Part 10

Then followed two and a half years' service in the Hampshire militia. But he did not neglect his reading. He mastered Homer, whom he termed "the Bible of the ancients," and in the militia he acquired "a just and indelible knowledge" of what he called "the first of languages." And his love for Latin abided also: "On every march, in every journey, Horace was always in my pocket and often in my hand." Practical knowledge he absorbed almost insensibly. "The daily occupations of the militia," he wrote, "introduced me to the science of Tactics" and led to the study of "the precepts of Polybius and Caesar." In this connection occurs the remark which admirers of Gibbon will never tire of citing: "A familiar view of 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 decline and fall of the Roman Empire." The grand tour followed his militia service. Three and a half months in Paris, and a revisit to Lausanne preceded the year that he passed in Italy. Of the conception of the History of the Decline and Fall, during his stay in Rome, I have already spoken.

On his return to England, contemplating "the decline and fall of Rome at an awful distance," he began, in collaboration with the Swiss Deyverdun, his bosom friend, a history of Switzerland written in French. During the winter of 1767, the first book of it was submitted to a literary society of foreigners in London. As the author was unknown the strictures were free and the verdict unfavorable. Gibbon was present at the meeting and related that "the momentary sensation was painful," but, on cooler reflection, he agreed with his judges and intended to consign his manuscript to the flames. But this, as Lord Sheffield, his literary executor and first editor, shows conclusively, he neglected to do. This essay of Gibbon's possesses interest for us, inasmuch as David Hume read it, and wrote to Gibbon a friendly letter, in which he said: "I have perused your manuscript with great pleasure and satisfaction. I have only one objection, derived from the language in which it is written. Why do you compose in French, and carry faggots into the wood, as Horace says with regard to Romans who wrote in Greek?" This critical query of Hume must have profoundly influenced Gibbon. Next year he began to work seriously on "The Decline and Fall" and five years later began the composition of it in English. It does not appear that he had any idea of writing his magnum opus in French.

In this rambling discourse, in which I have purposely avoided relating the life of Gibbon in anything like a chronological order, we return again and again to the great History. And it could not well be otherwise. For if Edward Gibbon could not have proudly said, I am the author of "six volumes in quartos" he would have had no interest for us. Dr. Hill writes, "For one reader who has read his 'Decline and Fall,' there are at least a score who have read his Autobiography, and who know him, not as the great historian, but as a man of a most original and interesting nature." But these twenty people would never have looked into the Autobiography had it not been the life of a great historian; indeed the Autobiography would never have been written except to give an account of a great life work. "The Decline and Fall," therefore, is the thing about which all the other incidents of his life revolve. The longer this history is read and studied, the greater is the appreciation of it. Dean Milman followed Gibbon's track through many portions of his work, and read his authorities, ending with a deliberate judgment in favor of his "general accuracy." "Many of his seeming errors," he wrote, "are almost inevitable from the close condensation of his matter." Guizot had three different opinions based on three various readings. After the first rapid perusal, the dominant feeling was one of interest in a narrative, always animated in spite of its extent, always clear and limpid in spite of the variety of objects. During the second reading, when he examined particularly certain points, he was somewhat disappointed; he encountered some errors either in the citations or in the facts and especially shades and strokes of partiality which led him to a comparatively rigorous judgment. In the ensuing complete third reading, the first impression, doubtless corrected by the second, but not destroyed, survived and was maintained; and with some restrictions and reservations, Guizot declared that, concerning that vast and able work, there remained with him an appreciation of the immensity of research, the variety of knowledge, the sagacious breadth and especially that truly philosophical rectitude of a mind which judges the past as it would judge the present. Mommsen said in 1894: "Amid all the changes that have come over the study of the history of the Roman Empire, in spite of all the rush of the new evidence that has poured in upon us and almost overwhelmed us, in spite of changes which must be made, in spite of alterations of view, or alterations even in the aspect of great characters, no one would in the future be able to read the history of the Roman Empire unless he read, possibly with a fuller knowledge, but with the broad views, the clear insight, the strong grasp of Edward Gibbon."

