No More Learning

In the
composition of his History, Hume shows in a remarkable degree a
skill which may be described as dramatic : when working up to
some critical event, he selects and arranges his facts, so that each
leads us a step further towards the climax that he has in view; he
tells us nothing that is extraneous to his immediate purpose;
is no anticipation and no divagation in his narrative.
In spite of his belief in his own impartiality, Hume was justly
accused of tory prejudice, and this caused the ill-success of his
first published volume. He did not, of course, regard the royal
authority as founded on divine appointment any more than on
contract. As a utilitarian, he held that the end of government
was the promotion of the public good, and that monarchy was
based on the necessity of escape from lawless violence. While he
admitted that resistance to sovereignty might be justifiable, he
considered this doctrine so dangerous to society, as opening the
door to popular excesses, that it should be concealed from the
people unless the sovereign drove his subjects from their allegiance.
This theory affected his view of the Stewart period. Ignorant
of common law, as a Scotsman might well be, and of earlier
English history, and inclined to scepticism, he failed to recognise
the fundamental liberties of the nation. To him, they were
'privileges,' more or less dependent on the will and strength of the
monarch; they had no common foundation in the spirit of the
people, there was no general'scheme of liberty. He held that, at
the accession of James I, the monarchy was regarded as absolute,
and that, though Charles pushed the exercise of the prerogative too
far, it was practically almost unlimited. The parliament made en-
croachments upon it: Charles defended his lawful position. Hume
did not undervalue the liberties for which the parliamentary party
contended, but he blamed them for the steps by which they asserted
and secured them. His opinions were probably affected by his
dislike of the puritans as much as by his erroneous theory of
constitutional history : 'my views of things,' he wrote, "are more


## p. 287 (#313) ############################################

Robertson
287
>
6
conformable to Whig principles, my representations of persons to
Tory prejudices. ' His scepticism led him to sneer at a profession
of religious motives. To the church of England in Charles's reign,
he accorded his approval as a bulwark of order, and, possibly,
because in his own day it afforded many examples of religious
indifference; and, including all the sects under the common appel-
lation of puritans, he condemned them as 'infected with a wretched
fanaticism' and as enemies to free thought and polite letters.
The extent to which his prejudices coloured his treatment of the
reign of Charles I may be illustrated by his remarks on the penal-
ties inflicted by the Star chamber and by his sneer at the reverence
paid to the memory of Sir John Eliot, 'who happened to die while
in custody. '
His second volume was not so offensive to the whigs, for he
held that limitations to the prerogative had been determined by
the rebellion, and that Charles II and James II tried to override
them. In his treatment of the reign of Elizabeth, his misconception
of the constitution again came to the front and again caused
offence; for he regarded the queen’s arbitrary words and actions
as proofs that it was an established rule that the prerogative
should not be questioned in parliament, and that it was generally
allowed that the monarchy was absolute. The same theory
influenced his treatment of some earlier reigns, especially those of
Henry III, Edward II and Richard II. His contempt for the
Middle Ages as a rude and turbulent period, which he derived
from, or shared with, Voltaire encouraged his error. Quarrels
between kings and their subjects might result in diminutions
of monarchical powers, but, in such barbarous times, no system
of liberty could have been established. No one now reads
Hume's History, though our more conscientious and more en-
lightened historians might learn much from it as regards the
form in which the results of their labours should be presented :
its defects in matter, therefore, are of little consequence, while its
dignity, its masterly composition and its excellence of expression
render it a literary achievement of the highest order.
In 1759, William Robertson, a presbyterian minister of
Edinburgh, published his History of Scotland during the Reigns
of Queen Mary and of James VI until his Accession to the Crown
of England, in two volumes : it was received with general applause
and had a large sale. Robertson was rewarded by his appointment
as principal of Edinburgh university in 1762, and as historio-
grapher royal. In 1769 appeared his History of Charles V in


## p. 288 (#314) ############################################

288
Historians
three volumes, for which he received £4500, a larger sum than had
ever been paid for a historical work : it brought him an European
a
reputation; it was translated into French in 1771; Voltaire
declared that it made him forget his woes, and Catherine II
of Russia, who sent him a gold snuff-box, that it was her constant
travelling companion. His History of America, in two volumes,
recording the voyages of discovery, conquests and settlements of
the Spaniards, was published in 1771, and, in 1791, his Disquisition
concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India.
Robertson paid more attention to authorities than Hume did,
but sometimes misunderstood them, besides being uncritical, and
apt to be superficial. Like Hume, he comments on events in a
philosophic strain; but his comments are often commonplace, and,
like Hume, too, he fails to appreciate the forces at work in great
social or political movements. Nevertheless, he had the historic
sense in a measure given to none of his contemporaries before
Gibbon : he had some idea of the interdependence of events and
of the unity of history as one long drama of human progress to
which even checks in this direction or that contribute fresh forces.
His History of Scotland is remarkably fair, though, here and else-
where, he shows a strong protestant bias: his mistaken view of the
character and aims of Esme Stewart, earl of Lennox, is probably con-
nected with the earl’s ‘firm adhesion to the protestant faith. ' In
common with Hume, he did not satisfy the more ardent admirers of
Mary, queen of Scots; and, in reply to both, William Tytler, a writer
to the signet and a member of the Select Society, wrote his Inquiry
as to the Evidence against her, in two volumes (1760), which passed
through four editions and was twice translated into French. Before
him, Walter Goodall, the advocates' sublibrarian, had defended her
in his Examination of the [Casket] Letters &c. , in two volumes
(1754), an ingenious book, proving that the French versions of the
letters were translated; and so the endless dispute began.
Robertson’s Charles V opens with a view of the ‘Progress
of Society during the Middle Ages,' which Hallam praises highly
and Carlyle, in boyhood, found inspiring. His misrepresentation of
the state of learning, especially among the clergy, from the eighth
to the eleventh century, has been exposed by Maitland": it
illustrates the contempt with which he, in common with Hume,
regarded the Middle Ages, his careless use of authorities, his
tendency to hasty generalisation and his religious bias. Other
defects might be pointed out, but, though his review can no longer
1 Dark Ages, passim.
a


