I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being.

Evelyn Waugh admired Gibbon's style but not his secular viewpoint. From 1759 to 1770 Gibbon served on active duty and in reserve with the South Hampshire militia his deactivation in December 1762 coinciding with the militia's dispersal at the end of the Seven Years' War. Gibbon later wrote:

It was on the day or rather the night of 27 June 1787 between the hours of eleven and twelve that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden.

Edward Gibbon (27 April 1737 – 16 January 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was publiEdward Gibbond in six volumes between 1776 and 1788.