It is difficult for an admirer of Gibbon to refrain from quoting some of his favorite passages. The opinion of a great historian on history always possesses interest. History, wrote Gibbon, is "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Again, "Wars and the administration of public affairs are the principal subjects of history." And the following cannot fail to recall a similar thought in Tacitus, "History undertakes to record the transactions of the past for the instruction of future ages." Two references to religion under the Pagan empire are always worth repeating. "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world," he wrote, "were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful." "The fashion of incredulity was communicated from the philosopher to the man of pleasure or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the master to the menial slave who waited at his table and who equally listened to the freedom of his conversation." Gibbon's idea of the happiest period of mankind is interesting and characteristic. "If," he wrote, "a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." This period was from A.D. 96 to 180, covering the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. Professor Carter, in a lecture in Rome in 1907, drew, by a modern comparison, a characterization of the first three named. When we were studying in Germany, he said, we were accustomed to sum up the three emperors, William I, Frederick III, and William II, as der greise Kaiser, der weise Kaiser, und der reise Kaiser. The characterizations will fit well Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian. Gibbon speaks of the "restless activity" of Hadrian, whose life "was almost a perpetual journey," and who during his reign visited every province of his empire.

A casual remark of Gibbon's, "Corruption [is] the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty," shows the sentiment of the eighteenth century. The generality of the history becomes specific in a letter to his father, who has given him hopes of a seat in Parliament. "This seat," so Edward Gibbon wrote, "according to the custom of our venal country was to be bought, and fifteen hundred pounds were mentioned as the price of purchase."

Gibbon anticipated Captain Mahan. In speaking of a naval battle between the fleet of Justinian and that of the Goths in which the galleys of the Eastern empire gained a signal victory, he wrote, "The Goths affected to depreciate an element in which they were unskilled; but their own experience confirmed the truth of a maxim, that the master of the sea will always acquire the dominion of the land." But Gibbon's anticipation was one of the frequent cases where the same idea has occurred to a number of men of genius, as doubtless Captain Mahan was not aware of this sentence any more than he was of Bacon's and Raleigh's epitomes of the theme which he has so originally and brilliantly treated.

No modern historian has been the subject of so much critical comment as Gibbon. I do not know how it will compare in volume with either of the similar examinations of Thucydides and Tacitus; but the criticism is of a different sort. The only guarantee of the honesty of Tacitus, wrote Sainte-Beuve, is Tacitus himself; and a like remark will apply to Thucydides. But a fierce light beats on Gibbon. His voluminous notes furnish the critics the materials on which he built his history, which, in the case of the ancient historians, must be largely a matter of conjecture. With all the searching examination of "The Decline and Fall," it is surprising how few errors have been found and, of the errors which have been noted, how few are really important. Guizot, Milman, Dr. Smith, Cotter Morison, Bury, and a number of lesser lights have raked his text and his notes with few momentous results. We have, writes Bury, improved methods over Gibbon and "much new material of various kinds," but "Gibbon's historical sense kept him constantly right in dealing with his sources"; and "in the main things he is still our master." The man is generally reflected in his book. That Gibbon has been weighed and not found wanting is because he was as honest and truthful as any man who ever wrote history. The autobiographies and letters exhibit to us a transparent man, which indeed some of the personal allusions in the history might have foreshadowed. "I have often fluctuated and shall tamely follow the Colbert Ms.," he wrote, where the authenticity of a book was in question. In another case "the scarcity of facts and the uncertainty of dates" opposed his attempt to describe the first invasion of Italy by Alaric. In the beginning of the famous Chapter XLIV which is "admired by jurists as a brief and brilliant exposition of the principles of Roman law," Gibbon wrote, "Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and candor of history, and directed by the most temperate and skillful guides, I enter with just diffidence on the subject of civil law." In speaking of the state of Britain between 409 and 449, he said, "I owe it to myself and to historic truth to declare that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy." Throughout his whole work the scarcity of materials forces Gibbon to the frequent use of conjecture, but I believe that for the most part his conjectures seem reasonable to the critics. Impressed with the correctness of his account of the Eastern empire a student of the subject once told me that Gibbon certainly possessed the power of wise divination.