## p. 289 (#315) ############################################

>
Robertson's Style
289
be regarded as authoritative, it is interesting and meritorious as
the earliest attempt made by a British historian to present, on
a large scale, a general view of history. In his work on the
emperor's reign, his record of events, though insufficient and,
occasionally, inaccurate, is, on the whole, more trustworthy than his
estimate of their significance or of the characters and conduct of
the chief actors in them. His erroneous description of the emperor's
life at Yuste, as withdrawn from this world's affairs, is due to the
authorities he used: in his day, access had not been allowed to the
records at Simancas which have enabled later writers to give
a very different account of it.
Robertson's style, in its lucidity, polish and signs of French
influence, has a strong likeness to that of Hume : his sentences are
well balanced, they lack Hume's ironic tone, but seem more alive
than his. They are more sonorous, and often end with some word
or words of weighty sound and Latin derivation, as when, speaking
of the feeling of the English against queen Mary, he says, “they
grasped at suspicions and probabilities as if they had been irre-
fragable demonstrations. ' Robertson's 'verbiage and use of big
'
'
words, illustrated in this sentence, Johnson humorously declared
to have been learnt from him? Some development may be dis-
cerned in his writing : passages in his Charles V show that he was
beginning to write history with an animation of which there is little
sign in his Scotland, and this tendency ripened in his America into
a faculty for rhetorical narrative finely displayed in his description
of the voyage and landing of Columbus and some other passages.
As history, his America is now of small value, for it is based on
insufficient authorities, but, nevertheless, it is delightful to read.
His books were, at least at first, more popular than Hume's
History: as the work of a minister of religion, they did not alarm
religious people, many of whom regarded all that Hume wrote as
likely to be dangerous : his style was more attractive to simple
folk, and they were impressed by the evidences of his learning in
directions wholly beyond their knowledge. Hume's friendship
with his younger rival? , and the cordial admiration which Gibbon
expressed for both of them? , are among the pleasing incidents in
our literary history.
The works of Hume and Robertson seem to have excited other
Scotsmen to write history. 'I believe,' Hume wrote in 1770, ‘this
1 Boswell, Life, vol. II, p. 173.
· Burton, Life, vol. 11, passim.
3 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. 122, ed. Hill, G. B. ; Dugald Stewart, Life of Robertson.
a
p. 367.
E. L. X.
CH. XII.
19


## p. 290 (#316) ############################################

290
Historians
is the true historical age and this the historical nation: I know no
less than eight Histories on the stocks in this country? ' The letter
which begins with these words refers especially to a History of
England by Robert Henry, an Edinburgh minister, in six volumes,
of which the first appeared in 1771, and which ends with the death
of Henry VIII. It is arranged under various headings, as political
and military affairs, religion, commerce, and so forth; and its interest
lies in the assertion, already, though not so strongly, made in Hume's
History, that history is concerned with all sides of social life in
the past. It is mainly written from second-hand authorities and is
inordinately dull. Nevertheless, its comprehensiveness made it
popular: it brought its author £3300 and a crown pension of £100
and was translated into French.
The character of the historical work of Sir David Dalrymple
or Lord Hailes, the title he took as a Scottish judge (1766), was
determined by professional instinct. He edited two small volumes
of documents belonging respectively to the reigns of James I and
Charles I, and compiled Annals of Scotland from the Accession
of Malcolm III to the Accession of the House of Stewart, in two
volumes (1776, 1779). This book contains an accurate and bare
record of events, impartially stated, supported by references to
authorities, and illustrated in footnotes and appendixes. Hailes,
though one of the Select Society, was more closely connected with
Johnson than with his fellow members. Johnson read the proofs of
the Annals and praised its “stability of dates' and its 'punctuality
of citation, though it had not that painted form which is the
taste of the age'-a hit at Robertson—but also aptly described it
as a 'Dictionary' containing ‘mere dry particulars. Hailes's attack
on Gibbon is noticed in the next chapter? .
Another Dalrymple, Sir John, of Cranstoun, a baronet, and,
later, a judge, who was also a member of the Select Society, and
had written an essay on feudal property, produced his Memoirs
of Great Britain and Ireland from 1684 to 1692, in two parts
(1771-8), beginning with a review of affairs from 1660. The
appendixes to his chapters contain a mass of previously unpublished
political correspondence of first-rate importance on which he based
his work. His first volume caused much stir, for it revealed the
extent to which English politics, in the reign of Charles II, had
been influenced by French intrigues, and disgusted the whigs by
exhibiting Sidney's acceptance of money from Barillon. Dalrymple
wrote in a pompous strain, and Johnson ridiculed his 'foppery'
1 Letters to Strahan, pp. 155 ff.
2 See chap. XIII, post.
6


