When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be
looking through a luminous haze or fog:--figures come and go, I know not
how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or discoloured; nothing is
real, vivid, true; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by
candlelight. And then to call it a History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire!
Was there ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single
philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate
causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is
the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor
scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led him to
misstate and mistake the character and influence of Christianity in a way
which even an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not have done.
Gibbon was a man of immense reading; but he had no philosophy; and he never
fully understood the principle upon which the best of the old historians
wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial construction of the whole
work--their dramatic ordonnance of the parts--without seeing that their
histories were intended more as documents illustrative of the truths of
political philosophy than as mere chronicles of events.
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