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Gibbon's Dark Ages: Some Remarks on the Genesis of the Decline and Fall*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

P. R. Ghosh
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Extract

It is a striking fact that the years in Gibbon's life about which we know least—the years 1765–72, between his return from the Grand Tour and the commencement of his History—are precisely those in which we are most interested, if we wish to study the genesis of his great book. The years 1758–64 are covered with increasing fullness in the journals which Gibbon began to keep in August 1761. From this source, for example, we can trace in detail the somewhat complex evolution of his first published work, the Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature—detail enhanced by reference to the manuscript draft which survives. Again, for the period 1773–87 we know exactly what Gibbon was doing: his intellectual course was finally settled, and the six ample quartos of the Decline and Fall provide the best possible comment on that course, supplemented and confirmed by increasingly full correspondence and the terse outline in Memoir E of the autobiography. But between these two periods we have only meagre and uninformative letters; one apparently unimportant publication, the Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid of 1770; and the help we can glean from Memoirs C and D of the autobiography. These were Gibbon's Dark Ages, and it is this obscure passage in his life which I wish to lighten.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 73 , November 1983 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © P. R. Ghosh 1983. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Add. MSS 34,880 fols. 130–84, passim. I have followed Gibbon's peculiar French usage without attempting to correct it.

2 Despite the superior critical apparatus of Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life ed. Bonnard, G. A. (1966)Google Scholar, the best edition of the memoirs for scholarly purposes remains The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon ed. Murray, John (1896)Google Scholar. For comprehensiveness and clarity, printing the six drafts of the memoirs consecutively will always be preferable to a mangled unitary account, and the latter edition is cited here. Drafts of the memoirs cited as Mem.

See Appendix H for a brief synopsis of the dates of Gibbon's writings in this period.

3 Edward Gibbon e la Cultura Europea del Settecento (1954).

4 ibid., 208 and n. 94.

5 All references in the text to The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are to the edition of Bury, J. B. (1909–14)Google Scholar; however, references to the volumes in this work assume the volume divisions of the first edition (1776–88). Hereafter abbreviated to DF.

6 loc. cit. (n. 3), 216—7.

7 ibid., 208.

8 Swain, J. W., Edward Gibbon the Historian (1966), 122–3Google Scholar; Craddock, P. B., The English Essays of Edward Gibbon (1972), 57Google Scholar (hereafter cited as English Essays). Though she has not revised her view in Young Edward Gibbon (1982), Professor Craddock there adduces arguments from both its style and content which militate against dating the Outlines to 1771, 289–94. Preface DF 1. xxxix-xli.

9 Compare Mem. B, 209–10 with Le Journal de Gibbon à Lausanne ed. G. A. Bonnard (1945), passim. Hereafter cited as Journal B.

10 As the extract makes clear, Gibbon read the Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi (1738–42) and the Annali d'Italia (1744–9), not the Rerum Italicorum Scriptores (1723–51), Muratori's own collection of primary materials.

11 Mem. C, 270; cf. DF iv. 21 n. 52.

12 Preface loc. cit. (n. 8).

13 DF 1. xli.

14 cf. Momigliano, A., ‘Gibbon's Contribution to Historical Method’, reprinted in Studies in Historiography (1966), 40–55, here 45Google Scholar; Bonnard, G. A., ‘L'importance du deuxième séjour de Gibbon à Lausanne dans la formation de l'historien’ in Mélanges d'Histoire et de Littérature Offerts à M. Charles Gilliard (1944), 401–20, here 405Google Scholar.

15 His interest in Raleigh carried him into seventeenth-century England, cf. Gibbon's Journal to January 28th, 1763 ed. D. M. Low (1929), January 1762 (hereafter cited as Journal A); for his interest in seventeenth-century France, ibid., 19, 28 August 1762 and The Letters of Edward Gibbon ed. J. E. Norton (1956), no. 463 (hereafter cited as Letters).

