(1) Historians,
(2) Poets, (3) Orators, and (4) Philosophers, in "chronological series
from the days of Plautus and Sallust to the decline of the language
and empire of Rome." In one year he read over the following authors:
Virgil, Sallust, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus,
Suetonius, Quintus Curtius, Justin, Florus, Plautus, Terence, and
Lucretius. We may take his word when he says that this review, however
rapid, was neither hasty nor superficial. Gibbon had the root of all
scholarship in him, the most diligent accuracy and an unlimited
faculty of taking pains. But he was a great scholar, not a minute one,
and belonged to the robust race of the Scaligers and the Bentleys,
rather than to the smaller breed of the Elmsleys and Monks, and of
course he was at no time a professed philologer, occupied chiefly with
the niceties of language. The point which deserves notice in this
account of his studies is their wide sweep, so superior and bracing,
as compared with that narrow restriction to the "authors of the best
period," patronised by teachers who imperfectly comprehend their own
business. Gibbon proceeded on the common-sense principle, that if you
want to obtain a real grasp of the literature, history, and genius of
a people, you must master that literature with more or less
completeness from end to end, and that to select arbitrarily the
authors of a short period on the grounds that they are models of
style, is nothing short of foolish. It was the principle on which
Joseph Scaliger studied Greek, and indeed occurs spontaneously to a
vigorous mind eager for real knowledge.[4]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Vix delibatis conjugationibus Graecis, Homerum cum
interpretatione arreptum uno et viginti diebus totum didici. Reliquos vero
poetas Graecos omnes intra quatuor menses devoravi. Neque ullum oratorem aut
historicum prius attigi quam poetas omnes tenerem.--_Scaligeri Epistolae,
Lib. 1. Epis. 1._]

Nor did he confine himself to reading: he felt that no one is sure of
knowing a language who limits his study of it to the perusal of
authors. He practised diligently Latin prose composition, and this in
the simplest and most effectual way. "I translated an epistle of
Cicero into French, and after throwing it aside till the words and
phrases were obliterated from my memory, I retranslated my French into
such Latin as I could find, and then compared each sentence of my
imperfect version with the ease, the grac