Part 8

SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Thanking heartily the governing boards of Harvard College for the honor conferred upon me, I shall say, on this my first admission to the circle of the Harvard alumni, a word on the University as it appears to one whose work has lain outside of it. The spirit of the academy in general and especially of this University impels men to get to the bottom of things, to strive after exact knowledge; and this spirit permeates my own study of history in a remarkable degree. "The first of all Gospels is this," said Carlyle, "that a lie cannot endure forever." This is the gospel of historical students. A part of their work has been to expose popular fallacies, and to show up errors which have been made through partiality and misguided patriotism or because of incomplete investigation. Men of my age are obliged to unlearn much. The youthful student of history has a distinct advantage over us in that he begins with a correct knowledge of the main historical facts. He does not for example learn what we all used to learn--that in the year 1000 the appearance of a fiery comet caused a panic of terror to fall upon Christendom and gave rise to the belief that the end of the world was at hand. Nor is he taught that the followers of Peter the Hermit in the first crusade were a number of spiritually minded men and women of austere morality. It is to the University that we owe it that we are seeing things as they are in history, that the fables, the fallacies, and the exaggerations are disappearing from the books.

To regard the past with accuracy and truth is a preparation for envisaging the present in the same way. For this attitude towards the past and the present gained by college students of history, and for other reasons which it is not necessary here to detail, the man of University training has, other things being equal, this advantage over him who lacks it, that in life in the world he will get at things more certainly and state them more accurately.

"A university," said Lowell, "is a place where nothing useful is taught." By utility Lowell undoubtedly meant, to use the definition which Huxley puts into the average Englishman's mouth, "that by which we get pudding or praise or both." A natural reply to the statement of Lowell is that great numbers of fathers every year, at a pecuniary sacrifice, send their sons to college with the idea of fitting them better to earn their living, in obedience to the general sentiment of men of this country that there is a money value to college training. But the remark of Lowell suggests another object of the University which, to use the words of Huxley again, is "to catch the exceptional people, the glorious sports of nature, and turn them to account for the good of society." This appeals to those imbued with the spirit of the academy who frankly acknowledge, in the main, our inferiority in the scholarship, which produces great works of literature and science, to England, Germany, and France, and who with patriotic eagerness wish that we may reach the height attained in the older countries. To recur to my own study again, should we produce a historian or historical writer the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay there would be a feeling of pride in our historical genius which would make itself felt at every academical and historical gathering. We have something of that sentiment in regard to Francis Parkman, our most original historian. But it may be that the historical field of Parkman is too narrow to awaken a world-wide interest and I suspect that the American who will be recognized as the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay must secure that recognition by writing of some period of European history better than the Englishman, German, or Frenchman has written of it. He must do it not only in the way of scientific history, in which in his field Henry Charles Lea has won so much honor for himself and his country, but he must bring to bear on his history that quality which has made the historical writings of Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay literature.

EDWARD GIBBON

Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and printed in Scribner's Magazine, June, 1909.

EDWARD GIBBON

No English or American lover of history visits Rome without bending reverent footsteps to the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. Two visits are necessary, as on the first you are at once seized by the sacristan, who can conceive of no other motive for entering this church on the Capitol Hill than to see the miraculous Bambino--the painted doll swaddled in gold and silver tissue and "crusted over with magnificent diamonds, emeralds, and rubies." When you have heard the tale of what has been called "the oldest medical practitioner in Rome," of his miraculous cures, of these votive offerings, the imaginary picture you had conjured up is effaced; and it is better to go away and come a second time when the sacristan will recognize you and leave you to yourself. Then you may open your Gibbon's Autobiography and read that it was the subtle influence of Italy and Rome that determined the choice, from amongst many contemplated subjects of historical writing, of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." "In my Journal," wrote Gibbon, "the place and moment of conception are recorded; the 15th of October, 1764, in the close of the evening, as I sat musing in the Church of the Franciscan friars while they were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol." Gibbon was twenty-seven when he made this fruitful visit of eighteen weeks to Rome, and his first impression, though often quoted, never loses interest, showing, as it does, the enthusiasm of an unemotional man. "At the distance of twenty-five years," he wrote, "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 Cicero spoke or Cæsar fell was at once present to my eye."

