Its contribution to the Philosophy of History His grasp of the unity We are thus taken into a region of speculation where every traveller must make his own chart. But to attempt to deny a general truth in Gibbon's point of view is vain; and it is feeble to deprecate his sneer. We may spare more sympathy than he for the warriors and the churchmen; but all that has since been added to his knowledge of facts has neither reversed nor blunted the point of the "Decline and Fall". For an inquirer not blinded by religious prepossessions, or misled by comfortable sophistries, Gibbon really expounded one of the chief data with which the philosophy of history has to reckon. How are we to define progress? how recognize retrogression? Is there an end in relation to which such words have their meaning, and is there a law which will explain "the triumph of barbarism and religion" as a necessary moment in a reasonable process towards that end, whatever it may be? Some answers have been given since Gibbon's day, for which he would have the same smile as for Leo's Dogmatic Epistle. Not the least important aspect of the Decline and Fall is of history its lesson in the continuity of history, the favourite theme of Mr. Freeman. The title displays the cardinal fact that the Empire founded by Augustus fell in 1461; that all the changes which transformed the Europe of Marcus Aurelius into the Europe of Erasmus had not abolished the name and memory of the Empire. And whatever names of contempt-in harmony with his thesis-Gibbon might apply to the institution in the period of its later decline, such as the "Lower Empire," or "Greek Empire," his title rectified any false impressions that such language might cause. On the continuity of the Roman Empire depended the unity of his work. By the emphasis laid on this fact he did the same kind of service to the study of history in England, that Mr. Bryce has done in his Holy Roman Empire by tracing the thread which connects the Europe of Francis the Second with the Europe of Charles the Great. It has sometimes been remarked that those histories are purposes spirit" in the writing view Stubbs most readable which are written to prove a thesis. The in- Ulterior dictment of the Empire by Tacitus, the defence of Cæsarianism and party by Mommsen, Grote's vindication of democracy, Droysen's fo advocacy of monarchy, might be cited as examples. All these writers intended to present the facts as they took place, but all wrote with prepossessions and opinions, in the light of which they interpreted the events of history. Arnold de- Arnold's liberately advocated such partiality on the ground that "the past is reflected to us by the present and the partyman feels the present most". Another Oxford Regius Professor remarked Bishop that "without some infusion of spite it seems as if history could not be written". On the other side stands the formula of Ranke as to the true task of the historian: "Ich will bloss Ranke's sagen wie es eigentlich gewesen ist It cannot be said that Gibbon sat down to write with any ulterior purpose, but fortunately he allowed his temperament to colour his history, and used it to prove a congenial thesis. But, while he put things in the light demanded by this thesis, he related his facts accurately. If we take into account the vast range of his work, his accuracy is amazing. He laboured under some Gibbon's disadvantages, which are set forth in his own Memoirs. view accuracy knowledge had not enjoyed that school and university training in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome which is probably the best preparation for historical research. His know-Imperfect ledge of Greek was imperfect; he was very far from having of Greek the "scrupulous ear of the well-flogged critic". He has committed errors of translation, and was capable of writing "Gregory of Nazianzen". But such slips are singularly few. debt to Gibbon's diligent accuracy in the use of his materials Gibbon's cannot be over-praised, and it will not be diminished by giving Tillemont the due credit to his French predecessor Tillemont. The Histoire des Empereurs and the Mémoires ecclésiastiques, laborious and exhaustive collections of material, were addressed to the special student and not to the general reader, but scholars may still consult them with profit. It is interesting to find Mommsen in his later years retracting one of his earlier judgments and reverting to a conclusion of Tillemont. In his recent edition1 of the Laterculus of Polemius Silvius, he writes thus: 66 L'auteur de la Notice-peritissimi Tillemontii verba sunt (hist. 5, 699)-vivoit en Occident et ne savoit pas trop l'état où estoit l'Orient; ei iuvenis contradixi hodie subscribo”. It is one of Gibbon's merits that he made full use of Tillemont, "whose inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of genius," as far as Tillemont guided him, up to the reign of Anastasius I.; and it is only just to the work of the Frenchman to impute to him a large share in the accuracy which the Englishman achieved. From the historical, though not from the literary, point of view, Gibbon, deserted by Tillemont, distinctly declines, though he is well sustained through the His wars of Justinian by the clear narrative of Procopius. Relimitations Cognizing that he was accurate, we do not acknowledge by implication that he was always right; for