Twelve years later, in 1776, Gibbon published the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and the enormous success of the work encouraged him to go on with the other five volumes, which were published at intervals during the next twelve years.  The History begins with the reign of Trajan, in A.D. 98, and “builds a straight Roman road” through the confused histories of thirteen centuries, ending with the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453.  The scope of the History is enormous.  It includes not only the decline of the Roman Empire, but such movements as the descent of the northern barbarians, the spread of Christianity, the reorganization of the European nations, the establishment of the great Eastern Empire, the rise of Mohammedanism, and the splendor of the Crusades.  On the one hand it lacks philosophical insight, being satisfied with facts without comprehending the causes; and, as Gibbon seems lacking in ability to understand spiritual and religious movements, it is utterly inadequate in its treatment of the tremendous influence of Christianity.  On the other hand, Gibbon’s scholarship leaves little to criticise; he read enormously, sifted his facts out of multitudes of books and records, and then marshaled them in the imposing array with which we have grown familiar.  Moreover, he is singularly just and discriminating in the use of all documents and authorities at his command.  Hence he has given us the first history in English that has borne successfully the test of modern research and scholarship.

The style of the work is as imposing as his great subject.  Indeed, with almost any other subject the sonorous roll of his majestic sentences would be out of place.  While it deserves all the adjectives that have been applied to it by enthusiastic admirers,—­finished, elegant, splendid, rounded, massive, sonorous, copious, elaborate, ornate, exhaustive,—­it must be confessed, though one whispers the confession, that the style sometimes obscures our interest in the narrative.  As he sifted his facts from a multitude of sources, so he often hides them again in endless periods, and one must often sift them out again in order to be quite sure of even the simple facts.  Another drawback is that Gibbon is hopelessly worldly in his point of view; he loves pageants and crowds rather than individuals, and he is lacking in enthusiasm and in spiritual insight.  The result is so frankly material at times that one wonders if he is not reading of forces or machines, rather than of human beings.  A little reading of his History here and there is an excellent thing, leaving one impressed with the elegant classical style and the scholarship; but a continued reading is very apt to leave us longing for simplicity, for naturalness, and, above all, for the glow of enthusiasm which makes the dead heroes live once more in the written pages.

This judgment, however, must not obscure the fact that the book had a remarkably large sale; and that this, of itself, is an evidence that multitudes of readers found it not only erudite, but readable and interesting.