SOURCE: Brownley, Martine Watson. “Gibbon's Artistic and Historical Scope in the Decline and Fall.” Journal of the History of Ideas 42, no. 2 (October-December 1981): 629-42.

[In the following essay, Brownley argues that one reason the Decline and Fall is still read today is because of limitations in Gibbon's imagination and philosophical abilities, limitations that, paradoxically, have kept his historical work from becoming merely a window to eighteenth-century scholarship.]

Much of the effectiveness of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire derives from Edward Gibbon's ability to create a vast scope for his subject extending well beyond the ostensible historical limits of the centuries from the Age of the Antonines to the fall of Constantinople. He achieves this expanded scope in his history not only by including material outside the strict confines of his topic but also by effectively juxtaposing comparable and disparate events and figures comprehended within this enlarged scope. By employing such parallels, he gains unity for his subject and provides the reader with continuously shifting perspectives. Gibbon believed that “the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view,”¹ and he seldom fails to create this experience for the reader of the Decline and Fall. As a literary artist he can convincingly present a broad overview sweeping through time and space. But in contrast to this success in artistically “enlarging our intellectual view” by skillful creation and use of wide scope, he fails to convey the historical depth of his subject when he attempts to establish causal relationships or draw significant generalizations from his materials. The historian too often remained content with the surface scope depicted by the literary artist. It is an ironic measure of Gibbon's greatness that both his abilities and his limitations ultimately functioned to insure the enduring appeal of his history.

I.

Readers of the Decline and Fall have been invariably impressed with a sense of the magnitude and comprehensiveness of Gibbon's history.² This impression is produced both by the sheer mass of material encompassed and by Gibbon's use of the range of time and space to convey the immensity of Rome's power and the enormity of her collapse. The presence of Augustus as the figure dominating the opening chapters is an early indication that Gibbon intends to extend the temporal scope of his history beyond the chronological limits of his subject. After this initial extension of temporal scope, he continues to widen the boundaries by including Republican Rome, the glories of the Greek city-states at their height, the Renaissance, and contemporary Europe within the scope of the Decline and Fall. A particularly effective example of his tendency to encompass time is his pause at the appearance of Halley's comet during Justinian's reign to trace the sightings of the comet from the Greek Ogyges in 1767 b.c. to projected sightings in 2355 a.d. in the American or Siberian wilderness (IV, 461-63).

Gibbon also makes use of geographical scope in presenting his enlarged vision, using the geographical range of the Roman empire to impress the reader. He employs geographical comparisons to emphasize Rome's vast powers: “The established authority of the emperors pervaded without an effort the wide extent of their dominions, and was exercised with the same facility on the banks of the Thames, or of the Nile, as on those of the Tiber” (I, 47). As the central focus in the history moves away from the city of Rome, references to geographical scope create images of the ever-widening boundaries and cultural variety of the imperial world:

But when the passages of the straits were thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and artificial riches of the north and south, of the Euxine, and of the Mediterranean. Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and Scythia, as far as the sources of the Tanais and the Borysthenes; whatsoever was manufactured by the skill of Europe or Asia; the corn of Egypt, and the gems and spices of the farthest India, were brought by the varying winds into the port of Constantinople, which, for many ages, attracted the commerce of the ancient world.

(II, 156-57)

In these lines Gibbon's taste for the farflung and the exotic combines with his predilection for the pictorial to produce colorful decorative effects in his vast historical canvas.

Within the scope he creates for his subject, Gibbon draws disparate places, figures, and eras together by using the technique of juxtaposition for unity and continuity in the history. The Decline and Fall is unified by many elements; various critics have focused on the narrative voice and role, the pervasive thematic emphasis on reason, the geographical centering on Rome and Constantinople, and other artistic unifiers.³ Gibbon's use of temporal and geographical juxtapositions is another unifying device, a way of pulling together a vast subject by establishing connections and providing a sense of continuity. For instance, he notes that “Justinian, the Greek emperor of Constantinople and the East, was the legal successor of the Latian shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks of the Tiber” (IV, 541). With juxtapositions through time, Gibbon joins varied persons and events to help his reader recall familiar scenes from earlier in the history and connect the high points in the narrative expanse. He thus describes Cyprian: “Sometimes we might imagine that we were listening to the voice of Moses, when he commanded the earth to open, and to swallow up, in consuming flames, the rebellious race which refused obedience to the priesthood of Aaron; and we should sometimes suppose that we heard a Roman consul asserting the majesty of the republic, and declaring his inflexible resolution to enforce the rigour of the laws” (II, 57).

