us in his autobiography, from a Kentish family of considerable
antiquity; among his remoter ancestors he reckons the lord high
treasurer Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, whom Shakespeare has immortalized
in his _Henry VI._ His grandfather was a man of ability, an enterprising
merchant of London, one of the commissioners of customs under the Tory
ministry during the last four years of Queen Anne, and, in the judgment
of Lord Bolingbroke, as deeply versed in the "commerce and finances of
England" as any man of his time. He was not always wise, however, either
for himself or his country; for he became deeply involved in the South
Sea Scheme, in the disastrous collapse of which (1720) he lost the ample
wealth he had amassed. As a director of the company, moreover, he was
suspected of fraudulent complicity, taken into custody and heavily
fined; but L10,000 was allowed him out of the wreck of his estate, and
with this his skill and enterprise soon constructed a second fortune. He
died at Putney in 1736, leaving the bulk of his property to his two
daughters--nearly disinheriting his only son, the father of the
historian, for having married against his wishes. This son (by name
Edward) was educated at Westminster[1] and Cambridge, but never took a
degree, travelled, became member of parliament, first for Petersfield
(1734), then for Southampton (1741), joined the party against Sir Robert
Walpole, and (as his son confesses, not much to his father's honour) was
animated in so doing by "private revenge" against the supposed
"oppressor" of his family in the South Sea affair. If so, revenge, as
usual, was blind; for Walpole had sought rather to moderate than to
inflame public feeling against the projectors.
The historian was born at Putney, Surrey, April 27 (Old Style), 1737.
His mother, Judith Porten, was the daughter of a London merchant. He was
the eldest of a family of six sons and a daughter, and the only one who
survived childhood; his own life in youth hung by so mere a thread as to
be again and again despaired of. His mother, between domestic cares and
constant infirmities (which, however, did not prevent an occasional
plunge into fashionable dissipation in compliance with her husband's
wishes), did but little for him. The "true mother of his mind as well as
of his health" was a maiden aunt--Catherine Porten by name--with respect
to whom he expresses himself in language of the most grateful
remembrance. "Many anxious and solitary days," says Gibbon, "did she
consume with patient trial of every mode of relief and amusement. Many
wakeful nights did she sit by my bedside in trembling expectation that
each hour would be my last." As circumstances allowed, she appears to
have taught him reading, writing and arithmetic--acquisitions made with
so little of remembered pain that "were not the error corrected by
analogy," he says, "I should be tempted to conceive them as innate." At
seven he was committed for eighteen months to the care of a private
tutor, John Kirkby by name, and the author, among other things, of a
"philosophical fiction" entitled the _Life of Automathes_. Of Kirkby,
from whom he learned the rudiments of English and Latin grammar, he
speaks gratefully, and doubtless truly, so far as he could trust the
impressions of childhood. With reference to _Automathes_ he is much more
reserved in his praise, denying alike its originality, its depth and its
elegance; but, he adds, "the book is not devoid of entertainment or
instruction."
In his ninth year (1746), during a "lucid interval of comparative
health," he was sent to a school at Kingston-upon-Thames; but his former
infirmities soon returned, and his progress, by his own confession, was
slow and unsatisfactory. "My timid reserve was astonished by the crowd
and tumult of the school; the want of strength and activity disqualified
me for the sports of the play-field.... By the common methods of
discipline, at the expense of many tears and some blood, I purchased the
knowledge of the Latin syntax," but manifestly, in his own opinion, the
_Arabian Nights_, Pope's _Homer_, and Dryden's _Virgil_, eagerly read,
had at this period exercised a much more powerful influence on his
intellectual development than Phaedrus and Cornelius Nepos, "painfully
construed and darkly understood."
In December 1747 his mother died, and he was taken home. After a short
time his father removed to the "rustic solitude" of Buriton (Hants), but
young Gibbon lived chiefly at the house of his maternal grandfather at
Putney, where, under the care of his devoted aunt, he developed, he
tells us, that passionate love of reading "which he would not exchange
for all the treasures of India," and where his mind received its most
decided stimulus. Of 1748 he says, "This year, the twelfth of my age, I
shall note as the most propitious to the growth of my intellectual
stature." After detailing the circumstances which unlocked for him the
door of his grandfather's "tolerable library," he says, "I turned over
many English pages of poetry and romance, of history and travels. Where
a title attracted my eye, without fear or awe I snatched the volume from
the shelf." In 1749, in his twelfth year, he was sent to Westminster,
still residing, however, with his aunt, who, rendered destitute by her
father's bankruptcy, but unwilling to live a life of dependence, had
opened a boarding-house for Westminster school. Here in the course of
two years (1749-1750), interrupted by danger and debility, he "painfully
climbed into the third form"; but it was left to his riper age to
"acquire the beauties of the Latin and the rudiments of the Greek
tongue." The continual attacks of sickness which had retarded his
progress induced his aunt, by medical advice, to take him to Bath; but
the mineral waters had no effect. He then resided for a time in the
house of a physician at Winchester; the physician did as little as the
mineral waters; and, after a further trial of Bath, he once more
returned to Putney, and made a last futile attempt to study at
Westminster. Finally, it was concluded that he would never be able to
encounter the discipline of a school; and casual instructors, at various
times and places, were provided for him. Meanwhile his indiscriminate
appetite for reading had begun to fix itself more and more decidedly
upon history; and the list of historical works devoured by him during
this period of chronic ill-health is simply astonishing. It included,
besides Hearne's _Ductor historicus_ and the successive volumes of the
_Universal History_, which was then in course of publication,
Littlebury's _Herodotus_, Spelman's _Xenophon_, Gordon's _Tacitus_, an
anonymous translation of Procopius; "many crude lumps of Speed, Rapin,
Mezeray, Davila, Machiavel, Father Paul, Bower, &c., were hastily
gulped. I devoured them like so many novels; and I swallowed with the
same voracious appetite the descriptions of India and China, of Mexico
and Peru." His first introduction to the historic scenes the study of
which afterwards formed the passion of his life took place in 1751,
when, while along with his father visiting a friend in Wiltshire, he
discovered in the library "a common book, the continuation of Echard's
_Roman History_." "To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine
were absolutely new; and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over
the Danube, when the summons of the dinner bell reluctantly dragged me
from my intellectual feast." Soon afterwards his fancy kindled with the
first glimpses into Oriental history, the wild "barbaric" charm of which
he never ceased to feel. Ockley's book on the Saracens "first opened his
eyes" to the striking career of Mahomet and his hordes; and with his
characteristic ardour of literary research, after exhausting all that
could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tatars and
Turks, he forthwith plunged into the French of D'Herbelot, and the Latin
of Pocock's version of Abulfaragius, sometimes understanding them, but
oftener only guessing their meaning. He soon learned to call to his aid
the subsidiary sciences of geography and chronology, and before he was
quite capable of reading them had already attempted to weigh in his
childish balance the competing systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of
Marsham and Newton. At this early period he seems already to have
adopted in some degree the plan of study he followed in after life and
recommended in his _Essai sur l'etude_--that is, of letting his subject
rather than his author determine his course, of suspending the perusal
of a book to reflect, and to compare the statements with those of other
authors--so that he often read portions of many volumes while mastering
one.
