Let us do justice to that intrepid spirit, whose leaps have sometimes led to truth and whose very excesses, like popular rebellions, have struck salutary fears in the heart of the despot. Let our thoughts be filled with all that we owe to the geometric spirit; but let us search for the spirit of philosophy, which is at once wiser than the one and more universal than the other.
The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) is known primarily as the author of the magisterial The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols., 1776–1789). Both the imposing length of and awesome erudition displayed in that work have understandably overshadowed his other literary achievements, many of which deserve to be noted in their own valuable capacities.
Shortly following Gibbon's death, his good friend and literary executor, John Lord Sheffield undertook to edit and in 1796 published the first (of three) edition(s) of the Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon (MW) in order that the reading public have an opportunity to gain a broader insight into the historian and his overall body of work. Various elements of the MW, as well as other Gibbon writings not contained therein, are listed below along with their pertinent bibliographical detail and descriptive text where available. Notes and letters from Sheffield were also included in the MW, but only Gibbon's writings follow here. Listed contents are exactly those from each volume's table as they appear in the Google Books digitized copies. Links to those copies are provided below. Where publisher and year follows a work the reference is to the year of its first publication apart from the MW. A year following alone (with or without a scholar's name) refers to the year of Gibbon's composition. An asterisk [*] denotes that the work can be found in Craddock, EEEG (see see References).
The first edition was "pirated" and reprinted twice in 1796, in Ireland and Switzerland: