Edward Gibbon,

historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was by birth, education, and social standing distinctively an English gentleman; his father's family being an ancient Kentish house, though not (as Sir Egerton Brydges argued) descended from the Barons Say and Seale. Born at Putney, 27th April 1737, Gibbon was at first, on account of delicate health, privately educated; at fifteen he was entered of Magdalen College, Oxford. Almost from infancy he was a close student, but his indiscriminate appetite for books subsided by

EDWARD GIBBON,

From an Engraving after the Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

degrees in the historic line.' He arrived at Oxford, he has himself told us, with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed; and he spent fourteen months at college idly and unprofitably. At no period in its history had Oxford reached such a depth of degeneracy. 'The fellows of my time,' says Gibbon, 'were decent easy men who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder; their days were filled by a series of uniform employments; the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience; and the first

shoots of learning and ingenuity withered in the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the public. . . . Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover.' After studying Bossuet and Parsons the Jesuit, young Gibbon became a convert to the Roman Catholic religion; and at the feet of a priest in London, on the 8th of June 1753, he solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy.' In order to reclaim him his father placed him under the care of the deist and poet Mallet, by whose philosophy the young inquirer was rather scandalised than reclaimed. He was next sent for some years to Lausanne to be under the charge of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist clergyman, whose judicious guidance brought his pupil back to Protestantism; and on Christmas Day 1754 he received the sacrament in the Protestant church at Lausanne. 'It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants.' Here he began and carried out with rare steadfastness of purpose those studies in French literature and in the Latin classics which, aided by his prodigious memory, made him a master of erudition without a superior. And here too he fell in love with Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the minister of Crassy, who lived to become the wife of the great French Minister and financier, M. Necker, and the mother of the gifted Madame de Staël. He found on his return to England that his father would not hear of the 'strange alliance,' and, like the more emotional Chateaubriand in the same case, submitted meekly to the family law. In the calm reflection of thirty years later he adds, '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.' The pair remained constant friends in later life.

In 1758 Gibbon returned to England, and three years afterwards appeared as an author in a slight French treatise on the study of literature. He accepted the commission of captain in the Hampshire militia; and though his studies were interrupted, the discipline and evolutions of a modern battle gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers was not useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.' Released from his military duties at the peace of 1762, he paid a visit to France and Italy. He had long been meditating some historical work, and whilst at Rome in 1764 his choice was determined. 'As I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of

Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started into my mind;' but years were to elapse before he realised his intentions. On returning to England in 1765 he seems to have been fashionable and idle; his father died in 1770, and he then began to form the plan of an independent life. The Hampshire estate of Buriton, his home off and on for the last twenty years, was left by his father much in debt, so that he determined to quit the country and live in London; and it was then he undertook the first volume of his history. At the outset all was dark and doubtful: even the title of the work, the true era of the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narrative; and I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years. The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation: three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect.'

In 1774 he was returned for the borough of Liskeard, and sat in Parliament eight sessions during the memorable contest between Great Britain and America. Prudence, he says, condemned him to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute; the great speakers filled him with despair, the bad ones with terror. But he supported by his vote the administration of Lord North, by whom he was appointed one of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations. In 1776, after seven years of unremitting toil and much fastidious polishing of the style, the first quarto volume of his history was given to the world. For a grave historical work, its success was almost unprecedented: 'The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin: the book was on every table, and almost on every toilette.' His elder brother-historians, Hume and Robertson, generously greeted him with warm applause. 'Whether I consider the dignity of your style,' said Hume, 'the depth of your matter, or the extensiveness of your learning, I must regard the work as equally the object of esteem.' There was another bond of sympathy between the English and the senior of the Scottish historians Gibbon had unmistakably worked from quite anti-orthodox views as to the origins of Christianity. 'The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.' This dictum pretty clearly indicates Gibbon's own religious belief: the philosophers of France had triumphed over the Calvinist divinity of Lausanne. Gibbon treated the growth of

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Christianity as he did other historical phenomena, without reference to supernatural guidance; and his own temperament intensified the eighteenth century distrust and dislike of enthusiasm :' self-devoting zeal was hardly distinguished from fanaticism. It was not for some time that the religious world awakened to the very far-reaching issues of Gibbon's view of the growth and spread of Christianity in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, which, while not formally denying the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and the ruling providence of its great author,' nevertheless accounted for the rapid growth of the early Christian Church by 'secondary' or merely human causes. Of these Gibbon reckoned five the inflexible and intolerant zeal of the Christians, the doctrine of a future life, the miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church, the virtues of the primitive Christians, and the union and discipline of the Christian republic. Ere long fierce controversy inevitably arose, and, as in the debates about Darwinism in the next century, thousands took a keen interest in the discussion and a strong side against the innovator who never had in their hands the book that raised the questions. Deism, supposed to have been routed from the field by the orthodox, had reasserted itself in a more formidable shape, and multitudes of answers' to Gibbon were written-perhaps the most noteworthy that by Watson, Bishop of Llandaff. But Gibbon deigned to reply only when a critic-the unfortunate Mr Davies of Oxford '--impugned 'not the faith but the fidelity of the historian.'

The author's modest claim for himself in the matter of style was amply justified: the stately and rhythmical roll of his sonorous periods stood out in contrast to anything yet attempted in English prose; though antithesis of sense and balance of phrase were at times too insistent, the style, in wonderful accord with the majestic and continuous march of the story, was at once less artificial and more English than Johnson's, mo harmonious, more varied, and less tedious than Johnson is apt to become.

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The second and third volumes of the history did not appear till 1781. After their publication, being disappointed of a place looked for from Ministerial patronage, Gibbon resolved to retire to Lausanne, where he was offered a residence by a friend of his youth, M. Deyverdun. Here he lived very happily for about four years, devoting his mornings to composition, and his evenings to the enlightened and polished society which had gathered in that city and neighbourhood. The completion of the history must be described in his own memorable 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.' The house occupied by Gibbon, wholly or partly rebuilt, is now a muchfrequented hotel, called by the historian's name; the acacia walk still commands substantially the same glorious view.

A month later he started for England to superintend the printing of the work; and the last three volumes were issued in the May of 1788. He returned immediately to Lausanne, where within a twelvemonth his much-loved companion Deyverdun died. The state of France filled him with trouble, though it was some solace to have the exiled Neckers beside him at Coppet near Lausanne; the letters between his old love and himself are creditable in the highest degree to the hearts of both. But his last years were not happy; good living and want of exercise had brought on burdensome corpulency, and he began to be racked with gout. His aunt had already died in 1786, Deyverdun and other favourite friends had quickly followed; last came the unexpected death of his dear friend, Lady Sheffield, and though travelling was now terrible to him, he made up his mind to go to console Lord Sheffield. After three months' stay at Sheffield Place, he came to London, where he was seized with dropsy. An operation gave temporary relief, but two months later he died, on the 16th of January 1794.

The work of Gibbon was translated into French by Leclerc de Septchênes and others (1788–95)— partly, it would seem, by Louis XVI., whose secretary Septchênes was. The whole was re-edited in 1812 by Suard, with notes by Guizot (not yet professor or statesman), who, like a devout Huguenot, took at first a very unfavourable view of Gibbon's attitude on the Christian problem, holding him guilty not merely of prejudice, but of serious errors. Later he said: 'A second attentive and regular perusal of the entire work, of the notes of the author, and of those which I had thought it right to subjoin, showed me how much I had exaggerated the importance of the reproaches which Gibbon really deserved; I was struck with the same errors, the same partiality on certain subjects; but I had been far from doing adequate justice to the immensity of his researches, the variety of his knowledge, and, above all, to that truly philosophical discrimination which judges. the past as it would judge the present.'

Dean Milman was even more adverse to Gibbon than Guizot: 'Christianity alone receives

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no embellishment from the magic of Gibbon's language; his imagination is dead to its moral dignity; it is kept down by a general tone of jealous disparagement, or neutralised by a painfully elaborate exposition of its darker and degenerate periods. . . . This inextricable bias appears even to influence his manner of composition. . . . The successes of barbarous energy and brute force call forth all the consummate skill of composition, while the moral triumphs of Christian benevolence, the tranquil heroism of endurance, the blameless purity, the contempt of guilty fame and of honours destructive to the human race, which, had they assumed the proud name of philosophy, would have been blazoned in his brightest words, because they own religion as their principle, sink into narrow asceticism. The glories of Christianity, in short, touch on no chord in the heart of the writer; his imagination remains unkindled ; his words, though they maintain their stately and measured march, have become cool, argumentative, and inanimate.'

Mr Bury, a more impartial judge, treats Milman's general charge against Gibbon of a bold and disingenuous attack on Christianity' as a libel impossible to prove or disprove. Gibbon's irony was thoroughly sincere; his contempt for enthusiasm largely a reflection of the temper of his times-was shown towards anti-Christian fanaticism as well as towards Christian fervour. 'The guiding moral of his history is briefly stated in his epigram, "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion;"" the historical development from the second century was a retrogression for which Christianity was mainly to blame. But to attempt to deny a general truth in Gibbon's point of view is vain, and it is feeble to deprecate his sneer. We may spare more sympathy for the warriors and the churchmen; but all that has since been added to his knowledge of facts has neither reversed nor blunted the point of the Decline and Fall? If Gibbon were writing now, 'his manner would not be that of sometimes open, sometimes transparently veiled dislike; he would rather assume an attitude of detachment.' Neither the historian nor the man of letters will any longer subscribe without a thousand reserves to the theological chapters,' and 'no discreet inquirer would go there for his ecclesiastical history.' Yet Mr Bury even holds that Gibbon's success has in large measure been due to his scorn for the Church, which 'spiced the book' and excited interest by irritating the passions of readers. His works are read when those of his contemporaries are left on the shelf because of his accurate vision, his tact in managing perspective; his discreet reserves of judgment and timely scepticism; the immortal affectation of his unique manner.' Gibbon's diligent accuracy in the use of his materials cannot be overpraised, and it will not be diminished by giving due credit to his French predecessor Tillemont. Gibbon was accu

rate according to his lights; he was not always right. Modern research has added to our knowledge of facts and upset conclusions he was bound to draw. He relied, as did his contemporaries, on Al Wakidi's romance for the history of Mohammed, and he believed too fully in Procopius; Mommsen's study of Latin inscriptions, unknown in Gibbon's time, has reconstructed parts of Roman history; and the best recent work in Byzantine history proves that Gibbon's contemptuous attitude towards the Lower Empire was unjust.

But spite of the new facts and new views admirably summed up in Mr Bury's introduction to his great edition of the Decline and Fall, and though it be admitted that accordingly his first chapters are somewhat out of date, the monumental work of Gibbon is likely to remain our masterpiece in history. The magnitude of the subject is nobly sustained by the dignity of the treatment, and the whole fabric stands out, to borrow the image of Carlyle, a marvellous bridge flung by genius and erudition across the weltering centuries of confusion that separate the old world from the new. The glowing imagination of the writer gives life and vigour to the rounded periods and to the stately and pompous march of the narrative, and all defects of taste disappear in the admiration extorted from the most reluctant reader. Perhaps his most unique merit is his supreme and almost epic power of moulding into a lucid unity a bewildering multitude of details, and giving life and sequence to the whole. His prodigious memory moved freely under a ponderous weight of learning which his quickening imagination fused into a glowing stream of continuous narrative. The story of Constantinople is his greatest effort; his treatment of Julian, of Justinian, of the Arabs, and of the Crusades, the most splendid single episodes in our historical literature. He has painted in gorgeous colours all the splendours of the ancient Paganism, and portrayed with matchless force every figure that crossed the stage of history for a thousand years. The enduring merit of the work may be summarised in the words of a great modern master of history. That Gibbon should ever be displaced,' said Freeman, 'seems impossible. That wonderful man monopolised, so to speak, the historical genius and the historical learning of a whole generation, and left little indeed of either for his contemporaries. He remains the one historian of the eighteenth century whom modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set aside. We may correct and improve from the stores which have been opened since Gibbon's time; we may write again large parts of his story from other and often truer and more wholesome points of view; but the work of Gibbon as a whole, as the encyclopædic history of 1300 years, as the grandest of historical designs, carried out alike with wonderful power and with wonderful accuracy,

must ever keep its place. Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read too.'

The Ancient Philosophers on the Immortality of the Soul.