The admirer of Gibbon as he travels northward will stop at Lausanne and visit the hotel which bears the historian's name. Twice have I taken luncheon in the garden where he wrote the last words of his history; and on a third visit, after lunching at another inn, I could not fail to admire the penetration of the Swiss concierge. As I alighted, he seemed to divine at once the object of my visit, and before I had half the words of explanation out of my mouth, he said, "Oh, yes. It is this way. But I cannot show you anything but a spot." I have quoted from Gibbon's Autobiography the expression of his inspiration of twenty-seven; a fitting companion-piece is the reflection of the man of fifty. "I have presumed to mark the moment of conception," he wrote; "I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather the 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.... 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 my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion."

Although the idea was conceived when Gibbon was twenty-seven, he was thirty-one before he set himself seriously at work to study his material. At thirty-six he began the composition, and he was thirty-nine, when, in February, 1776, the first quarto volume was published. The history had an immediate success. "My book," he wrote, "was on every table and almost on every toilette; the historian was crowned by the taste or fashion of the day." The first edition was exhausted in a few days, a second was printed in 1776, and next year a third. The second and third volumes, which ended the history of the Western empire, were published in 1781, and seven years later the three volumes devoted to the Eastern empire saw the light. The last sentence of the work, written in the summer-house at Lausanne, is, "It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candor of the public."

This is a brief account of one of the greatest historical works, if indeed it is not the greatest, ever written. Let us imagine an assemblage of English, German, and American historical scholars called upon to answer the question, Who is the greatest modern historian? No doubt can exist that Gibbon would have a large majority of the voices; and I think a like meeting of French and Italian scholars would indorse the verdict. "Gibbon's work will never be excelled," declared Niebuhr. "That great master of us all," said Freeman, "whose immortal tale none of us can hope to displace." Bury, the latest editor of Gibbon, who has acutely criticised and carefully weighed "The Decline and Fall," concludes "that Gibbon is behind date in many details. But in the main things he is still our master, above and beyond date." His work wins plaudits from those who believe that history in its highest form should be literature and from those who hold that it should be nothing more than a scientific narrative. The disciples of Macaulay and Carlyle, of Stubbs and Gardiner, would be found voting in unison in my imaginary Congress. Gibbon, writes Bury, is "the historian and the man of letters," thus ranking with Thucydides and Tacitus. These three are put in the highest class, exemplifying that "brilliance of style and accuracy of statement are perfectly compatible in an historian." Accepting this authoritative classification it is well worth while to point out the salient differences between the ancient historians and the modern. From Thucydides we have twenty-four years of contemporary history of his own country. If the whole of the Annals and History of Tacitus had come down to us, we should have had eighty-three years; as it is, we actually have forty-one of nearly contemporary history of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's tale covers 1240 years. He went far beyond his own country for his subject, and the date of his termination is three centuries before he was born. Milman spoke of "the amplitude, the magnificence, and the harmony of Gibbon's design," and Bury writes, "If we take into account the vast range of his work, his accuracy is amazing." Men have wondered and will long wonder at the brain with such a grasp and with the power to execute skillfully so mighty a conception. "The public is seldom wrong" in their judgment of a book, wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, and, if that be true at the time of actual publication to which Gibbon intended to apply the remark, how much truer it is in the long run of years. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has had a life of over one hundred and thirty years, and there is no indication that it will not endure as long as any interest is taken in the study of history. "I have never presumed to accept a place in the triumvirate of British historians," said Gibbon, referring to Hume and Robertson. But in our day Hume and Robertson gather dust on the shelf, while Gibbon is continually studied by students and read by serious men.