## p. 291 (#317) ############################################

6
Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts 291
and 'bouncing style! He continued his work, in a new edition
(1790), to the capture of the French and Spanish fleets at Vigo.
Another history, which may have been 'on the stocks' in
Scotland in 1770, is Robert Watson's History of the Reign of
Philip II, published in two volumes in 1777, the year of its author's
promotion as principal of St Salvator's college, St Andrews. It
contains a full and careful account of the revolt of the Netherlands,
derived from van Meteren, Bentivoglio and Grotius, but its com-
paratively scanty notices of other Spanish affairs and of the foreign
policy of Philip II are unsatisfactoryWatson's style is similar,
though inferior to Robertson's : his sentences are generally well
balanced, but some are less skilfully constructed; he is verbose,
and, though his narrative shows a perception of the things which
appeal to the emotions, it lacks emotional expression. Horace
Walpole greatly admired his book, which passed through several
editions and was translated into French, German and Dutch. At
the time of his death in 1781, Watson was engaged on a History of
Philip III, which was completed by William Thomson, a prolific
Scottish writer.
Incursions into the field of history were made by two English
authors of the governing class. Walpole's Historic Doubts on the
Life and Reign of Richard III (1768) is an attempt to show that
Richard was probably innocent of the crimes imputed to him
by Lancastrian writers. Sir George Buck, Carte and William
Guthrie, whose History of England to 1688 in four volumes (1744
–51) was little read and is of no importance, had, in different
degrees, anticipated him ; but Walpole was the first to argue the
case with skill. He got it up well, his points are clearly put, and
his pleading is witty and readable. The question has been revived
and adequately discussed in our own day. Some of the accusations
which Walpole criticises are no longer maintained by competent
historians, but Walpole could not (nor can any one) show sufficient
cause for doubting that Richard had part, at least, in the murder
of Henry VI, that he put Hastings to death without a trial and
that he murdered his nephews. Walpole was much pleased with
his own book and bitterly resented adverse criticism from Humes
and others
1 Boswell, Life, vol. II, pp. 210, 237 ; vol. v, p. 403.
? Forneron, H. , Histoire de Philippe II (1881), vol. I, p. 392, says that, with Gregorio
Leti, Watson contributed most to substitute legend for fact in the history of Philip II.
3 Letters, vol. x, p. 224.
4 Cf. ante, vol. VII, p. 443.
5 In Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne. See Walpole, Short Notes of My
Life.
6 See bibliography.
19-2


## p. 292 (#318) ############################################

292
Historians
George, first baron Lyttelton, a second rate whig statesman,
whose active interest in other departments of literature is noticed
elsewhere', worked intermittently for some thirty years at his
History of the Life of Henry II, which he produced, in three vol-
umes, in 1767. The whole work, Johnson records, was printed twice
over and a great part of it three times, ‘his ambitious accuracy'
costing him at least £1000. He used the best authorities he could
find, and gives a minute and accurate account of the political
events of Henry's reign, together with remarks not always accord-
ing to knowledge on its constitutional and legal aspects. His style
is clear, but remarkably flat, his narrative inanimate, and his re-
flections, in which ‘Divine Providence' frequently appears, are
often almost childish. His opinions on the constitution in the
twelfth century flattered whig sentiment. Hume jeered at his
whiggery and his piety; Johnson was offended by his whiggery;
and Gibbon, referring to a review of the book which he had written
in Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne, declared that
the public had ratified his judgment that the author's 'sense and
learning were not illuminated by a single ray of genius' Horace
Walpole's remark, 'How dull one may be if one will but take pains
for six or seven and twenty years together! ", is just, though, as
work conscientiously and, to some extent, efficiently done, the book
deserves some kinder comment. Lyttelton was a patron of poorer
authors, and among those he befriended was Archibald Bower,
a Scot, who wrote for booksellers. Bower asserted that he had
been a Jesuit and a counsellor of the inquisition in Italy, that he
had escaped and had become a protestant. Between 1748 and 1753,
a
he issued to numerous subscribers three volumes of a History
of the Popes written with a great show of learning and ending at
757. Through Lyttelton's influence, he was appointed librarian to
the queen (1748), and clerk of the buck-warrants (1754). In
1756—8, however, John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury,
published proofs that Bower's account of himself was false, and
that his volumes, text and references, were stolen from other
authors, two-thirds of his first volume being practically translated
from Tillemont". He defended himself vigorously so far as his
own story was concerned, and gradually completed his History in
seven volumes, the seventh going down to 1758, but disposing of
the history from 1600 onwards in twenty-six pages. The book,
i See chap. V, ante.
2 Lives of the Poets.
• Memoirs, pp. 173–4, ed. Hill, G. B.
4 Letters, vol. VII, p. 122.
• See bibliography as to Gibbon's debt to Tillemont, cf. chap. XIII, post.


