (United Kingdom)|Lieutenant-Colonel]] in 1770. Gibbon later credited his militia service with providing him "a larger introduction into the English world." There was further, the matter of a vast utility: "The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire."<ref>Murray, p. 190.</ref><ref>Lloyd-Verney, pp. 144, 151, 164–74.</ref><ref name = Womersley11>Womersley, ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', pp. 11, 12.</ref> 

In 1763 he returned, via Paris, to Lausanne, where he made the acquaintance of a "prudent worthy young man" William Guise. On 18 April 1764, he and Guise set off for Italy, crossed the Alps, and after spending the summer in Florence arrived in Rome, via Lucca, Pisa, Livorno and Siena, in early October.<ref>[[Edward Chaney]], "Reiseerlebnis und 'Traumdeutung' bei Edward Gibbon und William Beckford", ''Europareisen politisch-sozialer Eliten im 18.Jahrhundert'', eds. J. Rees, W. Siebers and H. Tilgner (Berlin 2002), pp. 244–245; cf. Chaney, "Gibbon, Beckford and the Interpretation of ''Dreams''," pp. 40–41.</ref> In his autobiography, Gibbon vividly records his rapture when he finally neared "the great object of [my] pilgrimage":

<blockquote>...at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the ''eternal City''.  After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus ''stood'', or [[Cicero|Tully]] spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation.<ref>Chaney, p. 40 and Murray, pp. 266–267.</ref></blockquote>

Here, Gibbon first conceived the idea of composing a history of the city, later extended to the entire [[Roman Empire|empire]], a moment he described later as his "Capitoline vision":<ref>Pocock, "Classical History," ¶ #2.</ref>

<blockquote>It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the [[Capitoline Hill|Capitol]], while the barefooted fryars were singing [[vespers]] in the [[Santa Maria Aracoeli|temple]] of [[Jupiter (god)|Jupiter]], that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.<ref>Murray, p. 302.</ref></blockquote>

Womersley<ref name = Womersley11/> notes the existence of "good reasons" to doubt the statement's accuracy. Elaborating, Pocock ("Classical History," ¶ #2) refers to it as a likely "creation of memory" or a "literary invention", given that Gibbon, in his autobiography, claimed that his journal dated the reminiscence to 15 October, when in fact the journal gives no date.