A work covering Gibbon's vast range of time would have been impossible for Thucydides or Tacitus. Historical skepticism had not been fully enough developed. There had not been a sufficient sifting and criticism of historical materials for a master's work of synthesis. And it is probable that Thucydides lacked a model. Tacitus could indeed have drawn inspiration from the Greek, while Gibbon had lessons from both, showing a profound study of Tacitus and a thorough acquaintance with Thucydides.

If circumstances then made it impossible for the Greek or the Roman to attempt history on the grand scale of Gibbon, could Gibbon have written contemporary history with accuracy and impartiality equal to his great predecessors? This is one of those delightful questions that may be ever discussed and never resolved. When twenty-three years old, arguing against the desire of his father that he should go into Parliament, Gibbon assigned, as one of the reasons, that he lacked "necessary prejudices of party and of nation"; and when in middle life he embraced the fortunate opportunity of becoming a member of the House of Commons, he thus summed up his experience, "The eight sessions that I sat in Parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian." At the end of this political career, Gibbon, in a private letter to an intimate Swiss friend, gave the reason why he had embraced it. "I entered Parliament," he said, "without patriotism, and without ambition, and I had no other aim than to secure the comfortable and honest place of a Lord of Trade. I obtained this place at last. I held it for three years, from 1779 to 1782, and the net annual product of it, being £750 sterling, increased my revenue to the level of my wants and desires." His retirement from Parliament was followed by ten years' residence at Lausanne, in the first four of which he completed his history. A year and a half after his removal to Lausanne, he referred, in a letter to his closest friend, Lord Sheffield, to the "abyss of your cursed politics," and added: "I never was a very warm patriot and I grow every day a citizen of the world. The scramble for power and profit at Westminster or St. James's, and the names of Pitt and Fox become less interesting to me than those of Cæsar and Pompey."

These expressions would seem to indicate that Gibbon might have written contemporary history well and that the candor displayed in "The Decline and Fall" might not have been lacking had he written of England in his own time. But that subject he never contemplated. When twenty-four years old he had however considered a number of English periods and finally fixed upon Sir Walter Raleigh for his hero; but a year later, he wrote in his journal: "I shrink with terror from the modern history of England, where every character is a problem, and every reader a friend or an enemy; where a writer is supposed to hoist a flag of party and is devoted to damnation by the adverse faction.... I must embrace a safer and more extensive theme."

How well Gibbon knew himself! Despite his coolness and candor, war and revolution revealed his strong Tory prejudices, which he undoubtedly feared might color any history of England that he might undertake. "I took my seat," in the House of Commons, he wrote, "at the beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America; and supported with many a sincere and silent vote the rights though perhaps not the interests of the mother country." In 1782 he recorded the conclusion: "The American war had once been the favorite of the country, the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her colonies, and the executive power was driven by national clamor into the most vigorous and coercive measures." But it was a fruitless contest. Armies were lost; the debt and taxes were increased; the hostile confederacy of France, Spain and Holland was disquieting. As a result the war became unpopular and Lord North's ministry fell. Dr. Johnson thought that no nation not absolutely conquered had declined so much in so short a time. "We seem to be sinking," he said. "I am afraid of a civil war." Dr. Franklin, according to Horace Walpole, said "he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with materials for writing the History of the Decline of the British Empire." With his country tottering, the self-centered but truthful Gibbon could not avoid mention of his personal loss, due to the fall of his patron, Lord North. "I was stripped of a convenient salary," he said, "after having enjoyed it about three years."

