ng Gibbon's
history, and no authority will have greater weight with those to whom
the extent and accuracy of his historical researches are known:--

"After a first rapid perusal, which allowed me to feel nothing but
the interest of a narrative, always animated, and, notwithstanding its
extent and the variety of objects which it makes to pass before the
view, always perspicuous, I entered upon a minute examination of the
details of which it was composed; and the opinion which I then formed
was, I confess, singularly severe. I discovered, in certain chapters,
errors which appeared to me sufficiently important and numerous to
make me believe that they had been written with extreme negligence; in
others, I was struck with a certain tinge of partiality and prejudice,
which imparted to the exposition of the facts that want of truth
and justice, which the English express by their happy term
misrepresentation. Some imperfect (tronquees) quotations; some passages,
omitted unintentionally or designedly cast a suspicion on the honesty
(bonne foi) of the author; and his violation of the first law of
history--increased to my eye by the prolonged attention with which I
occupied myself with every phrase, every note, every reflection--caused
me to form upon the whole work, a judgment far too rigorous. After
having finished my labors, I allowed some time to elapse before I
reviewed the whole. A second attentive and regular perusal of the entire
work, of the notes of the author, and of those which I had thought it
right to subjoin, showed me how much I had exaggerated the importance of
the reproaches which Gibbon really deserved; I was struck with the same
errors, the same partiality on certain subjects; but I had been far from
doing adequate justice to the immensity of his researches, the
variety of his knowledge, and above all, to that truly philosophical
discrimination (justesse d'esprit) which judges the past as it would
judge the present; which does not permit itself to be blinded by the
clouds which time gathers around the dead, and which prevent us from
seeing that, under the toga, as under the modern dress, in the senate
as in our councils, men were what they still are, and that events took
place eighteen centuries ago, as they take place in our days. I then
felt that his book, in spite of its faults, will always be a noble
work--and that we may correct his errors and combat his prejudices,
without ceasing to admit that few men h