The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-22 00:00:00

APRIL 2,1854.

masterly powers will always obtain him ad-
mirers, and while none can doubt that the
splendid monument to his fame will be coeval
with our language, the inquisitive reader will
feel a natural desire to have the results of
continental scholarship and the reflections of
posthumous criticism placed before him in
judicious comments. How does his erudition
stand the scrutinising and circumspective
gaze of critics bred in the school of Niebuhr?
Have his disguised venom and philosophic
sneer lost their dread potency over the timid
thinker and the half-educated Christian?
What is the exact logical worth of his dispa-
ragement of the evidences for the Gospel?
Such are the questions on which the buyers of
Gibbon's work will always desire the newest
information.

Both of the editions before us are of the
variorum sort, and for general circulation we do
not see any better plan than that of judiciously-
compiled notes on the " Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire." An editor perfectly
competent to undertake the trust single-
handed would be almost the equal of his
author. We cannot consider that these two
editions should be criticised as rivals, for
their merits are dissimilar, and their styles
of typography and price differ widely.
For the library Mr Murray here gives
Gibbon's great work in eight beautifully-
printed volumes, at the moderate price of
seven shillings and sixpence each. Mr. Bohn
supplies us with the same work in six vo-
lumes, of his well-known type, at three shil-
lings and sixpence each. As the second
volume of the Albemarle-street edition con-
tains the celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth
chapters, covertly attacking Christianity, we
may say a few words on the mode in which
Dean Milman has commented on the insidious
art of the specious sceptic.
We have already recorded in a cordial spirit
our very high estimate of Dean Milman as a
scholar and an author, but we have stated our
doubts whether, in a polemical encounter, his
logic has punishing power in its blow, and
whether he has the muscularity required for
grappling with a cool and sturdy opponent.
We do not think that Dean Milman has ex-
posed with adequate power the sophistry of
Gibbon. The fallacies of Gibbon sprung, in
our opinion, from two causes—firstly, from
the fact that Gibbon was deeper as a scholar
than as a thinker. Strip him of his hoarded
knowledge, of his industry, and his passion
for literary fame, and will any one say that he
had one of those deep originative intellects
that, according to the temperaments of their
possessors, shake or sustain the moral systems
of the world? It is not so much the matter
as the manner of his enigmatical assertions and
his ambiguous hints, combined with his
assumed tone of indifferency, that give such
force of artful incrimination to his attacks on
Christianity. On the events of his own age,
and on the progress of society in England,
Gibbon was by no means a deep observer, and
it would be very difficult to show that in any
high philosophical sense he even attained to a
synthesis. How much there is that is contra-
dictory in his reflections could be best seen by
attempting to collect his opinions into a code
of infidelity. Secondly : contrary to all the
rules of history, he narrates facts in a sneering
and sarcastic style, and on grave subjects the
spirit of mockery is not to be exorcised by
science. " Who can refute a sneer ?" asked
Paley, with undeniable sense, and the
school of affectedly " strong minds" (dashed
with epicurean effeminacy), to which Gib-
bon and other literary ornaments of " the
" philosophical century " belonged, too often
substituted a satirical for a critical mode of
treating speculative and moral subjects. The
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of his history
are professedly esoterical, while they are really
ambiguous, for Gibbon would. be sorely
puzzled if a philosophical " Deist asked him,
" in strict confidence," to define the exact
bounds of his opinions on the development of
the religious principle in human nature, or as
to how far " conscience " was traceable to ac-
quired perception or innate sources. Those
read in speculative, or trained in metaphysical,
studies have never held Gibbon as a philoso
pher in high respect, though paying every
credit to his honest and unborrowed learning,