Gibbon's tireless emphasis on decline, cited by J. B. Black and others⁴ as a major reason for the unified tone of the Decline and Fall, is reinforced by his use of contrasts and comparisons through time. Many of his most powerful contrasts juxtapose the Roman republic with the empire to emphasize decline. By the time of Constantine and his successors, the names of consuls “served only as the legal date of the year in which they had filled the chair of Marius and of Cicero” (II, 173). As the decline progresses, the mighty early empire, especially under Augustus' rule, serves as a measure of the decline of later centuries: “A territorial acquisition, which Augustus might have despised, reflected some lustre on the declining empire of the younger Theodosius” (III, 416). Such juxtapositions render a sense of the living past, an almost Burkean impression of the continuity of evolving history and the echoes in the present of a past tragic because irrecoverably gone.

Gibbon also relies on parallels through time and space to create new and enlarged perspectives within the Decline and Fall. He opens Chapter XLII by surveying the state of the empire and showing the stature of certain great military commanders in order to provide a background for proper evaluation of Belisarius' character and achievements. In depicting Alaric's sack of Rome, he refers to Hannibal's Italian maneuvers, the attacks of the Gauls, and Charles V's military campaigns. Finally, the panoramic reviews of the empire spaced throughout the history rely heavily on geographical and temporal comparisons for perspective, and Gibbon is quick to exploit the dramatic potential of the striking pictures and ideas which can result. Through manipulation of distance Gibbon controls his own and the reader's involvement with the material he presents.

In creating perspectives Gibbon occasionally moves beyond the information in his sources for comparisons which alter scope in order to remind the reader that events have personal and local as well as international implications. For example, he speaks of barbarian depredations in the provinces: “The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader” (III, 121). Carried by the authoritative ring of the narrative voice, the reader may regret that Gibbon has no chance to render a close-up view. However, whether he would have chosen to focus on such domestic distresses even if information had existed is questionable—the hearth never emerges as a setting particularly compelling or attractive to the chronicler of empires. Gibbon probably could not have effectively portrayed the kind of local disasters he envisions; when he tries to inject emotional appeal into the history, he usually strains and produces empty rhetoric. This piece of occupatio is rhetorically effective because Gibbon uses the insertion to place the barbarian attacks in a different perspective. Requiring a minimal expenditure of time and space, the sentence reminds the reader of personal dimensions of the imperial tragedy to widen the scope of the history. His description of the magnificence of St. Sophia similarly enlarges perspective. After writing that the worshiper who entered the church “might be tempted to suppose that it was the residence, or even the workmanship, of the Deity,” he comments: “Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant is the labour, if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple!” (IV, 264). The comparison with the natural world changes scope and perspective for a moment to offer the reader an alternative standard for judging man's accomplishments.

When Gibbon is at his best, the wide angle of his vision of Rome produces more than useful perspectives for historical and general judgments. Gibbon manages to convey fully the kinds of sensations that Boswell tries vaguely to describe in a passage in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. John N. Morris quotes the passage to illustrate Boswell's delight “in importing the past into the present”—a pleasure the biographer shared with many greater literary figures of the eighteenth century: “To see Mr. Samuel Johnson lying in Prince Charles's bed, in the Isle of Skye, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe as the mind perceives them.”⁵ While considering one specific instance in the Decline and Fall, Gibbon indicates some reasons why such juxtapositions can be fruitful: “If, in the neighbourhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has really existed, we may contemplate in the period of the Scottish history, the opposite extremes of savage and civilized life. Such reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas, and to encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce, in some future age, the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere” (III, 47). Gibbon believed that “general pictures … compose the use and ornament of a remote history” (V, 180), and juxtapositions of time and space play an important part in producing encompassing overviews by enlarging “the circle of our ideas.”

Another passage in the Decline and Fall further elaborates on the kind of “general pictures” that Gibbon desires and explains in greater detail why temporal and geographical juxtapositions are so important in his work:

A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment; the grave is ever beside the throne; the success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of his prize; and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes and faintly dwell in our remembrance.

