Although Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire (1776-1788) has been through many editions and
the hands of a number of learned and industrious editors, no edition appears
to have incorporated the manuscript changes in the history made by Gibbon
himself in five of the six volumes of the British Museum copy with the
shelf-mark C.60 m.1. In this new material, anyone familiar with Gibbon's
manuscripts will recognize not only his hand but also several idiosyncratic
devices for signalling additions and corrections to his text, and anyone
familiar with Gibbon's style will recognize his manner. In addition to
correcting 50-100 errors in accidentals, Gibbon made fourteen substantive
changes in this copy. Although these changes are few in comparison with
the total bulk of the Decline and Fall, they provide valuable
evidence of Gibbon's way of working and of the kinds of second thoughts
which would have influenced a full-scale revision of his
history.
Because there are no significant variations in the hand, ink, or pen of
these annotations, presumably they were all made at the same time. If so,
that time must have been after 1788, when volumes IV-VI of the composite
edition Gibbon annotated were published. But the bulk of the added material
is in the first chapter of Volume I, where Gibbon's copy is from the 1782
edition. If the hypothesis that all the notes were made at the same time is
discounted, it is possible, of course, that annotations in Volume I and in
Volume II (1781 edition) were made before 1788. A specious substance is
lent to this possibility by Gibbon's preface to volumes I-III in the octavo
edition of 1783, in which he explains that he has considered but rejected the
idea of revising these three completed volumes for the new edition. In 1783
he was still writing new volumes for his history; the last three volumes
were not published, in fact, until 1788. He "preferred the pleasures of
composition and study to the
minute diligence of revising a former publication,"
he said in that preface, and he was "unwilling to injure or offend the
purchasers of the preceding editions" by revising this one.
[1] One might conclude, then, that the
revisions in Volumes I and II were begun at this request of his publisher,
and dropped because they interested him less than did the writing of new
volumes.
But the inference is weakened by the fact that his publishers also
suggested his revising the work on several other occasions. One of these is
recorded in 1789, when Gibbon at last had all six volumes before him. If
we can know why Gibbon began to annotate his history but abandoned the
revision, the correspondence with his publisher following the 1789 request
is most likely to tell us. The fluctuations of ambition there recorded are
consistent with those implicit in the changes and with the appearance and
distribution of the annotations. On February 11, 1789, Gibbon wrote to his
publisher, Thomas Cadell:
I do not propose making any improvements or corrections in the
octavo edition [of volumes IV-VI] which you meditate: some slight
alterations would give me more trouble than pleasure. A thorough revision
of the whole work would be the labour of many months; it may be the
amusement of my old age, and will be a valuable legacy, to renew your
copy-right at the expiration of the last fourteen years . . . . Since my return
I have been, as I promise in the preface [of 1788], very busy and very idle
in my library: several ideal works have been embraced and thrown aside;
but if the warm weather should ripen any project to form and maturity, you
may depend on the earliest intelligence.
[2]
That "earliest intelligence" came, however, not with the warm weather, but
after a delay of nearly two years. On November 17, 1790, another letter to
Cadell suggests an intervening favorable consideration of the idea of
revision:
As I am inclined to flatter myself that you have no reason to be
displeased with your purchase, I now wish to ask you whether you feel
yourself disposed to add a seventh, or supplemental volume to my History?
The materials of which it will be composed will naturally be classed under
the three following heads: 1. A series of fragments, disquisitions,
digressions, &c more or less connected with the principal subject. 2.
Several tables of geography, chronology, coins, weights and measures,
&c; nor should I despair of obtaining from a gentleman at Paris some
accurate and well-adapted
maps. 3. A critical review of all the authors whom I have used and quoted.