Gibbon's striving after precision and accuracy is shown in some marginal corrections he made in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." On the first page in his first printed edition and as it now stands, he said, "To deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall: a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth." For this the following is substituted: "To prosecute the decline and fall of the empire of Rome: of whose language, religion, and laws the impression will be long preserved in our own and the neighboring countries of Europe." He thus explains the change: "Mr. Hume told me that, in correcting his history, he always labored to reduce superlatives and soften positives. Have Asia and Africa, from Japan to Morocco, any feeling or memory of the Roman Empire?"

On page 6, Bury's edition, the text is, "The praises of Alexander, transmitted by a succession of poets and historians, had kindled a dangerous emulation in the mind of Trajan." We can imagine that Gibbon reflected, What evidence have I that Trajan had read these poets and historians? Therefore he made this change: "Late generations and far distant climates may impute their calamities to the immortal author of the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander was inflamed by the praises of Achilles; and succeeding heroes have been ambitious to tread in the footsteps of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor Trajan aspired to the conquest of the East."

The "advertisement" to the first octavo edition published in 1783 is an instance of Gibbon's truthfulness. He wrote, "Some alterations and improvements had presented themselves to my mind, but I was unwilling to injure or offend the purchasers of the preceding editions." Then he seems to reflect that this is not quite the whole truth and adds, "Perhaps I may stand excused if, amidst the avocations of a busy winter, I have preferred the pleasures of composition and study to the minute diligence of revising a former publication."

The severest criticism that Gibbon has received is on his famous chapters XV and XVI which conclude his first volume in the original quarto edition of 1776. We may disregard the flood of contemporary criticism from certain people who were excited by what they deemed an attack on the Christian religion. Dean Milman, who objected seriously to much in these chapters, consulted these various answers to Gibbon on the first appearance of his work with, according to his own confession, little profit. "Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth chapters," wrote Buckle, "all the devices of controversy have been exhausted; but the only result has been, that while the fame of the historian is untarnished, the attacks of his enemies are falling into complete oblivion. The work of Gibbon remains; but who is there who feels any interest in what was written against him?" During the last generation, however, criticism has taken another form and scientific men now do not exactly share Buckle's gleeful opinion. Both Bury and Cotter Morison state or imply that well-grounded exceptions may be taken to Gibbon's treatment of the early Christian church. He ignored some facts; his combination of others, his inferences, his opinions are not fair and unprejudiced. A further grave objection may be made to the tone of these two chapters: sarcasm pervades them and the Gibbon sneer has become an apt characterization.

Francis Parkman admitted that he was a reverent agnostic, and if Gibbon had been a reverent free-thinker these two chapters would have been far different in tone. Lecky regarded the Christian church as a great institution worthy of reverence and respect although he stated the central thesis of Gibbon with emphasis just as great. Of the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Lecky wrote, "it may be boldly asserted that the assumption of a moral or intellectual miracle is utterly gratuitous. Never before was a religious transformation so manifestly inevitable." Gibbon's sneering tone was a characteristic of his time. There existed during the latter part of the eighteenth century, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, "an unphilosophical and indeed fanatical animosity against Christianity." But Gibbon's private defense is entitled to consideration as placing him in a better light. "The primitive church, which I have treated with some freedom," he wrote to Lord Sheffield in 1791, "was itself at that time an innovation, and I was attached to the old Pagan establishment." "Had I believed," he said in his Autobiography, "that the majority of English readers were so fondly attached to the name and shadow of Christianity, had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the prudent would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite sensibility, I might perhaps have softened the two invidious chapters."