Towards his sixteenth year he tell us "nature displayed in his favour
her mysterious energies," and all his infirmities suddenly vanished.
Thenceforward, while never possessing or abusing the insolence of
health, he could say "few persons have been more exempt from real or
imaginary ills." His unexpected recovery revived his father's hopes for
his education, hitherto so much neglected if judged by ordinary
standards; and accordingly in January 1752 he was placed at Esher,
Surrey, under the care of Dr Francis, the well-known translator of
Horace. But Gibbon's friends in a few weeks discovered that the new
tutor preferred the pleasures of London to the instruction of his
pupils, and in this perplexity decided to send him prematurely to
Oxford, where he was matriculated as a gentleman commoner of Magdalen
College, 3rd April 1752. According to his own testimony he arrived at
the university "with a stock of information which might have puzzled a
doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy might be
ashamed." And indeed his huge wallet of scraps stood him in little stead
at the trim banquets to which he was invited at Oxford, while the
wandering habits by which he had filled it absolutely unfitted him to be
a guest. He was not well grounded in any of the elementary branches,
which are essential to university studies and to all success in their
prosecution. It was natural, therefore, that he should dislike the
university, and as natural that the university should dislike him. Many
of his complaints of the system were certainly just; but it may be
doubted whether any university system would have been profitable to him,
considering his antecedents. He complains especially of his tutors, and
in one case with abundant reason; but, by his own confession, they might
have recriminated with justice, for he indulged in gay society, and kept
late hours. His observations, however, on the defects of the English
university system, some of which have only very recently been removed,
are acute and well worth pondering, however little relevant to his own
case. He remained at Magdalen about fourteen months. "To the university
of Oxford," he says, "I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as
cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a
mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the
fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life."
But thus "idle" though he may have been as a "student," he already
meditated authorship. In the first long vacation--during which he,
doubtless with some sarcasm, says that "his taste for books began to
revive"--he contemplated a treatise on the age of Sesostris, in which
(and it was characteristic) his chief object was to investigate not so
much the events as the probable epoch of the reign of that semi-mythical
monarch, whom he was inclined to regard as having been contemporary with
Solomon. "Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of
thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a
book"; but the discovery of his own weakness, he adds, was the first
symptom of taste. On his first return to Oxford the work was "wisely
relinquished," and never afterwards resumed. The most memorable
incident, however, in Gibbon's stay at Oxford was his temporary
conversion to the doctrines of the church of Rome. The bold criticism of
Middleton's recently (1749) published _Free Enquiry into the Miraculous
Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church_
appears to have given the first shock to his Protestantism, not indeed
by destroying his previous belief that the gift of miraculous powers had
continued to subsist in the church during the first four or five
centuries of Christianity, but by convincing him that within the same
period most of the leading doctrines of popery had been already
introduced both in theory and in practice. At this stage he was
introduced by a friend (Mr Molesworth) to Bossuet's _Variations of
Protestantism_ and _Exposition of Catholic Doctrine_ (see Gibbon,
_Decline and Fall_, c. xv., note 79). "These works," says he, "achieved
my conversion, and I surely fell by a noble hand." In bringing about
this "fall," however, Parsons the Jesuit appears to have had a
considerable share; at least Lord Sheffield has recorded that on the
only occasion on which Gibbon talked with him on the subject he imputed
the change in his religious views principally to that vigorous writer,
who, in his opinion, had urged all the best arguments in favour of Roman
Catholicism. But be this as it may, he had no sooner adopted his new
creed than he resolved to profess it; "a momentary glow of enthusiasm"
had raised him above all temporal considerations, and accordingly, on
June 8, 1753, he records that having "privately abjured the heresies" of
his childhood before a Catholic priest of the name of Baker, a Jesuit,
in London, he announced the same to his father in an elaborate
controversial epistle which his spiritual adviser much approved, and
which he himself afterwards described to Lord Sheffield as having been
"written with all the pomp, the dignity, and self-satisfaction of a
martyr."
The elder Gibbon heard with indignant surprise of this act of juvenile
apostasy, and, indiscreetly giving vent to his wrath, precipitated the
expulsion of his son from Oxford, a punishment which the culprit, in
after years at least, found no cause to deplore. In his _Memoirs_ he
speaks of the results of his "childish revolt against the religion of
his country" with undisguised self-gratulation. It had delivered him
for ever from the "port and prejudice" of the university, and led him
into the bright paths of philosophic freedom. That his conversion was
sincere at the time, that it marked a real if but a transitory phase of
genuine religious conviction, we have no reason to doubt,
notwithstanding the scepticism he has himself expressed. "To my present
feelings it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed
in transubstantiation," he indeed declares; but his incredulous
astonishment is not unmixed with undoubting pride. "I could not blush
that my tender mind was entangled in the sophistry which had reduced the
acute and manly understandings of a Chillingworth or a Bayle." Nor is
the sincerity of the Catholicism he professed in these boyish days in
any way discredited by the fact of his subsequent lack of religion.
Indeed, as one of the acutest and most sympathetic of his critics has
remarked, the deep and settled grudge he has betrayed towards every form
of Christian belief, in all the writings of his maturity, may be taken
as evidence that he had at one time experienced in his own person at
least some of the painful workings of a positive faith.
But little time was lost by the elder Gibbon in the formation of a new
plan of education for his son, and in devising some method which if
possible might effect the cure of his "spiritual malady." The result of
deliberation, aided by the advice and experience of Lord Eliot, was that
it was almost immediately decided to fix Gibbon for some years abroad
under the roof of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne. In as
far as regards the instructor and guide thus selected, a more fortunate
choice could scarcely have been made. From the testimony of his pupil,
and the still more conclusive evidence of his own correspondence with
the father, Pavilliard seems to have been a man of singular good sense,
temper and tact. At the outset, indeed, there was one considerable
obstacle to the free intercourse of tutor and pupil: M. Pavilliard
appears to have known little of English, and young Gibbon knew
practically nothing of French. But this difficulty was soon removed by
the pupil's diligence; the very exigencies of his situation were of
service to him in calling forth all his powers, and he studied the
language with such success that at the close of his five years' exile he
declares that he "spontaneously thought" in French rather than in
English, and that it had become more familiar to "ear, tongue and pen."
It is well known that in after years he had doubts whether he should not
compose his great work in French; and it is certain that his familiarity
with that language, in spite of considerable efforts to counteract its
effects, tinged his style to the last.