16 DF I. 85–6, 241, 248; cf. The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1769) 1. 10.

17 loc. cit., p. I above.

18 Gibbon's text is printed in The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon (1814 ed.) ed. Sheffield, III. 183–202 (hereafter cited as MW); cf. De l'Esprit des Lois XXVIII. 4, XXX. 10–25, passim, Dubos, J. B., Histoire Critique de l'Etablissement de la Monarchie Française dans les Gaules (1742)Google Scholar.

19 MW 11. 249 no. CXLIX.

20 See Appendix 1 below.

21 Text printed in English Essays, 163–98.

22 In order the texts are printed in MW III. 56–149; English Essays, 107–29; ibid., 96–106; Letters no. 196; DF IV. 172–81; English Essays, 131–62. The diverse locations of these pieces, all of the same period, show how badly we need a modern and comprehensive edition of Gibbon's miscellaneous prose works.

23 Journal B, 7 December 1763.

21 It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the source of the emotional appeal of the Decline and Fall is the principle of regret for temps perdu, the period of ‘correct’ classical taste. This explains why, from the very beginning, Gibbon harps on the theme of decline (cc. 1–3). As part of an historical argument this seems exaggerated, when there are almost three more volumes to come, but we must not overlook the dictates of literature: first, that Gibbon was in some sense writing a tragedy (we remember his passion for the theatre), which demanded that the tragic motif be stated at the outset; secondly, that the closer in time he was to the period of the Republic, the more keenly the principle of regret would operate. Given such an emotional premiss, the sympathetic and detailed treatment of the fourth century is remarkable, and provides another example of Gibbon, the open-minded author, being deflected from his original position in the course of composition.

25 Quotations from Mem. E, 308, ‘Materials for a Seventh Volume’ in English Essays, 338 respectively; cf. p. 15 and n. 97 below.

28 One of the most striking and least noticed aspects of Gibbon's choice of subject is that it coincided with the early stirrings of neo-Classical aesthetic taste, in which interest in late Roman remains ‘helped to break up the dominance of Palladianism, and paved the way for the Greek Revival’ (Crook, J. Mordaunt, The Greek Revival (1972), 19Google Scholar). Gibbon was familiar with and appreciative of the literature this interest spawned—Dawkins and Wood on Palmyra (1753) and Balbec (1757) and Adam on Spalatro (1764); cf. DF 1. 330 n. 77, v. 458 n. 85, I. 422 n. 129 respectively—but he did not adopt the same aesthetic standpoint. For him the art of the later Empire was debased and he charged that Adam ‘somewhat flattered the objects which it was [his] purpose to represent’ (loc. cit. and n. 130); similarly, though prepared to allot historical significance to Greek art, he preferred St. Peter's in Rome to the temple of Diana at Ephesus (DF 1. 288–9). But if Gibbon was a conservative, both aesthetically and in his historical preferences, his writing a lament for the passage of the period of true Roman greatness and the immense public appeal of the Decline and Fall suggest that, however obscurely, he had moved with and caught the shifting tide of taste.

27 Gibbon's Journey from Geneva to Rome, His Journal from 20 April to 2 October 1764 ed. Bonnard, G. A. (1961), 235Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Journal C).

28 Mem. D, E, 405–6, 302, MW 1. 198 respectively.

29 Three points should be mentioned: (i) Bonnard (Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life, 304–5) raises the objection that the phrase ‘the ruins of the Capitol’ used in drafts C and E of the memoirs must be inaccurate, since such ruins no longer existed. But in fact the theme of Christian foundations on Roman ruins was for Gibbon a conventional topos, symbolic of the triumph of the Christian religion at the expense of Roman power, and it did not necessarily require the literal survival of the ruins in the areas referred to. This is clear from the usage in DF 1. 433, IV. 66, not to mention a cancelled MS draft of the Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature Add. MSS 34,880 fol. 155.

