m is of
a different sort. The only guarantee of the honesty of Tacitus, wrote
Sainte-Beuve, is Tacitus himself;[114] and a like remark will apply to
Thucydides. But a fierce light beats on Gibbon. His voluminous notes
furnish the critics the materials on which he built his history, which,
in the case of the ancient historians, must be largely a matter of
conjecture. With all the searching examination of "The Decline and
Fall," it is surprising how few errors have been found and, of the
errors which have been noted, how few are really important. Guizot,
Milman, Dr. Smith, Cotter Morison, Bury, and a number of lesser lights
have raked his text and his notes with few momentous results. We have,
writes Bury, improved methods over Gibbon and "much new material of
various kinds," but "Gibbon's historical sense kept him constantly right
in dealing with his sources"; and "in the main things he is still our
master."[115] The man is generally reflected in his book. That Gibbon
has been weighed and not found wanting is because he was as honest and
truthful as any man who ever wrote history. The autobiographies and
letters exhibit to us a transparent man, which indeed some of the
personal allusions in the history might have foreshadowed. "I have often
fluctuated and shall _tamely_ follow the Colbert Ms.," he wrote, where
the authenticity of a book was in question.[116] In another case "the
scarcity of facts and the uncertainty of dates" opposed his attempt to
describe the first invasion of Italy by Alaric.[117] In the beginning of
the famous Chapter XLIV which is "admired by jurists as a brief and
brilliant exposition of the principles of Roman law,"[118] Gibbon wrote,
"Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and candor of
history, and directed by the most temperate and skillful guides, I enter
with just diffidence on the subject of civil law."[119] In speaking of
the state of Britain between 409 and 449, he said, "I owe it to myself
and to historic truth to declare that some _circumstances_ in this
paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy."[120] Throughout
his whole work the scarcity of materials forces Gibbon to the frequent
use of conjecture, but I believe that for the most part his conjectures
seem reasonable to the critics. Impressed with the correctness of his
account of the Eastern empire a student of the subject once told me that
Gibbon certainly possessed the power of wise divination.

Gibbon's stri