298 GIBBON. 



occupation to fill up the bulk of his time, he must make to 

 himself the only substitute for it by engaging in some 

 long and laborious work. Gibbon found by experience 

 the necessity of some such resource ; and we owe to his 

 sense of it, the ' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' 

 The preparations for this great work were made with 

 deliberate care; but the composition was deferred for 

 several years, by the anxieties which his father's declining 

 circumstances as well as health occasioned. After many 

 vain efforts to mend his fortune by loans, and by parting 

 with the residence at Putney, all of which means were 

 generously seconded by the son, he died in 1770, partly 

 from mental suffering ; and it was not till two years had 

 elapsed, that the heir of a fortune, now become moderate, 

 could finally close the farming concerns of the family and 

 transfer his residence from Hampshire to London. At 

 length, in 1772, he began the work, and so little did he 

 find it easy to "hit the middle tone between a dull 

 chronicle and a rhetorical declamation," that the first 

 chapter was thrice, and the two following ones were 

 twice composed, before he could be satisfied with the 

 effect. Possibly had he given the same careful revision 

 to the subsequent chapters we should have seen a style 

 more chastened; and if his very defective taste in com- 

 position had retained the weeds which he took for 

 flowers, at least such confused metaphors would have been 

 extirpated, as " the aspect of Greek emperors towards the 

 Pope being the thermometer of their prosperity, and the 

 scale of their dynasty," (ch. Ixvi.) and " a ray of light 

 proceeding from the darkness of the tenth century ;" and 

 such enigmatical wrapping up of his meaning, as " the 

 kindred appellation of Scsevola being illustrated by three 

 sages of the law." (ch. xliv.) Certain it is that the 