Under the judicious regulations of his new tutor a methodical course of
reading was marked out, and most ardently prosecuted; the pupil's
progress was proportionably rapid. With the systematic study of the
Latin, and to a slight extent also of the Greek classics, he conjoined
that of logic in the prolix system of Crousaz; and he further
invigorated his reasoning powers, as well as enlarged his knowledge of
metaphysics and jurisprudence, by the perusal of Locke, Grotius and
Montesquieu. He also read largely, though somewhat indiscriminately, in
French literature, and appears to have been particularly struck with
Pascal's _Provincial Letters_, which he tells us he reperused almost
every year of his subsequent life with new pleasure, and which he
particularly mentions as having been, along with Bleterie's _Life of
Julian_ and Giannone's _History of Naples_, a book which probably
contributed in a special sense to form the historian of the Roman
empire. The comprehensive scheme of study included mathematics also, in
which he advanced as far as the conic sections in the treatise of
L'Hopital. He assures us that his tutor did not complain of any
inaptitude on the pupil's part, and that the pupil was as happily
unconscious of any on his own; but here he broke off. He adds, what is
not quite clear from one who so frankly acknowledges his limited
acquaintance with the science, that he had reason to congratulate
himself that he knew no more. "As soon," he says, "as I understood the
principles, I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the mathematics; nor
can I lament that I desisted before my mind was hardened by the habit of
rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feelings of moral
evidence, which must, however, determine the action and opinions of our
lives."
Under the new influences which were brought to bear on him, he in less
than two years resumed his Protestantism. "He is willing," he says, to
allow M. Pavilliard a "handsome share in his reconversion," though he
maintains, and no doubt rightly, that it was principally due "to his own
solitary reflections." He particularly congratulated himself on having
discovered the "philosophical argument" against transubstantiation,
"that the text of Scripture which seems to inculcate the real presence
is attested only by a single sense--our sight, while the real presence
itself is disproved by three of our senses--the sight, the touch, and
the taste." Before a similar mode of reasoning, all the other
distinctive articles of the Romish creed "disappeared like a dream"; and
"after a full conviction," on Christmas day, 1754, he received the
sacrament in the church of Lausanne. Although, however, he adds that at
this point he suspended his religious inquiries, "acquiescing with
implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the
general consent of Catholics and Protestants," his readers will probably
do him no great injustice if they assume that even then it was rather to
the negations than to the affirmations of Protestantism that he most
heartily assented.
With all his devotion to study at Lausanne[2] (he read ten or twelve
hours a day), he still found some time for the acquisition of some of
the lighter accomplishments, such as riding, dancing, drawing, and also
for mingling in such society as the place had to offer. In September
1755 he writes to his aunt: "I find a great many agreeable people here,
see them sometimes, and can say upon the whole, without vanity, that,
though I am the Englishman here who spends the least money, I am he who
is most generally liked." Thus his "studious and sedentary life" passed
pleasantly enough, interrupted only at rare intervals by boyish
excursions of a day or a week in the neighbourhood, and by at least one
memorable tour of Switzerland, by Basel, Zurich, Lucerne and Bern, made
along with Pavilliard in the autumn of 1755. The last eighteen months of
this residence abroad saw the infusion of two new elements--one of them
at least of considerable importance--into his life. In 1757 Voltaire
came to reside at Lausanne; and although he took but little notice of
the young Englishman of twenty, who eagerly sought and easily obtained
an introduction, the establishment of the theatre at Monrepos, where the
brilliant versifier himself declaimed before select audiences his own
productions on the stage, had no small influence in fortifying Gibbon's
taste for the French theatre, and in at the same time abating that
"idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare which is inculcated
from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman." In the same
year--apparently about June--he saw for the first time, and forthwith
loved, the beautiful, intelligent and accomplished Mademoiselle Susan
Curchod, daughter of the pasteur of Crassier. That the passion which she
inspired in him was tender, pure and fitted to raise to a higher level a
nature which in some respects was much in need of such elevation will
be doubted by none but the hopelessly cynical; and probably there are
few readers who can peruse the paragraph in which Gibbon "approaches the
delicate subject of his early love" without discerning in it a pathos
much deeper than that of which the writer was himself aware. During the
remainder of his residence at Lausanne he had good reason to "indulge
his dream of felicity"; but on his return to England, "I soon discovered
that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without
his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful
struggle I yielded to my fate; I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son;
my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new
life."[3]
In 1758 he returned with mingled joy and regret to England, and was
kindly received at home. But he found a stepmother there; and this
apparition on his father's hearth at first rather appalled him. The
cordial and gentle manners of Mrs Gibbon, however, and her unremitting
care for his happiness, won him from his first prejudices, and gave her
a permanent place in his esteem and affection. He seems to have been
much indulged, and to have led a very pleasant life of it; he pleased
himself in moderate excursions, frequented the theatre, mingled, though
not very often, in society; was sometimes a little extravagant, and
sometimes a little dissipated, but never lost the benefits of his
Lausanne exile; and easily settled into a sober, discreet, calculating
Epicurean philosopher, who sought the _summum bonum_ of man in
temperate, regulated and elevated pleasure. The first two years after
his return to England he spent principally at his father's country seat
at Buriton, in Hampshire, only nine months being given to the
metropolis. He has left an amusing account of his employments in the
country, where his love of study was at once inflamed by a large and
unwonted command of books and checked by the necessary interruptions of
his otherwise happy domestic life. After breakfast "he was expected," he
says, to spend an hour with Mrs Gibbon; after tea his father claimed his
conversation; in the midst of an interesting work he was often called
down to entertain idle visitors; and, worst of all, he was periodically
compelled to return the well-meant compliments. He mentions that he
dreaded the "recurrence of the full moon," which was the period
generally selected for the more convenient accomplishment of such
formidable excursions.
His father's library, though large in comparison with that he commanded
at Lausanne, contained, he says, "much trash"; but a gradual process of
reconstruction transformed it at length into that "numerous and select"
library which was "the foundation of his works, and the best comfort of
his life both at home and abroad." No sooner had he returned home than
he began the work of accumulation, and records that, on the receipt of
his first quarter's allowance, a large share was appropriated to his
literary wants. "He could never forget," he declares, "the joy with
which he exchanged a bank note of twenty pounds for the twenty volumes
of the _Memoirs_ of the Academy of Inscriptions," an Academy which has
been well characterized (by Sainte-Beuve) as Gibbon's intellectual
fatherland. It may not be uninteresting here to note the principles
which guided him both now and afterwards in his literary purchases. "I
am not conscious," says he, "of having ever bought a book from a motive
of ostentation; every volume, before it was deposited on the shelf, was
either read or sufficiently examined"; he also mentions that he soon
adopted the tolerating maxim of the elder Pliny, that no book is ever so
bad as to be absolutely good for nothing.