I am convinced such a supplement might be rendered entertaining, as well
as useful; and that few purchasers would refuse to
complete
their Decline and Fall. But as the writer could not derive either fame or
amusement from these obscure labours, he must be encouraged by other
motives; and, in plain English, I should expect the same reward for the
seventh, as for any of the preceding volumes. You think and act with too
much liberality, to confound such a large original supplement with the
occasional improvements of a new edition, which are already your property
by the terms of our former covenant. But as I am jealous of standing clear,
not only in law and equity, but in your esteem and my own, I shall instantly
renounce the undertaking, if it appears by your answer that you have the
shadow of an objection. Should you tempt me to proceed, this supplement
will be only the employment of my leisure hours; and
I foresee that full two years will elapse before I can deliver it into the hands
of the printer. (
Letters, III,209-210)
Two months later, however, before Cadell had replied to the proposal,
Gibbon had again grown cold toward the idea, favoring instead other
historical projects he was then at work upon. He wrote to Cadell, "I am
curious to know your opinion concerning the nature and value of a seventh
or supplemental Volume of my history: but I much doubt whether any
prospect of advantage will now tempt me to undertake a work which cannot
be productive either of amusement or reputation to the author"
(
Letters, III,211).
The nature and distribution of the changes themselves support the
hypothesis that they were made and abandoned on such a series of impulses
as is implied in the letters to Cadell. Although Chapter I, Volume I, is by
far the most heavily annotated part of the work, the annotations, small
matters both of accidentals and of substantives, are most widely diffused in
Volume VI, as if Gibbon had read through it looking for errors of the press
and such "slight alterations" as he owed and had before given to Cadell.
The substantive changes in Volumes II, IV, and V are the sort that might
previously have occurred to Gibbon while "very busy and very idle in his
library," without his intending a thorough revision. But Chapter I contains
changes obviously prompted by the rereading and rethinking necessary for
thorough revision or for such a miscellaneous seventh volume as he
proposed. It contains, moreover, a note to himself about an addition not
actually written there which could only have
been designed for a supplementary volume. In the second paragraph, the
words "a rapid succession of triumphs" are underlined, and parallel to that
paragraph, he wrote in the margin, "Excursion 1, on the succession
of Roman
triumphs." No doubt this was intended to remind him to write
or to include the essay on the succession of Roman triumphs which
occupies pages 359-393 of the fourth volume of Lord Sheffield's 1814
edition of Gibbon's
Miscellaneous Works.
One may surmise, then, that in the winter of 1790/91, he read
through the sixth volume at length, made a few especially obvious changes
in other volumes, and began systematically to revise the work from the
beginning, only to be defeated or discouraged, as he was in all his other
literary works of these last years (Gibbon died in January, 1794) by the fact
that, as he put it, "un objet interessant s'étend et s'aggrandit sous
le
travail" and that "Le souvenir de ma servitude de vingt ans m'a . . .
effrayé et je me suis bien promis de ne plus m'embarquer dans une
entreprise de longue haleine, que je n'acheverois vraisemblablement jamais"
(Letters, III, 204, 203). Although he frequently undertook
ambitious literary projects, and pursued them enthusiastically and
energetically for a time, none, after the Decline and Fall, was
completed to his own satisfaction, except his reluctant
Vindication of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters.
Within these annotations there is explicit as well as implicit evidence
that he knew they too were an ambitious project. In one of the first he
remarked, "Mr. Hume told me that in correcting his history, he always
laboured to reduce superlatives, and soften positives." Hume's is a general
principle designed to assist a thorough revision; it would have been
irrelevant if Gibbon had thought only of correcting the most egregious
errors. Indeed, Gibbon had long before distinguished in practice between
correcting "in a minute and almost imperceptible way"
(Letters,
II,110) as he had cheerfully done in the past and correcting in a thorough
way, against which the interests of earlier purchasers had militated. But
Gibbon's practice in these annotations, though ambitious, is by no means
conformable throughout to Hume's precept. Sometimes he labours to soften
positives and to reduce superlatives, sometimes he simply mutters
regretfully to himself in the margin, sometimes he corrects
errors of fact or emphasis, sometimes he supplies new facts or reflections,
and sometimes he defies Hume's rule by making an assertion more
sweeping or more bitingly ironic.
As one would expect, he followed Hume's advice on the occasion
when he cited it. The new restraint comes, interestingly enough, in his
description of the importance of his subject. In print, the last sentence of
his first paragraph had announced the aim of his history, after the
characterization of the prosperity of the empire under Nerva, Trajan,
Hadrian, and the two Antonines, as "to deduce the most important
circumstances of [the empire's] decline and fall; a revolution which
will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth."