(V, 258-59)

Contrasts of geographical and particularly of temporal range help Gibbon to “exalt and enlarge the horizon” of the reader's intellectual view by rendering the haunting sense of the vanity of human wishes which pervades the history. The distanced view reflected in his artistic vision of his subject through time and space is the serene epic perspective, clear, calm, and balanced, that represents Gibbon at his best.

Thus Gibbon's habitual geographical and temporal juxtapositions provide rich dimensions for the world of the Decline and Fall. Comparisons centering on geographical range show the vast power and variety of the empire and also serve a decorative purpose within the narrative. In addition, by tying together disparate places, geographic comparisons provide a superficial kind of unification in the history. Comparisons and contrasts across time can function on a slightly deeper level, telescoping centuries to highlight change or continuity. Gibbon uses both geographical and temporal scope to emphasize that despite details, the reader should remember the whole panorama of history. Nevertheless, in many instances Gibbon draws parallels which seem at first glance interesting and which with closer examination emerge as somewhat superficial, if not totally useless. Two footnotes show his usual practice:

It is impossible to peruse the interesting narrative of Plutarch … without perceiving that Mark Antony and Julian were pursued by the same enemies and involved in the same distress.

(II, 540, n. 93)

I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between the siege and lake of Nice with the operations of Hernan Cortez before Mexico.

(VI, 307, n. 84)

After initial recognition of the commendable range of knowledge shown, the lack of any real significance in the comparisons becomes apparent. Though Gibbon usually confines these kinds of observations to footnotes, they occur often enough in the text to arouse curiosity. Another footnote seems to indicate that Gibbon himself recognized the superficiality of these kinds of limited comparisons of scope: “Voltaire, who casts a keen and lively glance over the surface of history, has been struck with the resemblance of the first Moslems and the heroes of the Iliad; the siege of Troy and that of Damascus” (V, 446, n. 65).

Since Gibbon's temporal comparisons can function as useful literary devices for thematic purposes, the reader may well wonder why Gibbon is so often content to draw temporal parallels similar to the more superficial geographical juxtapositions. These superficial comparisons remain literary devices only, external decorations without substantive significance. Such comparisons fail to reflect any depth of historical vision. This failure suggests the question of whether corresponding superficialities exist in his general historical overview. What are the limitations of the seemingly vast world Gibbon is depicting in the Decline and Fall? Are there areas he will not explore? Analysis of Gibbon's use of geographical and temporal scope leads naturally into the problem of limitations in the scope of Gibbon's own personal and historical vision.

II.

Gibbon's statement of his aims in the beginning of the famous Chapter XVI fairly accurately reflects his practice throughout the Decline and Fall: “To separate (if it be possible) a few authentic, as well as interesting, facts from an undigested mass of fiction and error, and to relate [them] in a clear and rational manner …” (II, 77). The emphasis on fact is particularly characteristic. In his personal writings as well as in the history, fact dominates every page Gibbon wrote.⁶ His early journals presage his historical practices; he writes down thoughts rather than feelings and simple factual perceptions more often than thoughts. The journals contain some keen observations painstakingly recorded, but the reader plods through pages of lists of reading or sightseeing to glean the scantiest knowledge of Gibbon personally through occasional offhand comments. In both his personal life and his work, Gibbon seemed to need the protection of facts; he never likes to commit himself in any way without securing all possible data. Over a decade before the Decline and Fall was published, he writes in his journal of his interest in an inscription he has seen, commenting, “Je compte d'écrire quelques observations là dessus, quand je serai dans un endroit un peu mieux fourni de livres.”⁷ Not even tentative observations in an informal journal will be made without careful research. In the Decline and Fall Gibbon meticulously provides authorities and traces sources. A footnote about Maximus is typical: “Camden … appoints him governor of Britain; and the father of our antiquities is followed, as usual, by his blind progeny. Pacatus and Zosimus had taken some pains to prevent this error, or fable; and I shall protect myself by their decisive testimonies” (III, 144, n. 11). And protect himself he did, through thirteen centuries and more, with countless original and secondary authorities; his imaginative vision of Rome is based solidly in historical fact. This devotion to factual detail combined with his superb organizing ability to form the basis of Gibbon's greatness as a historian.

