Volume 9, Number 11 · December 21, 1967
Gibbon Made Simple
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Edward Gibbon, the Historian
by Joseph Ward Swain
St. Martin's, 176 pp., $5.75
When Gibbon, at the end of his life, began his autobiography—or rather, as he called it, his 'Memoirs of My Life and Writings'—his purpose was perfectly clear. He knew that he had written a great work of 'philosophic history.' He was confident that it would preserve his fame. He therefore decided to record the process which lay behind it. The Memoirs were not, and were not intended to be, an 'Autobiography of Edward Gibbon.' They were not concerned, except indirectly, with his personal life. Mere physical circumstances, mere social episodes are firmly controlled, excluded or subordinated to the main them. The work was a history not of the body but of the mind.
Review, 2439 words
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