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that here was a new thing introduced into the literature of the world.-Gosse, EdMUND, 1897, Short History of Modern English Literature, p. 258.

Gibbon excels all other English historians in symmetry, proportion, perspective, and arrangement, which are also the pre-eminent and characteristic merits of the best French literature. We find in his writing nothing of the great miscalculations of space that were made by such writers as Macaulay and Buckle; nothing of the awkward repetitions, the confused arrangement, the semi-detached and disjointed episodes that mar the beauty of many other histories of no small merit. Vast and multifarious as are the subjects which he has treated, his work is a great whole, admirably woven in all its parts. On the other hand, his foreign taste may perhaps be seen in his neglect of the Saxon element, which is the most vigorous and homely element in English prose. Probably in no other English writer does the Latin element so entirely predominate. Gibbon never wrote an unmeaning and very seldom an obscure sentence; he could always paint with sustained and stately eloquence an illustrious character or a splendid scene: but he was wholly wanting in the grace of simplicity, and a monotony of glitter and of mannerism is the great defect of his style. He possessed, to a degree which even Tacitus and Bacon had hardly surpassed, the supreme literary gift of condensation, and it gives an admirable force and vividness to his narrative; but it is sometimes carried to excess. Not unfrequently it is attained by an excessive allusiveness, and a wide knowledge of the subject is needed to enable the reader to perceive the full import and meaning conveyed or hinted at by a mere turn of phrase. But though his style is artificial and pedantic, and greatly wanting in flexibility, it has a rare power of clinging to the memory, and it has profoundly influenced English prose. -LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1897, Edward Gibbon, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. XI, p. 6273.

The author's profits for the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Gibbon, are put down at £10,000.-ANDREWS, WILLIAM, 1898, The Earnings of Authors, Literary Byways, p. 56,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

1796-1896

Papa has read us several parts of Mr. Gibbon's Memoirs, written so exactly in the style of his conversation that, while we felt delighted at the beauty of the thoughts and elegance of the language, we could not help feeling a severe pang at the idea we should never hear his instructive and amusing conversation any more. -HOLROYD, MARIA JOSEPHA, 1793, Girlhood, p. 273.

The most important part consists of Memoirs of Mr. Gibbon's life and writings, a work which he seems to have projected with peculiar solicitude and attention, and of which he left six different sketches, all in his own hand-writing. One of these sketches, the most diffuse and circumstantial, so far as it proceeds, ends at the time when he quitted Oxford. Another at the year 1764, when he travelled to Italy. A third, at his father's death, in 1770. A fourth, which he continued to a short time after his return to Lausanne in 1788, appears in the form of Annals, much less detailed than the others. The two remaining sketches are still more imperfect. It is difficult to discover the order in which these several pieces were written, but there is reason to believe that the most copious was the last. From all these the following Memoirs have been carefully selected, and put together.— SHEFFIELD, JOHN LORD, 1795, ed., The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Introduction.

The private memoirs of Gibbon the historian have just been published. In them we are able to trace with considerable accuracy the progress of his mind. While he was at college, he became reconciled to the Roman Catholic faith. By this circumstance he incurred his father's displeasure, who banished him to an obscure situation in Switzerland, where he was obliged to live upon a scanty provision, and was far removed from all the customary amusements of men of birth and fortune. If this train of circumstances had not taken place, would he ever have been the historian of the "Decline and Fail of the Roman Empire?" Yet how unusual were his attainments in consequence of these events, in learning, in acuteness of research, and intuition of genius.-GODWIN, WILLIAM, 1797, The Enquirer, p. 25.

We are now "in the thick and bustle" of living biographers; but let a tribute of literary respect be paid to the recent dead. The autobiography of Gibbon, attached to his Posthumous Works edited by Lord Sheffield, has been perhaps the most popular production, of its kind, of modern times. It is winning in an unusual degree. The periods flow with a sort of liquid cadence. The facts are beautifully brought together, and ingeniously argued upon; and the life of a studious Recluse has something about it of the air of a romantic Adventurer. This is attributable to the charm-the polishthe harmony of the style. But the autobiography of Gibbon is, in fact, the consummation of Art; and never were pages more determinedly and more elaborately written for the admiration of posterity.DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 529.

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Read Gibbon's autobiography again; it me like a bugle. ALEXANDER, JAMES W., 1825, Familiar Letters, May 28, vol. I, p. 78.