On the other hand Gibbon's treatment of Julian the Apostate is in accordance with the best modern standard. It might have been supposed that a quasi-Pagan, as he avowed himself, would have emphasized Julian's virtues and ignored his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested him with all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and Julius Caesar, without their defects. Robertson indeed feared that he might fail in this part of the history; but Gibbon weighed Julian in the balance, duly estimating his strength and his weakness, with the result that he has given a clear and just account in his best and most dignified style.

Gibbon's treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian, is certainly open to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," he wrote, "in painting the manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.... My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language." This explanation satisfies neither Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as a justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is really so scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do right to subject him to our present-day rigid tests.

There has been much discussion about Gibbon's style, which we all know is pompous and Latinized. On a long reading his rounded and sonorous periods become wearisome, and one wishes that occasionally a sentence would terminate with a small word, even a preposition. One feels as did Dickens after walking for an hour or two about the handsome but "distractingly regular" city of Philadelphia. "I felt," he wrote, "that I would have given the world for a crooked street." Despite the pomposity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words is a marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change of words will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought with Thucydides, "My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten."

To a writer of history few things are more interesting than a great historian's autobiographical remarks which relate to the composition of his work. "Had I been more indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or the perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history." "Notwithstanding the hurry of business and pleasure," he wrote from London in 1778, "I steal some moments for the Roman Empire." Between the writing of the first three and the last three volumes, he took a rest of "near a twelvemonth" and gave expression to a thought which may be echoed by every studious writer, "Yet in the luxury of freedom, I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry." Every one who has written a historical book will sympathize with the following expression of personal experience as he approached the completion of "The Decline and Fall": "Let no man who builds a house or writes a book presume to say when he will have finished. When he imagines that he is drawing near to his journey's end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually finds something to add and something to correct."

Plain truthful tales are Gibbon's autobiographies. The style is that of the history, and he writes of himself as frankly as he does of any of his historical characters. His failings—what he has somewhere termed "the amiable weaknesses of human nature"—are disclosed with the openness of a Frenchman. All but one of the ten years between 1783 and 1793, between the ages of 46 and 56, he passed at Lausanne. There he completed "The Decline and Fall," and of that period he spent from August, 1787, to July, 1788, in England to look after the publication of the last three volumes. His life in Lausanne was one of study, writing, and agreeable society, of which his correspondence with his English friends gives an animated account. The two things one is most impressed with are his love for books and his love for Madeira. "Though a lover of society," he wrote, "my library is the room to which I am most attached." While getting settled at Lausanne, he complains that his boxes of books "loiter on the road." And then he harps on another string. "Good Madeira," he writes, "is now become essential to my health and reputation;" yet again, "If I do not receive a supply of Madeira in the course of the summer, I shall be in great shame and distress." His good friend in England, Lord Sheffield, regarded his prayer and sent him a hogshead of "best old Madeira" and a tierce, containing six dozen bottles of "finest Malmsey," and at the same time wrote: "You will remember that a hogshead is on his travels through the torrid zone for you.... No wine is meliorated to a greater degree by keeping than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous for it, that I must conceive you wish to have a stock." Gibbon's devotion to Madeira bore its penalty. At the age of forty-eight he sent this account to his stepmother: "I was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given over the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter, convinced me of my error, and about the latter end of March I found myself a prisoner in my library and my great chair. I attempted twice to rise, he twice knocked me down again and kept possession of both my feet and knees longer (I must confess) than he ever had done before." Eager to finish his history, he lamented that his "long gout" lost him "three months in the spring." Thus as you go through his correspondence, you find that orders for Madeira and attacks of gout alternate with regularity. Gibbon apparently did not connect the two as cause and effect, as in his autobiography he charged his malady to his service in the Hampshire militia, when "the daily practice of hard and even excessive drinking" had sown in his constitution "the seeds of the gout."