In London he seems to have seen but little select society--partly from
his father's taste, "which had always preferred the highest and lowest
company," and partly from his own reserve and timidity, increased by his
foreign education, which had made English habits unfamiliar, and the
very language in some degree strange. And thus he was led to draw that
interesting picture of the literary recluse among the crowds of London:
"While coaches were rattling through Bond Street, I have passed many a
solitary evening in my lodging with my books. My studies were sometimes
interrupted with a sigh, which I breathed towards Lausanne; and on the
approach of spring I withdrew without reluctance from the noisy and
extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without
pleasure." He renewed former acquaintance, however, with the "poet"
Mallet, and through him gained access to Lady Hervey's circle, where a
congenial admiration, not to say affectation, of French manners and
literature made him a welcome guest. It ought to be added that in each
of the twenty-five years of his subsequent acquaintance with London "the
prospect gradually brightened," and his social as well as his
intellectual qualities secured him a wide circle of friends. In one
respect Mallet gave him good counsel in those early days. He advised him
to addict himself to an assiduous study of the more idiomatic English
writers, such as Swift and Addison--with a view to unlearn his foreign
idiom and recover his half-forgotten vernacular--a task, however, which
he never perfectly accomplished. Much as he admired these writers, Hume
and Robertson were still greater favourites, as well from their subject
as for their style. Of his admiration of Hume's style, of its nameless
grace of simple elegance, he has left us a strong expression, when he
tells us that it often compelled him to close the historian's volumes
with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.
In 1761 Gibbon, at the age of twenty-four, after many delays, and with
many flutterings of hope and fear, gave to the world, in French, his
maiden publication, an _Essai sur l'etude de la litterature_, which he
had composed two years before. It was published partly in compliance
with his father's wishes, who thought that the proof of some literary
talent might introduce him favourably to public notice, and secure the
recommendation of his friends for some appointment in connexion with the
mission of the English plenipotentiaries to the congress at Augsburg
which was at that time in contemplation. But in yielding to paternal
authority, Gibbon frankly owns that he "complied, like a pious son, with
the wish of his own heart."
The subject of this youthful effort was suggested, its author says, by a
refinement of vanity--"the desire of justifying and praising the object
of a favourite pursuit," namely, the study of ancient literature. Partly
owing to its being written in French, partly to its character, the
_Essai_ excited more attention abroad than at home. Gibbon has
criticized it with the utmost frankness, not to say severity; but, after
every abatement, it is unquestionably a surprising effort for a mind so
young, and contains many thoughts which would not have disgraced a
thinker or a scholar of much maturer age. His account of its first
reception and subsequent fortunes in England deserves to be cited as a
curious piece of literary history. "In England," he says, "it was
received with cold indifference, little read, and speedily forgotten. A
small impression was slowly dispersed; the bookseller murmured, and the
author (had his feelings been more exquisite) might have wept over the
blunders and baldness of the English translation. The publication of my
history fifteen years afterwards revived the memory of my first
performance, and the essay was eagerly sought in the shops. But I
refused the permission which Becket solicited of reprinting it; the
public curiosity was imperfectly satisfied by a pirated copy of the
booksellers of Dublin; and when a copy of the original edition has been
discovered in a sale, the primitive value of half-a-crown has risen to
the fanciful price of a guinea or thirty shillings."[4]
Some time before the publication of the essay, Gibbon had entered a new
and, one might suppose, a very uncongenial scene of life. In an hour of
patriotic ardour he became (June 12, 1759) a captain in the Hampshire
militia, and for more than two years (May 10, 1760, to December 23,
1762) led a wandering life of "military servitude." Hampshire, Kent,
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire formed the successive theatres of what he
calls his "bloodless and inglorious campaigns." He complains of the busy
idleness in which his time was spent; but, considering the
circumstances, so adverse to study, one is rather surprised that the
military student should have done so much, than that he did so little;
and never probably before were so many hours of literary study spent in
a tent. In estimating the comparative advantages and disadvantages of
this wearisome period of his life, he has summed up with the
impartiality of a philosopher and the sagacity of a man of the world.
Irksome as were his employments, grievous as was the waste of time,
uncongenial as were his companions, solid benefits were to be set off
against these things; his health became robust, his knowledge of the
world was enlarged, he wore off some of his foreign idiom, got rid of
much of his reserve; he adds--and perhaps in his estimate it was the
benefit to be most prized of all--"the discipline and evolutions of a
modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion,
and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has
not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire."
It was during this period that he read Homer and Longinus, having for
the first time acquired some real mastery of Greek; and after the
publication of the _Essai_, his mind was full of projects for a new
literary effort. The Italian expedition of Charles VIII. of France, the
crusade of Richard I., the wars of the barons, the lives and comparisons
of Henry V. and the emperor Titus, the history of the Black Prince, the
life of Sir Philip Sidney, that of Montrose, and finally that of Sir W.
Raleigh, were all of them seriously contemplated and successively
rejected. By their number they show how strong was the impulse to
literature, and by their character, how determined the bent of his mind
in the direction of history; while their variety makes it manifest also
that he had then at least no special purpose to serve, no preconceived
theory to support, no particular prejudice or belief to overthrow.
The militia was disbanded in 1762, and Gibbon joyfully shook off his
bonds; but his literary projects were still to be postponed. Following
his own wishes, though with his father's consent, he had early in 1760
projected a Continental tour as the completion "of an English
gentleman's education." This had been interrupted by the episode of the
militia; now, however, he resumed his purpose, and left England in
January 1763. Two years were "loosely defined as the term of his
absence," which he exceeded by half a year--returning June 1765. He
first visited Paris, where he saw a good deal of d'Alembert, Diderot,
Barthelemy, Raynal, Helvetius, Baron d'Holbach and others of that
circle, and was often a welcome guest in the saloons of Madame Geoffrin
and Madame du Deffand.[5] Voltaire was at Geneva, Rousseau at
Montmorency, and Buffon he neglected to visit; but so congenial did he
find the society for which his education had so well prepared him, and
into which some literary reputation had already preceded him, that he
declared, "Had I been rich and independent, I should have prolonged and
perhaps have fixed my residence at Paris."
From France he proceeded to Switzerland, and spent nearly a year at
Lausanne, where many old friendships and studies were resumed, and new
ones begun. His reading was largely designed to enable him fully to
profit by the long-contemplated Italian tour which began in April 1764
and lasted somewhat more than a year. He has recorded one or two
interesting notes on Turin, Genoa, Florence and other towns at which
halt was made on his route; but Rome was the great object of his
pilgrimage, and the words in which he has alluded to the feelings with
which he approached it are such as cannot be omitted from any sketch of
Gibbon, however brief. "My temper is not very susceptible of enthusiasm,
and the enthusiasm which I do not feel I have ever scorned to affect.
But at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor
express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached
and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a
lofty step the ruins of the forum; each memorable spot, where Romulus
stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye;
and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could
descend to a cool and minute investigation." Here at last his long
yearning for some great theme worthy of his historic genius was
gratified. The first conception of the _Decline and Fall_ arose as he
lingered one evening amidst the vestiges of ancient glory. "It was at
Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of
the Capitol, while the barefooted friars 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."