The most imposing of domestic narratives, the model of dignified detail. BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1856, Edward Gibbon, Literary Studies, ed. Hutton, vol. II, p. 53. English literature is rich in autobiography. It has, indeed, no tale so deep and subtle as that which is told in the "Confessions of St. Augustine." It has no such complete and unreserved unbosoming of a life as is given by the strange Italian, Benvenuto Cellini, who is the prince of unconcealment. But there is hardly any self-told life in any language which is more attractive than the autobiography of Edward Gibbon, in which he recounts the story of his own career in the same stately, pure prose in which he narrates the "Decline and Fall of Rome." It must have needed a great faith in a man's self to write those sonorous pages. Two passages in them have passed into the history of man. One is that in which he describes how, in Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started in his mind. The other is the passage in which the great historian records how, on the night of the 27th of June, 1787,

between the hours of eleven and twelve, he wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house at Lausanne, and how then, laying down his pen, he "took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commanded a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains." The story is all very solemn and exalted. It is full of the feeling that the beginning and ending of a great literary work is as great an achievement as the foundation and completion of an empire - as worthy of record and of honor; and as we read we feel so too.-BROOKS, PHILLIPS, 1880–94, Biography, Essays and Addresses, p. 440.

He had written a magnificent history of the Roman Empire. It remained to write the history of the historian. Accordingly we have the autobiography. These two immortal works act and react upon one another; the history sends us to the autobiography, and the autobiography returns us to the history. He made six

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different sketches of the autobiography. It is a most studied performance, and may be boldly pronounced perfect.-BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE, 1892, Res Judicata, p. 50.

Lord Sheffield executed his editorial task with extreme judgment, singular ingenuity, but remarkable freedom. Quite a third of the whole manuscript is omitted, and many of the most piquant passages that Gibbon ever wrote were suppressed by the caution or the delicacy of his editor and his family. The result is a problem of singular literary interest. A piece, most elaborately composed by one of the greatest writers who ever used our language, an autobiography often pronounced to be the best we possess, is now proved to be in no sense the simple work of that illustrious pen, but to have been dexterously pieced together out of seven fragmentary sketches and adapted into a single and coherent narrative. SHEFFIELD, EARL OF, 1896, The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, Introduction, p. IX.

It is one of the best specimens of selfportraiture in the language, reflecting with pellucid clearness both the life and character, the merits and defects, of its author.-LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1897, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. XI, p. 6278.

All critics agree that Gibbon's autobiography is a model in its way. STEPHEN,

LESLIE, 1898, Studies of a Biographer, trivial; but many readers, I flatter myself, vol. I, p. 148.

Gibbon's miscellaneous work, both in English and French, is not inconsiderable, and it displays his peculiar characteristics; but the only piece of distinct literary importance is his "Autobiography." This, upon which he seems to have amused himself by spending much pains, was left unsettled for press. Edited with singular judgment and success under the care of his intimate friend and literary executor Lord Sheffield, it has been for three generations one of the favourite things of its kind with all good judges, and is likely to continue so in the textus receptus, for which the fussy fidelity of modern literary methods will probably try in vain to substitute a chaos of rough drafts.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 626.

If, as Johnson said, there had been only three books "written by man that were wished longer by their readers," the eighteenth century was not to draw to its close without seeing a fourth added. With "Don Quixote," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "Robinson Crusoe," the "Autobiography of Edward Gibbon" was henceforth to rank as "a work whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day."

It is indeed so short that it can be read

by the light of a single pair of candles; it is so interesting in its subject, and so alluring in its turns of thought and its style, that in a second and a third reading it gives scarcely less pleasure than in the first. Among the books in which men have told the story of their own lives it stands in the front rank.-HILL, GEORGE BIRKBECK, 1900, ed. The Memoirs of the Life of Edward Gibbon, Preface, p. v.