The outbreak of the French Revolution intensified his conservatism. He was then at Lausanne, the tranquillity of which was broken up by the dissolution of the neighboring kingdom. Many Lausanne families were terrified by the menace of bankruptcy. "This town and country," Gibbon wrote, "are crowded with noble exiles, and we sometimes count in an assembly a dozen princesses and duchesses." Bitter disputes between them and the triumphant Democrats disturbed the harmony of social circles. Gibbon espoused the cause of the royalists. "I beg leave to subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on the Revolution of France," he wrote. "I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for Church establishments." Thirteen days after the massacre of the Swiss guard in the attack on the Tuileries in August, 1792, Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield, "The last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced almost everybody of the fatal consequences of Democratical principles which lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of hell." Gibbon, who was astonished by so few things in history, wrote Sainte-Beuve, was amazed by the French Revolution. Nothing could be more natural. The historian in his study may consider the fall of dynasties, social upheavals, violent revolutions, and the destruction of order without a tremor. The things have passed away. The events furnish food for his reflections and subjects for his pen, while sanguine uprisings at home or in a neighboring country in his own time inspire him with terror lest the oft-prophesied dissolution of society is at hand. It is the difference between the earthquake in your own city and the one 3000 miles away. As Gibbon's pocket-nerve was sensitive, it may be he was also thinking of the £1300 he had invested in 1784 in the new loan of the King of France, deeming the French funds as solid as the English.

It is well now to repeat our dictum that Gibbon is the greatest modern historian, but, in reasserting this, it is no more than fair to cite the opinions of two dissentients--the great literary historians of the nineteenth century, Macaulay and Carlyle. "The truth is," wrote Macaulay in his diary, "that I admire no historians much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus.... There is merit no doubt in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of history more just, I am confident, than theirs." "Gibbon," said Carlyle in a public lecture, is "a greater historian than Robertson but not so great as Hume. With all his swagger and bombast, no man ever gave a more futile account of human things than he has done of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire; assigning no profound cause for these phenomena, nothing but diseased nerves, and all sorts of miserable motives, to the actors in them." Carlyle's statement shows envious criticism as well as a prejudice in favor of his brother Scotchman. It was made in 1838, since when opinion has raised Gibbon to the top, for he actually lives while Hume is read perfunctorily, if at all. Moreover among the three--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle--whose works are literature as well as history, modern criticism has no hesitation in awarding the palm to Gibbon.

Before finally deciding upon his subject Gibbon thought of "The History of the Liberty of the Swiss" and "The History of the Republic of Florence under the House of Medicis," but in the end, as we have seen, he settled on the later history of the Roman Empire, showing, as Lowell said of Parkman, his genius in the choice of his subject. His history really begins with the death of Marcus Aurelius, 180 A.D., but the main narrative is preceded by three excellent introductory chapters, covering in Bury's edition eighty-two pages. After the completion of his work, he regretted that he had not begun it at an earlier period. On the first page of his own printed copy of his book where he announces his design, he has entered this marginal note: "Should I not have given the history of that fortunate period which was interposed between two iron ages? Should I not have deduced the decline of the Empire from the Civil Wars that ensued after the Fall of Nero or even from the tyranny which succeeded the reign of Augustus? Alas! I should; but of what avail is this tardy knowledge?" We may echo Gibbon's regret that he had not commenced his history with the reign of Tiberius, as, in his necessary use of Tacitus, we should have had the running comment of one great historian on another, of which we have a significant example in Gibbon's famous sixteenth chapter wherein he discusses Tacitus's account of the persecution of the Christians by Nero. With his power of historic divination, he would have so absorbed Tacitus and his time that the history would almost have seemed a collaboration between two great and sympathetic minds. "Tacitus," he wrote, "very frequently trusts to the curiosity or reflection of his readers to supply those intermediate circumstances and ideas, which, in his extreme conciseness, he has thought proper to suppress." How Gibbon would have filled those gaps! Though he was seldom swayed by enthusiasm, his admiration of the Roman historian fell little short of idolatry. His references in "The Decline and Fall" are many, and some of them are here worth recalling to mind. "In their primitive state of simplicity and independence," he wrote, "the Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye and delineated by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts." Again he speaks of him as "the philosophic historian whose writings will instruct the last generation of mankind." And in Chapter XVI he devoted five pages to citation from, and comment on, Tacitus, and paid him one of the most splendid tributes one historian ever paid another. "To collect, to dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years in an immortal work, every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and the most lively images, was an undertaking sufficient to exercise the genius of Tacitus himself during the greatest part of his life." So much for admiration. That, nevertheless, Gibbon could wield the critical pen at the expense of the historian he rated so highly, is shown by a marginal note in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." It will be remembered that Tacitus published his History and wrote his Annals during the reign of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly respected and admired. He referred to the reigns of Nerva and Trajan in suggested contrast to that of Domitian as "times when men were blessed with the rare privilege of thinking with freedom, and uttering what they thought." It fell to both Tacitus and Gibbon to speak of the testament of Augustus which, after his death, was read in the Senate: and Tacitus wrote, Augustus "added a recommendation to keep the empire within fixed limits," on which he thus commented, "but whether from apprehension for its safety, or jealousy of future rivals, is uncertain." Gibbon thus criticised this comment: "Why must rational advice be imputed to a base or foolish motive? To what cause, error, malevolence, or flattery, shall I ascribe the unworthy alternative? Was the historian dazzled by Trajan's conquests?"