accuracy is relative to opportunities. The discovery of new materials, the researches of numerous scholars, in the course of a hundred years, have not only added to our knowledge of facts, but have modified and upset conclusions which Gibbon with his materials was justified in drawing. necessary New methods of Some Gibbon's historical sense kept him constantly right in dealresearch ing with his sources, but he can hardly be said to have treated them methodically. The growth of German erudition was one of the leading features of the intellectual history of the nineteenth century; and one of its most important contributions to historical method lies in the investigation of sources. "Quellen German scholars have indeed pressed this "Quellenkritik" further than it can safely be pressed. A philologist, writing his doctoral dissertation, will bring plausible reasons to prove where exactly Diodorus ceased to "write out" Ephorus, whose work we do not possess, and began to write out somebody else, kritik" 1 In the Chronica Minora (M. G. H.), vol. i. 512 sqq. whose work is also lost to us. But, though the method lends itself to the multiplication of vain subtleties, it is absolutely indispensable for scientific historiography. It is in fact part of the science of evidence. The distinction of primary and derivative authorities might be used as a test. The untrained historian fails to recognize that nothing is added to the value of a statement of Widukind by its repetition by Thietmar or Ekkehard, and that a record in the Continuation of Theophanes gains no further credibility from the fact that it likewise occurs in Cedrenus, Zonaras, or Glycas. On the other hand, it is irrelevant to condemn a statement of Zonaras as made by a "modern Greek". The question is, where did he get it?2 The difficult questions connected with the authorship and compilation of the Historia Augusta have produced a chestful of German pamphlets, but they did not trouble Gibbon. The relationships of the later Greek chronicles and histories are more difficult and intricate even than the questions raised by the Historia Augusta, but he did not even formulate a prudent interrogation. Ferdinand Hirsch, thirty years ago, cleared new roads through this forest, in which George the Monk and the Logothete who continued him, Leo Grammaticus and Simeon Magister, John Scylitzes, George Cedrenus, and Zonaras lived in promiscuous obscurity. use of untrust Criticism, too, has rejected some sources from which Gibbon Example of drew without suspicion. In the interest of literature we may worthy perhaps be glad that like Ockley he used with confidence the sources now discredited Al Wakidi. Before such maintained perfection of manner, to choose is hard; but the chapters on the origin of Mahometanism and its first triumphs against the Empire would alone be enough to win perpetual literary fame. Without Al Wakidi's romance they would not have been written. * Gibbon had a notion of this, but did not apply it methodically. See in this vol., p. 448, note 60: "but those modern Greeks had the opportunity of consulting many writers which have since been lost". And see, in general, his Preface to the fourth volume of the quarto ed. Progress of textual In the study of sources, then, our advance has been great, criticism while the labours of an historian have become more arduous. It leads us to another advance of the highest importance. To use historical documents with confidence, an assurance that the words of the writer have been correctly transmitted is manifestly indispensable. It generally happens that our texts have come down in several MSS., of different ages, and there are often various discrepancies. We have then to determine the relations of the MSS. to each other and their comparative values. To the pure philologist this is part of the alphabet of his profession; but the pure historian takes time to realise it, and it was not realised in the age of Gibbon as it is to-day. Nothing forces upon the historian the necessity of having a sound text so impressively as the process of comparing different documents in order to determine whether one was dependent on another, the process of investigating sources. In this respect we have now to be thankful for many blessings denied to Gibbon and-so recent is our progress-denied to Milman Improved and Finlay. We have Mommsen's editions of Jordanes and the Variae of Cassiodorus, his Chronica Minora, including, for instance, Idatius, Prosper, Count Marcellinus, Isidore; we have Peter's Historia Augusta, Gardthausen's Ammianus, Birt's Claudian, Luetjohann's Sidonius Apollinaris; Duchesne's Liber Pontificalis; and a large number of critical texts of ecclesiastical writers might be mentioned. The Greek historians are also being re-edited. The Bonn edition of the "Byzantine Writers," issued under the auspices of Niebuhr and Bekker in the early part of the nineteenth century, was the most lamentably feeble production ever given to the world by German scholars of great reputation. It marked no advance on the older folio edition, except that it was cheaper, and that one or two new documents were included. But there is now a reasonable prospect that we shall by degrees have a complete Improved series of trustworthy texts. De Boor showed the way by his splendid edition of Theophanes and his smaller texts of Theo Latin texts Greek texts |