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A Grand Tour: Reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Christopher Kelly
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Extract

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has not always been greeted with applause. On the fly-leaf to Volume IV of his copy, Gibbon's contemporary, the writer, antiquarian, and bibliophile, William Beckford gave vent to near apoplectic rage:

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , April 1997 , pp. 39 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

Notes

1. Gotlieb, H. B., William Beckford of Fonthill … A Brief Narrative and Catalogue of an Exhibition (Yale Univ. Library, 1960), no. 237 at 77–8. Beckford's copy of Gibbon was sold as lot no. 3447 on 23 Oct., the 35th day of the Fonthill Abbey sale of 1823Google Scholar; see Gemmett, R.J. (ed.), Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons, vol. 3, Poets and Men of Letters, William Beckford (London, 1972), 440Google Scholar; Keynes, G., The Library of Edward Gibbon (London, 2nd ed. 1980), 28Google Scholar.

2. Runciman, S., ‘Gibbon and Byzantium in Bowersock, G. W., Clive, J. and Graubard, S. R. (edd.), Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Harvard U.P., 1977), 53–60 at 59.Google Scholar.

3. Walpole, H., Correspondence: Lewis, W.S.etal (edd.), 48 vols (Yale U.P., 1937– 1983), vol. 28 p. 243 (18 Feb. 1776 to William Mason)Google Scholar.

4. Monthly Review 54 (01. 1776), 188–95 at 189Google Scholar. Contemporary reactions to The Decline and Fall are conveniently surveyed in Norton, J. E., A Bibliography of the Works of Edward Gibbon (Oxford, 1940Google Scholar, reptd 1970), ch. 8; Craddock, , Historian, 67–72, 168–73, 263–4Google Scholar.

5. Trevor-Roper, H. R., ‘The Historical Philosophy of the Enlightenment’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 27 (1963), 1667–87 at 1671Google Scholar.

6. DF cvi. For compact surveys of modern criticism and praise, see Porter, R., Edward Gibbon: Making History (London, 1988), 2–5Google Scholar; Womersley, , Transformation, 43–4, 195–6Google Scholar; Craddock, , Historian, 360–4Google Scholar; Craddock, , Edward Gibbon: a Reference Guide (Boston, 1987), xxix–xxxvi, xl–xliiiGoogle Scholar.

7. Craddock, , Historian, 44Google Scholar.

8. Letters vol. 2 no. 251 p. 19 (24 May 1774 to J. B. Holroyd, later first Lord Sheffield, and Gibbon's literary executor); Craddock, , Historian, 20Google Scholar.

9. Letters vol. 1 no. 210 p. 353 (15 Dec. 1772 to J.B. Holroyd); Craddock, , Historian, 7Google Scholar; Craddock, , Young Edward Gibbon: Gentleman of Letters (Johns Hopkins U.P., 1982), 301–3Google Scholar.

10. Heal, A., Notes and Queries 194 (1949), 474–6 at 475Google Scholar; Craddock, , Historian, 7–8Google Scholar.

11. For discussion of Gibbon's standards of scholarship, see, for example, Carnochan, W.B., Gibbon's Solitude: the Inward World of the Historian (Stanford U.P., 1987), 25–38Google Scholar; Jordan, D. P., Gibbon and his Roman Empire (U. of Illinois Press, 1971), 40–6Google Scholar; Porter (n.6), 72–7; DF xi–xiii; Momigliano, A., ‘Gibbon's Contribution to Historical Method’ in his Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), ch. 2Google Scholar.

12. Davis, H. E., An Examination ofthe Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In which his view of the Progress of the Christian Religion is shewn to be founded on the Misrepresentation of the Authors he cites: and Numerous Instances of his Inaccuracy and Plagiarism are produced (London, 1778), ii–iiiGoogle Scholar.

13. Vindication, 1113. For the background to these attacks and Gibbon's counter in his Vindication, see Craddock, , Historian, 122–31Google Scholar; Norton (n. 4), ch. 9; McCloy, S. T., Gibbon's Antagonism to Christianity … and the Discussions that it has Provoked (U.of N. Carolina Press, 1933), 64–72Google Scholar; Cartledge, P.A., Hermathena 158 (1995), 133–47Google Scholar, esp. 134–8.