(ii) Bonnard (loc. cit.) and Jordan, D. P., Gibbon and His Roman Empire (1971), 17–21Google Scholar both tend to denigrate the historical accuracy of this passage by stressing that Gibbon's principal concern when writing the successive drafts of the memoirs was to increase their literary effect—a suggestion derived from what they perceive to be an increase in such effect. But, leaving aside the uncertain nature of this type of judgement, such a theory runs contrary to Bonnard's own account of the genesis of the memoirs, which states that for the period of the Grand Tour Memoir C was a full version, whereas the two later drafts, D and E, skipped over those years as quickly as possible (op. cit., xxvi–xxvii) in order to concentrate on the later part of Gibbon's life—an account well founded in evidence and in the texts themselves.

(iii) Craddock in Young Edward Gibbon, 183, n. 79, etc. starts the hare that Gibbon referred to a journal entry for 15 October, because the first page on Rome in the Receuil Geographique was written on 15 October 1763, as can be deduced from the journal entry for that date. This expresses so low an estimate of Gibbon's ‘early and constant attachment to the order of time and place’ (Mem. B, 121)—an attachment evident on every page of the memoirs—that I am unable to follow it. Furthermore, if we consult the journal for 15 October 1763, we find no paragraphs of enthusiasm for Rome, only disappointment at such a bad day's work on the Receuil in which only one page has been written, the working day having been disrupted by the financial problems raised by the arrival of a letter from home—which fact entirely dominates the journal entry. This was hardly the stuff of inspiration for the author of the memoirs consulting his journal at the end of his life. In fact, as the last sentence of the Decline and Fall makes clear (VII. 338), the scene on the ruins of the Capitol was always in Gibbon's mind, independent of any journal entry, and I suggest that 15 October was an over-precise expression for ‘about a fortnight’ after his arrival in Rome on the 2nd.

30 Letters no. 61.

31 Printed as ‘Nomina Gentesque Italiae Antiquae’ in MW IV. 157–326.

32 Craddock, , Young Edward Gibbon, 182–6Google Scholar, discusses the textual evolution of the Receuil, but neglects the chronological aspect of this, aside from her emphasis on 15 October 1763 (cf. n. 29) which, in this context also, proves misleading. The Receuil was in fact written in two parts: a first, much smaller part in the summer of 1763, and a second, larger part in the spring of 1764. Between 8 September 1763 and 19 February 1764 there are no journal entries referring to actual composition of the Receuil, with the meagre and isolated exceptions of 15, 20 October 1763, which amounted to slightly more than one MS page. It is clear that this interval was caused by Gibbon's preferring to finish his reading, before writing up the text, cf. Journal B, loc. cit. and 31 December 1763. For the hope that travel would augment the account, ibid., 7 December 1763, 29 March 1764; for re-writing in England, 7 December 1763.

33 Journal B 7 December 1763.

34 Sections VII–VIII on Rome and its environs take up over half the printed text; Rome was also the geographical starting point in the MS, Add. MSS 34,881 fol. 125b.

35 Above, p. 5.

36 MW IV. 203–6; 224–5; 314, cf. Journal C 13 June, 10 July, 30 August 1764.

37 Journal C 30 August 1764.

38 As is well-known, the finest topographical set-piece in the History, that on Constantinople (c. 17), was of a place Gibbon had never visited. For places he had seen, the fruits of observation were kept to a minimum and he remained anxious to supply printed sources even so, cf. Jordan, D. P., Gibbon and His Roman Empire, 54–6Google Scholar.

39 Letters no. 60; Journal C 30 August 1764.

40 MW v. 39–41, here 39.

41 Unlike Gravina, Gibbon had an interest in the entire history of the City and, as we have seen (p. 3 above), with its chief emphasis on the period pre-476.

42 The text is printed in MW iv. 359–98, but is artificially divided into three by the editor, cf. Add. MSS 34,880 fols. 229b–238b.

