d
need of further inquiry. It is a pity that we cannot follow the
elaboration of the work in detail. That portion of his Memoirs in
which he speaks of it is very short and fragmentary, and the defect is
not supplied by his letters. He seems to have worked with singular
ease and mastery of his subject, and never to have felt his task as a
strain or a fatigue. Even his intimate friends were not aware that he
was engaged on a work of such magnitude, and it is amusing to see his
friend Holroyd warn him against a hasty and immature publication when
he learned that the book was in the press. He had apparently heard
little of it before. This alone would show with what ease and
smoothness Gibbon must have worked. He had excellent health--a strange
fact after his sickly childhood; society unbent his mind instead of
distracting it; his stomach was perfect--perhaps too good, as about
this time he began to be admonished by the gout. He never seems to
have needed change. "Sufficient for the summer is the evil thereof,
viz., one distant country excursion." There was an extraordinary
difference in this respect between the present age and those which
went before it; restlessness and change of scene have become almost a
necessity of life with us, whereas our ancestors could continue
healthy and happy for months and years without stirring from home.
What is there to explain the change? We must not pretend that we work
harder than they did.[10] However, Gibbon was able to keep himself in
good condition with his long spell of work in the morning, and his
dinner-parties at home or elsewhere in the afternoon, and to have kept
at home as much as he could. Whenever he went away to the country, it
was on invitations which he could not well refuse. The result was a
leisurely, unhasting fulness of achievement, calm stretches of
thorough and contented work, which have left their marks on the
_Decline and Fall_. One of its charms is a constant good humour and
complacency; not a sign is visible that the writer is pressed for
time, or wants to get his performance out of hand; but, on the
contrary, a calm lingering over details, sprightly asides in the
notes, which the least hurry would have suppressed or passed by, and a
general impression conveyed of thorough enjoyment in the immensity of
the labour.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: The most remarkable instance of all is the case of
Newton, who, according to Dr. Whewell, resided in Trinity College "for