14. Davis (n. 12), 275.

15. Vindication, 1151.

16. ibid. 1152.

17. ibid. 1110.

18. ibid. 1154–5.

19. Burrow, J. W., Gibbon (Oxford, 1985), 17Google Scholar.

20. Vol. III Ch. 27 p. 69.

21. Gossman, L., The Empire Unpossess'd: an Essay on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Cambridge U.P., 1981), 97–8Google Scholar, and see too 87–91, 101–8. There is a large literature on Gibbon's relationship with the eighteenth-century debate on the writing of history. Porter (n.6), ch. 1; Burrow (n. 19), 16–28; Cartledge, , ‘The Enlightened Historiography of Edward Gibbon, Esq.: a Bicentennial Celebration’, Maynooth Review 3 (1977), 67–93Google Scholar at 78–85 offer good, brief introductions to the important issues. Gibbon's relationship with contemporary thought is exhaustively surveyed in Baridon, M., Edward Gibbon et le mythe de Rome: histoire et idéologie en siècle des lumières (Paris, 1977), 328–489Google Scholar. In thinking through these issues, I have found the following particularly helpful: Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Gibbon's Decline and Fall and the World View of the Late Enlightenment’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 10 (1977), 287–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reptd in his Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge U.P., 1985), ch. 8; Starobinski, J., ‘From the Decline of Erudition to the Decline of Nations: Gibbon's Response to French Thought’ in Bowersock, Clive and Graubard, (n. 2), 139–57Google Scholar; Momigliano, , ‘Eighteenth-Century Prelude to Mr.Gibbon’ in Ducrey, P. (ed.), Gibbon et Rome: a la lumiere de I'historiographie modeme (Geneva, 1977), 57–70Google Scholar; Womersley, , Transformation, Part I and 134–42Google Scholar, 182–91 withhis main themes recapitulated in DF esp. xxf.; Wootton, D., ‘Narrative, Irony and Faith in Gibbon's Decline and Fall H&T Theme Issue Proof and Persuasion in History 33 (1994), 77–105Google Scholar, esp. 78–89. On Gibbon's early intellectual formation see Ghosh, P., JRS 73 (1983), 1–23 and 85 (1995), 148–64Google Scholar.

22. See on this issue Cartledge, , MHR 2 (1989), 251–70Google Scholar; Womersley, , Transformation, 80–8Google Scholar; Gay, P., Style in History (London, 1975Google Scholar, reptd 1988), 21–34.

23. Vol. I Ch. 9 p. 230; see too Ch. 16 pp. 529–30.

24. Vol. I. Ch. 6 p. 178.

25. Vol. V Ch. 48 p. 25.

26. ibid.

27. Womersley, , Transformation, 100Google Scholar; see, generally, ch. 8 and 147–9; DF xlii–xlv; Baridon (n. 21), 751–2, 829; Craddock, , Historian, 102–4Google Scholar; Jordan (n. 11), 192–3.

28. Vol. I Ch. 14 p. 440.

29. Vol. I Ch. 14 p. 426.

30. Only in the very last sentence is there a hint of what might have been (so far) omitted – ‘The foundation of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Christian religion, were the immediate and memorable consequences of this revolution’ (Vol. I Ch. 14 p. 445). But even these ‘immediate consequences’ had to wait two further chapters for elaboration.

31. Vol. II Ch. 20 p. 740; Jordan (n. 11), 202–5.

32. Vol. II Ch. 18 pp. 585–6 and 592–3; Ch. 19 pp. 643 and 654.

33. Vol. I Ch. 16 p. 580.

34. Vol. II Ch. 18 pp. 645 and 646.

35. Vol. II Ch. 17 p. 603.

36. Vol. I Ch. 15 p. 446.

37. Vol. I Ch. 15 p. 496.

38. Vol. I Preface (1st February 1776) p. 3.

39. Vol. I Ch. 16 p. 524.

40. Vol. II Ch. 20 p. 725.

41. Vol. n Ch. 20 p. 750; see too Ch. 17 p. 585.

42. For a survey of contemporary reactions see, most conveniently, McCloy (n. 13), chs 2–4; Craddock (n. 6), xv–xvii; and n. 13 above.