The five years and a half which intervened between his return from this
tour, in June 1765, and the death of his father, in November 1770, seem
to have formed the portion of his life which "he passed with the least
enjoyment and remembered with the least satisfaction." He attended every
spring the meetings of the militia at Southampton, and rose successively
to the rank of major and lieutenant-colonel commandant; but was each
year "more disgusted with the inn, the wine, the company, and the
tiresome repetition of annual attendance and daily exercise." From his
own account, however, it appears that other and deeper causes produced
this discontent. Sincerely attached to his home, he yet felt the anomaly
of his position. At thirty, still a dependant, without a settled
occupation, without a definite social status, he often regretted that he
had not "embraced the lucrative pursuits of the law or of trade, the
chances of civil office or India adventure, or even the fat slumbers of
the church." From the emoluments of a profession he "might have derived
an ample fortune, or a competent income instead of being stinted to the
same narrow allowance, to be increased only by an event which he
sincerely deprecated." Doubtless the secret fire of a consuming, but as
yet ungratified, literary ambition also troubled his repose. He was
still contemplating "at an awful distance" _The Decline and Fall_, and
meantime revolved some other subjects, that seemed more immediately
practicable. Hesitating for some time between the revolutions of
Florence and those of Switzerland, he consulted M. Deyverdun, a young
Swiss with whom he had formed a close and intimate friendship during his
first residence at Lausanne, and finally decided in favour of the land
which was his "friend's by birth" and "his own by adoption." He executed
the first book in French; it was read (in 1767), as an anonymous
production, before a literary society of foreigners in London, and
condemned. Gibbon sat and listened unobserved to their strictures. It
never got beyond that rehearsal; Hume, indeed, approved of the
performance, only deprecating as unwise the author's preference for
French; but Gibbon sided with the majority.
In 1767 also he joined with M. Deyverdun in starting a literary journal
under the title of _Memoires litteraires de la Grande-Bretagne_. But its
circulation was limited, and only the second volume had appeared (1768)
when Deyverdun went abroad. The materials already collected for a third
volume were suppressed. It is interesting, however, to know, that in the
first volume is a review by Gibbon of Lord Lyttelton's _History of Henry
II._, and that the second volume contains a contribution by Hume on
Walpole's _Historic Doubts_.
The next appearance of the historian made a deeper impression. It was
the first distinct print of the lion's foot. "Ex ungue leonem" might
have been justly said, for he attacked, and attacked successfully, the
redoubtable Warburton. Of the many paradoxes in the _Divine Legation_,
few are more extravagant than the theory that Virgil, in the sixth book
of his _Aeneid_, intended to allegorize, in the visit of his hero and
the Sibyl to the shades, the initiation of Aeneas, as a lawgiver, into
the Eleusinian mysteries. This theory Gibbon completely exploded in his
_Critical Observations_ (1770)--no very difficult task, indeed, but
achieved in a style, and with a profusion of learning, which called
forth the warmest commendations both at home and abroad. Warburton never
replied; and few will believe that he would not, if he had not thought
silence more discreet. Gibbon, however, regrets that the style of his
pamphlet was too acrimonious; and this regret, considering his
antagonist's slight claims to forbearance, is creditable to him. "I
cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a man who, with all
his faults, was entitled to my esteem; and I can less forgive, in a
personal attack, the cowardly concealment of my name and character."
Soon after his "release from the fruitless task of the Swiss revolution"
in 1768, he had gradually advanced from the wish to the hope, from the
hope to the design, from the design to the execution of his great
historical work. His preparations were indeed vast. The classics, "as
low as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Juvenal," had been long familiar.
He now "plunged into the ocean of the Augustan history," and "with pen
almost always in hand," pored over all the original records, Greek and
Latin, between Trajan and the last of the Western Caesars. "The
subsidiary rays of medals and inscriptions, of geography and chronology,
were thrown on their proper objects; and I applied the collections of
Tillemont, whose inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of
genius, to fix and arrange within my reach the loose and scattered atoms
of historical information." The Christian apologists and their pagan
assailants; the Theodosian Code, with Godefroy's commentary; the _Annals
and Antiquities_ of Muratori, collated with "the parallel or transverse
lines" of Sigonius and Maffei, Pagi and Baronius, were all critically
studied. Still following the wise maxim which he had adopted as a
student, "multum legere potius quam multa," he reviewed again and again
the immortal works of the French and English, the Latin and Italian
classics. He deepened and extended his acquaintance with Greek,
particularly with his favourite authors Homer and Xenophon; and, to
crown all, he succeeded in achieving the third perusal of Blackstone's
_Commentaries_.
The course of his study was for some time seriously interrupted by his
father's illness and death in 1770, and by the many distractions
connected with the transference of his residence from Buriton to London.
It was not, indeed, until October 1772 that he found himself at last
independent, and fairly settled in his house and library, with full
leisure and opportunity to set about the composition of the first volume
of his history. Even then it appears from his own confession that he
long brooded over the chaos of materials he had amassed before light
dawned upon it. At the commencement, he says, "all was dark and
doubtful"; the limits, divisions, even the title of his work were
undetermined; the first chapter was composed three times, and the second
and third twice, before he was satisfied with his efforts. This
prolonged meditation on his design and its execution was ultimately well
repaid by the result: so methodical did his ideas become, and so readily
did his materials shape themselves, that, with the above exceptions, the
original MS. of the entire six quartos was sent uncopied to the
printers. He also says that not a sheet had been seen by any other eyes
than those of author and printer, a statement indeed which must be taken
with a small deduction; or rather we must suppose that a few chapters
had been submitted, if not to the "eyes," to the "ears" of others; for
he elsewhere tells us that he was "soon disgusted with the modest
practice of reading the manuscript to his friends." Such, however, were
his preliminary difficulties that he confesses he was often "tempted to
cast away the labour of seven years"; and it was not until February 1776
that the first volume was published. The success was instant, and, for a
quarto, probably unprecedented. The entire impression was exhausted in a
few days; a second and a third edition were scarcely adequate to the
demand. The author might almost have said, as Lord Byron after the
publication of _Childe Harold_, that "he awoke one morning and found
himself famous." In addition to public applause, he was gratified by the
more select praises of the highest living authorities in that branch of
literature: "the candour of Dr Robertson embraced his disciple"; Hume's
letter of congratulation "overpaid the labour of ten years." The latter,
however, with his usual sagacity, anticipated the objections which he
saw could be urged against the famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters.
"I think you have observed a very prudent temperament; but it was
impossible to treat the subject so as not to give grounds of suspicion
against you, and you may expect that a clamour will arise."