Problems begin to occur only when a move from the specific to the general would enhance Gibbon's narrative. His remarks on the Isaurians of Asia Minor provide a good example of his hesitancy to abandon the specific: “But the hopes of fortune depopulated the mountains, luxury enervated the hardiness of their minds and bodies, and, in proportion as they mixed with mankind, they became less qualified for the enjoyment of poor and solitary freedom” (IV, 271). By the time this passage occurs in the fourth volume of the history, the progressive degeneration described has been seen among many nations, and the reader expects some comment from Gibbon on what seems to be a repeating pattern. The situation of the Isaurians offers an excellent opportunity for considering some of the problems which the historian of the Decline and Fall must have confronted again and again in the process of writing the history. What is the relationship between physical and spiritual decline? Is the transition from poor and isolated hardihood to rich social decadence a repeating pattern in history? If the pattern exists, is it inevitable? Whether in the eighteenth or the twentieth century, the reader of the Decline and Fall must feel a twinge of uneasiness at the story of the Isaurians. Gibbon, however, makes no general comments and continues to relate details of the Isaurians' relations with the empire.

Though the modern view is that drawing moral and political lessons about the Isaurians or anyone else is not the historian's duty, Gibbon's own standards were different. His writings show his admiration for what he termed the “philosophical historian,” and to that ideal he always aspired. He felt that the philosophical historian was one who not only ascertains and assembles facts, as the mere antiquarian does, but who molds individual facts into coherent narratives to present a more unified and complete philosophical overview of the subject.⁸ Gibbon's model for a philosophical historian was Tacitus, and his description of Tacitus' endeavors in the Histories indicates what he expects from the best historical studies: “To collect, to dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years in an immortal work, every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and the most lively images …” (II, 93). Gibbon's literary skill provides an ample number of “most lively images,” but, ironically enough for one who prided himself on being a philosophical historian working directly in the Tacitean tradition, the depth of Gibbon's observations is questionable.

Whenever he moves toward generalization, he heads unerringly for the obvious. His comment on the spread of gunpowder is typical: “If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind” (VII, 86). This remark is the kind which Gibbon undoubtedly thought made him a philosophic historian and which he liberally sprinkles through the pages of the Decline and Fall. The remark is rhetorically effective, fulfilling Gibbon's desire for impressive presentation, and, as the last line in a chapter, it provides a somberly satisfying finish—provided the reader does not linger. Gibbon's strength in the line is rhetorical rather than philosophical.

A few of his statements on history provide further evidence of his tendency to settle for a somewhat superficial gloss over the obvious. Because Gibbon typically works from assumed rather than articulated theoretical positions, his failure at any point to delineate systematically his beliefs about history and its purposes is hardly surprising. Nevertheless, his individual statements about the study to which he devoted his entire life are particularly unsatisfying. His Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature opens with a statement about history: “L'histoire des empires est celle de la misère des hommes.”⁹ Obviously this kind of remark can be judged fairly only within its context. This introductory sentence is a dramatically effective way to engage the reader's attention, and, in addition, Gibbon writes emphatically because he is eager to draw the strongest contrast possible between the histories of politics and of science. Finally, the Essai is the product of a young man conscious of his lack of experience and anxious to compensate for any deficiencies by assuming a stance of disillusioned sophistication. However, years later, Gibbon expresses similar attitudes in one of the first chapters of the Decline and Fall: “His [Antoninus Pius'] reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind” (I, 84). This generalization, often quoted to show Gibbon's beliefs about history, clearly derives from Voltaire's Essai sur Les Moeurs et L'Esprit des Nations: “Il faut donc, encore une fois, avouer qu'en général toute cette histoire est un ramas de crimes, de folies, et de malheurs. …”¹⁰ Gibbon consciously or unconsciously parrots Voltaire because he likes the effects produced by this kind of statement. Like many of his own more quotable remarks, the description of history is striking, superficially satisfying, and accurate as far as it goes; the sources often focused on the more luridly memorable historical events. The statement makes an impression because it contains an undeniable kernel of truth distressing to thinking men. But it is a most reductive kind of truth.