43. Vol. I Ch. 15 p. 512.

44. Vol. V Ch. 51 n. 55 p. 252.

45. Vol. I Ch. I n. 87 p. 54. Gibbon regarded geographical accuracy of paramount importance; see, for example, Vol. VI Ch. 66 n. 23 p. 874; Vindication, 1122–4; Memoirs (draft B), 121, 209–10, (draft C), 224, (draft E), 296, (draft F), 58. This was a life-long obsession, from a early essay of 1757 dealing with various geographical puzzles in famous Latin poets (Craddock [n. 9], 101), throughthe Recueil géographique(1763–64) concerned with the historical geography of classical Italy (Ghosh, , JRS 73 [1983],6—7Google Scholar; Craddock [n. 9], 182–6, 190–1; Baridon [n. 21], 304–8), and continued in a late piece ‘On the Canary Islands’ (1789–90), a fragment of a larger, incomplete work The Circumnavigation of Africa (in Craddock, [ed.], The English Essays of Edward Gibbon [Oxford, 1972], 375–7)Google Scholar. See, generally, Carnochan (n. 11), 31; Jordan (n. 11), 57–60; and, less enthusiastically, Badian, E., ‘Gibbon on War’ in Ducrey, (n. 21), 103–30 at 106–8Google Scholar.

46. Vol. III Ch. 28 n. 79 p. 93.

47. Vol. IV Ch. 41 n. 10 p. 625. Further examples in Clive, J., ‘Gibbon's Humor’ in Bowersock, Clive and Graubard, (n. 2), 183–91 at 183–5Google Scholar, reptd in his Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History (London, 1989), 55–65.

48. 5 vols, London, quotation from the title page of vol. I.

49. Vol. I Preface p. v.

50. Vol. Hp. 61.

51. Vol. HI Ch. 30 n. 82 p. 147. The emphasis in this phrase should perhaps beon ‘unfeeling’ in other contexts, as Paul Cartledge pointed out to me, ‘coolness’ can be a proper, praiseworthy attribute for a historian – see, for example, Vol. II Ch. 24 p. 910; Vol. III Ch. 37 p. 443; Vindication, 1135; Memoirs (draft C), 267 (see n. 70 below); but see too Womersley, , Transformation, 140–1Google Scholar.

52. Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946, revised edn. 1993), 147Google Scholar.

53. Craddock, , Historian, 105–6Google Scholar.

54. Vol. V Ch. 48 pp. 25–7 for Gibbon's own summary of the structure of the last two volumes; Craddock, , Historian, 213–15Google Scholar.

55. Memoirs(draft E), 332; see too Vol. II Ch. 25 pp. 988–9; Vol.IV Ch. 46 pp. 880–1; Vol. V Ch. 48 p. 23; Gossman (n. 21), 93–9.

56. Vol. V Ch. 51 n. 15 p. 238. For Gibbon's copy of d'Herbelot, seeKeynes (n. 1), 148.

57. Vol. V Ch. 52 p. 360; Craddock, , Historian, 216Google Scholar. For Gibbon's use of this simile, see Womersley, , Transformation, 204, 290–5Google Scholar; Johnson, J. W., J. of British Studies 13 (1973), 44–62 esp. 50–3, 57–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oliver, D. M., Texas Studies in Literature and Language 14 (1972), 77–92 esp. 82, 87–9Google Scholar; Baridon, M., ‘Le style d'une pensée politique et esthétique dans le Decline and Fall’, in Ducrey, (n. 11), 73–98Google Scholar, esp. 92–3; Craddock, , ‘Edward Gibbon and the “Ruins of the Capitol’” in Patterson, A. (ed.), Roman Images (Johns Hopkins U.P., 1984), 63–82 esp. 63–9Google Scholar.