## p. 293 (#319) ############################################

Smollett.
Goldsmith. Leland
293
which was avowedly written against the claims of the see of Rome,
has no literary merit. Bower, though an impudent impostor, had
some learning, but his last four volumes are not of historical
importance, and the reputation of his History did not survive
Douglas's attack.
History was written as hackwork by two authors of eminent
genius. Tobias George Smollett was hired to write a history to
rival Hume's work, of which the first two volumes had then
appeared, and, in 1757, he produced his Compleat History of
England to 1748, in four volumes, written in fourteen months. He
boasts of having consulted over three hundred books. When he
began to write, he had 'a warm side' to whig principles ; but he
changed his opinions as he proceeded. The History sold well, and
Hume, while contemptuous, was annoyed at his rivalry! Smollett
wrote a continuation ; the part from the revolution was revised
and republished as a continuation of Hume's History and, as such,
passed through several editions. It favours the tory side and is
written in a robust and unaffected style. Oliver Goldsmith, in the
preface to his History of England to 1760, in four volumes (1771),
disclaims any attempt at research, and says that he wrote to
instruct beginners and to refresh the minds of the aged, and not
to add to our historical knowledge but to contract it. ' In matter,
his History is indebted to Hume. Both it and his two smaller
books on the same subject are written in the charming and graceful
style which makes all his prose works delightful. The smaller
books, at least, were extensively used in education within the last
seventy years. Neither Smollett, though he took his History
seriously, nor Goldsmith should be considered as a historian.
Ireland found its historian at home. Thomas Leland, senior
fellow of Trinity college, Dublin, wrote a History of Ireland from
the Invasion of Henry II, ending with the treaty of Limerick
(1691), which was published in 1773 in three volumes. Though he
consulted some original authorities, he founds his work, after losing
the guidance of Giraldus, mainly on those of Ware, Camden,
Stanihurst, Cox and Carte, noting his authorities in his margins
though without precise references. He writes in a lucid, straight-
forward, but inanimate style, and, though some of his statements
and comments are capable of correction by modern scholars, his
narrative, as a whole, is accurate, sober and impartial. The History
of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan,
from 1745 to 1761, by Robert Orme, published in two volumes
1 Burton, J. H. , Life, vol. 11, p. 53.


## p. 294 (#320) ############################################

294
Historians
a
(the second in two sections') in 1763–78, is a contemporary
memoir, for Orme was in India in the company's service during
practically the whole time of which he wrote. It is a record of
noble deeds written with picturesque details, and in dignified and
natural language appropriate to its subject. Its accuracy in all
important matters is unquestionable? It is too full of minor
events which, however interesting in themselves, bewilder a reader
not thoroughly acquainted with the history. Nor does it lay
sufficient stress on events of the first magnitude. To this defect,
all contemporary memoirs are, relatively, liable, and, in Orme's
case, it is heightened by his excessive minuteness. It has been
observed that he errs in treating the native princes rather than
the French 'as principals in the story. This, which would be
a fault in a later history, is interesting in Orme's book, as it shows
the aspect under which affairs appeared to a competent observer
on the spot. William Russell's History of Modern Europe, from
the time of Clovis to 1763, in five volumes (1779—86), is creditable
to its author, who began life as an apprentice to a bookseller and
printer, and became ‘reader' for William Strahan, the publisher
of the works of Gibbon, Hume, Robertson and other historians.
Its sole interest consists in Russell's idea that Europe, as a whole,
has a history which should be written by pursuing what he calls
'a great line. ' He was not the man to write it : his book is badly
constructed ; far too large a space is given to English history;
there are strange omissions in his narrative and several blunders.
Together with the development of historical writing, this period
saw a remarkable increase in the publication of materials for it in
the form of state papers and correspondence. The share taken by
Lord Hailes and Sir John Dalrymple in this movement is noticed
above. A third volume of Carte's Ormond, published in 1735,
the year before the publication of the two containing the duke's
Life, consists of a mass of original letters to which he refers in the
Life. A portion of the State Papers of the Earl of Clarendon
was published in three volumes by the university of Oxford in 1767.
The publication of the Thurloe Papers by Thomas Birch has
already been noted in this work? Birch, rector of St Margaret
Pattens, London, and Depden, Suffolk, did much historical work,
scenting out manuscript authorities with the eagerness of 'a young
setting dog. His more important productions are An Inquiry
into the Share which Charles I had in the Transactions of the
Earl of Glamorgan (1747), in answer to Carte's contention in his
1 Macaulay, Essay on Clive.
2 See vol. VII, pp. 187–8.
>


