Page images
PDF
EPUB

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 tone 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 the remainder of the way, I advanced with a more

equal and easy pace.'

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. Gibbon, however, supported by his vote the administration of Lord North, and was by this nobleman appointed one of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations. In 1776 the first quarto volume of his history was given to the world. Its success was almost unprecedented for å grave historical work: 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 toilet.' His brotherhistorians, Robertson and Hume, generously greeted him with warm applause. Whether I consider the dignity of your style,' says 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 Scottish historian: Gibbon had insidiously, though too unequivocally, evinced his adoption of intidel principles. The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all,' he remarks, 'considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful. Some feeling of this kind constituted the whole of Gibbon's religious belief: the philosophers of France had triumphed over the lessons of the Calvinist ministers of Lausanne, and the historian seems never to have returned to the faith and the humility of the Christian. In the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of his work he gave an account of the growth and progress of Christianity, which he accounted for solely by secondary causes, without reference to its divine origin. Several answers were written to these memorable chapters, but the only one that excited general attention was the reply by Dr. Watson, bishop of Llandaff, entitled An Apology for Christianity. Gibbon's method of attacking our faith has been well described by Lord Byron, as

Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer,
The lord of irony, that master spell.

He nowhere openly avows his disbelief. By tacitly sinking the early and astounding spread of Christianity during the time of the Apoštles, and dwelling with exaggerated colouring and minuteness on the

ors and corruption by which it afterwards became debased, the

historian in effect conveys an impression that its divine origin is but a poetical fable, like the golden age of the poets, or the mystic absurdities of Mohammedanism. The Christian faith was a bold and successful innovation, and Gibbon hated all innovations. In his after-life, he was in favour of retaining even the Inquisition, with its tortures and its tyranny, because it was an ancient institution! Besides the solemn sneer' of Gibbon, there is another cardinal defect in his account of the progress of the Christian faith, which has been thus ably pointed out by the Rev. H. H. Milman: Christianity alone receives 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 neutralized by a painfully elaborate exposition of its darker and degenerate periods. There are occasions, indeed, when its pure and exalted humanity, when its manifestly beneficial influence, can compel even him, as it were, to fairness, and kindle his unguarded eloquence to its usual fervour; but in general he soon relapses into a frigid apathy; affects an ostentatiously severe impartiality; notes all the faults of Christians in every age with bitter and almost malignant sarcasm; reluctantly, and with exception and reservation, admits their claim to admiration. This inextricable bias appears even to influence his manner of composition. While all the other assailants of the Roman empire, whether warlike or religious, the Goth, the Hun, the Arab, the Tartar, Alaric and Attilla, Mohammed, and Zingis, and Tamerlane, are each introduced upon the scene almost with dramatic animation-their progress related in a full, complete, and unbroken narrative-the triumph of Christianity alone takes the form of a cold and critical disquisition. 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.' The second and third volumes of the history did not appear till 1781. After their publication, finding it necessary to retrench his expenditure, and being disappointed of a lucrative place which he had hoped for from ministerial patronage, he resolved to retire to Lausanne, where he was offered a residence by a friend of his you, 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 he thus describes:

'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 historian adds two facts which have seldom occurred in the composition of six or even five quartos; his first rough manuscript, without an intermediate copy, was sent to the press, and not a sheet was seen by any person but the author and the printer. His lofty style, like that of Johnson, was, in fact, 'the image of his mind.'

Gibbon went to London to superintend the publication of his last three volumes, and afterwards returned to Lausanne, where he resided till 1793. The French Revolution had imbittered and divided the society of Lausanne; some of his friends were dead, and he anxiously wished himself again in England. At this time, the lady of his most intimate friend, Lord Sheffield, died, and he hastened to administer consolation: he arrived at Lord Sheffield's house in London, in June, 1793. The health of the historian had, however, been indifferent for some time, owing to a long-settled complaint; and, exhausted by surgical operations, he died without pain, and apparently without any sense of his danger, on the 16th of January, 1794. In most of the essential qualifications of a historian, Gibbon was equal to either Hume or Robertson. In some, he was superior. He had greater depth and variety of learning, and a more perfect command of his intellectual treasures. It was not merely with the main stream of Roman history that he was familiar. All its accessories and tributaries-the art of war, philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, geography, down to its minutest point-every shade of manners, opinions, and public character, in Roman and contemporaneous history, he had studied with laborious diligence and complete success. Hume was elaborate, but it was only with respect to style. Errors in fact and theory were perpetuated through every edition, while the author was purifying his periods and weeding out Scotticisms.

