on, of my historical work,
of whose limits and extent I had yet a very inadequate notion. The
Classics, as low as Tacitus, the younger Pliny, and Juvenal, were my
old and familiar companions. I insensibly plunged into the ocean of the
Augustan history; and in the descending series I investigated, with
my pen almost always in my hand, the original records, both Greek and
Latin, from Dion Cassius to Ammianus Marcellinus, from the reign of
Trajan to the last age of the Western Caesars. The subsidiary rays of
medals, and inscriptions of geography and chronology, were thrown on
their proper objects; and I applied the collections of Tillemont, whose
inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of genius, to fix and
arrange within my reach the loose and scattered atoms of historical
information. Through the darkness of the middle ages I explored my way
in the Annals and Antiquities of Italy of the learned Muratori; and
diligently compared them with the parallel or transverse lines of
Sigonius and Maffei, Baronius and Pagi, till I almost grasped the ruins
of Rome in the fourteenth century, without suspecting that this final
chapter must be attained by the labour of six quartos and twenty
years. Among the books which I purchased, the Theodocian Code, with the
commentary of James Godefroy, must be gratefully remembered. I used it
(and much I used it) as a work of history, rather than of jurisprudence:
but in every light it may be considered as a full and capacious
repository of the political state of the empire in the fourth and fifth
centuries. As I believed, and as I still believe, that the propagation
of the Gospel, and the triumph of the church, are inseparably connected
with the decline of the Roman monarchy, I weighed the causes and effects
of the revolution, and contrasted the narratives and apologies of the
Christians themselves, with the glances of candour or enmity which
the Pagans have cast on the rising sects, The Jewish and Heathen
testimonies, as they are collected and illustrated by Dr. Lardner,
directed, without superseding, my search of the originals; and in
an ample dissertation on the miraculous darkness of the passion, I
privately withdrew my conclusions from the silence of an unbelieving
age. I have assembled the preparatory studies, directly or indirectly
relative to my history; but, in strict equity, they must be spread
beyond this period of my life, over the two summers (1771 and 1772) that
elapsed betw