43 Compare Journal A 26 July 1762 and Memoir C, 275–6.

44 Trevor-Roper, H. R., ‘The Idea of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ in The Age of the Enlightenment, Studies Presented to Theodore Besterman ed. Barber, W. H. et al. , 413–30, here 427Google Scholar. Craddock has evolved a variant of this hypothesis—that Gibbon could only work part-time before his father's death, and so, while awaiting this consummation, engaged only on small-scale projects. However, (i) the limitations on Gibbon's time were as significant after 1770 as before; (ii) were the premiss sound, the conclusion would not follow and (iii) the hypothesis fails to take account of the Swiss History of 1765–7, indubitably a first-class project, cf. Young Edward Gibbon, 230.

45 Text printed in MW III. 239–329. For a very useful discussion, see Offler, H. S., ‘Gibbon and the Making of his Swiss History’, Durham University Journal 1949, 64–75Google Scholar. For an explanation of the texts allotted by Craddock, , Young Edward Gibbon, 231–7Google Scholar, to 1765 see below n. 83.

46 In addition to the well-known remark in DF I. 84, cf. Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature c. XLVII, Journal B 1 September 1763; ‘Notes’ printed in English Essays, 319, etc.

47 The authors are Giannone, Muratori and Mosheim; cf. MW III. 242; 248 n.; 283 respectively.

48 cf. Journal A 26 July 1762, Mem. B, 196–7.

49 Trevor-Roper, ‘The Idea of the Decline and Fall’, 419.

50 English Essays, 88–95; for dating see ibid., 55–6, 559.

51 Letters nos. 76–7; in fact the first volume was published in April 1768, Norton, J. E., A Bibliography of the Works of Edward Gibbon (1940), 13Google Scholar.

52 Journal B esp. 21 March 1764.

53 Text printed in English Essays, 88–95, here 88 esp.; cf. Mem. F, 57.

54 For a particularly explicit case, Journal A II. February 1759. For the general picture of town and country activity, Mem B, C, E, 161, 273–4, 286, 302—‘the dull division of my English year’—and Letters nos. 23, 83, 165, 219, etc.

55 Add. MSS 34,800 fols. 1–159, 160–219, 220–238b respectively.

56 Garbled text in MW v. 120–69.

57 The items comprising the 1768 MS volume are in Add. MSS 34,881 and are laid out thus:

It will be observed that one page (56b–57) is missing of Gibbon's pagination. This is because, on occasion, he left a blank page between the various items, and such pages have been deleted; thus, for example, in the 1762 volume ‘Extraits raisonnés de mes Lectures’ (Add. MSS 34,880 fols. 160–219), pp. 1, 17, 32 of Gibbon's pagination are all missing for this reason.

58 Add. MSS 34,880 fol. 78b (Commonplace book 1755–8).

59 Letters no. 82.

60 It is not in G. L. Keynes, The Library of Gibbon: A Catalogue of his Books (1980 ed.), and it would appear to have been altogether a rare book in England—the earliest edition in the Bodleian Library, for example, is Paris, 1789.

61 MW III. 58.

62 ibid., III. 122–49; contra Swain, J. W., Edward Gibbon the Historian, 109Google Scholar, Baridon, M., Edward Gibbon et le Mythe de Rome (1975), 263Google Scholar.

63 cf. English Essays, 5–8, MW III. 150–69.

64 Index Expurgatorius no. 39, in English Essays, 122–3 review of Horace Walpole, Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third in MW III. 331–49. The particular ‘Noces’ handled by the Relation were, of course, those of Charles the Bold with Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV, in 1468.

65 ed. H. Beaune and J. D'Arbaumont (Société de l'Histoire de France, 1883–5), cf. III. 101–201.

66 The Relation opens with a striking obiter dictum commending the study of mæurs, arts and commerce as well as of wars and treaties (MW III. 202–3). This, like the statement in DF II. 168–9, is a useful amplification of the famous mot that ‘Wars and the administration of public affairs are the principal subjects of history’, DF I. 255 (my emphasis).