The "clamour" thus predicted was not slow to make itself heard. Within
two years the famous chapters had elicited what might almost be called a
library of controversy. The only attack, however, to which Gibbon
deigned to make any reply was that of Davies, who had impugned his
accuracy or good faith. His _Vindication_ appeared in February 1779;
and, as Milman remarks, "this single discharge from the ponderous
artillery of learning and sarcasm laid prostrate the whole disorderly
squadron" of his rash and feeble assailants.[6]
Two years before the publication of this first volume Gibbon was elected
member of parliament for Liskeard (1774). His political duties did not
suspend his prosecution of his history, except on one occasion, and for
a little while, in 1779, when he undertook, on behalf of the ministry, a
task which, if well performed, was also, it must be added, well
rewarded. The French government had issued a manifesto preparatory to a
declaration of war, and Gibbon was solicited by Chancellor Thurlow and
Lord Weymouth, secretary of state, to answer it. In compliance with this
request he produced the able _Memoire justificatif_, composed in French,
and delivered to the courts of Europe; and shortly afterwards he
received a seat at the Board of Trade and Plantations--little more than
a sinecure in itself, but with a very substantial salary of nearly L800
per annum. His acceptance displeased some of his former political
associates, and he was accused of "deserting his party." In his
_Memoir_, indeed, Gibbon denies that he had ever enlisted with the
Whigs. A note of Fox, however, on the margin of a copy of _The Decline
and Fall_ records a very distinct remembrance of the historian's
previous vituperation of the ministry; within a fortnight of the date of
his acceptance of office, he is there alleged to have said that "there
was no salvation for this country until six heads of the principal
persons in administration were laid upon the table." Lord Sheffield
merely replies, somewhat weakly it must be said, that his friend never
intended the words to be taken literally. More to the point is the
often-quoted passage from Gibbon's letter to Deyverdun, where the frank
revelation is made: "You have not forgotten that I went into parliament
without patriotism and without ambition, and that all my views tended
to the convenient and respectable place of a lord of trade."
In April 1781 the second and third quartos of his _History_ were
published. They excited no controversy, and were comparatively little
talked about--so little, indeed, as to have extorted from him a half
murmur about "coldness and prejudice." The volumes, however, were bought
and read with silent avidity. Meanwhile public events were developing in
a manner that had a considerable influence upon the manner in which the
remaining years of the historian's life were spent. At the general
election in 1780 he had lost his seat for Liskeard, but had subsequently
been elected for Lymington. The ministry of Lord North, however, was
tottering, and soon after fell; the Board of Trade was abolished by the
passing of Burke's bill in 1782, and Gibbon's salary vanished with
it--no trifle, for his expenditure had been for three years on a scale
somewhat disproportionate to his private fortune. He did not like to
depend on statesmen's promises, which are proverbially uncertain of
fulfilment; he as little liked to retrench; and he was wearied of
parliament, where he had never given any but silent votes. Urged by such
considerations, he once more turned his eyes to the scene of his early
exile, where he might live on his decent patrimony in a style which was
impossible in England, and pursue unembarrassed his literary studies. He
therefore resolved to fix himself at Lausanne.
A word only is necessary on his parliamentary career. Neither nature nor
acquired habits qualified him to be an orator; his late entrance on
public life, his natural timidity, his feeble voice, his limited command
of idiomatic English, and even, as he candidly confesses, his literary
fame, were all obstacles to success. "After a fleeting, illusive hope,
prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute.[7]
... I was not armed by nature and education with the intrepid energy of
mind and voice--'Vincentem strepitus et natum rebus agendis.' Timidity
was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the
trial of my voice." His repugnance to public life had been strongly
expressed to his father in a letter of a very early date, in which he
begged that the money which a seat in the House of Commons would cost
might be expended in a mode more agreeable to him. Gibbon was
eight-and-thirty when he entered parliament; and the obstacles which
even at an earlier period he had not had courage to encounter were
hardly likely to be vanquished then. Nor had he much political sagacity.
He was better skilled in investigating the past than in divining the
future. While Burke and Fox and so many great statesmen proclaimed the
consequences of the collision with America, Gibbon saw nothing but
colonies in rebellion, and a paternal government justly incensed. His
silent votes were all given on that hypothesis. In a similar manner,
while he abhorred the French Revolution when it came, he seems to have
had no apprehension, like Chesterfield, Burke, or even Horace Walpole,
of its approach; nor does he appear to have at all suspected that it had
had anything to do with the speculations of the philosophic coteries in
which he had taken such delight. But while it may be doubted whether his
presence in parliament was of any direct utility to the legislative
business of the country, there can be no question of the present
advantage which he derived from it in the prosecution of the great work
of his life--an advantage of which he was fully conscious when he wrote:
"The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil
prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian."
Having sold all his property except his library--to him equally a
necessary and a luxury--Gibbon repaired to Lausanne in September 1783,
and took up his abode with his early friend Deyverdun, now a resident
there. Perfectly free from every engagement but those which his own
tastes imposed, easy in his circumstances, commanding just as much
society, and that as select, as he pleased, with the noblest scenery
spread out at his feet, no situation can be imagined more favourable for
the prosecution of his literary enterprise; a hermit in his study as
long as he chose, he found the most delightful recreation always ready
for him at the threshold. "In London," says he, "I was lost in the
crowd; I ranked with the first families in Lausanne, and my style of
prudent expense enabled me to maintain a fair balance of reciprocal
civilities.... Instead of a small house between a street and a
stable-yard, I began to occupy a spacious and convenient mansion,
connected on the north side with the city, and open on the south to a
beautiful and boundless horizon. A garden of four acres had been laid
out by the taste of M. Deyverdun: from the garden a rich scenery of
meadows and vineyards descends to the Leman Lake, and the prospect far
beyond the lake is crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy." In
this enviable retreat, it is no wonder that a year should have been
suffered to roll round before he vigorously resumed his great work--and
with many men it would never have been resumed in such a paradise. We
may remark in passing that the retreat was often enlivened, or invaded,
by friendly tourists from England, whose "frequent incursions" into
Switzerland our recluse seems half to lament as an evil. Among his more
valued visitors were M. and Mme Necker; Mr Fox also gave him two welcome
"days of free and private society" in 1788. Differing as they did in
politics, Gibbon's testimony to the genius and character of the great
statesman is highly honourable to both: "Perhaps no human being," he
says, "was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence,
vanity, or falsehood."
When once fairly reseated at his task, he proceeded in this delightful
retreat leisurely, yet rapidly, to its completion. The fourth volume,
partly written in 1782, was completed in June 1784; the preparation of
the fifth volume occupied less than two years; while the sixth and last,
begun 18th May 1786, was finished in thirteen months. The feelings with
which he brought his labours to a close must be described in his own
inimitable words: "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 date of my _History_, the life of the
historian must be short and precarious."