The reductionism in this reference is characteristic of Gibbon, for many times in the Decline and Fall he cuts through historical complexity to obtain ironical and rhetorical effects. Though never willing to sacrifice fact to abstract theory, he is not adverse to slighting complexity with easy reductionism. Gibbon's reductionism is similar to that found in many of Samuel Johnson's conversational remarks: the difference, of course, is that Johnson in writing usually subsumed such reductive tendencies, while Gibbon committed his to the printed page. A typical comment concerns Europe's continued interest in launching crusades despite repeated failures; he sneers that “men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country” (VI, 345). His remark that he has chronicled the triumph of Christianity and barbarism, incessantly quoted by commentators, is another example of reductionism for effect. All the remarks are true in a limited sense, but they are basically inaccurate summations. Too often satisfied with statements that sound impressive, Gibbon lets such remarks stand for rhetorical and ironic effects and thereby leaves himself open to serious, although richly deserved, misrepresentation.

Gibbon is especially disappointing in the development of certain philosophical points which he introduces by what can only be called virtuoso openings. His compulsive movement away from contemplation to fact can be seen at the end of Chapter XLVIII, the unfortunate section in which he tries to survey the Greek emperors at Constantinople from Heraclius to the Latin conquest. At the end of the wreckage of six hundred years even Gibbon is moved by the graphic illustration of the vanity of human wishes which he has just written, and he pauses for an overview of the chaos. He writes the sublime passage quoted previously about history's exaltation of the horizon of the intellectual view, and then he turns to consider the problem of ambition, a prominent corollary to any consideration of the vanity of human wishes:

The observation that, in every age and climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy, may abate the surprise of a philosopher; but, while he condemns the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion. To the greater part of the Byzantine series we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of fame and of mankind. The virtue alone of John Comnenus was beneficent and pure; the most illustrious of the princes who precede or follow that respectable name have trod with some dexterity and vigour the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish policy; in scrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the Isaurian, Basil the First, and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus, the second Basil, and Manuel Comnenus, our esteem and censure are almost equally balanced; and the remainder of the Imperial crowd could only desire and expect to be forgotten by posterity. Was personal happiness the aim and object of their ambition? I shall not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings; but I may surely observe that their condition, of all others, is the most pregnant with fear, and the least susceptible of hope. For these opposite passions, a larger scope was allowed in the revolutions of antiquity than in the smooth and solid temper of the modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph of Alexander or the fall of Darius.

(V, 259-60)

Gibbon tries to discuss the psychological ramifications of ambition, and fails to produce anything but specific examples and obvious platitudes. He finally falls back on facts; the passage ends anticlimactically with three additional sentences reviewing basic facts about the imperial position. The only thing that saves the passage from banality is Gibbon's marvelous language; as Virginia Woolf has noted, Gibbon's style is “well adapted to invest little ideas with large bodies.”¹¹ Gibbon's ideas, and particularly his philosophical scope, are in no way extraordinary because he does not often enough surmount facts to produce coherent and satisfying historical overviews.

His limitations are rather painfully evident at the end of Volume III, originally planned as the conclusion of the history. Standing forth proudly in the role of philosophic historian, Gibbon closes what he thought would be his final chapter with a section entitled “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.”¹² He asserts that Rome's decline and fall “may usefully be applied to the instruction of the present age” (IV, 175-76), and he proceeds to outline the lessons. The gist of his argument is that the Europeans of his time could be assured that their civilization was safe from the barbarian attacks which levelled the Roman empire. Confident and secure, Gibbon misjudged the immortal barbarian in the mind of man and failed to foresee, among other things, the French Revolution. Like most men of his era, he was no visionary. Furthermore, ample evidence of his lack of ability in political prognostication had already been provided by his own political career, where he almost always ended up on the losing side. But the basic problem with the “General Reflections” is that it is an appendage tacked on to the history rather than a natural outgrowth of the story itself, as Gibbon's best points always are. Such an artificial philosophical insert cuts Gibbon off from his greatest strength, his reliance on the factual. This dedication to fact ultimately functioned in many places in the history to keep him safe from his own weaknesses in generalization.

Gibbon's failure to surmount fact and to move towards significant generalization is attributable to both his personal proclivities and his general historical outlook. Never an abstract and speculative thinker, he sought the concrete and the solidly fact-based, and his approach shows integrity as well as limitation. In chronicling the rise of Christianity his insistence on considering only “human causes” opened the way for truly historical treatments of religion; at the same time, his failure to consider adequately spiritual and emotional elements seriously limited his interpretation. His deliberate focus on secondary causes of the spread of religion was an important contribution to the rise of modern scientific history. Yet a man like Gibbon, whose personal life shows his limited appreciation of the emotional, could only have approached religion from this perspective, and the distance he maintained was for him a personal as well as an historical necessity.