[3] In the manuscript additions, he
revised
these lofty and important lines to read, "And afterwards, from the death of
Marcus Antoninus, to prosecute the decline and fall of the Empire of Rome:
of whose language, Religion and laws the impression will be long preserved
in our own, and the neighbouring countries of Europe." Having moderated
his claims to his readers, he added the note in which he reminded himself
of his illustrious model. This part of the material was not apparently
intended for publication (none of his usual means of indicating its placement
in, or as a note to, the text are used), but in it he indulges the delight in
grandeur which, throughout his work, corrects and complements his love
of precision and distaste for exaggeration. "N.B.," he began, and then
recorded both Hume's advice and his own reflections: "Mr. Hume told me
that in correcting his history, he
always laboured to reduce superlatives, and soften positives. Have Asia and
Africa, from Japan to Morocco, any feeling or memory of the Roman
Empire?" The rhetorical exaggeration by which "ever" was originally used
instead of "long" and "nations of the earth" instead of "countries of
Europe" was hardly seriously misleading (though his adversaries had split
finer hairs); his primary concern seems, therefore, to have been rhetorical
tact, not historical accuracy. From the vantage point of acknowledged
success, he could prefer to appear restrained, rather than hyperbolic, in his
initial statement of the significance of his work.
Second thoughts sometimes, however, engendered not merely
rhetorical restraint, but new caution about his conclusions and their
foundations, his utilization of his sources. In the printed versions, he
showed little hesitation in committing what J. B. Black calls the "crime of
combining evidence derived from different periods in order to fill out the
paucity of information available on the subject he happened to be
handling,"[4] the fault in the practice
of his craft most universally condemned in Gibbon. In the seventh
paragraph of the
first chapter, for example, he had said, "The first exploits of Trajan were
against the Dacians, the most warlike of men, who dwelt beyond the
Danube, and who, during the reign of Domitian, had insulted with impunity
the Majesty of Rome. To the strength and fierceness of Barbarians, they
added a contempt for life, which was derived from a warm persuasion of
the immortality and transmigration of the soul" (I,5). The note for this
passage was only, "Herodotus, 1. iv. c. 94. Julian in the Cæsars, with
Spanheim's observations" (Notes, ii).
In the revision, he planned to retain this passage, but to add a note
embodying the reasons for his original confidence and his new reservations:
Julian assigns this Theological cause of whose power he himself
might be conscious (Caesares p. 327.) Yet I am not assured that the
Religion of Zamolxis subsisted in the time of Trajan, or that his Dacians
were the same people with the Getæ of Herodotus. The transmigration
of the Soul has been believed by many nations, warlike as the Celts, or
pusillanimous like the Hindoos. When speculative opinion is kindled into
practical enthusiasm, its operation will be determined by the prævious
character of the man or the nation.
It is interesting to see that Gibbon had begun to distrust the practice for
which he was to be condemned; he hesitated, even with Julian's authority,
to combine the testimony of Herodotus (fifth century B.C.) and that of
Julian (fourth century A.D.) to draw conclusions about the Dacians of
Trajan's time (c. 52-118). Julian was influenced by his own experience,
Gibbon points out with his usual dry irony, in finding this conclusion
probable. But Gibbon's experience, especially his literary experience,
forced him to recognize a different standard of probability, as his last two
sentences show. The rhetoric is assured; he propounds an axiom. But the
axiom itself is moderate compared to that he might have propounded in
earlier moods of zealous contempt for zeal. He now seems resigned to the
recognition that enthusiasm, or excessive zeal, is not always caused by
religious faith or accompanied by destructive effects. In the
Decline
and Fall he had gone so far as to admit (in a
footnote) that "in his way, Voltaire was a bigot, an intolerant bigot"
(Chapter LXVII, note 13). But in this revision he apparently had accepted
as a rule, not the exception, the absence of a predictable correlation
between zeal and destruction, moderation and achievement; the operation
of either is determined by the underlying character of the man or nation.
Whether he interpreted Hume's advice to include reconsideration of
conclusions drawn from
a priori assumptions about human
behavior, or whether his own increasing knowledge
of historical diversity forced him to such reconsiderations, their product
would certainly have required a seventh volume and two years, at the most
optimistic estimate.
The revisions reveal not only new questioning of his procedures and
conclusions, but also new candor about doubts concealed in the printed text.
