GIBBON. 321 



Julian's reign and of the fourth century : then the eccle- 

 siastical history goes back to the beginning of that 

 century and continues to the middle of the fifth; and 

 lastly the general narrative, thus interrupted, is again 

 taken up where it left off in Julian's reign. Thus, too, 

 the history of Mahomet and his immediate successors is 

 given apart from that of their conquests. The reigns of 

 the six caliphs who conquered Persia, Syria, Egypt, and 

 part of Africa, are all given, though shortly; and no one, 

 to read the chapter containing that history (the fiftieth), 

 would ever suspect that any of them, not even Omar and 

 Ali and Othrnan, had ever drawn a sword, though the rise 

 of their religion had been related, and even its peculiar 

 doctrines described, and though that history covered a 

 period of half a century (632 to 680). Hence anti- 

 cipation and repetition, or the choice between these and 

 obscurity, becomes unavoidable. Other defects of a like 

 description may be found out in the design ; but it must 

 on all hands be admitted, that the extraordinary nature 

 of the subject, its many scattered parts, its consisting of 

 so much possessing no interest, and yet not easy to 

 omit, with so much which, though interesting, is of most 

 difficult arrangement and compression, interposed obsta- 

 cles all but insuperable to the composition of a work 

 having any pretensions to either unity or method, and 

 the historian has been always most justly praised for 

 having approached as near as could reasonably be 

 expected to a perfection of impossible attainment. 



The great merit of Gibbon is his extraordinary in- 

 dustry, and the general fidelity of his statements, as 

 attested by the constant references which he makes to 

 his numerous and varied authorities -references which 



Y 