Gibbon's practical outlook had very real advantages for treating the subject he chose. Most of the characters in his history were no more philosophical than he; as he points out in the Decline and Fall, “the counsels of princes are more frequently influenced by views of temporal advantage than by considerations of abstract and speculative truth” (II, 311). His taste for intrigue and his appreciation of the complexities of political infighting were in many ways more useful than a broader philosophical approach for satisfactory explanations of historical actions. In addition, Gibbon's focus on the concrete was partially derived from an admirable refusal to slight complexity by theoretical systemization. He had long distrusted the simplicity necessitated by imposed systems; as early as the Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature he warns: “Combien il faut se défier des systêmes les plus éblouissans, puisqu'il y en a si peu soutiennent l'épreuve d'un examen libre et attentif.”¹³ He knew the temptation to impose system on experience, and in his Critical Observations on the Design of the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, he reveals a personal experience with encompassing theory. He discovered a “hypothesis which connected the several parts of Horace's ode with each other. My ideas appeared (I mean to myself) most ingeniously conceived. I read the ode once more, and burnt my hypothesis.”¹⁴ Gibbon's distrust of system saved his history from disfigurement by the superficial and facile theoretical generalization which fails to take adequate account of the importance of individual details. Unfortunately, at the same time, his lack of trust in abstract thinking seriously limited his philosophical depth.

Although Gibbon was not the kind of philosophical historian he intended to be and probably thought he was, his dedication to facts and his problems with generalizations did not confine him to the ranks of chroniclers and annalists. His achievement does not rest in the discovery of new facts—he added nothing really new to historical data—or even simply in the summation of known fact.¹⁵ His style and his ideals of literary excellence enabled him to present his facts in the most effective way possible. Interestingly, he is at his best when dealing with alleged facts undeniably false, for when he cannot rely on the given details, he becomes free to use a more imaginative approach and he overcomes his problems in making generalizations. His treatment of the problem of Ossian is a brief example of how he can surmount the limitations of false stories to make an effective point. He questions the authenticity of Ossian, establishes doubt through historical fact, and then rises to present an overview which is effective whether or not the story of Ossian is true:

Something of a doubtful mist still hangs over these Highland traditions; nor can it be entirely dispelled by the most ingenious researches of modern criticism; but if we could, with safety, indulge the pleasing supposition, that Fingal lived, and that Ossian sung, the striking contrast of the situation and manners of the contending nations might amuse a philosophic mind. The parallel would be little to the advantage of the more civilised people, if we compared the unrelenting revenge of Severus with the generous clemency of Fingal; the timid and brutal cruelty of Caracalla, with the bravery, the tenderness, the elegant genius of Ossian; the mercenary chiefs who, from motives of fear or interest, served under the Imperial standard, with the freeborn warriors who started to arms at the voice of the king of Morven; if, in a word, we contemplated the untutored Caledonians, glowing with the warm virtues of nature, and the degenerate Romans, polluted with the mean vices of wealth and slavery.

(I, 141-42)

Through another “general picture” Gibbon has imaginatively created a wider scope for his history through a series of effective juxtapositions. He is at his best at those times when he can work not with or against facts but in spite of them.

The scope of Gibbon's vision in the Decline and Fall encompasses a vast range of time and space even as it reflects limitations in his mind and personality. He lacks the cohesive imagination and the ability to rise above historical detail which are necessary to derive significant generalizations from the specific. Ironically, Gibbon's problems in generalization put his work in line with later views of history. Ranke's famous words are the obvious example: “To history has been attributed the office to judge the past and to instruct the present to make its future useful; at such high functions this present attempt does not aim—it merely wants to show how things really were.”¹⁶ W. H. Walsh similarly defines the historian's tasks: “His attention must be concentrated on the events which are the immediate object of his scrutiny: unlike the scientist, he is not all the time led beyond those events to consideration of the general principles which they illustrate.”¹⁷ Gibbon's factual strength and philosophical weakness combined to produce work very much like that described by Ranke and Walsh. Had Gibbon managed to write the philosophical history he desired, the Decline and Fall would probably by now be hopelessly dated. Many more sections like the “General Reflections” would have tied the history to more ephemeral aspects of eighteenth-century thought and would have left it a curiosity for scholars only. One can learn much about the eighteenth century from the Decline and Fall because Gibbon's perspective reflects various presuppositions of his era. But because he ultimately failed to produce the great philosophical overviews at which he aimed in his history, the beliefs of the age do not seriously interfere with Gibbons' effective artistic presentation of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Notes

1. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury, 2nd ed. (London, 1929), V, 258. All further quotations are from this edition and will be cited in the text.

