aged his mother tongue
better, if indeed he ever managed it so well. The little tract is
written with singular spirit and rapidity of style. It is clear,
trenchant, and direct to a fault. It is indeed far less critical than
polemical, and shows no trace of lofty calm, either moral or
intellectual. We are not repelled much by his eagerness to refute and
maltreat his opponent. That was not alien from the usages of the time,
and Warburton at least had no right to complain of such a style of
controversy. But there is no width and elevation of view. The writer
does not carry the discussion up to a higher level, and dominate his
adversary from a superior standpoint. Controversy is always ephemeral
and vulgar, unless it can rise to the discussion and establishment of
facts and principles valuable for themselves, independently of the
particular point at issue. It is this quality which has made the
master-works of Chillingworth and Bentley supereminent. The particular
point for which the writers contended is settled or forgotten. But in
moving up to that point they touched--such was their large discourse
of reason--on topics of perennial interest, did such justice, though
only in passing, to certain other truths, that they are gratefully
remembered ever after. Thus Bentley's dissertation on Phalaris is
read, not for the main thesis--proof of the spuriousness of the
letters--but for the profound knowledge and admirable logic with which
subsidiary positions are maintained on the way to it. Tried by this
standard, and he deserves to be tried by a high standard, Gibbon fails
not much, but entirely. The _Observations_ are rarely, if ever,
quoted as an authority of weight by any one engaged on classical or
Virgilian literature. This arises from the attitude of the writer, who
is nearly solely occupied with establishing negative conclusions that
AEneas was _not_ a lawgiver, that the Sixth AEneid is _not_ an allegory,
that Virgil had _not_ been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries when
he wrote it, and so forth. Indeed the best judges now hold that he has
not done full justice to the grain of truth that was to be found in
Warburton's clumsy and prolix hypothesis.[8] It should be added that
Gibbon very candidly admits and regrets the acrimonious style of the
pamphlet, and condemns still more "in a personal attack his cowardly
concealment of his name and character."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: Conington, _Introduction to the Sixth AEneid