The labour of Gibbon was directed to higher objects-to the accumulation of facts, and the collation of ancient authors. His style once fixed, remained unaltered. In erudition, and comprehensive

The house occupied by Gibbon is now an hotel, and the whole premises are much

altered.

ness of intellect, Gibbon may therefore be pronounced the first of English historians. The vast range of his subject, and the tone of dignity which he preserves throughout the whole of his capacious circuit, also give him a superiority over his illustrious rivals. In concentrating his information, and presenting it in a clear and lucid order, he is no less remarkable, while his vivid imagination, quickening and adorning his varied knowledge, is fully equal to his other powers. He identifies himself with whatever he describes, and paints local scenery, national costume or manners, with all the force and animation of a native or eye-witness. These solid and bright acquirements of the historian were not, however, without their drawbacks. His mind was more material or sensual than philosophicalmore fond of splendour and display than of the beauty of virtue, or the grandeur of moral heroism. His taste was vitiated and impure, so that his style is not only deficient in chaste simplicity, but is disfigured by offensive pruriency and occasional grossness. His lofty ornate diction fatigues by its uniform pomp and dignity, notwithstanding the graces and splendour of his animated narrative. ficient in depth of moral feeling and elevation of sentiment, Gibbon seldom touches the heart or inspires true enthusiasm. The reader admires his glittering sentences, his tournaments, and battle-pieces, his polished irony, and masterly sketches of character; he marvels at his inexhaustible learning, and is fascinated by his pictures of military conquest and Asiatic luxury, but he still feels that, as in the state of imperial Rome itself, the seeds of ruin are developed amidst flattering appearances: the florid bloom but ill conceals the fatal malady which preys upon the vitals.'* The want of one great har monising spirit of humanity and genuine philosophy to give unity to the splendid mass, becomes painfully visible on a calm review of the entire history.

De

The work of Gibbon has been translated into French, with notes by M. Guizot, the distinguished philosopher and statesman. The remarks of Guizot, with those of Wenck, a German commentator, and numerous original illustrations and corrections, are embodied in a fine edition by Mr. Milman, in twelve volumes, published by Mr. Murray, London, in 1838. M. Guizot has thus recorded his own impressions on reading Gibbon's history. After a first rapid perusal, which allowed me to feel nothing but the interest of a narrative, always animated, and notwithstanding its extent and the variety of objects which it makes to pass before the view, always perspicuous, I entered upon a minute examination of the details of which it was composed, and the opinion which I then formed was, I confess, singularly severe. I discovered in certain chapters errors which appeared to me sufficiently important and numerous to make me believe that they had been written with extreme negligence; in others, I was struck with a certain tinge of partiality and prejudice, which

Hall, On the Causes of the Present Discontents.
E. L. v. iv.-11

imparted to the exposition of the facts that want of truth and justice which the English express by their happy term, misrepresentation, Some imperfect quotations, some passages omitted unintentionally or designedly, have cast a suspicion on the honesty of the author; and his violation of the first law of history-increased to my eyes by the prolonged attention with which I occupied myself with every phrase, every note, every reflection-caused me to form on the whole work a judgment far too rigorous After having finished my labours, I allowed some time to elapse before I reviewed the whole. 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, shewed 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 justesse d'esprit) which judges the past as it would judge the present; which does not permit itself to be blinded by the clouds which time gathers around the dead, and which prevent us from seeing that under the toga, as under the modern dress, in the senate as in our councils, men were what they still are, and that events took place eighteen centuries ago as they take place in our days. I then felt that his book, in spite of its faults, will always be a noble work; and that we may correct his errors, and combat his prejudices, without ceasing to admit that few men have combined, if we are not to say in so high a degree, at least in a manner so complete and so well regulated, the necessary qualifications for a writer of history.'

Opinions of 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 suse ptible 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

« EelmineJätka »