LETTERS AND MISCELLANEOUS

WORKS

1796-1897

I shall thus give more satisfaction, employing the language of Mr. Gibbon instead of my own; and the public will see him in a new and admirable light, as a writer of letters. By the insertion of a few occasional sentences, I shall obviate the disadvantages that are apt to arise from an interrupted narration. A prejudiced or a fastidious critic may condemn, perhaps, some parts of the letters as

will be gratified by discovering, even in these, my friend's affectionate feelings, and his character in familiar life. His letters in general bear a strong resemblance to the style and turn of his conversation: the characteristics of which were vivacity, elegance, and precision, with knowledge astonishingly extensive and ive and entertaining; and in general there correct. He never ceased to be instructwas a vein of pleasantry in his conversation which prevented its becoming languid, even during a residence of many months with a family in the country. It has been supposed that he always arranged his quickness in conversation contradicts what he intended to say before he spoke; this notion: but it is very true, that before he sat down to write a note or letter, he completely arranged in his mind what he meant to express. SHEFFIELD, JOHN LORD, 1795, ed., The Autobiography of Edward Gibbon, Illustrated from his Letters with Occasional Notes and Narratives.

On the style and spirit of Mr. Gibbon's own letters it were vain to comment.

They rank in the first class of epistolary composition, equally honourable to the head and heart of the writer. Ease, vigpervade the whole. On the subject of our, spirit, and the very soul of friendship religion, they maintained silence, which was obviously the effect of a general indifference; and on another subject they contain nothing that would put a Vestal to blush. On one or two occasions, however, enough is disclosed to shew, that rejected the probabilities of natural reliwith the proofs of Revelation, Gibbon. gion. Born with a constitution naturally incredulous, he had refined it into a systematic rejection of almost everything beyond the reach of the senses; and this state of the understanding, after the example of his school, he dignified with the name of Philosophy.-WHITAKER, T. D., 1815, Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, Quarterly Review, vol. 12, p. 384.

I have finished reading the first volume of "Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works," published by Lord Sheffield. Of mere worldly production, it is the most interesting that I have read for many years, more especially Gibbon's own memoirs of himself. I have been acquainted with Lord Sheffield

above forty years, and more than once met Gibbon at his house; and, if I remember rightly, the first time I was at Sheffield Place, which, I think, was in 1770, being invited by him on my advertising the intentions of the Eastern tour. But, alas! the whole volume has not one word of Christianity in it, though many which mark the infidelity of the whole gang. Lord Sheffield never had a grain of religion, and his intimate connections with Gibbon would alone account for it.-YOUNG, ARTHUR, 1816, Autobiography, ed., Betham-Edwards, pp. 468, 469.

His letters have the faults of his conversation; they are not easy or natural; all is constrained, all for effect. No one can suppose in reading them that a word. would have been changed, had the writer known they were to be published the morning after he dispatched them, and had sent them to the printing-office instead of the post-office.-BROUGHAM, HENRY LORD, 1845-6, Lives of Men of Letters of the Time of George III.

If the Memoirs give us Gibbon in the full dress of a fine gentleman of letters, the correspondence reveals to us the man. as he was known to his valet and his housekeeper. The letters have the ease and freshness of conversations with intimate friends, and, considering the character of the century in which they were written, they present one feature which deserves special notice. Only one short sentence has been omitted as too coarse

to be printed. With this solitary exception, the reader knows the worst as well as the best of Gibbon, and there are scarcely a dozen phrases, scattered over 800 pages, which will offend good taste or good feeling.-PROTHERO, ROWLAND E., 1896, ed., Private Letters of Edward Gibbon, Preface, vol. I, p. xii.

It is Gibbon's letters that will most interest the reader. With very few exceptions, they were addressed to his father, his stepmother, and his friend Lord Sheffield. The character of the man shines in them all. As a son he was constantly dutiful, devoted, obedient, and sympathetic.-HALSEY, FRANCIS W., 1897, The New Memoirs of Gibbon, The Book Buyer, vol. 14, p. 178.

Gibbon's Letters may be said to derive more interest from him than he derives

from them. They have not the audacious fun and commanding force of Byron's, the full-blooded eloquence of Burns's, the manly simplicity of Cowper's, the profound humour and pathos of Carlyle's. They are without the radiant geniality of Macaulay's. They do not touch the high literary water-mark of Gray's. They express the mundane sentiments of an earthly sage, in love, if the phrase may be pardoned, with peace and wealth. The secret of the charm which most of them undoubtedly have is that they reveal the inner homely side of the richest and most massive intellect which the eighteenth century produced. Gibbon was an indefatigable student, and so far as he could rise to enthusiasm, an enthusiastic admirer of Cicero. Perhaps the rather monotonous flow of the Ciceronian rhythm is too evident in his prose.-PAUL, HERBERT, 1897, Gibbon's Life and Letters, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 41, p. 304.

