ed upon his work as very serious, and thought with
Thucydides, "My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize
composition which is heard and forgotten."

To a writer of history few things are more interesting than a great
historian's autobiographical remarks which relate to the composition of
his work. "Had I been more indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in
his Autobiography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or the
perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history."[133]
"Notwithstanding the hurry of business and pleasure," he wrote from
London in 1778, "I steal some moments for the Roman Empire."[134]
Between the writing of the first three and the last three volumes, he
took a rest of "near a twelvemonth" and gave expression to a thought
which may be echoed by every studious writer, "Yet in the luxury of
freedom, I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which
gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry."[135] Every
one who has written a historical book will sympathize with the following
expression of personal experience as he approached the completion of
"The Decline and Fall": "Let no man who builds a house or writes a book
presume to say when he will have finished. When he imagines that he is
drawing near to his journey's end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually
finds something to add and something to correct."[136]

Plain truthful tales are Gibbon's autobiographies. The style is that of
the history, and he writes of himself as frankly as he does of any of
his historical characters. His failings--what he has somewhere termed
"the amiable weaknesses of human nature"--are disclosed with the
openness of a Frenchman. All but one of the ten years between 1783 and
1793, between the ages of 46 and 56, he passed at Lausanne. There he
completed "The Decline and Fall," and of that period he spent from
August, 1787, to July, 1788, in England to look after the publication of
the last three volumes. His life in Lausanne was one of study, writing,
and agreeable society, of which his correspondence with his English
friends gives an animated account. The two things one is most impressed
with are his love for books and his love for Madeira. "Though a lover of
society," he wrote, "my library is the room to which I am most
attached."[137] While getting settled at Lausanne, he complains that his
boxes of books "loiter on the road."[138] And then he harps on another
string. "Good