67 Above, p. 10.

68 Prof. Craddock has painstakingly traced the MS sequence of the 1759 Principes des Poids, des Monnoies, et des Mesures des Anciens (Young Edward Gibbon, 354, n. 12), but falters before the Receuil on a similar theme (ibid., 231–2). In fact, Gibbon wrote a first draft on quarto paper, Add. MSS 34,881 fols. 50-b, 36–38b, 41–b, 45b, 52, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 and then rewrote or added sections on foolscap: fols. 24–35, 42–43b. That there was no significant interval between these two stages seems to me strongly suggested by the identity of the hand, and the fact that the new material is not in any way additional matter collected and appended to the various original sections, but is directly complementary. Sections which were re-written—such as the Avant-propos—result in the original being discarded, whilst some sections in the original—such as that on l'Antiquité—were barely started, and assume the lengthy foolscap re-write which in fact took place (cf. fols. 50b, 36, 27b–35). In the final, rather messy product foolscap and quarto pages sat together, vainly awaiting the copyist.

69 i.e. back to the Principes des Poids … printed in MW V. 66–119, which can be dated to 1759 from Journal A, after 11 April 1759.

70 There is an immense and progressive change in Gibbon's hand throughout his adult life, cf. p. 20 below.

71 An exception is Bond, H. L., The Literary Art of Edward Gibbon (1960), 19–20Google Scholar. One consequence of this blind spot has been the bizarrely conceived edition of Gibbon's English Essays. Since the editor has made no sufficient consideration of Gibbon's use of language (p. vi), this is a purely miscellaneous collection of material for the period before 1772, selected on no principle. Because of his history of tacking between English and French, any edition of Gibbon's prose works must be comprehensive to be satisfactory.

72 ‘Le Séjour de Gibbon à Paris’ ed. Bonnard, G. A. in Miscellanea Gibboniana (1952), 83–107, here 93Google Scholar; cf. Principes des Poids …, MW V. 66. This principle is, of course, related to the better known ‘The style of an author should be the image of his mind’, Mem. E, 308, cf. DF III. 164 n. 61.

73 English Essays, 27–53.

74 Journal C December 1764, 236 f. The correct language would, of course, have been Italian, but Gibbon's Italian was too poor and his residence too brief, Mem. C, 267.

75 Letters nos. 108–9, and n. 2 to 108.

76 Low, D. M., Edward Gibbon (1937), 203Google Scholar. Given the paucity of evidence ‘middle’ is a mot juste: we know that Deyverdun was abroad by 22 September 1769 (Meredith Read, Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne and Savoy (1897), II. 380–1Google Scholar), but there is one other piece of information, which has been ignored hither-to, Gibbon's distinct assertion that Deyverdun was with him ‘during four successive summers’ at Buriton from 1765 (Mem. C, 273). Given Gibbon's intense interest in precise chronology, and his evident concern both in the memoirs and elsewhere always to account exactly for time spent (e.g. Mem. E, 315–6; Journal B 31 December 1763), it would be hard to overestimate the chronological nicety of the former, and every date mentioned must be taken as exact, unless proven otherwise. From this we conclude that Deyverdun was not with Gibbon in the summer of 1769, when the first English language texts were being written.

77 See the proem to the Principes des Poids, MW v. 66, for reflections on this subject in 1759.

78 contra Bond, The Literary Art of Edward Gibbon, 20.

79 Mem. C, 277 n.

80 Letters no. 80.

81 It is just possible that there was some connection between the failure of the Memoires Litteraires and Deyverdun's willingness to depart from England. There is no evidence for this, but then, as we have seen (n. 76), the whole episode is rather murky, though it is of some importance.

