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Home  »  Volume X: English THE AGE OF JOHNSON  »  § 14. Substantial accuracy

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume X. The Age of Johnson.

XIII. Historians

§ 14. Substantial accuracy

The capabilities of the subject, then, are of surpassing greatness; yet the mind is able to grasp it as a whole. Here, we have no mere series of annals, such as were presented even by the excellent Tillemont, to whom Gibbon was indebted for much of his material, but a complete work. Its opening chapters may fall short of the results of modern numismatical and epigraphical research; its later portions, which cover a relatively far larger ground, may show an inadequate command of the political life of the Byzantine empire and all but ignore much of the Slavonic side of its history, may inadequately appreciate the historic significance, or the individual grandeur, of the figure of Charles the great and may fail in the narration of the second and third crusades—in a word, it may need to be supplemented, repaired or changed here and there, and again and again. But it is complete even though it is imperfect. Eminent historians—Guizot, Milman, Bury—have, therefore, been willing to become Gibbon’s editors and commentators; but they have not dealt with him as he dealt with Tillemont. It is as a whole that his work has maintained the position which it conquered for itself at once in historical literature.