James Baquet

    His first book, “Essay on the Study of Literature” (1761), brought him a certain amount of temporary fame. But the lasting reputation of the British historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) rests on one work and one alone: his monumental “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a vast work that was published in six volumes over a 12-year stretch.

    Add to this the seven years he worked on it prior to the publication of Volume I and we can understand why he reflected, upon its completion, on “the recovery of my freedom,” but also felt “a sober melancholy” from “the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave from an old and agreeable companion...”

    The work was groundbreaking in numerous ways. In the first place, he used readily-available primary sources-original works by Romans--whenever he could, rather than just quoting other authorities. For another, he treated the history of Christianity as just another result of human history, and not a divine intervention in the affairs of the earth. This caused the book to banned by several countries.

    The entire project was inspired by Gibbon’s visit to “The Eternal City” (Rome) at 27. In his journal for October 15, 1764, he said he was standing “amidst the ruins of the Capitol” when he had what was later referred to as “the Capitoline vision,” the idea to write his magnum opus.

    Between that vision and its execution, there were literary failures. And just before his trip to Rome, there was a romantic failure: His father would not approve his marriage to the French woman Suzanne Curchod. Returning home, Gibbon wrote, “I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.”

    But he persevered, and the fulfillment of his vision brought both immediate and lasting fame. Prominent literary figures of his day, including Adam Smith and David Hume, praised not only its content, but its style. In later days Winston Churchill used it as a model for his own history of England, and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov admitted to “a little bit of cribbin’ from the works of Edward Gibbon” in writing his “Foundation Trilogy.”

    Gibbon’s influence lives on.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. deterioration, decrease (in power)

    2. dream, foretelling of the future

    3. large, important

    4. sadness

    5. before, in advance of

    6. cheating, copying

    7. wide, sweeping

    8. prohibited, forbidden

    9. serious

    10. eternal