58. Vol. V Ch. 48 p. 27.

59. Vol. VI Ch. 68 p. 1062. On Gibbon's use of visual imagery, see, particularly, Carnochan (n. 11), ch. 4; Womersley, , Transformation, 263Google Scholar.

60. Vol. VI Ch. 68 p. 1084.

61. Livy 31.1.5. (The text is Gibbon's.) ‘Already I see in my mind's-eye – like those who, deceived by the shallows nearest the shore, wade out into the sea – that whatever progress I make, I am being swept out into ever deeperwaters, towards, as it were, the ocean's depths’.

62. Letters vol. 3 no. 642 p. 59 (20 Jan. 1787 to Lord Sheffield); Womersley, , Transformation, 43Google Scholar, 296, see too Letters vol. 3 no. 688 p. 107 (28 May 1788 to Dorothea Gibbon).

63. Vol. V Ch. 50 p. 151; Womersley, , Transformation, 257Google Scholar.

64. Vol. V Ch. 55 p. 451; see too Vol. III Ch. 38 p. 464.

65. Vol. VI. Ch. 69 n. 2 p. 979.

66. Carnochan (n. 11), 58–9, 69–70.

67. Memoirs(draft E), 302. On this pivotal passage see Baridon (n. 21),120–2, 326; Burrow (n. 19), 1–3, 36–8; Carnochan (n. 11), 53–4,71–3; Cartledge, , Maynooth Review 3 (1977), 74–5Google Scholar; Craddock (n. 9), 222–3; Craddock, , Historian, 237–40Google Scholar; Ghosh, , JRS 73 (1983), 5–6Google Scholar; Jordan (n. 11), 17–23; Womersley, , Transformation, 226–7Google Scholar. Of course, by 1764, following Michelangelo's building programme, there were no ruins on the Capitol, see Saunders, J. J., History Today 14 (1964), 608–15 at 611; Craddock (n. 57), 64–6Google Scholar.

68. Vol. V Ch. 52 n. 887 p. 360.

69. Bonnard, G. A. (ed.), Gibbon's Journey from Geneva to Rome: his Journal from 20 April to 2 October 1764 (London, 1961), 235Google Scholar.

70. Memoirs(draft C), 267; Gay (n. 22), 36–7.

71. Memoirs(draft E), 302; see too (draft B), 144; (draft C), 266.

72. Baridon (n. 21), 747–8; Carnochan (n. 11), 75–8; Jordan (n. 11), 51–7.

73. Walpole, , Correspondence (n. 3), vol. 34 p. 131 (23 11 1791 to Lady Ossory)Google Scholar.

74. Vol. VI Ch. 64 p. 791.

75. Vol. VI Ch. 68 p. 971.

76. Craddock, , Historian, 16–19Google Scholar; Womersley, , Transformation, 44–8, 216–20Google Scholar.

77. Memoirs(draft E), 308.

78. Memoirs(draft B), 166.

79. Letters vol. 3 no. 768 p. 209 (17 Nov. 1790 to Thomas Cadell); Craddock, , Historian, 303–7Google Scholar.

80. Gibbon's marginalia in two sets of The Decline and Fall in the British Library (C.60.m. 1 and C. 135.h.3) are printed by Womersley in DF vol. 3 appendix 2; this note at 1093; see too Craddock, , Studies in Bibliography 21 (1963), 191–204Google Scholar.

81. On this theme, see, for example, Jordan (n. 11), 101–4; Porter (n. 6), 158–64; Burrow (n. 19), 101–2; DF xiii–xiv; Craddock, ,Historian, 141–4, 216–17, 228–45Google Scholar; Gossman (n. 21), 87–91,93–9; Braudy, L., ‘Edward Gibbon and “the Privilege of Fiction”’, Prose Studies 3 (1980), 138–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 146–50; and particularly Braudy, , Narrative Form in History and Fiction (Princeton U.P., 1970), ch. 5, esp. 213–18Google Scholar, 238–40, 257–61.

82. Lettersvol. 2 no. 452 p. 218 (4 June 1779 to Georges Deyverdun); see too Letters vol. 2 no. 262 p. 32 (10 Sept. 1774 to J. B. Holroyd): ‘Yesterday morning about half an hour after seven as I was destroying an army of Barbarians….’

