University of Virginia Library

Quoted in J. E. Norton, A Bibliography of the Works of Edward Gibbon (1940), p. 94, from Gibbon's preface to the 1783 octavo edition, Vol. I, p. x. Other comments by Gibbon make it clear that he refers here only to thorough revision; he did not object to, or fail to make, small changes.

The Letters of Edward Gibbon, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), III, 142-143. Hereafter cited in the text as Letters.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), I, 2. References to the printed text of the history will hereafter be indicated in my text by volume and page, except for the notes to Volume I, which were placed at the end of the volume and which are indicated by "Notes" and the page number. The copy-text is that of the first edition, but subsequent editions have been consulted for possible substantive changes. I have followed the accidentals as well as the substantives of Gibbon's manuscript, with the following exceptions: punctuation at the ends of lines, which he often omits, I have silently supplied when there was no possibility of error; I have suppressed his note numbers, and I supplied a few missing letters in the emendation in Volume IV, which he had written on the edge of the page.

The Art of History (1926), p. 162.

Thus in second and subsequent editions. First edition has "every other virtue was almost extinguished by the progress of despotism," but Gibbon had made "minute and almost imperceptible" corrections for the second edition (Letters, II, 110) and this change is unlikely to have been a printer's invention.

The Autobiography of Edward Gibbon, ed. Dero A. Saunders (1961), p. 134.

Presumably Ferdinand IV, of Naples.