A History of English Literature

the opinion of competent critics without an equal in the whole field of
history except perhaps for that of the Greek Thucydides. His one great
deficiency is his lack of emotion. By intellectual processes he realizes
and partly visualizes the past, with its dramatic scenes and moments, but
he cannot throw himself into it (even if the material afforded by his
authorities had permitted) with the passionate vivifying sympathy of later,
romantic, historians. There are interest and power in his narratives of
Julian's expedition into Assyria, of Zenobia's brilliant career, and of the
capture of Constantinople by the Turks, but not the stirring power of Green
or Froude or Macaulay. The most unfortunate result of this deficiency,
however, is his lack of appreciation of the immense meaning of spiritual
forces, most notoriously evident in the cold analysis, in his fifteenth
chapter, of the reasons for the success of Christianity.
His style possesses much of the same virtues and limitations as his
substance. He has left it on record that he composed each paragraph
mentally as a whole before committing any part of it to paper, balancing
and reshaping until it fully satisfied his sense of unity and rhythm.
Something of formality and ponderousness quickly becomes evident in his
style, together with a rather mannered use of potential instead of direct
indicative verb forms; how his style compares with Johnson's and how far it
should be called pseudo-classical, are interesting questions to consider.
One appreciative description of it may be quoted: 'The language of Gibbon
never flags; he walks forever as to the clash of arms, under an imperial
banner; a military music animates his magnificent descriptions of battles,
of sieges, of panoramic scenes of antique civilization.'
A longer eulogistic passage will sum up his achievement as a whole:
[Footnote: Edmund Gosse, 'History of Eighteenth Century Literature,' p.
350.]
'The historian of literature will scarcely reach the name of Edward Gibbon
without emotion. It is not merely that with this name is associated one of
the most splendid works which Europe produced in the eighteenth century,
but that the character of the author, with all its limitations and even
with all its faults, presents us with a typical specimen of the courage and
singleheartedness of a great man of letters. Wholly devoted to scholarship
without pedantry, and to his art without any of the petty vanity of the
literary artist, the life of Gibbon was one long sacrifice to the purest
literary enthusiasm. He lived to know, and to rebuild his knowledge in a
shape as durable and as magnificent as a Greek temple. He was content for
years and years to lie unseen, unheard of, while younger men rose past him
into rapid reputation. No unworthy impatience to be famous, no sense of the
uncertainty of life, no weariness or terror at the length or breadth of his
self-imposed task, could induce him at any moment of weakness to give way
to haste or discouragement in the persistent regular collection and
digestion of his material or in the harmonious execution of every part of
his design.... No man who honors the profession of letters, or regards with
respect the higher and more enlightened forms of scholarship, will ever
think without admiration of the noble genius of Gibbon.' It may be added
that Gibbon is one of the conspicuous examples of a man whose success was
made possible only by the possession and proper use of inherited wealth,
with the leisure which it brings.
EDMUND BURKE. The last great prose-writer of the eighteenth century, Edmund
Burke, is also the greatest of English orators. Burke is the only writer
primarily a statesman and orator who can be properly ranked among English
authors of the first class. The reasons, operating in substantially the
same way in all literature, are not hard to understand. The interests with