GIBBON. 289 



century ? The vindicator came five or six hundred 

 years too late to the defence. The champion hastened 

 to the rescue long after the fight was over, and was won. 

 His ancient reading might have reminded him of things 

 out of time and things out of place. Learning might 

 be figured addressing him with thanks, and, also, in her 

 turn, vindicating him from the charge of not knowing 

 his alphabet, as Tiberius condoled with some tardy 

 addressers from Troy, on the occasion of his son's death, 

 by condoling with them on the loss of their distinguished 

 countryman Hector. A bystander might have applied 

 to his panegyric on Letters the question put to the 

 eulogist of Hercules. 



Gibbon, himself, seems fully aware of the radical 

 defect in his work, that he applies the term "literature" 

 loosely and variously, instead of giving it a definite 

 sense. If classical learning be the principal subject of 

 his remarks, it is equally certain that he sets out with 

 resting the glory of man upon his achievements in the 

 sciences, and soon declares his regret that mathematics 

 and physics should have in modern times thrown the 

 sister branches of philosophy into the shade. His obser- 

 vations, too, are scattered over the whole range of know- 

 ledge, and not always confined to the knowledge of the 

 ancients. But suppose they were \ Who can draw the 

 line between ancient and modern, or suppose that the 

 study of the poets, the orators, the historians, the philo- 

 sophers of antiquity, can be different from the general 

 study of poetry, rhetoric, history, and philosophy? He 

 is himself quite conscious of the total want of arrange- 

 ment that pervades his work. "A number," he says, 

 "of remarks and examples, historical, critical, philoso- 



u 