The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colours the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate as an obvious though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life; and that those can no longer suffer who no longer exist. Yet there were a few sages of Greece and Rome who had conceived a more exalted, and in some respects a juster idea of human nature; though it must be confessed, that in the sublime inquiry, their reason had often been guided by their imagination, and that their imagination had been prompted by their vanity. When they viewed with complacency the extent of their own mental powers; when they exercised the various faculties of memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most profound speculations, or the most important labours; and when they reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages, far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave; they were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being, for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration, could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. With this favourable prepossession, they summoned to their aid the science, or rather the language, of metaphysics. They soon discovered that as none of the properties of matter will apply to the operations of the mind, the human soul must consequently be a substance distinct from the body-pure, simple, and spiritual, incapable of dissolution, and susceptible of a much higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from its corporeal prison. From these specious and noble principles, the philosophers who trod in the footsteps of Plato deduced a very unjustifiable conclusion, since they asserted not only the future immortality, but the past eternity of the human soul, which they were too apt to consider as a portion of the infinite and self-existing spirit which pervades and sustains the universe. A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the experience of mankind might serve to amuse the leisure of a philosophic mind; or, in the silence of solitude, it might sometimes impart a ray of comfort to desponding virtue; but the faint impression which had been received in the school was soon obliterated by the commerce and business of active life. We are sufficiently acquainted with the eminent persons who flourished in the age of Cicero, and of the first Cæsars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be assured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards or punishments of a future state. At the bar and in the senate of Rome the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giving offence to their hearers by exposing that doctrine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was rejected with contempt by every man of a liberal education and understanding.

Since, therefore, the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no further than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or at most the probability, of a

future state, there is nothing except a divine revelation that can ascertain the existence and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body. (From The Decline and Fall, Chap. xv.)

The Magnificence of the Caliphs. Almansor, the brother and successor of Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad (762 A.D.), the imperial seat of his posterity during a reign of five hundred years. The chosen spot is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the ruins of Modain: the double wall was of a circular form; and such was the rapid increase of a capital now dwindled to a provincial town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and the adjacent villages. In this city of peace, amidst the riches of the east, the Abbasides soon disdained the abstinence and frugality of the first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian kings. After his wars and buildings, Almansor left behind him in gold and silver about thirty millions sterling; and this treasure was exhausted in a few years by the vices or virtues of his children. His son Mahadi in a single pilgrimage to Mecca expended six millions of dinars of gold. A pious and charitable motive may sanctify the foundation of cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed along a measured road of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels, laden with snow, could serve only to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to refresh the fruits and liquors of the royal banquet. The courtiers would surely praise the liberality of his grandson Almamon, who gave away four-fifths of the income of a province-a sum of two millions four hundred thousand gold dinars--before he drew his foot from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the same prince, a thousand pearls of the largest size were showered on the head of the bride, and a lottery of lands and houses displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of the court were brightened rather than impaired in the decline of the empire, and a Greek ambassador might admire or pity the magnificence of the feeble Moctader. The caliph's whole army,' says the historian Abulfeda, both horse and foot, was under arms, which together made a body of one hundred and sixty thousand men. His state-officers, the favourite slaves, stood near him in splendid apparel, their belts glittering with gold and gems. Near them were seven thousand eunuchs, four thousand of them white, the remainder black. The porters or door-keepers were in number seven hundred. Barges and boats with the most superb decorations were seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the palace itself less splendid, in which were hung up thirty-eight thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of which were of silk embroidered with gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two thousand. A hundred lions were brought out, with a keeper to each lion. Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural harmony. Through this scene of magnificence the Greek ambassador was led by the vizier to

the foot of the caliph's throne.' In the west, the Ommiades of Spain supported with equal pomp the title of commander of the faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in honour of his favourite sultana, the third and greatest of the Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra. Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were employed by the founder his liberal taste invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by twelve hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the gardens one of these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished not with water but with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three hundred persons; and he was attended to the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse, whose belts and scimitars were studded with gold.

In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by poverty and subordination; but the lives and labours of millions are devoted to the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture; and whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. 'I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man! place not thy confidence in this present world.'

(From The Decline and Fall, Chap. lii.)

Conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and importance of her memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail against the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground that might supersede the necessity of fortifications, and the walls and towers that would have fortified the most accessible plain. These obstacles were diminished in the age of the crusades. The bulwarks had been completely destroyed and imperfectly restored: the Jews, their nation and worship, were for ever banished; but nature is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem, though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was still strong against the assaults of an enemy. By the experience of a recent siege, and a three years' possession, the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in some degree to remedy, the defects of a place which religion as well as honour forbade them to resign.