## p. 295 (#321) ############################################

State Papers, etc.
295
Ormond that the commission to the earl was not genuine; Negotia-
tions between the Courts of England, France, and Brussels,
1592–1617 (1749); Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth from 1581
(1754), mainly extracts from the papers of Anthony Bacon at
Lambeth ; and Lives of Henry, prince of Wales and archbishop
Tillotson. At the time of his death (1766), he was preparing for
press miscellaneous correspondence of the times of James I and
Charles I.
This interesting collection presenting the news of the
day has been published in four volumes, two for each reign, under
the title Court and Times etc. (1848). Birch, though a lively talker
was a dull writer ; but his work is valuable. He was a friend of
the family of lord chancellor Hardwicke, who presented him to
seven benefices.
The second earl of Hardwicke shared Birch's historical taste, and,
in 1778, published anonymously Miscellaneous State Papers, from
1501 to 1726, in two volumes, a collection of importance compiled
from the manuscripts of lord chancellor Somers. In 1774, Joseph
Maccormick, a St Andrews minister, published the State Papers
and Letters left by his great-uncle William Carstares, private
secretary to William III, material invaluable for Scottish history
in his reign, and prefixed a life of Carstares. The manuscripts left
by Carte were used by James Macpherson, of Ossianic fame, in his
Original Papers, from 1660 to 1714, in two volumes (1775). In the
first part are extracts from papers purporting to belong to a life of
James II written by himself, Carte's extracts being supplemented
by Macpherson from papers in the Scottish college at Paris. The
second part contains Hanover papers, mostly extracts from the
papers of Robethon, private secretary to George II, now in the
British Museum; the copies are accurate, but some of the translations
are careless? . Also, in 1775, he produced a History of Great Britain
during the same period, in two volumes, which is based on the papers,
and is strongly tory in character. For this, he received £3000.
His style is marked by a constant recurrence of short and some-
what abrupt sentences. Both his History and his Papers
annoyed the whigs, especially by exhibiting the intrigues of
leading statesmen of the revolution with the court of St
Germain? . His Introduction to the History of Great Britain
and Ireland (1771) contains boldly asserted and wildly erroneous
a
9
1 For the James II papers and their relation to the Life of James II, ed. Clarke, J. S. ,
1816, see Ranke, History of England (Eng. trans. ), vol. vi, pp. 29 ff. , and, for the Hanover
papers, Chance, J. F. , in Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. xm (1898), pp. 55 ff. and pp. 533 ff.
2 Horace Walpole, Last Journals, vol. 1, pp. 444–5, ed. Steuart, A. F.


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296
Historians
theories, particularly on ethnology, inspired by a spirit of excessive
Celticism.
Much interest was excited by the speculations of the French
philosophes, in some measure the literary offspring of Locke and
enthusiastic admirers of the British constitution. Influenced by
Montesquieu's famous Esprit des Lois (1748), Adam Ferguson,
Hume's successor as advocates' librarian (1757) and then a professor
of philosophy at Edinburgh, published his Essay on the History of
Civil Society (1767). Hume advised that it should not be published,
but it was much praised, was largely sold and was translated into
German and French. Nevertheless, Hume's judgment was sound;
the book is plausible and superficial'. It is written in the polished
and balanced style of which Hume was the master? . The admiration
expressed on the continent for the British constitution led Jean
Louis Delolme, a citizen of Geneva, who came to England about
1769, to write an account of it in French which was published at
Amsterdam in 1771. An English translation, probably not by the
author, with three additional chapters, was published in London in
1775, with the title The Constitution of England; it had a large
sale both here and in French and German translations abroad, and
was held in high repute for many years. Delolme was a careful
observer of our political institutions and, as a foreigner, marked
some points in them likely to escape the notice of those familiar
with them from childhood. The fundamental error of his book is
that it regards the constitution as a nicely adjusted machine in
which the action of each part is controlled by another, instead of
recognising that any one of the 'powers' within it was capable of
development at the expense of the others; though, even as he
wrote, within hearing of mobs shouting for ‘Wilkes and Liberty,'
one of them, the 'power of the people,' was entering on a period of
development. To him, the outward form of the constitution was
everything : he praised its stability and the system of counterpoises
which, he believed, assured its permanence, so long as the Commons
did not refuse supplies ; he failed to see that it was built up by
living forces any one of which might acquire new power or lose
something of what it already had, and so disturb the balance which
he represented as its special characteristic and safeguard.
1 Stephen, Sir L. , English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, p. 215.
? Ferguson's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic is noticed
in the following chapter.
* Stephen, u. 8. 209–214.


## p. 297 (#323) ############################################

CHAPTER XIII
HISTORIANS
II
GIBBON
THE mind of Gibbon, like that of Pope, from which, in many
respects, it widely differed, was a perfect type of the literary mind
proper. By this, it is not meant that either the historian or the
poet was without literary defects of his own, or of weaknesses-one
might almost say obliquities—of judgment or temperament which
could not fail to affect the character of his writings. But, like
Pope and very few others among great English men of letters,
Gibbon had recognised, very early in his life, the nature of the
task to the execution of which it was to be devoted, and steadily
pursued the path chosen by him till the goal had been reached
which he had long and steadily kept in view1. Like Pope, again,
Gibbon, in the first instance, was virtually self-educated; the
intellectual education with which he provided himself was more
conscientious and thorough, as, in its results, it was more pro-
ductive, than that which many matured systems of mental training
succeed in imparting. The causes of his extraordinary literary
success have to be sought, not only or mainly in the activity and
the concentration of his powers-for these elements of success he
had in common with many writers, who remained half-educated as
well as self-educated—but, above all, in the discernment which
accompanied these qualities. He was endowed with an inborn
tendency to reject the allurements of hand-to-mouth knowledge
and claptrap style, and to follow with unfaltering determination
the guidance which study and reason had led him to select. Thus,
1 His statement (Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. Birkbeck--the edition cited throughout this
chapter—p. 195) that he never presumed to accept a place,' with Hume and Robert-
son, 'in the triumvirate of British historians' may be taken cum grano.