Whereas before Gibbon had felt free simply to rely upon his sense of the
probable, even when silently concealing the opposition of a usually trusted
source, now he seems inclined to admit and explain his problem and its
resolution. No fact is in dispute, but in the third paragraph of the first
chapter, a fact occurs which had been explained by Tacitus, a favorite
source, in a way which seemed illegitimate to Gibbon. The Decline
and Fall as printed says that Augustus "bequeathed, as a valuable
legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those
limits, which Nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and
boundaries" (I,3). In it Gibbon gives no hint of Tacitus' theory about
Augustus' motives. The new note reveals both what Tacitus thought and
why Gibbon was reluctant to accept it: "Incertum metu an
per invidiam (Tacit. Annal. I. 11) Why must rational advice be imputed to
a base or foolish motive? To what cause, error, malevolence or flattery
shall I ascribe this unworthy alternative? Was the historian dazzled by
Trajan's conquests?" Here Gibbon questions the reliability of a source,
albeit only on a matter of interpretation, on the grounds that the source
might well be prejudiced and that general experience of human nature leads
one to object to the source's conclusion. Gibbon's principle, that rational
advice ought not to be attributed to base motives without evidence, is
candidly admitted in the revision; it was silently acted upon in the original
text, though Gibbon preserved in the next paragraph both his own and
Tacitus' opinion about the motivation by ascribing them respectively to
Augustus and to his successors ("the moderate system recommended by the
wisdom of Augustus, was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate
successors"). The new frankness is both more
accurate and more tentative than the original smooth compromise.
Gibbon did not confine his revision to moderating generalizations to
allow for particular cases, however; in one instance, he corrected his own
injustice to mankind's general standard of judgment. In the eighth paragraph
of Chapter I, Gibbon had said, "Trajan was ambitious of fame; and as long
as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their
destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever
be the vice of the most exalted characters" (I,6). Here, after changing
"characters" to "minds," he
added a manuscript note: "The first place in the temple of fame is due and
is assigned to the successful heroes who had struggled with adversity; who,
after signalizing their valour in the deliverance of their country have
displayed their wisdom and virtue in foundation or government of a
flourishing state. Such men as Moses, Cyrus, Alfred, Gustavus Vasa,
Henry iv of France &c." This qualification not only interrupts his
indictment of humanity, but also weakens or destroys the logic of his
conclusion. If mankind praises most those whose destructive activities are
less important than their constructive ones, then some exalted minds or
characters may long to be remembered for civil, not military, glory.
Nevertheless abstract justice required the acknowledgement of this other
kind of hero, if only in a note.
In the same paragraph Gibbon had also overstated the influence of the
poets' and historians' praise of Alexander in causing Trajan's dangerous
ambitions. Surely Gibbon had to correct the injustice to that class of
mankind with which he most sympathized, when he corrected the slur upon
man as a whole. He had said, "The praises of Alexander, transmitted by a
succession of poets and historians, had kindled a dangerous emulation in the
mind of Trajan. Like him the Roman emperor undertook an expedition
against the nations of the east, but he lamented with a sigh that his
advanced age scarcely left him any hopes of equalling the renown of the
son of Philip" (I,6). The revised version is actually bolder in rhetoric, but
the boldness makes Gibbon's jocularity apparent; it is interesting to see him
correcting a subtle distortion such as ambiguity of tone, not just large errors
of fact or changes of emphasis and opinion. The manuscript version reads:
Late generations, and far distant climates may impute their calamities
to the immortal author of the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander was inflamed
by the praises of Achilles: and succeeding Heroes have been ambitious to
tread in the footsteps of Alexander. Like him the Emperor Trajan aspired
to the conquest of the East; but the Roman lamented with a sigh that his
advanced age scarcely left him any hopes of equalling the renown of the
son of Philip.
The earlier version had overstated the relationship between Trajan's
ambitions and the praises given to Alexander, by making the parallel
unique. The newer version corrects this fault by adding the parallel between
Achilles and Alexander, and prevents a rigidly literal and didactic
interpretation of the passage by means of the playful accusation against
Homer.
A similar concern for correction of overstatement, especially
oversimplification, is shown in the only change in Volume V, a
geographical emendation. In describing the realm of the Arabs he had
remarked hastily that on what "is still called Algezire," "they bestowed the
name of the Green Island, from a verdant cape that advances into the sea"
(V,36; Chapter LI). He marked out the last five words in order to indicate
a distinction still important, especially to Englishmen, by substituting, "and
small isle on the western side of the bay of Gibraltar."
