GIBBON. 325 



a long digression on the finances of the empire, as well 

 as a history of Maxiniin, being interposed between these 

 allusions and the narrative of the death. A great and 

 just panegyric is delivered of Papinian, the greatest 

 lawyer and statesman of his age, and prime minister of 

 the Emperor Caracalla."* His death is said to have 

 caused general sorrow; but we are never told that lie 

 died, or how, and can only conjecture as most likely that 

 the tyrant put him to death for nobly refusing to follow 

 Seneca's example and defend parricide. (Chap. VI.) 

 So too in the same chapter, a minuter account with some 

 statements, and especially some notes that might have 

 been spared, is given of the monster Elagabalus. We 

 are told that he sent his portrait to Rome before he 

 marched thither in person. But the important event 

 of his going there is altogether left out, and we only 

 know it by being afterwards told of his conduct in the 

 capital. Speaking of the war of Honain, he mentions 

 the confederacy of Tayef as a thing already described 

 and known to the reader, yet it never had even been 

 alluded to. (Chap. L.) 



All this proceeds from the false notion which Gibbon 

 seems to have formed of a dignified style. He will not 

 condescend to be plain : he forgets that the very business 

 of the historian is to relate the history of events as they 

 happened. He must always shine; but labouring for 

 effect, he wholly omits the obvious consideration that 

 relief is absolutely necessary to produce it; and forgets 

 that a strong unbroken light may dazzle without pleasing, 

 or may shine rather than illuminate, and that a broad 



* So Gibbon makes him. He appears, however, to have been 

 dismissed from his office of Pr&fectus Pretoria some time before. 