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298
Historians
as culminating in the production of his great work, Gibbon's
literary labours were very harmonious, and, so far as this can
be asserted of any performance outside the field of pure literature,
complete in themselves. While carrying them on, he experienced
the periods of difficulty and doubt which no worker is spared ;
but, though the flame flickered at times, it soon recovered its
steady luminosity. After transcribing the caliph Abdalrahman's
reflection, how, in a reign of fifty years of unsurpassed grandeur,
he had numbered but fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness,
he adds in a note :
If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with
certainty) my happy hours have far exceeded the scanty numbers of the
caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to
the pleasing labour of the present composition 1
Thus, while he was continuously engaged in occupations which
never ceased to stimulate his energies and to invigorate his powers,
he was also fortunate enough to achieve the great work which
proved the sum of his life's labours, to identify himself and his
fame with one great book, and to die with his intellectual task
done. Macaulay, the one English historian whose literary genius
can be drawn into comparison with Gibbon’s, left the history of
England which he had 'purposed to write from the accession of
King James II down to a time which is within the memory of
men living' a noble fragment. Gibbon could lay down his pen,
in a summer-house in his garden at Lausanne, ‘in the day, or
rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, after writing this final
sentence of his completed book :
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 candour of the publica.
Though what Gibbon calls the curiosity of the public' may
have exhausted itself long since, the candid judgment of many
generations and of almost every class of readers has confirmed the
opinion formed at once by Gibbon's own age. His great work
remains an enduring monument of research, an imperishable
literary possession and one of the highest encouragements to
intellectual endeavour that can be found in the history of
letters.
The facts of Gibbon's life in themselves neither numerous
nor startling—are related by him in an autobiography which,
i Decline and Fall, chap. LII.
2 Cf. Memoirs, p. 225.


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Gibbon's Autobiography
299
by general consent, has established itself as one of the most
fascinating books of its class in English literature. This is the
more remarkable, since the Memoirs of My Life and Writings,
as they were first printed by Gibbon's intimate friend the first
earl of Sheffield (John Baker Holroyd), who made no pretence
of concealing his editorial method, were a cento put together out
of six, or, strictly speaking, seven, more or less fragmentary
sketches written at different times by the author! Lord Sheffield
was aided in his task (to what extent has been disputed) by
his daughter Maria Josepha (afterwards Lady Stanley of Alderley),
described by Gibbon himself as 'a most extraordinary young
woman,' and certainly one of the brightest that ever put pen
to paper. The material on which they worked was excellent in
its way, and their treatment of it extraordinarily skilful ; so that
a third member of this delightful family, Lord Sheffield's sister
Serena,' expressed the opinion of many generations of readers
in writing of the Memoirs : "They make me feel affectionate to
Mr Gibbon? ' The charm of Gibbon's manner as an autobiographer
and, in a lesser degree, as a letter-writer, lies not only in his
inexhaustible vivacity of mind, but, above all, in his gift of self-
revelation, which is not obscured for long either by over-elaboration
of style or by affectation of chic (such as his more than filial
effusions to his stepmother or his facetious epistles to his friend
Holroyd occasionally display). Out of all this wealth of matter, ,
we must content ourselves here with abstracting only a few
necessary data
Edward Gibbon, born at Putney-on-Thames on 27 April 1737,
came of a family of ancient descents, tory principles and ample
income. His grandfather, a city merchant, had seen his wealth
.
engulfed in the South Sea abyss—it was only very wise great men,
like Sir Robert Walpole, or very cautious small men, like Pope,
1 For details, see bibliography. Frederic Harrison, in Proceedings of the Gibbon
Commemoration (1895), describes the whole as '& pot-pourri concocted out of the MS
with great skill and tact, but with the most daring freedom. ' He calculates that
possibly one-third of the MS was not printed at all by Lord Sheffield. The whole
series of autobiographical sketches are now in print. Rowland Prothero, in a note in
his edition of Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753—94)—the edition cited through-
out this chapter as Letters-vol. I, p. 155, shows, by the example of a letter
(no. XXXIII) patched together by Lord Sheffield out of five extending over a period of
six months, that he applied the same method to the Letters published by him in 1814.
· The Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd, ed. Adeane, Jane, p. 372.
* The Gibbons were connected, among others, with the Actons, and Edward
Gibbon, the historian's father, was a kinsman of the great-grandfather of the late
Lord Acton.