Even the pettiest of these newly drawn or newly cautious distinctions
illustrates a general historical principle of prudence and reserve; one
distinction explicitly prefers that principle to a theory of historical causation
popular in Gibbon's day. Gibbon may be granted the virtues of his faults,
and if he is blamed for not discovering or arguing an adequate general
cause for the fall of Rome, at least it must also be admitted that he did not
reject the will of God as a practical historical explanation only to accept
equally impractical, but more speciously scientific, facile explanations. The
revisions of the first chapter provide an example of Gibbon's care to reject
simplistic explanations. In the thirteenth paragraph he had said, "In all
levies [of soldiers under the Republic], a just preference was given to the
climates of the North over those of the South" (I,9). His new note added:
The distinction of North and South is real and intelligible; and our
pursuit is terminated on either side by the poles of the Earth. But the
difference of East and West is arbitrary, and shifts around the globe. As the
men of the North not of the West the legions of Gaul and Germany were
superior to the south-eastern natives of Asia and Egypt. It is
the
triumph of cold over heat; which may however and has been surmounted
by moral causes.
His method of evaluating the doctrine is implicit in this comment. He asks
himself to what extent the distinctions to be tested actually can be made;
once made, what is the evidence of experience as to their validity; how did
that validity operate; what limitations of the principle are observed. Thus
he concludes that cold will and does triumph over heat, without being
beguiled into mistaking a useful generalization for a universal law.
Other substantive changes show, like those discussed above, that
Gibbon would never have been content with a revision upon limited
rhetorical principles, but the revisions so far can be reconciled to an
extended application of Hume's principle, to matter as well as manner. The
rest of the revisions cannot have been suggested by Hume's advice,
either because they make the rhetoric more emphatic and sweeping or
because they show Gibbon finding new material relevant to his history, not
just qualifying that already within it. In the first annotation in Volume I, he
expresses, almost in soliloquy, an irremediable regret that he could not
radically alter the scope of his work. After changing his reference to the
happy ages from Nerva through Marcus Antoninus to read, "the prosperous
condition of their times," instead of "the prosperous condition of their
empire" (Chapter I, first paragraph), he remarked in the margin, in another
passage probably never intended for publication:
Should I not have given the history of that fortunate
period which was interposed between two Iron ages? Should I not have
deduced the decline of the Empire from the civil Wars, that ensued after the
fall of Nero or even from the tyranny which succeeded the reign of
Augustus? Alas! I should: but of what avail is this tardy knowledge? Where
error is irretrievable, repentance is useless.
He regretted that he could not now alter the scope of his history, but it is
apparent that he saw beginning his history earlier, just after Nero (d. 68
A.D.) or just after Augustus (d. 14 A.D.) as a desirable improvement, not
as a new definition of the true significance of his subject. By "deduce"
Gibbon always means "to bring down (a record) from or to a particular
period" (OED), not "to find the cause, source, explanation (of a subsequent
event) in that period." He is saying, then, that a description of the earlier
times would have been relevant to his theme, not that his location of the
cause of the decline of the empire had been erroneous. He does not think
of himself as having redefined the thesis of his work, but only as having
omitted potentially valuable support for it. As the condition of the empire
after Augustus or Nero but before Nerva could not be considered relevant
to a description of the "triumph of barbarism and religion," it is obvious
that Gibbon, at least, did not
consider that famous phrase a description of the ultimate cause of the fall
of the empire. This manuscript note, then, provides new evidence of the
invalidity of one popular interpretation of Gibbon's thesis. The tone of the
note, regretful but calm, confirms the impression that Gibbon had discerned
not an untenable thesis, but a lost opportunity, and his continuing the
ambitious revision, albeit only to the end of the chapter, is itself evidence
that he saw no need to despair.
Many of the additions intended for publication correct and extend the
factual material of the history from the knowledge Gibbon continued to
acquire. Individually these factual changes are not very
interesting, but together they testify to the extent and solidity of the
foundation for his massive work. In Chapter I, paragraphs sixteen and
seventeen, he made two additions to his already formidable account of the
formation of the Roman army. The first note is added to "The heavy-armed
infantry . . . was divided into ten cohorts, and fifty-five companies, under
the orders of a correspondent number of tribunes and centurions" (I,12).