82 Above, p. 10.

83 Taking up Gibbon's remark in the Abstract that ‘we have only the first Volume’ of Blackstone—the second being published in 1766—Prof. Craddock has allotted that text to 1765, and this has caused her, in turn, to bunch up other texts in that year, the Receuil sur les Poids and the Relation des Noces de Charles Duc de Bourgogne (English Essays, 55, 63; Young Edward Gibbon, 231–4). But, as demonstrated in the text, both the memoirs and the existence of the 1768 MS volume indicate a later date, and so this scheme falls to the ground. Gibbon's statement that he had only the first volume of Blackstone must be taken as a simple statement about his possession, not a reference to dates of publication.

84 Mem. D, 409; text printed in English Essays, 59–87. As the memoirs make clear (loc. cit.), the Abstract was part of the process whereby Gibbon ‘adopted the style and sentiments of an English gentleman’, and had no connection with his academic development nor, in particular, his study of the Theodosian code.

85 Letters no. 196; this drew on Persian chronology as much as on the early history of Christianity.

86 English Essays, 107–29.

87 ibid., 56, 560–1.

88 No. 39 in the Index also coincides in its use of the Mémoires of Olivier de la Marche with the Relation des Noces, dated to 1768 above (p. 13); cf. English Essays, 123.

89 cf. Mem. C, D, 284–5, 411–2. The specifically Greek entries are nos. 28, 30–2.

90 English Essays, 96–106; 131–62.

91 loc. cit., (n. 75).

92 English Essays, 96, 104 n. 4.

93 cf. ibid., 93–4.

94 There are two manuscripts of the Digression, Add. MSS 34,880 fols. 264–72b; 34,881 fols. 242–8b, neither of which help us since both are written by copyists, though the first has marginal corrections by Gibbon. Craddock, , Young Edward Gibbon, 355 n. 38Google Scholar speculates that the second copy might have been made for the proposed seventh volume of Decline and Fall; this would be quite consistent with the account of vol. 7 offered below, p. 16.

95 Journal A 13 August 1761.

96 Morison, J. Cotter, Gibbon (1878), 63–5Google Scholar; Young, G. M., Gibbon (1932), 65Google Scholar; Craddock, , Young Edward Gibbon, 276, etc.Google Scholar

97 cf. Robertson, J. M., Gibbon (1925), 99Google Scholar; G. Bowersock, W., ‘Gibbon on Civil War and Rebellion in the Decline of the Roman Empire’ in Daedalus (Summer 1976), 63–71, here 63, 69–70Google Scholar.

98 cc. LXII–LXIV esp.

99 It constituted nos. 13 and 18 of a Cahier des dissertations, Add. MSS 34,880 fols. 130–41, 150–9.

100 There are two exceptions to this: (i) juvenilia of which Gibbon was ashamed, and which were superseded by later work, such as the ‘critical enquiry into the age of Sesostris, and the parallel lives of the Emperor Aurelian and Selim the Turkish Sultan’ (Mem. B, 122). The former was overtaken by Les principales Époques de l'Histoire de la Grèce et de l'Egypte and Remarques Critiques sur le nouveau Systême de Chronologie du Chevalier Newton in MW III. 150–69, both of January 1758. (ii) One mature work, ‘An ample dissertation on the miraculous darkness of the passion’ (Mem. C, 285), which is subsumed in DF II. 74–5.

101 On cc. 1–2 Letters no. 316 may be preferred to Mem. E, 308; on cc. 15–16, Mem. E loc. cit., 315–6.

102 We should remember that this account was never written. Memoir E, the only draft for the period after 1772, is the merest précis; Memoir C, which stops in effect in 1770, is fuller for our period, the Dark Ages, but it is only a first attempt. Had the spaciousness of the final Memoir F been sustained, the autobiography would have run to double the length of Sheffield's edition, the extra weight coming almost wholly in the last 20–25 years of Gibbon's life; cf. Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life ed. Bonnard, , xxiv–xxviiGoogle Scholar.