83. Lettersvol. 3 no. 646 p. 65 (2 June 1787 to Lord Sheffield). For Gibbon's frequent use of the metaphor of paternity, see Womersley, , Transformation, 286Google Scholar; Craddock, , Historian, 249Google Scholar; Carnochan (n. 11), 19–20.

84. Craddock, , Historian, 216Google Scholar.

85. Vol. V Ch. 57 n. 10 p. 527; Vol. I Ch. 8 n. 49 p. 226; see Womersley, , Transformation, 47Google Scholar. For other examples of changes of mind, see Vol. IV Ch. 46 n. 36 p. 897; Vol. VI Ch. 70 n. 90 pp. 1057– 8; Ch. 71 n. 20 p. 1068.In his reading of the later volumes, Womersley emphasizes the degree to which this shiftin structure and authorial tone was also a response to the material available to the historian: ‘My own conviction is that, once we have left behind the tight ordering ofVolume I, The Decline and Fall becomes increasingly loose, without, however, descending into incoherence. The diminishing of formal control arises from the growing recalcitrance of Gibbon's material. Its intractability impedes his aspirations towards literary shapeliness, while also indicating that such shapeliness could only be realised at the expense of the material it was supposed to reveal’ (at 216). See esp. Transformation, 44, chs 13–14.

86. Vol. VI Ch. 64 n. 61 p. 820.

87. Vol. VI Ch. 65 n. 59 p. 847. Further examples in Womersley, ,Transformation, 222Google Scholar; see too 242–57 for Womersley's perceptive discussion of Gibbon's deployment of his source material in these last two volumes with the deliberate aim of conveying ‘to the reader a more spacious intimation of the possibilities of history’ (at 255).

88. Womersley, , Transformation 94–5Google Scholar; Braudy, Prose Studies 3 (1980), 1412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gossman (n. 20), 75–6.

89. Vol. V Ch. 48 p. 23.

90. Vol. VI Ch. 70 n. 15 p. 1022; see too Ch. 70 n. 41 p. 1034.

91. Vol. VI Ch. 68 n. 45 p. 954; see too Ch. 58 n. 20 p. 563.

92. Vol. II Ch. 20 p. 765.

93. Vol. V Ch. 57 n. 41 p. 541; compare Vol. IV Ch. 44 p. 779; Ch. 47 n. 1 p. 932. For Gibbon' copy of d'Herbelot, see above n. 56; for his copy of Guignes, de, Histoire générate des Huns, des Tures, des Mongols, et des autres peuples tartares occidentaux (4 vols in 5, Paris, 1756– 1758–1758)Google Scholar, see Keynes (n. 1), 141.

94. Vol. VI Ch. 71 pp. 1084–5.

95. Lettersvol. 3 no. 623 p. 12 (22 Oct. 1784 to Lady Sheffield); see too Memoirs(draft E), 339–40.

96. Memoirs(draft B), 190; see too Vol. III Ch. 37 p. 450.

97. Vol. VI Ch. 59 n. 92 p. 649.

98. Gentleman's Magazine 64 (Jan. 1794), 178, an anonymous note adding personal reminiscences of Gibbon to the Magazine's earlier obituary; Craddock, , Historian, 57Google Scholar.

99. Letters vol. 2 no. 387 p. 151 (16 June 1777 to J. B. Holroyd); Craddock, , Historian, 93, 175, 195Google Scholar; Craddock (n. 9), 296.

100. Vol. V Ch. 56 n. 83 p. 504.

101. Vol. V Ch. 52 n. 50 p. 346.

102. Vol. V Ch. 48 p. 24.

103. Letters vol. 2 no. 334 p. 100 (26 March 1776 to Dorothea Gibbon).

104. Vol. V Ch. 48 p. 84; Carnochan (n. 11), 68.

105. Vol. II Ch. 20 p. 725 (above n. 40).

106. Bagehot, W., Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen (London, 1858), 104Google Scholar.

107. Vol. II Ch. 20 p. 736.

108. Vol. I Ch. 15 p. 446.