2. In a letter to Gibbon in 1788, William Robertson was among the first to express this common reaction to Gibbon's scope: “Indeed, when I consider the extent of your undertaking, and the immense labour of historical and philosophic research requisite towards executing every part of it, I am astonished that all this should have been accomplished by one man. I know no example, in any age or nation, of such a vast body of valuable and elegant information communicated by any individual.” (The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., ed. John, Lord Sheffield [1814; rpt. New York, 1971], II, 424. Hereafter cited as MW.)

3. Leo Braudy's Narrative Form in History and Fiction (Princeton, 1970) focuses on “the themes of narrative control, time, and place” (244). David Jordan also emphasizes that “the unity of the Decline and Fall is the mind of the creator” in Gibbon and His Roman Empire (Urbana, Illinois, 1971), xii. Gibbon's geographical centrality is pointed out by Jordan (58), by D. M. Low in Edward Gibbon (New York, 1937), 320, and by Michael Joyce in Edward Gibbon (New York, 1953), 11. Virginia Woolf notes Gibbon's belief in reason as a unifier in “The Historian and ‘The Gibbon’,” The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (London, 1942), 60. Three perceptive discussions of literary methods unifying the history are W. R. Keast's “The Element of Art in Gibbon's History,” ELH, 23 (1956), 156-62; Peter Gay's Style in History (New York, 1974), 19-56; and Harold Bond's The Literary Art of Edward Gibbon (Oxford, 1960).

4. J. B. Black, The Art of History (New York, 1965), 165; W. R. Keast, “The Element of Art in Gibbon's History,” 157; David Thomason, “Edward Gibbon: The Master Builder,” Contemporary Review, 151 (1937), 588-90. A useful essay locating Gibbon's place within the larger context of traditional theories of decline is Peter Burke's “Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon,” Daedalus, 105 (Summer 1976), 137-50.

5. John N. Morris, Versions of the Self (New York, 1966), 204-05.

6. Bond, in The Literary Art of Edward Gibbon, writes that Gibbon's deep respect for facts developed from his study of Bayle (6). Bayle was undoubtedly a useful example, but Gibbon's devotion to fact probably stemmed as much from his own temperament as from any external influences.

7. Edward Gibbon, Gibbon's Journey from Geneva to Rome, ed. Georges A. Bonnard (London, 1961), 81.

8. Many commentators have discussed in detail Gibbon's ideal of the philosophical historian; two inclusive accounts are Frank E. Manuel's “Edward Gibbon: Historien-Philosophe,” Daedalus, 105 (Summer 1976), 231-45, and Jordan's chapter on “Gibbon the Scholar” in Gibbon and His Roman Empire, 40-69.

9. MW, IV, 15.

10. Voltaire, Essai sur Les Moeurs et L'Esprit des Nations, in Oeuvres Complètes (Paris, 1878), XIII, 177.

11. Woolf, “The Historian and ‘The Gibbon’,” 56.

12. Few critics can resist dissecting the “General Reflections.” J. W. Johnson's comment on their “Panglossian shine” in The Formation of English Neo-Classical Thought (Princeton, 1967), 240, concisely sums up the general consensus. Two good appraisals appear in Daedalus, 105 (Summer 1976): Peter Brown, “Gibbon's Views on Culture and Society in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries,” 81-85, and J. G. A. Pocock, “Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian,” 165-68.

13. MW, IV, 45. (Gibbon's French as shown.)

14. MW, IV, 504-05.

15. Probably the best general discussion of Gibbon's place in historiography is Arnaldo Momigliano's “Gibbon's Contribution to Historical Method,” Studies in Historiography (New York, 1966), 40-56. J. J. Saunders' “Gibbon and the Decline and Fall,” History, 23 (1939), 346-55, presents some judgments of Gibbon's reliability as a historian.

16. As quoted in George H. Nadel, “Philosophy of History Before Historicism,” History and Theory, 3 (1964), 315

17. W. H. Walsh, An Introduction to the Philosophy of History (London, 1953), 38-39.