326 GIBBON. 



glare may be as confused and uninteresting as darkness 

 itself. The main fault of his style is the perpetual effort 

 which it discloses. Hume may have concealed his art 

 better than Robertson, yet the latter is ever at his 

 entire ease, while Gibbon is ever in the attitudes of the 

 Academy; he is almost agonistic. He can tell nothing 

 in plain terms, unadorned with figure, unseasoned with 

 epigram and point. Much tinsel is the result; many a 

 puerile ornament; many a gaudy allusion. But the 

 worst consequence of the erroneous theory, after the 

 fatal effect of spoiling the narrative and making the 

 story be told by allusion and hint rather than his- 

 torically, is that it leads to no small obscurity in the 

 diction. This great historian furnishes an example of 

 the style so much in favour with some inferior writers of 

 a later date, the senigmatical. Forgetting that the use 

 of language is to disclose our thoughts, they seem rather 

 to adopt the politic cardinal's notion that speech was 

 given us to conceal them, and accordingly they seem at 

 the end of each fine sentence as if they cried in a tone of 

 defiance, " Find me out the meaning of that !" Of course 

 the proverbial servility of imitators has since gone very 

 far beyond the earlier examples in Tacitus, Montesquieu, 

 and Gibbon. Yet the latter has innumerable passages at 

 which we guess long ere we can be sure of their sense. 

 Another consequence of the determination to pursue the 

 same stately march on all occasions is, that the most 

 common things being wrapt up in the same dignified or 

 adorned language, the matter, beside eluding for some 

 time our apprehension, forms a contrast so ludicrous 

 with the manner, that somewhat of ridicule is produced 

 when the sense is well ascertained. 