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300
Historians
who knew when to withdraw from the brink ; but he had realised
a second fortune, which he left to a son who, in due course,
became a tory member of parliament and a London alderman.
Edward, a weakly child—so weakly that 'in the baptism of each
of my brothers my father's prudence successively repeated my
Christian name. . . that, in case of the departure of the eldest son,
this patronymic appellation might still be perpetuated in the
family! ,' was, after two years at a preparatory school at Kingston-
upon-Thames, sent to the most famous seminary of the day,
Westminster school. But, though he lodged in College street
at the boarding-house of his favourite 'Aunt Kitty' (Catherine
Porten), the school, as readers of Cowper do not need to be
reminded, was ill-suited to so tender a nursling; and Gibbon
remained a stranger to its studies almost as much as to its
recreations. More than this—he tells us, in words that have been
frequently quoted, how he is
tempted to enter a protest against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness
of our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the world.
That happiness I have never known, that time I have never regretted 2.
Yet, even his boyhood had its enjoyments, and the best of these
was, also, the most enduring. His reading, though private, was
carried on with enthusiasm, and, before he was sixteen, he had,
in something more than outline, covered at least a large part
of the ground which he afterwards surveyed in The Decline and
Falls. Before, however, his boyhood was really over, his studies
were suddenly arrested by his entry, as a gentleman-commoner, at
Magdalen college, Oxford, on 3 April 1752. No passage of his
Memoirs has been more frequently quoted than his account of
his Alma Mater, whom, if not actually 'dissolved in port,' he
found content with the leavings of an obsolete system of studies,
varied by prolonged convivialities, tinged, in their turn, by way
of sentiment, with a futile Jacobitism“. The authorities of his
college made no pretence of making up by religious training for
the neglect of scholarship. He was, he says, forced by the 'in-
credible neglect' of his tutors to 'grope his way for himself';
and the immediate result was that, on 8 June 1753, he was
1 As a matter of fact, all his five brothers died in infancy.
? Memoirs, p. 216.
8 Morison, J. C. , Gibbon (English Men of Letters), pp. 4–5.
• For comparison pictures of the intellectual barrenness of Oxford in the period
1761–92, see Memoirs, appendix 15, where Sir James Stephen's account of Cambridge
in 1812-16 is also cited.


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Gibbon's Conversions
301
received into the church of Rome by a Jesuit named Baker, one
of the chaplains to the Sardinian legation, and that, in the same
month, his connection with Oxford came to an abrupt close. He
had, at that time, barely completed his sixteenth year; but he
tells us that, 'from his childhood, he had been fond of religious
disputation. '
No sooner had Gibbon left Oxford than his taste for study
returned, and he essayed original composition in an essay on
the chronology of the age of Sesostris. But the situation had
another side for a 'practical' man like the elder Gibbon, who
might well view with alarm the worldly consequences entailed,
at that time, by conversion to Roman catholicism. He seems
to have tried the effect upon his son of the society of David
Mallet, a second-rate writer patronised in turn by Pope, Bolingbroke
and Hume. But Mallet's philosophy (rather scandalised than
reclaimed 'the convert, and threats availed as little as arguments.
For, as he confesses, in his inimitable way, he cherished a secret
hope that his father would not be able or willing to effect his
menaces,' while 'the pride of conscience' encouraged the youth
'to sustain the honourable and important part which he was now
acting. Accordingly, change of scene (and of environment) was
resolved upon as the only remedy left. In June 1753, he was
sent by his father to Lausanne, where he was settled under the
roof and tuition of a Calvinist minister named Pavillard, who
afterwards described to Lord Sheffield the astonishment with
which he gazed on Mr Gibbon standing before him: a thin little
figure’(time was to render the first epithet inappropriate), 'with
a large head, disputing and urging, with the greatest ability, all
the best arguments that had ever been used in favour of
Popery? '
To Lausanne, Gibbon became so attached that, after he had
returned thither in the days of his maturity and established
reputation, it became, in Byron's words? one of
the abodes
Of names which unto (them) bequeath'd a name.
His Swiss tutor's treatment of him was both kindly and discreet,
and, without grave difficulty, weaned the young man's mind
from the form of faith to which he had tendered his allegiance.
· Letters, vol. I, p. 2, note.
2 Childe Harold, canto III, st. 105. For an account of Lausanne and the Gibbon
relics there and elsewhere, see Read, Meredith, Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne and
Savoy, 2 vols. 1897 : vol. 11 in especial.