But now that we have the intimate records of his daily life from youth to death. in their original form, one wonders anew how so gigantic a work as the "Decline and Fall" was ever completed in about sixteen years amidst all the distractions of country squires, London gaieties, Parliamentary and official duties, interminable worries about his family and property, social scandals and importunate friends. In all these six hundred letters there

is not very much about his studies and his writings, but a great deal about politics, society, and pecuniary cares. We are left to imagine for ourselves when the great scholar read, how he wrote, and why he never seemed to exchange a thought with any student of his own calibre of learning. One would think he was a man of fashion, a dilettante man of the world, a wit, a bon vivant, and a collector of high-life gossip. All this makes the zest of his "Letters," which at times seem to recall to us the charm of a Boswell or a Horace Walpole. The world can now have all the fun, as Maria Holroyd said. But it leaves us with the puzzle even darker than before-how did Gibbon, whose whole epoch of really systematic study hardly lasted twenty-five years, acquire so stupendous a body of exact and curious learning?-HARRISON, FREDERIC, 1897, The New Memoirs of Edward Gibbon, The Forum, vol. 22, p. 751.

GENERAL

I prefer your style, as an historian, to that of the two most renowned writers of history the present day has seen. That you may not suspect me of having said more than my real opinion will warrant, I will tell you why. In your style I see no affectation. In every line of theirs I see nothing else. They disgust me always, Robertson with his pomp and his strut, and Gibbon with his finical and French manners.-COWPER, WILLIAM, 1783, To Rev. John Newton, July 27; Works, ed. Southey, vol. III, p. 33.

Though his style is in general correct and elegant, he sometimes "draws out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would. be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael.-PORSON, RICHARD, 1790, Letters to Archdeacon Travis.

Heard of the death of Mr. Gibbon, the calumniator of the despised Nazarene, the derider of Christianity. Awful dispensation! He too was my acquaintance. Lord, I bless Thee, considering how much infidel acquaintance I have had, that my soul never came into their secret! How many souls have his writings polluted! Lord preserve others from their contagion! -MORE, HANNAH, 1794, Diary, Jan. 19.

None of the cursed Gibbonian fine

writing, so fine and composite! - LAMB, CHARLES, 1800, Letters, ed. Ainger, March

1, vol. I, p. 115.

I hear Gibbon's artificial style still commended by a few; but it is his matter which preserves him. BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1824, Recollections of Foreign Travel, July 20, vol. 1, p. 86.

His way of writing reminds one of those persons who never dare look you full in the face. WHATELY, RICHARD, 1826, Elements of Logic, note.

There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written on the dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world admire and

behold it.-THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1853, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

Gibbon, however excellent an authority for facts, knew nothing about philosophy, and cared less.-KINGSLEY, CHARLES, 1854, Alexandria and her Schools.

Gibbon's literary ambition was never pure. It was rather a longing for temporary distinction than a desire to become of use to his age and his fellow men. He sought fame rather as a means of personal advantage than for any great and noble purpose. Even his love for literature was never that high and honorable passion which filled all the nature of Hume, and he seems now, abandoning the common professions as unsuited to his habits, to have betaken himself to his studies as a means of self-aggrandizement, rather than as the source of purest satisfaction. Gibbon had none of the quali

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ties of a good biographer. His style, heavy and sonorous, was never suited to convey the delicate painting of character, or to unfold a simple tale of domestic life and manners. Gibbon is of all

the historians the most learned. His rivals, Hume and Robertson, by whose side he modestly refused to place himself, sink into insignificance before the vast range of his acquirements. But his learning is not his chief excellence; his highest was that he was suited exactly to his theme. By nature, by the inclination of his taste, by his fondness for learned disquisition, by his clear method, by his grand and powerful style, by his imagination rising with his subject, by his accuracy and honesty of research, by his untiring labor, and above all by his single and unfaltering devotion to one absorbing theme, he was fitted above all men to become the historian of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." On this field he can never have a rival. There may, perhaps, be written a history of England, possessing greater research and purer honesty, if not the simple and perfect manner of Hume; but we can hope for no second "History of the Decline and Fall of Rome." The subject is fully occupied, and like the Coliseum or the Pyramids, Gibbon's vast work must stand alone for ever. LAWRENCE, EUGENE, 1855, The Lives of the British Historians, vol. II, pp. 256, 262, 310.

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