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.Gibbon did not carry out this project, and wemay emphasise either that he gave it up in 1767,t t or that he did not giveit up till then.There was coming to exist by that time a category of grandEnlightened histories, which began with the fall of the western empire,the formation of the Latin church, the barbarian invasions and thegrowth of feudal tenures, and ended with the emancipation of theEuropean states from the ecclesiastical and feudal orders.To thatcategory the history of Swiss liberty would have belonged if it had beencompleted.To that category the Decline and Fall was rapidly and hascontinued to be assigned, though there are important senses in which itdoes not belong there.The major works composing that category are allmentioned in Gibbon s first volume, and played parts of widely varyingimportance in making it what it was and is.For these reasons the nextvolume of this project will consist of detailed studies of these great works,from Giannone and Voltaire to Hume, Robertson and Ferguson; notbecause they were crucial (though some of them were) in determininghow the Decline and Fall came to be, but because they are crucial incharacterising what it came to be and what it is.This study of Enlighten-ment historiography, ranging far beyond matters of immediate concernto Gibbon, provides one of the most important contexts in which theDecline and Fall can be viewed and understood; because it is in its way agreat Enlightened narrative, and we need to understand the ways int ³ Ghosh, 1983, p.4.t t His own account is in Memoirs, pp.141 2 (A, pp.276 7, Memoir C). The journey to Rome 291which it is like and unlike the others, just as we have been consideringthe ways in which it is and is not a product of the erudition Gibbonsought to practice and defend.At the end of the next volume, we shallconsider the formation of the Decline and Fall in the light it may haveshed. epilogueGibbon and the rhythm that was differentFrom Rome and from excursions to Naples and Venice Gibbonreturned to Hampshire by way of Paris, where he spent a fortnight in thecompany of bothMadame Bontemps and Madame Necker, as SuzanneCurchod had by now become.¹ There is little sign that he renewed hisexplorations of the société des gens de lettres, and he did not visit Paris againuntil 1777, or Lausanne until 1783.From 1765 begins the middle periodof Gibbon s life, during which the Decline and Fall took shape and half ofit was written.These eighteen years present many problems to the critic,biographer and historian, not least because we are no longer informedby journals in which Gibbon recorded his doings, readings and reflec-tions; there are only a number of historical essays, not always easy todate,² what can be learned from his letters, and the Decline and Fall itself.The years from 1765 to 1776, when the first volume of his historyappeared, have been dubbed Gibbon s dark ages ,³ not only becausethe formation of his project and intentions is ill documented andobscure to us, but because it may as the Memoirs sometimes indicate have been obscure to Gibbon himself.t Some generalisations are,however, permissible.There is a process of self-fashioning, freed ofmany inhibitions by the death of Edward Gibbon II, in which Gibbonsolved his problem of being both gentleman and historian by moving toLondon, living off the income from leasing his estate, and moving in thecircles of the Literary Club and the House of Commons (to which hewas elected by a patron in 1774).About this time he jokingly describedhimself as an Englishman, a philosopher, and a Whig ,u as if his identitywere settled; but in 1776, with the publication of his first volume, he¹ Memoirs, p.137 (A, p.271); Letters, pp.199 201; YEG, pp.227 8; Baridon, i, pp.122 4.² These are to be found, as dated by Lord Sheffield, in MW, iii v; Craddock s English Essays is acritical edition of those in that language.A complete edition of Gibbon s essays in both French andEnglish is much to be desired.³ Ghosh, 1983.t Memoirs, pp.136 7, 140 2 (A, pp.275 6), 146 7 (A, pp.283 5), 155 6 (A, p.308).u Letters, ii, p.6 (11 March 1774).292 Gibbon and the rhythm that was different 293further became, and remained after death, the Historian of the RomanEmpire.The fashioning of the self and the persona is inseparable fromthe fashioning of the text and the history, and the latter has a great dealto tell us besides information about the former; Gibbon had more toattend to in this world than his own identity
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