Fox used to say that Gibbon's history was immortal, because nobody could do without it; nobody, without vast expense of time and labour, could get elsewhere the information which it contains. I think, and so Lord Grenville thought, that the introductory chapters are the finest part of that history: it was certainly more difficult to write them than the rest of the work. ROGERS, SAMUEL, 1855, Table Talk. work.-ROGERS, There is no more solid book in the world than Gibbon's history. Only consider the chronology. It begins before the year one and goes down to the year 1453, and is a schedule or series of schedules of important events during that time. Scarcely any fact deeply affecting European civilisation is wholly passed over, and the great majority of facts are elaborately recounted. Laws, dynasties, churches, barbarians, appear and disappear. Every thing changes; the old world-the classical civilisation of form and definition passes away, a new world of free spirit and inward growth emerges; between the two lies a mixed weltering interval of trouble and confusion, when everybody hates everybody, and the historical student leads a life of skirmishes, is oppressed with broils and feuds. All through this long period Gibbon's history goes with steady, consistent pace; like a Roman legion through a troubled country-hæret pede pes; up hill and down hill, through marsh and thicket, through Goth or Parthian the firm defined array passes forward-a type or order, and an emblem of civilisation. Whatever may be the defects of Gibbon's history, none can deny him a proud precision and a style in marching order. . . . Gibbon's reflections connect the events; they are not sermons between them. But, notwithstanding, the manner of the "Decline and Fall" is the last which should be recommended for strict imitation. It is not a style in which you can tell the truth. A monotonous writer is suited only to monotonous matter. Truth is of vari ous kinds-grave, solemn, dignified, petty, low, ordinary; and an historian who has to tell the truth must be able to tell what is vulgar as well as what is great, what is little as well as what is amazing. Gibbon is at fault here. -BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1856, Edward Gibbon, Literary Studies, ed. Hutton, vol. II, pp. 35, 36. "Gibbon's Decline and Fall" has now been jealously scrutinized by two generations of eager and unscrupulous opponents; and I am only expressing the general opinions of competent judges when I say that by each successive scrutiny it has gained fresh reputation. Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, all the devices of controversy have been exhausted; but the only result has been, that while the fame of the historian is untarnished, the attacks of his enemies. are falling into complete oblivion. The work of Gibbon remains; but who is there who feels any interest in what was written against him? - BUCKLE, HENRY THOMAS, 1857, History of Civilization in England, vol. 1, p. 308, note. Guizot and Milman have both subjected the original authorities, consulted by Gibbon in his history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to the intensest scrutiny, to see if the historian has perverted, falsified, or suppressed facts. Their judgment is in favor of his honesty and his conscientious research. Yet this by no means proves that we can obtain through his history the real truth of persons and events. The whole immense tract of history he traverses he has thoroughly Gibbonized. The qualities of his character steal out in every paragraph; the words are instinct with Gibbon's nature; though the facts may be obtained from without, the relations in which they are disposed are communicated from within; and the human race for fifteen centuries is made tributary to Gibbon's thought, wears the colors and badges of Gibbon's nature, is denied the possession of any pure and exalted experiences which Gibbon cannot verify by his own; and the reader, who is magnetized by the historian's genius, rises from the perusal of the vast work, informed of nothing as it was in itself, but everything as it appeared to Gibbon, and especially doubting two things, that there is any chastity in women, or any divine truth in Christianity. WHIPPLE, EDWIN P., 1857, Character, Character and Characteristic Men, p. 27. The student must have perceived at once that this unbeliever, however he might adopt the cant of the philosophers, was no mere philosophical historian in the Hume and Voltaire sense of the word; that he had devoted intense labour to his task; that he had succeeded in presenting a picture of the past ages such as had not been presented before. He might detect many sophisms in the arguments of his fifteenth and sixteenth chapters. But what are all these arguments to the actual vision of the evils of human society under the Christian dispensation? It is these that give the special pleas for secondary causes their weight. It is these that tempt to the notion that those secondary causes were many of them not divine, but devilish. If that conviction. is truly followed out, Gibbon himself will be the best of preachers. He will be the brilliant and eloquent witness for a divine power which has been at work in all ages to counteract the devilish power; which has been stronger to support a righteous kingdom on earth than all evil influences, proceeding from those who call themselves divine ministers, have been to destroy it. But if his reasoning and facts are merely brought face to face with arguments, to prove that at a certain. moment there was launched into the world, with miraculous sanctions, a religion the outward displays of which, through subsequent ages, have been so mixed,-which has apparently prompted so many evil deeds-the result must be, in a multitude of cases, a negative indifferent scepticism, in not a few, a positive infidelity.