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302
Historians
In matters spiritual, Gibbon inclined rather to frivolity than to
deliberate change; nor was this the only illustration of a dis-
position of mind 'clear' as the air and 'light' like the soil of
Attica, and one in which some of the highest and of the deepest
feelings alike failed to take root. It is, at the same time, absurd
to waste indignation (as, for instance, Schlosser has done) upon his
abandonment of an early engagement to a lady of great beauty
and charm, Suzanne Curchod, who afterwards became the wife
of the celebrated Necker. The real cause of the rupture was the
veto of his father, upon whom he was wholly dependent, and whose
decision neither of the lovers could ignore'.
Gibbon did not leave Lausanne till April 1758. During his
five years' sojourn there, his life had been the very reverse of that
of a recluse-a character to which, indeed, he never made any
pretension. As yet, he had not reached his intellectual manhood;
nor is it easy to decide in what degree a steadfast ambition had
already taken possession of him. Though his reading was various,
it was neither purposeless nor unsystematic. He brought home
with him, as the fruit of his studies, a work which was in every
sense that of a beginner, but, at the same time, not ill calculated
to attract the public. Before sending it to the printer, however,
he cheerfully took the experienced advice of Paul Maty, editor
of The New Review, and entirely recast it. The very circumstance
that Gibbon's Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature, published in
1761, was written in French shows under what influences it had
been composed and to what kind of readers it was primarily
addressed. Its purpose is one more defence of classical literature
and history, the study of which was then out of fashion in France;
but, though the idea is good, the style lacks naturalness-a defect
due to the youthfulness of the writer far more than to the fact
of his having written his treatise in a foreign tongue; for he
had already acquired a mastery over French which he retained
through life.
Before, however, he had entered the lists as an English author,
he had passed through a different, but by no means barren,
experience of life. A few days before the publication of his essay,
1 A full account of their relations from first to last, characteristic of both the man
and the age, will be found in an editorial note to Letters, vol. I, p. 40, and cf. ibid.
vol. I, p. 81, note, as to the last phase. ' In June 1794, Maria Josepha wrote: 'I
thought I had told you that Madame Necker had the satisfaction of going out of the
world with the knowledge of being Mr Gibbon's First and only love' (Girlhood,
p. 288). The passage in the Memoirs referring to Gibbon's renunciation of his
engagement, was, as F. Harrison shows, unscrupulously recast by Lord Sheffield.


## p. 303 (#329) ############################################

Hesitation between Historic Subjects
Subjects 303
he joined the Hampshire militia, in which, for two years, he held
in succession the rank of captain, major and colonel, and became,
practically, the commander of a smart 'independent corps of
476 officers and men,' whose encampment on Winchester downs,
on one occasion, at least, lasted four months, so that for twice that
period he never took a book into his hands. His predilection for
military history and the accounts of marches and campaigns was
of old standing, and afterwards reflected itself in many passages of
his historical masterpiece.
There cannot be any reason for doubting his statement that,
during all this time, he was looking to the future rather than to the
present, and that the conviction was gaining upon him of the time
having arrived for beginning his proper career in life. It was
in the direction of history that Gibbon's reading had lain almost
since he had been able to read at all; and, by 1760 or thereabouts,
Hume and Robertson were already before the world as historical
writers who commanded its applause, and the reproach of having
failed to reach the level of Italian and French achievement in this
branch of literature could no longer be held to rest upon English
writers. Gibbon, as a matter of course, was familiar with the
chief historical productions of Voltaire, and, during his visit to
Paris, in 1763, became personally acquainted with more than one
French historian of note. Thus, he could not fail to agree with
Hume that 'this was the historical age? ' But, though he had no
doubt as to the field of literature in which it behoved him to
engage, he hesitated for some time with regard to the particular
historical subject upon which he should fix his choice. Charles
VIII's Italian expedition (which subject he rejected for the good
reason that it was rather the introduction to great events than
important in itself), the English barons' war, a Plutarchian
parallel between Henry V and Titus and the biographies of more
than one British worthy—that of Sir Walter Ralegh in especial-
attracted him in turn. Gradually, he arrived at the conclusion
that the theme chosen by him must not be narrow, and must not
be English. The history of Swiss liberty, and that of Florence
under the Medici, hereupon, for a time, busied his imagination-
the former, he afterwards actually began, in French, but abandoned
after, in 1767-8, the first book of it had been read to 'a literary
society of foreigners in London,' and unfavourably received by
-
1
Memoirs, pp. 135 ff. , of. appendix 24.
9 Letters of Hume to Strachan, p. 155, cited ibid. appendix 21.


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304
Historians
them! But if, like Milton, he was embarrassed by the wealth of
themes which presented themselves to his literary imagination,
he ended, again like Milton, by choosing what, in its development,
proved the grandest and noblest of them all.
Soon after the disbandment of the militia on the close of the
war in 1763, he paid a long visit to the continent, spending some
time in Paris and then in Lausanne, where, during the better part
of a year, he prepared himself for a sojourn in Italy by a severe
course of archaeological study? He crossed the Italian frontier
in April 1764, and reached Rome in October. Here, on the 15th
of that month, as he records in a passage which is one of the
landmarks of historical literature, it was
-as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed
fryars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of
writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind 3.
For, as he adds, the conception of his life's work was, at first,
confined within these limits, and only gradually grew in his mind
into the vaster scheme which he actually carried into execution.
We shall, perhaps, not err in attributing a direct incitement
towards this expansion to the title, if not to the substance, of
Montesquieu's Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des
Romains et leur décadence (1734), which, to a mind like Gibbon's,
already occupied with part of the theme, could hardly fail to
suggest such an achievement as that to which, in the end, his
genius proved capable of rising *.
Still, a long interval separates the original conception of
Gibbon's Decline and Fall from the execution of even its first
instalment. During the years 1756 to 1764, he produced a series
of miscellaneous historical writings, which, in part, may be described
as preliminary studies for the great work of which the design had
now dawned upon him. Some of them were in the synoptical
form for which he always had a special predilection, characteristic
of a mind desirous, with all its inclination to detail, of securing as
wide as possible a grasp of the theme on which it was engaged-
1 Cf.