Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/599

Rh GIB and his acquirements. Of the kind and amount of varied ability displayed in that truly immortal work it would be almost impossible to speak in language of exaggerated praise,—the grandeur and vastness of conception, the artis- tic grouping, the masterly fulness and accuracy of detail, the richness and vividness of description, the coruscating liveliness, the polished sarcasm, the pungent wit. The history of Rome is, for the many centuries which Gibbon treats, the history of the world ; and it is nothing less than astonishing that he should have been able to work with so much ease the vast and incongruous materials into such a unity of design. It is the amplest historic canvas ever spread, the largest historic painting ever executed by a single hand; and only a comprehensive and orderly intellect of the highest rank could have grappled as Gibbon has done with the task of blending that vast array of nations, in all their varieties of costume, habit, language, and religion, into one picturesque and harmonious whole. If Gibbon had ever l_»een conscious of any inexactitude in his mental habit, it was a defect which he very early and very successfully remedied. No man could declare more honestly than he that “curiosity as well as duty had led him carefully to examine all the original documents that could illustrate the subject which he had undertaken to treat.” With incredible labour he was able to bring at last to his great life-work a mind capable equally of ascending to the most comprehen- sive, and of descending to the most minute surveys; of appreciating the beautiful and sublime in classic literature, and yet of delighting in the verbal criticism, the tedious collation, and dry antiquarian research by which the text IS established or illustrated; of celebrating the more im- posing events of history with congenial pomp of description, and of investigating with the dullest plodder’s patience and pe1‘severance the origin of nations, the emigrations of obscure tribes, and the unpromising yet instructive pro- blems which ethnology presents. In his pages the widest deductions of historic philosophy alternate with attempts to fix the true reading of an obscure passage or a min11te point of chronology or geography. It may even be said that in these last investigations he took almost as much delight as in depicting the grander scenes of history, and surrendered himself as absolutely for the time to the early niigrations of the Goths and Scythians as to the campaigns of Belisarius or the conquests of the Saracens. Never has historian evinced greater logical sagacity in making com- paratively obscure details yield important inferences, or held with ﬁrmer hand the balance in the case of conﬂicting pro- babilities; by no one has sounder judgment or greater self- control been, on the whole, more uniformly exhibited in cases where it is so easy for learned enthusiasm to r11n into fanciful hypotheses. While thus entitled to great and manifold praise, The Decline and Fall has not been, and can never be, exempt from a certain measure of just censure. Even when the occasional Gallieisms and grammatical absurdities pointed out by the industry of critics have been willingly over- looked, there yet remains something to be said on the defects of its style. Precise, energetic, massive it is _: splendid, when the pictorial demands of the narrative re- quire it, as that of Livy; and sometimes, where profound reﬂections are to be concisely expressed, as sententious and graphic as that of Tacitus. But with all its great merits it is too often formal and inﬂexible, and is apt to pall on the car by the too frequent recurrence of the same cadence at equal intervals, and the too unsparing use of antithesis. It is not veined marble, but an exquisite tesse- lation; not the ﬂuent naturally-winding stream, but a stately aqueduct, faced with stone, adorned with wooded embankments, or ﬂowing over noble arches, but an aque- duct still. It is a just criticism of Sir James Mackintosh B O N 581 that probably no great Writer ever derived less beneﬁt from his professed models. Pascal, Voltaire, Hume, were his delight; and he acknowledges, as so unsuccessful a pupil well might, that he often closed the pages of the last with a feeling of despair. Addison and Swift he read for the very purpose of improving his acquaintance with idiomatic English, yet, as the above critic remarks, “ with so little success, that in the very act of characterizing these writers, he has deviated not a little from that beautiful simplicity which is their peculiar distinction.” In a work of such extent it is a venial fault that the workmanship should not in all parts be equally perfect; “ aliquando bonus dormitat.” That Gibbon has sometimes failed in that lncidity of statement which is one of his very strongest characteristics has often been successfully pointed out ; and special reference may be made to the 59th chapter, where he treats of the crusades. In this instance by “ a brief parallel” he has sought to save himself “ the re- petition of a tedious narrative,” but has only succeeded in. presenting a superﬁcial sketch that cannot be otherwise characterized than as confused and badly written. Nor has his penetration enabled him in all cases to reach the true significance of some of the grander facts which, in order to the adequate discharge of his task, it was of the highest importance that he should have rightly understood. Here it is not necessary to adduce any minor instances, when it can be shown that he is out of harmony with the truth, or at least with the truth as apprehended by the 19th century, in a matter so fundamental as his conception of that empire which declined and fell, and of that Christianity which, as he rightly supposes, contributed to its overthrow. In Mirabeau’s correspondence there occurs a letter to Sir Samuel Itomilly containing the following criticism :— “ I have never been able to read the work of M. Gibbon without being astounded that it should ever have been written in English; or without being tempted to t11rn 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.’ ”1 Here Mirabean speaks in his own language what every one who in the least values the characteristic features of modern political life must, however inarticulately, have often felt. Gibbons enthusiasm for the empire of Trajan and the Antonines——- that “solid fabric of human greatness ”—is undisguised and perfectly sincere; to his thinking, if the earth ever enjoyed a golden age, it was then. The world was happy because it was under a government which it could never think of questioning or resisting,——happy because for once it had got rid of all unavailing enthusiasms, whether political or religious. Whether it was happy, and whether any hap- piness it really possessed was not rather in spite of than because of the prevalent political and religious indifference, are questions which not many historians will care to answer as Gibbon did. It is manifest, however, that to him, thinking of the Roman empire as he did, it was well nigh impossible to be just to Christianity. He could never for- give a religion which, in his opinion, had overthrown “ the solid fabric of human greatness,” and given to the world the sorry sight of bare—footed friars chanting psalms on the spot where once had been the august worship in which everybody took part and positively no one believed. This explains why one who can treat each and all of the ethnic religious with the cold impartiality of a Chinese literatus2 1 See Sainte-lleuve, Ca1(scr1'cs, viii. 460. I . _ 3 “ 11 a du lettre chinois dans sa manii-re d'apprcc1er les religions." —Sa1nte-Beuvc.