-MAURICE, FREDERICK DENISON, 1862, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, vol. II, p. 600. He did not write expressly against Christianity; but the subject came across his path in travelling over the vast space of time which he embraced in his magnificent "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It is a subject of regret to be compelled to direct hostile remarks against one who has deserved so well of the world. That work, though in the pageantry of its style it in some sense reflects the art and taste of the age in which it was written, yet in its love of solid information and deep research is the noblest work of history in the English tongue. Grand alike in its subject, its composition, and its perspective, it has a right to a place among the highest works of human conception; and sustains the relation to history which the works of Michael Angelo bear to art.-FARRAR, ADAM STOREY, 1863, A Critical History of Free Thought, p. 196. Gibbon has planted laurels long to bloom The famous XVIth chapter of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was assailed furiously, but in vain, each assault exposing the weakness of the assailants; and it was only by adopting his history, and editing it with judicious notes, that the church silenced the enemy it could not crush. FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS, 1876, Transcendentalism in New England, p. 185. I have finished Gibbon, with a great deduction from the high esteem I have had of him ever since the old Kirkcaldy days, when I first read the twelve volumes of poor Irving's copy in twelve consecutive days. A man of endless reading and research, but of a most disagreeable style, and a great want of the highest faculties (which indeed are very rare) of what we could call a classical historian, compared with Herodotus, for instance, and his perfect clearness and simplicity in every part.-CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1877? Letters; Life in London, ed. Froude, vol. II, p. 395. A man of genius; not for what he has done for history, but what he has done for literature, in showing that no theme is so huge but that art may proportion it and adorn it till it charms, the work which lastingly charms being always and alone the proof of genius. When one turns from other histories to his mighty achievement, one feels that it is really as incomparable for its noble manner as for the grandeur of the story it narrates. That story assumes at his touch the majestic forms, the lofty movement, of an epic; its advance is rhythmical; in the strong pulse of its antitheses is the fire, the life of a poetic sense; its music, rich and full, has a martial vigor, its colors are the blazons of shields and banners.-HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, 1878, Edward Gibbon, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 41, p. 100. It would be difficult to name any writer in our language, especially among the few who deserve to be compared with him, who is so un-English, not in a bad sense of the word, as implying objectionable qualities, but as wanting the clear insular stamp and native flavour. If an intelligent Chinese or Persian were to read his book in a French translation, he would not readily guess that it was written by an Englishman. It really bears the imprint of no nationality, and is emphatically European. An indefinable stamp of weightiness is impressed on Gibbon's writing; he has a baritone manliness which banishes everything small, trivial, or weak. When he is eloquent (and it should be remembered to his credit that he never affects eloquence, though he occasionally affects dignity), he rises without effort into real grandeur. On the whole we may say that his manner, with certain manifest faults, is not unworthy of his matter, and the praise is great.-MORISON, JAMES COTTER, 1878, Gibbon (English Men of Letters), pp. 26, 167. Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" leaves a reader cold who cares only to quicken his own inmost being by contact with what is most precious in man's spiritual history; one chapter of Augustine's "Confessions,' one sentence of the "Imitation"-each a live coal from off the altar-will be of more worth to such an one than all the mass and laboured majesty of Gibbon. But one who can gaze with a certain impersonal regard on the spectacle of the of the world will find the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," more than almost any other single book, replenish and dilate the mind. DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1880, Southey (English Men of Letters), p. 20. Though Gibbon's history was completed nearly a century ago, its great importance has not declined, and it is probably still entitled to be esteemed as the greatest historical work ever written. . The minuteness and comprehensiveness of Gibbon's historical knowledge are somewhat appalling to the scholarship of the present day. . So thorough were his methods that the laborious investigations of German scholarship, the keen. criticisms of theological zeal, and the steady researches of a century have brought to light very few important errors in the results of his labours. But it is not merely the learning of the work, learned as it is, that gives it character as a history. It is also that ingenious skill by which