328 GIBBON. 



circumstances of his family, we find him equally moving 

 upon stilts as when recounting the fortunes of the Western 

 or the Eastern Empire. He is telling that the Gibbons 

 had been city traders ; and he says that in their days, 

 " before our army and navy, our civil establishment, and 

 India empire had opened so many paths of fortune, the 

 mercantile profession was more frequently chosen by 

 youths of a liberal race and education who aspired to 

 create their own independence. Our most respectable 

 families have not disdained the counting-house, or even 

 the shop ; and in England as well as in the Italian com- 

 monwealths, heralds have been compelled to declare that 

 gentility is not degraded by the exercise of trade." 

 (Life, sub in.) 



Such a style is prone to adopt false and mixed meta- 

 phors, and falls naturally into obscurity. The great 

 original of it, Tacitus, is a constant example of the 

 latter vice ; but Gibbon added a defect not to be found 

 in his model, or in the other object of his admiration, 

 Montesquieu : he is very often incorrect, sometimes from 

 desire of making the sense of words bend to the balance 

 of a period, or the turn of an epigram, sometimes from 

 mere carelessness or neglect. " They addressed the Pon- 

 tiff to dispel their scruples, and absolve their promises," 

 (ch. XLIX.) Dispel is not the correct word applied to 

 scruples, but to doubts ; and absolving a promise is wholly 

 senseless ; but " absolve them from a promise," is plainly 

 rejected because it would have interrupted the sj'mmetry, 

 which some would call the jingle. So he makes the 

 Emperor (ch. XVI.) not pity, but "abhor the sufferings of 

 the persecuted sect," instead of the cruelty of the perse- 

 cutors. From the same motive, speaking of Maximin's 



