tate is in
accordance with the best modern standard. It might have been supposed
that a quasi-Pagan, as he avowed himself, would have emphasized Julian's
virtues and ignored his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested him
with all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and Julius Caesar, without
their defects.[128] Robertson indeed feared that he might fail in this
part of the history;[129] but Gibbon weighed Julian in the balance, duly
estimating his strength and his weakness, with the result that he has
given a clear and just account in his best and most dignified
style.[130]

Gibbon's treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian, is certainly open
to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has
incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its
salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's
love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical
criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," he
wrote, "in painting the manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form
an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.... My
English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the
obscurity of a learned language."[131] This explanation satisfies
neither Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as a
justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is really so
scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do right
to subject him to our present-day rigid tests.

There has been much discussion about Gibbon's style, which we all know
is pompous and Latinized. On a long reading his rounded and sonorous
periods become wearisome, and one wishes that occasionally a sentence
would terminate with a small word, even a preposition. One feels as did
Dickens after walking for an hour or two about the handsome but
"distractingly regular" city of Philadelphia. "I felt," he wrote, "that
I would have given the world for a crooked street."[132] Despite the
pomposity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words is a
marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change of words
will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and
selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace
philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is
truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one
feels that Gibbon look