Taking the manuscript with him, Gibbon, after an absence of four years,
once more visited London in 1787; and the 51st anniversary of the
author's birthday (27th April 1788) witnessed the publication of the
last three volumes of _The Decline and Fall_. They met with a quick and
easy sale, were very extensively read, and very liberally and deservedly
praised for the unflagging industry and vigour they displayed, though
just exception, if only on the score of good taste, was taken to the
scoffing tone he continued to maintain in all passages where the
Christian religion was specially concerned, and much fault was found
with the indecency of some of his notes.[8]
He returned to Switzerland in July 1788, cherishing vague schemes of
fresh literary activity; but genuine sorrow caused by the death of his
friend Deyverdun interfered with steady work, nor was it easy for him to
fix on a new subject which should be at once congenial and proportioned
to his powers; while the premonitory mutterings of the great
thunderstorm of the French Revolution, which reverberated in hollow
echoes even through the quiet valleys of Switzerland, further troubled
his repose. For some months he found amusement in the preparation of the
delightful _Memoirs_ (1789) from which most of our knowledge of his
personal history is derived; but his letters to friends in England,
written between 1788 and 1793 occasionally betray a slight but
unmistakable tone of ennui. In April 1793 he unexpectedly received
tidings of the death of Lady Sheffield; and the motive of friendship
thus supplied combined with the pressure of public events to urge him
homewards. He arrived in England in the following June, and spent the
summer at Sheffield Place, where his presence was even more highly
prized than it had ever before been. Returning to London early in
November, he found it necessary to consult his physicians for a symptom
which, neglected since 1761, had gradually become complicated with
hydrocele, and was now imperatively demanding surgical aid; but the
painful operations which had to be performed did not interfere with his
customary cheerfulness, nor did they prevent him from paying a Christmas
visit to Sheffield Place. Here, however, fever made its appearance; and
a removal to London (January 6, 1794) was considered imperative. Another
operation brought him some relief; but a relapse occurred during the
night of the 15th, and on the following day he peacefully breathed his
last. His remains were laid in the burial place of the Sheffield family,
Fletching, Sussex, where an epitaph by Dr Parr describes his character
and work in the language at once of elegance, of moderation and of
truth.
The personal appearance of Gibbon as a lad of sixteen is brought before
us somewhat dimly in M. Pavilliard's description of the "thin little
figure, with a large head, disputing and arguing, with the greatest
ability, all the best arguments that had ever been used in favour of
popery." What he afterwards became has been made more vividly familiar
by the clever silhouette prefixed to the _Miscellaneous Works_ (Gibbon
himself, at least, we know, did not regard it as a caricature), and by
Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait so often engraved. It is hardly fair
perhaps to add a reference to Suard's highly-coloured description of the
short Silenus-like figure, not more than 56 in. in height, the slim
legs, the large turned-in feet, the shrill piercing voice; but almost
every one will remember, from Croker's _Boswell_, Colman's account of
the great historian "tapping his snuff-box, smirking and smiling, and
rounding his periods" from that mellifluous mouth. It has already been
seen that Gibbon's early ailments all left him on the approach of
manhood; thenceforward, "till admonished by the gout," he could truly
boast of an immunity well-nigh perfect from every bodily complaint; an
exceptionally vigorous brain, and a stomach "almost too good," united to
bestow upon him a vast capacity alike for work and for enjoyment. This
capacity he never abused so as to burden his conscience or depress his
spirits. "The madness of superfluous health I have never known." To
illustrate the intensity of the pleasure he found alike in the solitude
of his study and in the relaxations of genial social intercourse, almost
any page taken at random, either from the _Life_ or from the _Letters_,
would suffice; and many incidental touches show that he was not a
stranger to the delights of quiet contemplation of the beauties and
grandeurs of nature. His manners, if formal, were refined; his
conversation, when he felt himself at home, interesting and unaffected;
and that he was capable alike of feeling and inspiring a very constant
friendship there are many witnesses to show. That his temperament at the
same time was frigid and comparatively passionless cannot be denied; but
neither ought this to be imputed to him as a fault; hostile criticisms
upon the grief for a father's death, that "was soothed by the conscious
satisfaction that I had discharged all the duties of filial piety," seem
somewhat out of place. His most ardent admirers, however, are
constrained to admit that he was deficient in large-hearted benevolence;
that he was destitute of any "enthusiasm of humanity"; and that so far
as every sort of religious yearning or aspiration is concerned, his
poverty was almost unique. Gibbon was such a man as Horace might have
been, had the Roman Epicurean been fonder of hard intellectual work,
and less prone than he was to the indulgence of emotion.
(H. Ro.; J. S. Bl.)
Gibbon's literary art, the sustained excellence of his style, his
piquant epigrams and his brilliant irony, would perhaps not secure for
his work the immortality which it seems likely to enjoy, if it were not
also marked by ecumenical grasp, extraordinary accuracy and striking
acuteness of judgment. It is needless to say that in many points his
statements and conclusions must now be corrected. He was never content
with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible; "I
have always endeavoured," he says, "to draw from the fountainhead; my
curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the
originals; and if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully
marked the secondary evidence on whose faith a passage or a fact were
reduced to depend." Since he wrote, new authorities have been discovered
or rendered accessible; works in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Armenian,
Syriac, Arabic and other languages, which he was unable to consult, have
been published. Again, many of the authorities which he used have been
edited in superior texts. The relative weights of the sources have been
more nicely determined by critical investigation. Archaeology has become
a science. In the immense region which Gibbon surveyed there is hardly a
section which has not been submitted to the microscopic examination of
specialists.
But apart from the inevitable advances made in the course of a century
during which historical research entered upon a new phase, the reader of
Gibbon must be warned against one capital defect. In judging the
_Decline and Fall_ it should carefully be observed that it falls into
two parts which are heterogeneous in the method of treatment. The first
part, a little more than five-eighths of the work, supplies a very
_full_ history of 460 years (A.D. 180-641); the second and smaller part
is a summary history of about 800 years (A.D. 641-1453) in which certain
episodes are selected for fuller treatment and so made prominent. To the
first part unstinted praise must be accorded; it may be said that, with
the materials at the author's disposition, it hardly admitted of
improvement, except in trifling details. But the second, notwithstanding
the brilliancy of the narrative and the masterly art in the grouping of
events, suffers from a radical defect which renders it a misleading
guide. The author designates the story of the later empire at
Constantinople (after Heraclius) as "a uniform tale of weakness and
misery," a judgment which is entirely false; and in accordance with this
doctrine, he makes the empire, which is his proper subject, merely a
string for connecting great movements which affected it, such as the
Saracen conquests, the Crusades, the Mongol invasions, the Turkish
conquests. He failed to bring out the momentous fact that up to the 12th
century the empire was the bulwark of Europe against the East, nor did
he appreciate its importance in preserving the heritage of Greek
civilization. He compressed into a single chapter the domestic history
and policy of the emperors from the son of Heraclius to Isaac Angelus;
and did no justice to the remarkable ability and the indefatigable
industry shown in the service of the state by most of the sovereigns
from Leo III. to Basil II. He did not penetrate into the deeper causes
underlying the revolutions and palace intrigues. His eye rested only on
superficial characteristics which have served to associate the name
"Byzantine" with treachery, cruelty, bigotry and decadence. It was
reserved for Finlay to depict, with greater knowledge and a juster
perception, the lights and shades of Byzantine history. Thus the later
part of the _Decline and Fall_, while the narrative of certain episodes
will always be read with profit, does not convey a true idea of the
history of the empire or of its significance in the history of Europe.
