University of Virginia Library

Gibbon's Revision of the Decline and Fall
by
Patricia B. Craddock

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:

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: 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:

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:

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:

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: 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, 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:

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."

Notes