786

Gibbon's Characteristics.

273

Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," which first placed the study of political economy on a firm basis, were published. However high Gibbon's hopes may have been, the success of the first volume must have surpassed them. It created a furore comparable to that which attended the publication of Macaulay's "History of England;" three editions were speedily exhausted, and the book was to be found not only on the table of students, but in the hands of ladies and of men of fashion. It was warmly welcomed by Hume and Robertson, and met with the common penalty of success by being vigorously attacked by a host of adversaries. In 1781 the second and third volumes were published, and in 1787 the work was completed. "I have presumed," he writes in his Autobiography," "to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house at my garden [at Lausanne]. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, and the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." The publication of the last three volumes of the "History" was deferred till April 27, 1788, so as to coincide with his fifty-first birthday.

Like Macaulay, to whose character Gibbon's in several respects bore a considerable resemblance, Gibbon found the composition of his "History" less of a toil than of a pleasure. He was a thorough scholar, finding in study its own exceeding great reward, and never happier than when at his desk or en

gaged in laborious researches. In 1774 he was, by the interest of Lord Eliot, returned to Parliament, where he sat for eight sessions, steadily supporting the ministry of Lord North; for, like many who have held advanced opinions upon other subjects, Gibbon was strongly conservative in politics. When the French Revolution broke out he was panic-stricken by it to an extent altogether unworthy of his philosophical mind. Gibbon never made any attempt to win oratorical laurels. The great speakers, he said, filled him with despair; the bad ones with terror; and he therefore preferred the safe though inglorious position of a silent member to risking the consequences of a failure.

His early residence abroad gave Gibbon a fondness for Continental life; and after 1783 most of his time was passed at Lausanne, where the "Hotel Gibbon" still keeps his memory alive. There he had many friends; and as his fortune was superior to that of most of those around him, he occupied a higher relative social position than he could have done in England. In 1793 he was recalled to his native country by the death of the wife of his dear friend, Lord Sheffield. His own

death followed on 16th January 1794. Gibbon was a man of small stature, very corpulent in his latter years, and always very neatly dressed. He had a disproportionately large head, and "his mouth," writes Colman, "melifluous as Plato's, was a round hole nearly in the centre of his visage." His moral character seems to have been stainless. He was a dutiful son, and a tender and generous friend. "His honourable and amiable disposition," writes Brougham, "his kind and even temper, was praised by all."

Carlyle, in a conversation with Emerson, once described the "Decline and Fall" as "the splendid bridge from the old world to the new." It comprises the history of the world for nearly thirteen centuries, from the reign of the Antonines to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. When we consider the vastness and complexity of the subject, Gibbon's learning and power of arrangement alike inspire us with wonder. Mistakes there are, doubtless, but they are wonderfully few

Gibbon's Attitude to Christianity.

275

and insignificant. The general accuracy is such, that Niebuhr, the great German historian, declared that the more a man knew, the more he would hesitate to contradict Gibbon. The style is ornate and sarcastic; often too allusive and artificial, yet always having a certain harmony with the lofty theme. The great fault of the work arises from Gibbon's bias against Christianity. It appears clear that when he renounced Catholicism, he at the same time abandoned all religious. belief; and when he refers to Christianity, it is generally with a covert sneer. The 15th and 16th chapters of his "History," giving an account of the early progress and extension of Christianity, have been particularly objected to, and called forth a crowd of antagonists, who were, however, quite incapable of coping with so great an adversary. Gibbon maintained a disdainful silence till his veracity was attacked by the charge of false quotations, when he published his "Vindication" of the 15th and 16th chapters of his "History." "This single discharge," writes Dean Milman, "from the ponderous artillery of learning and sarcasm, laid prostrate the whole disorderly squadrons of rash and feeble volunteers who filled the ranks of his enemies, while the more distinguished theological writers of the country stood aloof." It is not specific statements, but the general character and temper of the references to Chris.ianity that are liable to attack.*

"I picked up Whitaker's criticism on Gibbon," writes Macaulay in his Diary (9th October 1858). "Pointless spite, with here and there a just remark. It would be strange if in so large a work as Gibbon's there were nothing open to just remark. How utterly all the attacks on his 'History' are forgotten! this of Whitaker, Randolph's, Chelsum's, Davies's, that stupid beast Joseph Milner's, even Watson's. And still the book, with all its great faults of substance and style, retains, and will retain, its place in our literature; and this though it is offensive to the religious feeling of the country, and really most unfair where religion is concerned."

VIII.

THE NEW ERA IN POETRY.

Percy's "Reliques ; "Warton's "History of English Poetry;" Ossian, Chatterton, Shenstone, Beattie; Blake; Cowper; Burns; Crabbe: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; Byron, Shelley, Keats; Rogers, Hogg, Campbell, Moore.

HE influence of Pope over the poets of his own age and those who came after him was far-reaching and prolonged, but it must not be supposed that it was universal. Even during his lifetime poets arose who were not animated by the same spirit, to whom "the town" and its intellectual and moral atmosphere presented few attractions, and whose verse, even while hampered by artificial shackles and disfigured by poetic commonplaces and pseudo-classicalism, deals with an altogether different range of subjects from his, and has an altogether different inner meaning and substance. This is true of the poetry of Thomson, of Collins, of Gray, who have been mentioned in a previous chapter, and it is also true of the poetry of Allan Ramsay, not so great as any of these three, but still a very remarkable poetic phenomenon, considering the age in which he lived. A Scotchman, like Thomson, he stood alone, or almost alone, among the poets who flourished from 1680 to 1730, in having a genuine love for and pleasure in natural scenery. His pastoral drama, "The Gentle Shepherd," published in 1725, is, with its freshness and simplicity of style, and its picturesque and charming delineations of country life, an almost startling

The Poetical Renascence.

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contrast to the frigid and unnatural pastoral poetry of Pope and his followers. But what perhaps tended as much as any single cause to overthrow Pope's influence, and to bring the couplet metre of which he was such a master into disgrace and almost total desuetude, was the crowd of imitators who arose during his lifetime and after his death. As Cowper says in his "Table Talk," Pope had

"Made poetry a mere mechanic art,

And every warbler had his tune by heart."

When smoothly turned and deftly rhymed couplets were used by every poetaster to give utterance to empty nothings, people began to get tired of that form of verse. But it lingered long and died hard. It was employed by Johnson, by Goldsmith, by Cowper, by Campbell, not to mention others; and its vital. ity clearly shows how popular it was at one time, and how well adapted it is for dealing with a certain class of subjects.

The decay of Pope's favourite metre, however, is but a secondary matter: much more important is the reaction which, during the last thirty or forty years of the eighteenth century, set in against the whole tone and character of the artificial school of poetry. Men began to turn with eager eyes to our older poets, too long neglected; ballads, which in Queen Anne's time would have incurred almost universal ridicule, were sought out and fondly pondered over; the great book of nature was studied with impassioned zeal; and poets, tired of conventionality, begun to aspire to portray the deeper emotions and feelings of men. As time went on, the movement became more and more powerful; one great poet after another arose, different in many ways, it may be, from his brother bards, but alike them in singing from a natural impulse, and alike them in having little or nothing in common with the preceding generation of poets. Never, save in the Elizabethan era, was there such a gorgeous outburst of song as during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century. The causes of the new movement were various; but in great measure it must be attributed to the vast upheaval of men's minds,