103 Letters no. 125; cf. Mem. C, 286.

104 Above p. 2; cf. p. 4.

105 Letters no. 768; the reasons why the supplementary volume was never produced are already set out in the Preface to the Fourth Volume of 1 May 1788, DF I. xlv–xlvi.

106 e.g. the Principes des Poids, des Monnoies, et des Mesures des Anciens of 1759, and the section ‘L'Antiquité’ from the Receuil sur les Poids … of 1768, Add. MSS 34,881 fols. 27b–35.

107 The identification rests on Gibbon's well-known admiration for d'Anville, e.g. DF 11. 436 n. 35, and on his previous attempt to secure maps from him for the Decline and Fall, cf. Letters no. 387.

108 loc. cit. (n. 11).

109 A treatment of the Empire which carried through to sixth- and early seventh-century Byzantium had been conventional since the Renaissance, cf. Sigonius, Historiarum de Occidentali Imperio 284—565 (1577). A corollary of this was considerable flexibility (or uncertainty) as to when the Western Empire did collapse. Robertson in his History of Charles V (1769) defined the subversion of the Empire as covering the whole period 395–571 (1. 10 n. c.). Montesquieu, in Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de leur Decadence (1734)Google Scholar was equally imprecise: in c. 19 on the fall of the Western Empire he ranges from Valentinian to Zeno, and though nominally he goes up to 1453, the death of Heraclius in 642 is reached in c. 22 out of 23, which indicates the balance of his account. A cultured member of Gibbon's literary audience, Lord Hardwicke, also considered that sixth-century Byzantine history was germane, though the rest was ‘not very interesting and often disgusting’, cf. MW II. 254–5, no. CLII. It appears, then, that an insistence on the importance of the late fifth century and the year 476 was something of an innovation by Gibbon, the product of his love of precise chronology and of his original preoccupation with Rome and the West. The full impact of this innovation was not felt until the Preface of 1776, adhered to in the terminus of volume 3 of Decline and Fall. These quite ignore 565 or 642 as markers and focus on the two dates 476 and 800. Previously, in the General Observations on the fall of the Western Empire, Gibbon had still been glancing forward (DF IV. 174), as was conventional, to the reconquest of Italy from the East, and this was the position he was driven back to in writing volume 4 (cf. p. 21 below). Nevertheless, due to the way the Decline and Fall was published, and the division marked by the insertion of the General Observations—which, of course, reflected Gibbon's intentions at that time (1781)—we still tend to regard the History as divided into two three-volume units (e.g. M. Baridon, Gibbon et le Mythe de Rome, 750); whereas, insofar as a binary division is possible, the divide must come at the end of volume 4 (cf. below p. 21). Gibbon's wavering between 476 and 642 as marker dates constitutes another striking example of his failure to control the large-scale structure of his work in advance.

110 Journal B 19 December 1763.

111 Essai c. LXXXI; DF IV. 173–4; cf. Montesquieu, Considerations …, c. 9. That this argument was an eighteenth-century commonplace can be seen from Vertot, Histoire des Revolutions arrivées dans le Gouvernement de la République Romaine (1720 ed.), Discours Préliminaire, which also locates some of its classical origins.

112 loc. cit. (n. 101).

113 G. M. Young was the first to notice and the only one to use this information, Gibbon (1932), 93; he has been followed by Swain, J. W., Edward Gibbon the Historian (1966), 124Google Scholar, and Prof. Craddock, who, however, takes before May 1774 to mean in 1774, Young Edward Gibbon, 238. Not a single author in either of the bicentennial essay collections—Daedalus (Summer 1976), ‘Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’; Gibbon et Rome à la Lumière de l'Historiographie Moderne, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des Lettres XXII, 1977—displays awareness of the correct date of the General Observations, and most assume, tacitly or explicitly, that they were written in 1781 at the end of volume 3 of the History e.g. Daedalus loc. cit., 46, 67, 81–2, 149–50, 165–6, 182–4, 239, etc.

