Edward Gibbon, who wrote the _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, belonged to the later half of the eighteenth century, and was
a contemporary of Dr. Johnson and Burke. He finished his great history
three years after Dr. Johnson's death. It is a monumental work, and
will live as long as the English language. It is one of the books which
every cultivated gentleman should read. The style is stately and
sonorous, and the industry and erudition involved in its production must
have been immense.
Although it never sinks below a noble elevation of style, it nevertheless
displays no uplifting flights of eloquence or declamation, and to me, and
probably to you, Antony, the most moving passages in Gibbon's
writings are those that describe with unaffected emotion the moment of
the first resolve to compose the great history and the night when he
wrote the last line of it. On page 129 of his memoirs[1] he wrote:--
"It was at Rome on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing
amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were
singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing
the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."
Thus did he resolve to devote himself to the tremendous task, and at
Lausanne twenty-three years later it was at last fulfilled. He recorded
the event in a few pregnant sentences that are strangely memorable:--
"It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of 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. After
laying down my pen I took several turns in a berceau, or covered
walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the
lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was
serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters,
and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first
emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps, the
establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a
sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had
taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and
that, whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life
of the historian must be short and precarious."
In June, 1888, just one hundred and one years after that pen had been
finally laid aside, I searched in Lausanne for the summer-house and
covered walk, and could find no very authentic record of its site. I
brought home a flower from the garden where it seemed probable the
summer-house had once existed, behind the modern hotel built there in
the intervening time, and laid it between the leaves of my Gibbon.
The pressed flower was still there when I last took the book down from
my shelves.