arodied in reference to
himself and Gibbon. Johnson's style was grand, and Gibbon's elegant:
the stateliness of the former was sometimes pedantic, and the latter
was occasionally finical. Johnson marched to kettledrums and trumpets,
Gibbon moved to flutes and hautboys. Johnson hewed passages through
the Alps, while Gibbon levelled walks through parks and gardens.
Mauled as I had been by Johnson, Gibbon poured balm upon my bruises by
condescending once or twice in the course of the evening to talk with
me. The great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to
the capacity of the boy: but it was done _more suo_--still his
mannerism prevailed, still he tapped his snuff-box, still he smirked
and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of
good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men. His mouth,
mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole nearly in the centre of his
visage." (Quoted in Croker's _Boswell_.)

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: Not the assembly-room of that name, but a gaming-club
where the play was high. I find no evidence that Gibbon ever yielded
to the prevalent passion for gambling.]

Now and then he even joins in a masquerade, "the finest thing ever
seen," which costs two thousand guineas. But the chief charm of it to
him seems to have been the pleasure that it gave to his Aunt Porten.
These little vanities are however quite superficial, and are never
allowed to interfere with work.

Now indeed he was no loiterer. In three years after his settlement in
London he had produced the first volume of the _Decline and Fall_: an
amount of diligence which will not be underrated by those who
appreciate the vast difference between commencing and continuing an
undertaking of that magnitude. "At the outset," he says, "all was dark
and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true aera of the decline
and fall of the empire, the limits of the Introduction, the division
of the chapters, and the order of the narrative,--and I was often
tempted to cast away the labour of seven years;"--alternations no
doubt of hope and despair familiar to every sincere and competent
student. But he had taken the best and only reliable means of securing
himself from the danger of these fluctuations of spirit. He finished
his reading and preparation before he began to write, and when he at
last put pen to paper his course lay open before him, with no fear of
sudden and disquieting stoppages arising from imperfect knowledge an