The intellectual training of the greatest modern historian is a matter of great interest. "From my early youth," wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, "I aspired to the character of an historian." He had "an early and invincible love of reading" which he said he "would not exchange for the treasures of India" and which led him to a "vague and multifarious" perusal of books. Before he reached the age of fifteen he was matriculated at Magdalen College, giving this account of his preparation. "I arrived at Oxford," he said, "with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a Doctor and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed." He did not adapt himself to the life or the method of Oxford, and from them apparently derived no benefit. "I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College," he wrote; "they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." He became a Roman Catholic. It was quite characteristic of this bookish man that his conversion was effected, not by the emotional influence of some proselytizer, but by the reading of books. English translations of two famous works of Bossuet fell into his hands. "I read," he said, "I applauded, I believed ... and I surely fell by a noble hand." Before a priest in London, on June 8, 1753, he privately "abjured the errors of heresy" and was admitted into the "pale of the church." But at that time this was a serious business for both priest and proselyte. For the rule laid down by Blackstone was this, "Where a person is reconciled to the see of Rome, or procures others to be reconciled, the offence amounts to High-Treason." This severe rule was not enforced, but there were milder laws under which a priest might suffer perpetual imprisonment and the proselyte's estate be transferred to his nearest relations. Under such laws prosecutions were had and convictions obtained. Little wonder was it when Gibbon apprised his father in an "elaborate controversial epistle" of the serious step which he had taken, that the elder Gibbon should be astonished and indignant. In his passion he divulged the secret which effectually closed the gates of Magdalen College to his son, who was packed off to Lausanne and "settled under the roof and tuition" of a Calvinist minister. Edward Gibbon passed nearly five years at Lausanne, from the age of sixteen to that of twenty-one, and they were fruitful years for his education. It was almost entirely an affair of self-training, as his tutor soon perceived that the student had gone beyond the teacher and allowed him to pursue his own special bent. After his history was published and his fame won, he recorded this opinion: "In the life of every man of letters there is an æra, from a level, from whence he soars with his own wings to his proper height, and the most important part of his education is that which he bestows on himself." This was certainly true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly knew any French, but before he returned to England he thought spontaneously in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it better than he did his mother tongue. He read Montesquieu frequently and was struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothesis." Among the books which "may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the Roman Empire" were the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which he read "with a new pleasure" almost every year. From them he said, "I learned to manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity." As one thinks of his chapters in "The Decline and Fall" on Julian, one is interested to know that during this period he was introduced to the life and times of this Roman emperor by a book written by a French abbé. He read Locke, Grotius, and Puffendorf, but unquestionably his greatest knowledge, mental discipline, and peculiar mastery of his own tongue came from his diligent and systematic study of the Latin classics. He read nearly all of the historians, poets, orators, and philosophers, going over for a second or even a third time Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Tacitus. He mastered Cicero's Orations and Letters so that they became ingrained in his mental fiber, and he termed these and his other works, "a library of eloquence and reason." "As I read Cicero," he wrote, "I applauded the observation of Quintilian, that every student may judge of his own proficiency by the satisfaction which he receives from the Roman orator." And again, "Cicero's epistles may in particular afford the models of every form of correspondence from the careless effusions of tenderness and friendship to the well-guarded declaration of discreet and dignified resentment." Gibbon never mastered Greek as he did Latin; and Dr. Smith, one of his editors, points out where he has fallen into three errors from the use of the French or Latin translation of Procopius instead of consulting the original. Indeed he himself has disclosed one defect of self-training. Referring to his youthful residence at Lausanne, he wrote: "I worked my way through about half the Iliad, and afterwards interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardor, destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually cooled and, from the barren task of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free and familiar conversation of Virgil and Tacitus."