It must be added that the pages on the Slavonic peoples and their
relations to the empire are conspicuously insufficient; but it must be
taken into account that it was not till many years after Gibbon's death
that Slavonic history began to receive due attention, in consequence of
the rise of competent scholars among the Slavs themselves.
The most famous chapters of the _Decline and Fall_ are the fifteenth
and sixteenth, in which the historian traces the early progress of
Christianity and the policy of the Roman government towards it. The
flavour of these chapters is due to the irony which Gibbon has employed
with consummate art and felicity. There was a practical motive for using
this weapon. An attack on Christianity laid a writer open to prosecution
and penalties under the statutes of the realm (9 and 10 William III. c.
22, still unrepealed). Gibbon's stylistic artifice both averted the
peril of prosecution and rendered the attack more telling. In his
_Autobiography_ he alleges that he learned from the _Provincial Letters_
of Pascal "to manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on
subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity." It is not easy, however, to
perceive much resemblance between the method of Pascal and that of
Gibbon, though in particular passages we may discover the influence
which Gibbon acknowledges. For instance, the well-known description (in
chap. xlvii.) of the preposition "in" occurring in a theological dogma
as a "momentous particle which the memory rather than the understanding
must retain" is taken directly from the first Provincial Letter. The
main points in the general conclusions of these chapters have been borne
out by subsequent research. The account of the causes of the expansion
of Christianity is chiefly to be criticized for its omissions. There
were a number of important contributory conditions (enumerated in
Harnack's _Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums_) which Gibbon did
not take into account. He rightly insisted on the facilities of
communication created by the Roman empire, but did not emphasize the
diffusion of Judaism. And he did not realize the importance of the
kinship between Christian doctrine and Hellenistic syncretism, which
helped to promote the reception of Christianity. He was ignorant of
another fact of great importance (which has only in recent years been
fully appreciated through the researches of F. Cumont), the wide
diffusion of the Mithraic religion and the close analogies between its
doctrines and those of Christianity. In regard to the attitude of the
Roman government towards the Christian religion, there are questions
still _sub judice_; but Gibbon had the merit of reducing the number of
martyrs within probable limits.
Gibbon's verdict on the history of the middle ages is contained in the
famous sentence, "I have described the triumph of barbarism and
religion." It is important to understand clearly the criterion which he
applied; it is frequently misapprehended. He was a son of the 18th
century; he had studied with sympathy Locke and Montesquieu; no one
appreciated more keenly than he did political liberty and the freedom of
an Englishman. This is illustrated by his love of Switzerland, his
intense interest in the fortunes of that country, his design of writing
"The History of the Liberty of the Swiss"--a theme, he says "from which
the dullest stranger would catch fire." Such views and sentiments are
incompatible with the idealization of a benevolent despotism. Yet in
this matter Gibbon has been grossly misapprehended and misrepresented.
For instance, Mirabeau wrote thus to Sir Samuel Romilly: "I have never
been able to read the work of Mr Gibbon without being astounded that it
should ever have been written in English; or without being tempted to
turn to the author and say, 'You an Englishman? No, indeed.' That
admiration for an empire of more than two hundred millions of men, where
not one had the right to call himself free; that effeminate philosophy
which has more praise for luxury and pleasures than for all the virtues;
that style always elegant and never energetic, reveal at the most the
elector of Hanover's slave." This criticism is based on a perverse
misreading of the historian's observations on the age of Trajan, Hadrian
and the Antonines. He enlarges, as it was his business to do, on the
tranquillity and prosperity of the empire in that period, but he does
not fail to place his finger on the want of political liberty as a fatal
defect. He points out that under this benevolent despotism, though men
might be happy, their happiness was unstable, because it depended on the
character of a single man; and the highest praise he can give to those
virtuous princes is that they "deserved the honour of restoring the
republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of a rational
freedom." The criterion by which Gibbon judged civilization and
progress was the measure in which the happiness of men is secured, and
of that happiness he considered political freedom an essential
condition. He was essentially humane; and it is worthy of notice that he
was in favour of the abolition of slavery, while humane men like his
friend Lord Sheffield, Dr Johnson and Boswell were opposed to the
anti-slavery movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Of the original quarto edition of _The Decline and
Fall_, vol. i. appeared, as has already been stated, in 1776, vols.
ii. and iii. in 1781 and vols. iv.-vi. (inscribed to Lord North) in
1788. In later editions vol. i. was considerably altered by the
author; the others hardly at all. The number of modern reprints has
been very considerable. For many years the most important and valuable
English edition was that of Milman (1839 and 1845), which was reissued
with many critical additions by Dr W. Smith (8 vols. 8vo, 1854 and
1872). This has now been superseded by the edition, with copious
notes, by Professor J. B. Bury (7 vols. 8vo, 1896-1900). The edition
in Bohn's British Classics (7 vols., 1853) deserves mention. See also
the essay on Gibbon in Sir Spencer Walpole's _Essays and Biographies_
(1907). As a curiosity of literature Bowdler's edition, "adapted to
the use of families and young persons," by the expurgation of "the
indecent expressions and all allusions of an improper tendency" (5
vols. 8vo, 1825), may be noticed. The French translation of Le Clerc
de Septchenes, continued by Demeunier, Boulard and Cantwell
(1788-1795), has been frequently reprinted in France. It seems to be
certain that the portion usually attributed to Septchenes was, in part
at least, the work of his distinguished pupil, Louis XVI. A new
edition of the complete translation, prefaced by a letter on Gibbon's
life and character, from the pen of Suard, and annotated by Guizot,
appeared in 1812 (and again in 1828). There are at least two German
translations of _The Decline and Fall_, one by Wenck, Schreiter and
Beck (1805-1807), and a second by Johann C. Sporschil (1837, new ed.
1862). The Italian translation (alluded to by Gibbon himself) was,
along with Spedalieri's _Confutazione_, reprinted at Milan in 1823.
There is a Russian translation by Neviedomski (7 parts, Moscow,
1883-1886), and an Hungarian version of cc. 1-38 by K. Hegyessy (Pest,
1868-1869). Gibbon's _Miscellaneous Works, with Memoirs of his Life
and Writings, composed by himself; illustrated from his Letters, with
occasional Notes and Narrative_, published by Lord Sheffield in two
volumes in 1796, has been often reprinted. The new edition in five
volumes (1814) contained some previously unpublished matter, and in
particular the fragment on the revolutions of Switzerland. A French
translation of the _Miscellaneous Works_ by Marigne appeared at Paris
in 1798. There is also a German translation (Leipzig, 1801). It may be
added that a special translation of the chapter on Roman Law
(_Gibbon's historische Ubersicht des romischen Rechts_) was published
by Hugo at Gottingen in 1839, and has frequently been used as a
text-book in German universities. This chapter has also appeared in
Polish (Cracow, 1844) and Greek (Athens, 1840). The centenary of
Gibbon's death was celebrated in 1894 under the auspices of the Royal
Historical Society: _Proceedings of the Gibbon Commemoration_,
1794-1894, by R. H. T. Ball (1895). (J. B. B.)