the vast erudition, the boundless range, the infinite variety, and the gorgeous magnificence of the details are all wrought together into a symmetrical whole. Two objections to Gibbon's history have often been urged. The one is to the stately magnificence of his style, the other to his strong bias against Christianity. In both of these objections there is considerable reason. The majestic periods with which the author describes even the least important events are a source either of annoyance or of amusement to nearly every modern reader. The other characteristic not only leads the author to describe the origin and growth of Christianity without sympathy, but it throws a gloomy hue over the whole, and gives to events as they pass before the reader something of the melancholy pomp of a funeral procession. But whatever objections different minds may raise, either to the unbending stateliness of his style or to the stinging sarcasm of his spirits, these peculiarities will prevent no genuine scholar from studying the work and profiting by it. ADAMS, CHARLES KENDALL, 1882, A Manual of Historical Literature, p. 138. No Christian, therefore, but will rejoice that, with its great faults on this side, a history like that of Gibbon has been written; and Christianity needs too much to have its infirmities, as a human product, displayed for its own correction, to quarrel even with its severest censor who challenges historical evidence for his accusations. In particular allegations Gibbon may have failed, but many of his charges. hit some weak point, where Christianity is the better for the criticism; and if his general spirit be complained of, as, for example, in his sympathy with Mohammedanism rather than with so much higher a faith, this teaches the Church of Christ to remember its own corruption as the precursor of its defeat, while there is no more striking moral which Gibbon has unconsciously helped to point than the divine vitality, as since tested, of the one religion, while the other has been sinking into senility and exhaustion. In this point of view, or as a permanent measure of the strength and enduring resource of Christianity, the celebrated inquiry of Gibbon as to Secondary Causes of the success of Christianity has a special interest.-CAIRNS, JOHN, 1881, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 113. If you want to know where the world was, and how it fared with it during the first ten centuries of our era, read Gibbon. No other writer can do for you just what he does. No one else has had the courage to attempt his task over again. The laborious student of history may go to the many and obscure sources from which Gibbon drew the materials for his great work, and correct or supplement him here and there, as Milman has done; but the general reader wants the completed structure, and not the mountain quarries from which the blocks came; and the complete structure you get in Gibbon. To omit him is to leave a gap in your knowledge of the history of the world which nothing else can fill. As Carlyle said to Emerson, he "is the splendid bridge which connects the old world with the new;" very artificial, but very real for all that, and very helpful to any who have business that way. The case may be even more strongly stated than that. To read Gibbon is to be present at the creation of the world-the modern world. Ruskin objects to Gibbon's style as the "worst English ever written by an educated Englishman." It was the style of his age and country brought to perfection, the stately curvilinear or orbicular style; every sentence makes a complete circle; but it is always a real thought, a real distinction that sweeps through the circle. Modern style is more linear, more direct and picturesque; and in the case of such a writer as Ruskin, much more loose, discursive and audacious. The highly artificial buckram style of the age of Gibbon has doubtless had its day, but it gave us some noble literature, and is no more to be treated with contempt than the age which produced it is to be treated with contempt.-BURROUGHS, JOHN, 1886, Ruskin's Judgment of Gibbon and Darwin, The Critic, May 1. Gibbon has a good deal to answer for. You can find nearly every fact in him, but he began by making the subject ridiculous, by trotting out some absurd, and, if possible, indecent anecdote, as if it were a summary of the whole reign. It is that chapter which gives the impression, and those which follow never take it away. I believe that Pipin was made patrician by authority of Constantine Kopronymos, but that Pope Stephen bamboozled them all round. FREEMAN, EDWARD A., 1888, Letter to Goldwin Smith, April 25; Life and Letters, ed. Stephens, vol. II, p. 380. In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the "History" is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive. The philosophy is of course that of the age of Voltaire and implies a deficient insight into the great social forces. The style, though variously judged, has at least the cardinal merit of admirable clearness, and if pompous, is always animated. Whatever its shortcomings the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period. Gibbon's fortunate choice of a subject enabled him to write the one book in which the clearness of his own age is combined with a thoroughness of research which has made it a standard for his successors.- STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1890, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXI, p. 255. It is no personal paradox, but the judgment of all competent men, that the "Decline and Fall" of Gibbon is the most perfect historical composition that exists in any language: at once scrupulously faithful in its facts; consummate in its literary art; and comprehensive in analysis of the forces affecting society over a very long and crowded epoch. In eight moderate volumes, of which every sentence is compacted of learning and brimful of thought, and yet every page is as fascinating as romance, this great historian has condensed the history of the civilised world over the vast period of fourteen centuries-linking the ancient world to the modern, the Eastern world to the Western, and marshalling in one magnificent panorama the contrasts, the relations, and the analogies of all. If Gibbon has not the monumental simplicity of Thucydides, or the profound insight of Tacitus, he has performed a feat which neither has attempted. "Survey mankind," says our poet, "from China to Peru!" And our historian surveys mankind from Britain to Tartary, from the Sahara to Siberia, and weaves for one-third of all recorded time the epic of the human race.-HARRISON, FREDERIC, 1894, Some Great Books of History, The Meaning of History, p. 101. A great work then, and a great work now, measured by what standard we will. To say that one approaches the accuracy of Gibbon is to exhaust praise; to say that one surpasses him in reach of learning is to deal in hyperbole.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, Queen Anne and the Georges, p. 128. Gibbon gave a new impetus to the study of the history of Roman law through the celebrated 44th chapter of his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It was translated by Professor Hugo of Göttingen and Professor Warnkönig of Liège, and has been used as the text-book on Civil Law in some of the foreign universities. Herder, Savigny, and Niebuhr stand all under the immediate influence of Gibbon, and Lessing saw in him kindred tendencies, though in a different direction. .. MERZ, JOHN THEODORE, 1896, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, vol. I, p. 169, note. Gibbon was the first to write a complete history on the largest scale, with a magnificent sense of proportion, and with profound original research; tracing the complex, stormy evolution of the modern world out of the ancient, and the momentous transitions from polytheism and slavery to monotheism and free industry. It is the history of civilization during thirteen centuries. The vast canvas is filled without confusion, without apparent effort, and without discord by one glowing, distinct, harmonious composition. He was not a philosophic historian, nor did he profess the profound insight of Thucydides, of Tacitus, of Bacon, or of Hume, into the springs of human action; but he was great in research, and his work remains as the initial triumph of a great historical method. Allowing for manifest defects, arising from its ornate and elaborate style; from his perverse misconception of Christianity; from his disbelief in heroism, in popular enthusiasm, and in self-devotion; and from his own epicurean and aristocratic habit of mind, his "Decline and Fall" stands alone and unrivalled for breadth, knowledge, unity of conception, and splendour of form. It resembles the stately, solid, irresistible march of a Roman legion; and is characterized by Niebuhr as the greatest achievement of human thought and erudition in the department of history.-AUBREY, W. H. S., 1896, The Rise and Growth of the English Nation, vol. III, p. 254. Permanently established its author in that position of supremacy as a historian of which each succeeding generation renders his tenure more secure. On the merits and demerits of his style it cannot be pretended that the same consensus of competent opinion prevails. It has been reprehended by many who had some rights to criticise it, and by more who had not. Coleridge, whose own prose style, with all its eloquence, left much to be desired, condemned it in terms so extravagant as to discredit the critic rather than the criticised; but others, reviewing it with less bias, and expressing themselves with more moderation, have managed to draw up a pretty long list of objections to it. It has been pronounced monotonous, inelastic, affected, pompous; it has been called exotic in its spirit, and un-English in its structure. The most serious of these charges is, perhaps, the second. - TRAILL, HENRY DUFF, 1896, Social England, vol. V, pp. 448, 449. One who is, all things told and all things allowed for, the greatest historian of the world. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1896, Social England, ed. Traill, vol. v, p. 268. If we continue Gibbon in his fame, it will be for love of his art, not for worship of his scholarship. We some of us, nowadays, know the period of which he wrote better even than he did; but which one of us shall build so admirable a monument to ourselves, as artists, out of what we know? The scholar finds his immortality in the form he gives to his work. It is a hard saying, but the truth of it is inexorable: be an artist, or prepare for oblivion.WILSON, WOODROW, 1896, Mere Literature, p. 22. To Edward Gibbon, who timidly deprecated comparison with Robertson and Hume, criticism is steadily awarding a place higher and higher above them. He is, indeed, one of the great writers of the century, one of those who exemplify in the finest way the signal merits of the age in which he flourished. The book by which he mainly survives, the vast "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' began to appear in 1776, and was not completed until 1788. It was at once discovered by all who were competent to judge, 1 |