All things considered, however, it was an excellent training for a historian of the Roman Empire. But all except the living knowledge of French he might have had in his "elegant apartment in Magdalen College" just as well as in his "ill-contrived and ill-furnished small chamber" in "an old inconvenient house," situated in a "narrow gloomy street, the most unfrequented of an unhandsome town"; and in Oxford he would have had the "aid and emulation" of which at Lausanne he sadly felt the lack.

The Calvinist minister, his tutor, was a more useful guide for Gibbon in the matter of religion than in his intellectual training. Through his efforts and Gibbon's "private reflections," Christmas Day, 1754, one year and a half after his arrival at Lausanne, was witness to his reconversion, as he then received the sacrament in the Calvinistic Church. "The articles of the Romish creed," he said, had "disappeared like a dream"; and he wrote home to his aunt, "I am now a good Protestant and am extremely glad of it."

An intellectual and social experience of value was his meeting with Voltaire, who had set up a theater in the neighborhood of Lausanne for the performance mainly of his own plays. Gibbon seldom failed to procure a ticket to these representations. Voltaire played the parts suited to his years; his declamation, Gibbon thought, was old-fashioned, and "he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature." "The parts of the young and fair," he said, "were distorted by Voltaire's fat and ugly niece." Despite this criticism, these performances fostered a taste for the French theater, to the abatement of his idolatry for Shakespeare, which seemed to him to be "inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman." Personally, Voltaire and Gibbon did not get on well together. Dr. Hill suggests that Voltaire may have slighted the "English youth," and if this is correct, Gibbon was somewhat spiteful to carry the feeling more than thirty years. Besides the criticism of the acting, he called Voltaire "the envious bard" because it was only with much reluctance and ill-humor that he permitted the performance of Iphigenie of Racine. Nevertheless, Gibbon is impressed with the social influence of the great Frenchman. "The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre," he wrote, "refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne, and however addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society. After the theatrical representations, I sometimes supped with the actors: I was now familiar in some, and acquainted in many, houses; and my evenings were generally devoted to cards and conversation, either in private parties or numerous assemblies."

Gibbon was twenty-one when he returned to England. Dividing his time between London and the country, he continued his self-culture. He read English, French, and Latin, and took up the study of Greek. "Every day, every hour," he wrote, "was agreeably filled"; and "I was never less alone than when by myself." He read repeatedly Robertson and Hume, and has in the words of Sainte-Beuve left a testimony so spirited and so delicately expressed as could have come only from a man of taste who appreciated Xenophon. "The perfect composition, the nervous language," wrote Gibbon, "the well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps; the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair." He made little progress in London society and his solitary evenings were passed with his books, but he consoled himself by thinking that he lost nothing by a withdrawal from a "noisy and expensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure." At twenty-four he published his "Essay on the Study of Literature," begun at Lausanne and written entirely in French. This possesses no interest for the historical student except to know the bare fact of the writing and publication as a step in the intellectual development of the historian. Sainte-Beuve in his two essays on Gibbon devoted three pages to an abstract and criticism of it, perhaps because it had a greater success in France than in England; and his opinion of Gibbon's language is interesting. "The French" Sainte-Beuve wrote, "is that of one who has read Montesquieu much and imitates him; it is correct, but artificial French."

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 Cæsar." 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 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."