THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3801, 28 August 1936, Page 11

THE ROMAN EMPIRE

GIBBON’S TRIUMPH. The first volume of Edward Gibbon’s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” which was published on 17th February, 1776, was an immediate success, though as the reading public was smaller then than when Macaulay’s “History of England” began to appear seventy-two years later, the sales were not as large as those of Macaulay’s work. It is recorded by his biographer that within the generation following first publication of Macaulay’s “History cf England”, 140,000 copies were actually printed and sold .in England alone. “My book was on every table, and almost every toilette; the historian was crowned by the taste or fashion of the day; nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking of any profound critics,” wrote Gibbon in his journal. Before beginning his great task he had spent seven years in preparing the material for it, and for some years before that he had been making notes and abstracts from his reading. Concerning the early stages of the work, he wrote in hi B autobiography:— “At the outset, all was dark and doubtful—even the title of the work, the true era cf the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narrative; and I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years. The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of languages is the fruit of exercise; many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation; three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect. On the remainder of the way, I advanced with more equal and easy pace; but the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have been reduced by three successive revisals from a large volume to their present size, and they might well be compressed without any loss of facts or sentiments.”

The bookseller to whom Gibbon submitted the manuscript of the first volume was a personal friend, but he declined the risk of publishing it. It was published by the partners Thomas Cadell, a bookseller, and William Strahan, a printer. An edition of 500 unbound copies at a guinea each was arranged, but Strahan persuaded his partner to double the number. “The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand, and the booksellers’ property was twice invaded by pirates of Dublin,” wrote Gibbon. The second and third volume of Gibbon’s history were published simultaneously five years after the first had appeared. They were not as favourably received as their predecessor. “The public is seldom wrong,” wrote Gibbon in commenting on the fact. “And I am inclined to believe that, especially in the beginning, these volumes are more prolix and less entertaining than the first; my efforts had not been relaxed by success, and I had rather deviated into the opposite fault of minute and superfluous diligence.” But they “insensibly rose in sale and reputation, to a level with the first.” The fourth volume was published in 1783, the fifth and sixth in 1785 and the final three volumes in 1788. "It was on the day or rather the night of the 27th June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden,” said Gibbon in his autobiography. “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, the silver orb of the moon was reflected on 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 sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken 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.”

During his lifetime, Gibbon received about £5OOO as his share of the profits of the sale of his history.