According to the new note,
The composition of the Roman officers was very faulty. 1. It was late
before a Tribune was fixed to each cohort. Six tribunes were chosen for the
entire legion, which two of them commanded by turns (Polyb. L vi p 526
Edit Schweighœuser) for the space of two months. 2. Our long
subordination from the Colonel to the Corporal was unknown. I cannot
discern any intermediate ranks between the Tribune and the Centurion the
Centurion, and the Manipularis or private legionary. 3 As the Tribunes
were often without experience, the Centurions were often without
education, mere soldiers of fortune who had risen from the ranks (eo
immitior, quia toleraverat. Tacit. Annal 1.20). A body equal to eight or
nine of our battalions might be commanded by half a dozen young
gentlemen and fifty or sixty old serjeants.
This technical aside may have seemed necessary to Gibbon because of his
subsequent claim that "Such were the arts of war, by which the Roman
emperors defended their extensive conquests, and preserved a military
spirit, at a time when every other virtue was oppressed by luxury and
despotism" (I,16).
[5] Even in the
printed version he had described this defect in discipline in connection with
the Roman cavalry; "whenever [wealthy members of the equestrian order]
embraced the profession of arms, they were immediately intrusted with a
troop of horse, or a cohort of foot" (I,14). The note, number 53, attached
to this passage had begun, "As in the instance of Horace and Agricola"
(Notes, iii). For that casual phrase Gibbon substituted, "Quôd mihi
pareret legio Romana Tribuno. (Horat Serm. L i.vi, 45); a worthy
commander, of three and twenty from the schools of Athens! Augustus was
indulgent to noble birth, liberis Senatorum . . . militian auspicantibus non
tribunatum modo legionum sed et præfecturas alarum dedit (Sueton. C
38)." This addition, like the other military disquisition, substantiates
Gibbon's remark in the
Autobiography, "the captain of the
Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has
not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire."
[6]
The last addition in the first chapter is, appropriately enough, a
geographical quibble; even before the idea of writing the history of Rome
had occurred to him, Gibbon laboriously studied the geography of ancient
Italy. This geographical remark, however, concerns Africa, not Italy, and
amplifies a note explaining why he considered Mount Atlas "a name . . .
idly celebrated by the fancy of poets" (I,26). Note 86 had said, "The long
range, moderate height, and gentle declivity of mount Atlas (see Shaw's
travels, p. 5.) are very unlike a solitary mountain which rears its head into
the clouds, and seems to support the heavens. The Peak of Teneriff, on the
contrary, rises a league and a half above the surface of the sea, and as it
was frequently visited by the Phœnicians, might engage the notice of the
Greek poets" (Notes, v). Underlining the phrase, "a league and a half above
the surface of the sea," Gibbon added in the margin, "More correctly,
according to Mr. Bouguer, 2500 Toises
(Buffon Supplement Tom. V p 304). The height of Mont Blanc is now fixed
at 2426 Toises. (Saussure Voyage dans les Alpes Tom 1 p 495): but the
lowest ground from whence it can be seen is itself greatly elevated above
the level of the sea. He who sails by the isle of Teneriff, contemplates the
entire Pike, from the foot to the summit." Mere statistics will not induce
Gibbon to forsake his intuition — but he thinks his reader should
know
what the statistics are.
Gibbon's eagerness to add more facts to his history even manifests
itself in the Preface to Volume IV, where his manuscript changes adjust a
grammatical nicety and clarify Gibbon's relationship with Lord North by
enumerating dates and titles. "Lord North," he had said, "will permit me
to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth: but even truth
and friendship should be silent, if he still dispensed the favours of the
crown" (p. iv). The last sentence is corrected to read, "should have been
silent, as long as he dispensed the favours of the crown," and the position
occupied by Lord North which precluded his praise in Gibbon's earlier
prefaces is explained: "In the year 1776 when I published the first Volume,
in 1781 when I published the second and third, Lord North was first Lord
of the treasury. I was his friend and follower, a Member of parliament and
a Lord of trade: but I disdained to sink the Scholar in the politician."
