In a 1951 letter to Bernard Berenson collected in Letters from Oxford (2006), the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper writes:
“I, unlike you, prefer my
books to be long (though this may be a sign of laziness: it spares one the
mental effort of repeated choice); and I am now re-reading, for the nth time,
that greatest of all historians, as I continually find myself declaring,--Gibbon.
What a splendid writer he is! If only historians could write like him now! How
has the art of footnotes altogether perished and the gift of irony
disappeared!”
A friend is reading The
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89) for the first
time. He’s gifted with a vigorous sense of humor, curiosity and brains, and is having a grand time.
Gibbon’s footnotes are virtually a genre apart, often quoted and appreciated
for their humor or snark. He was famously critical of religion and in a
footnote he writes of St. Augustine and The City of God:
“Augustin composed the
two-and-twenty books of de Civitate Dei in the space of thirteen years, A. D.
413-426 . . . . His learning is too often borrowed, and his arguments are too
often his own, but the whole work claims the merit of a magnificent design,
vigorously, and not unskillfully, executed."
Probably the best known of
Gibbon’s footnotes is this,
“Twenty-two acknowledged
concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety
of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it
appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than
ostentation.
“By each of his
concubines, the younger Gordian left three or four children. His literary
productions, though less numerous, were by no means contemptible.”
I suppose no one reads
Gibbon’s six volumes for a crash course in Roman history, though an inspired
editor might easily excerpt a book-length assortment of Plutarch-style
character studies. He’s simply compulsively readable. Trevor-Roper continues in
his letter to Berenson:
“I took a volume of Gibbon
to Greece and read it on Mount Hymettus and the island of Crete; I read it
furtively even at I Tatti, where 40,000 other volumes clamoured insistently
around me to be read: and I cannot stop reading him even now.”
In a letter to Berenson
written four months earlier, Trevor-Roper proves himself as wise as he is
well-read:
“I used to think that
historical events always had deep economic causes: I now believe that pure
farce covers a far greater field of history, and that Gibbon is a more reliable
guide to that subject than Marx.”
Trevor-Roper died on this date, January 26, in 2003 at age eighty-nine.
What a coincidence! About an hour before reading your piece, I read Joseph Epstein's essay on Gibbon in his book, "The Ideal of Culture" (which I mentioned the other day). Between the two of you, perhaps this is a sign that I need to start reading Gibbon myself. Epstein mentions that he did it by reading 20 pages per day. It took him 5 months to get through it, and he was glad he did.
ReplyDeleteThere ain’t nothin’ like Gibbon as a source of bon mots unsuitable and unwelcome at the dinner table. I often show off in public by quoting his euphemistic summary of the most memorable gesture of the short-lived emperor (that’s a common description) . Heliogbalus , who castrated himself. But in Gibbon’s masterful and discreet prose the emperor “. thought it thus prudent to remove the distemper.”
ReplyDeleteI read the first two of the six volumes over twenty years ago and enjoyed them immensely...and then the phone rang and suddenly I had a job. I've long contemplated a return and a restart, but that will probably now wait until retirement.
ReplyDeleteI started an abridged version of Gibbon (still 900+ pages!) last year, but other books came along and booted him off my reading agenda (again). Hope springs eternal, however: my Gibbon is still perched on the table next to the sofa where I do most of my reading. Maybe this year I'll at least make a further dent in it before other books once again "intrude" on my attention? In any case, I do agree that the guy is amazingly readable.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Boswell say something to the effect that Gibbon "couldn't have been afraid of Dr. Johnson, but he certainly seemed reluctant to say anything in his presence?"
ReplyDelete