114 Letters no. 196; for Hurd's reply, MW II. 83, no. XXXI.

115 He went up to town between 15 and 19 November: Letters nos. 205–6.

116 c. LXXXI.

117 e.g. Dawson, C., ‘Edward Gibbon’, Proceedings of the British Academy 1934, 159–80Google Scholar, here 176; Jordan, D. P., Gibbon and His Roman Empire, 70 f.Google Scholar; Daedalus (Summer 1976), 81, 149–50.

118 This point is not reached until c. 45 of the Decline and Fall (v. 34 f.).

119 cf. DF II. 67–9 and A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall… printed in English Essays, 229–313, here 268–70.

120 e.g. Macchiavelli, Discorsi II. 2. Gibbon's involvement with Macchiavelli, though unsung, was extensive, cf. Journal A ‘Ab. Nov 20th.’ 1759; Mem. B, C, 121, 267, in addition to his interest in writing a Florentine history.

121 Especially since 1759–61, Mem. B, C, 191, 249, 257.

122 Jordan, D. P., Gibbon and His Roman Empire, e.g. 14–15Google Scholar and Craddock, , Young Edward Gibbon, e.g. ix, 230, 257, 284Google Scholar are two recent and extreme examples of this tendency. Though not so vulgarly put, the underlying premisses of these books are at but one remove from those of ‘psychobiography’.

123 For some evidence of this, above p. 3, below p. 22. I find myself anticipated in this conclusion by Milman, Dean, ‘Guizot's edition of Gibbon’, Quarterly Review 50 (January 1834), 273–307Google Scholar, here 288—which authority I prefer to Baridon, M., Gibbon et le Mythe de Rome, 749 f.Google Scholar

124 cf. A Vindication, English Essays, 234; Mem. A, 353.

125 English Essays, 163–98.

126 Most frequently territorial headings are supplemented by paragraphs on learning, commerce, the feudal system, etc.

127 Craddock, , English Essays, 564–6Google Scholar seeks to trace these.

128 ibid., 195.

129 ibid., 57; cf. MW, Contents for volume III.

130 Add. MSS 34,880 fols. 239–59b.

131 cf. Add. MSS 34,886; also Letters 11 plate iv, III plate iv, Low, D. M., Edward Gibbon plate (a) opp. 258Google Scholar.

132 Letters no. 677.

133 Above, p. 2.

134 DF I. xl–xli. It is curious that G. M. Young forgot this sentence when attempting to trace the origin of the image it contains, Gibbon, 134. On Gibbon and world history cf. also Momigliano, A., ‘Eighteenth Century Prelude to Mr. Gibbon’ in Gibbon et Rome (1977), 57–70, here 69–70Google Scholar.

135 For Gibbon's prejudicial distaste for Byzantine history of this period see Letters no. 518; Preface 1 March 1782, DF I. xli.

136 cf. Dawson, , ‘Edward Gibbon’, Proc. Brit. Acad. 1934, 168–9Google Scholar.

137 Gibbon's books arrived in Lausanne on 2(?) February 1784 (Letters no. 613), but composition was not resumed until the very end of May (ibid., no. 618); the ‘A.D. 1784. July etc.’ of Mem. E, 331 is not quite accurate.

138 For example, in the period before he resumed the Decline and Fall at Lausanne, Gibbon clearly did spend time at his desk studying (Letters, no. 608); it should also be remembered that since the Outlines lack source references and are so general in content, they could have been written not only in the period February-May 1784 but also in the period before then, when Gibbon's books had not yet arrived.

139 Gibbon had one chapter of volume 4 to write after settling at Lausanne, which was finished when he resumed writing in June 1784, Mem. E, 326, cf. Norton, J. E., A Bibliography of the Works of Edward Gibbon, 57Google Scholar. If the Outlines were written in 1784, they might fall either side of this month.

140 Journal A 4 August 1761.

141 p. 15.

142 See n. 135; also Preface 1 February 1776, DF 1. xxxix–xli.