SOURCE: Day, Robert Adams. “Gibbon and the Language of History.” Études Anglaises 41, no. 2 (April-June 1988): 155-64.

In the following essay, Day analyzes the vocabulary, sentence structure, and rhythms of a sample of Gibbon's prose from the Decline and Fall to show what devices Gibbons consciously used to convey his message to readers.

As recently as September 1985 a reviewer in the London Times Literary Supplement, praising J. W. Burrow's newly-published Gibbon, said that

the student will get a sharper sense of where the true vitality of the Decline and Fall resides from Burrow's book than from any comparable study,

but went on to complain:

However, although Burrow helps us to see where we may find the life of the Decline and Fall, he is not equally illuminating about the forms that life takes. There is an imbalance in his handling of the competing claims of text and context. We are...