Small improvements in accuracy and clarity, and short additions of
fact, testify to Gibbon's concern for minute correctness. In Chapter LXX,
he corrected an awkward and inaccurate repetition by making a clause read,
"Whatever may be the private taste of a stranger, his
slight and superficial knowledge should humbly acquiesce in the judgment
of a learned nation," instead of "in the taste of a learned nation" (VI, 567).
For the ambiguous "the brevity of their domestic annals" he substituted the
clear designation, "the Mogul annals," and he added the Japanese to the list
of peoples who supply information about the triumphs of the Moguls
(VI,292). "Each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own
disasters and defeats," he had remarked, and added in a new marginal note,
"The zeal and curiosity of Europe soon explored the Empire of the Great
Khan; and the monuments of Tartar history have been illustrated by the
learning of modern times" (VI,293). Together all these changes illustrate
both scholarly industry and the temptation toward pedantry, between which
Gibbon's erudition usually chose triumphantly.
The remaining alterations tend to increase rather than to moderate the
positiveness of Gibbon's assertions and the severity of his irony. The single
addition in Volume II adds more vigor and immediacy to Gibbon's
portrayal of the unique merit of the emperor Julian. In the last paragraph
of Chapter XXII, Gibbon had remarked, "The generality of princes, if they
were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would
immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging
from their obscurity. But the personal merit of Julian was, in some
measure, independent of his fortune" (II,353). In the manuscript addition
Gibbon amplified his praise by scornfully contrasting the vanities of a
monarch of the past and one of the present with Julian's real merit, and by
finding only Frederic the Great comparable to Julian among modern rulers:
Το ΤΕχνιον
πασα γαια τρε was the boast and comfort of Nero the
musician (Sueton. C 40). But the applause of venal or trembling crowds
was dispelled by the first manifesto of the Rebels, which pronounced him
a most execrable performer; (C 41) and could he have survived his descent
from the throne, it is more than probable, that he would have been hissed
from the stage. The present King of N
[7] is satisfied that, in case of a
revolution,
he could subsist by the trade of a fisherman or a pastry-cook. Perhaps he
would be disappointed. The amusement of an hour must not contend with
the labour of a life. Frederic alone, of the monarchs of the age, was
capable, like Julian, of making his own fortune.
The rhetoric retains an air of restraint ("perhaps he would be
disappointed"), but the praise is more emphatic, not more restrained, than
in the earlier version.
The longest change in Volume VI, the one that might represent his
becoming interested in doing more than correcting the errors of
the press, is a more dramatic expression of the credulity of the Crusaders,
in Chapter LXI. He had said, "The principle of the crusades was a savage
fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.
Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of
Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train
of miracles and visions" (VI, 209). The reference to note 67 was placed
after "Palestine," and the note read, "Such was the opinion of the great
Leibnitz (Oeuvres de Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 458.), a master of the history
of the middle ages. I shall only instance the pedigree of the Carmelites, and
the flight of the house of Loretto, which were both derived from Palestine."
He marked out the second, colorless sentence and added, after "visions" in
the text itself, "A cross, or a crown of thorns might be easily transported;
since the house of the Virgin Mary was carried through the air two
thousand miles, from Nazareth to
Loretto, a perpetual monument of priestly fraud, and popular credulity."
Here he has actually deleted material (the pedigree of the Carmelites) in
order to emphasize his ironic response through heightened rhetoric.
Had Gibbon revised the whole Decline and Fall with
the
thoroughness and variety of concern which he demonstrated in the revisions
of the first chapter and suggested in the other substantive changes, the
results of his labors might very probably have filled more than one volume,
even without the other material he proposed to Cadell. The volume would
have been shapeless and chaotic, of course, in the form Gibbon envisaged,
and indeed it is hard to imagine how he could have satisfied his own sense
of order and rational coherence without inserting the changes directly into
their original contexts. It seems significant that he never followed
"Excursion 1" with an "Excursion 2." Perhaps the inherent hopelessness of
dealing with material important to the Decline and Fall
outside
that mammoth structure sufficiently explains his abandoning the task.
Perhaps too, it ought to have deterred me from attempting to describe the
results of Gibbon's efforts. Certainly these changes
should have been incorported in a modern edition of the history. But in the
absence of such an edition, this description at least permits readers "to
complete their Decline and Fall."