have done no harm. The question cannot be discussed here. But every
law of historic equity compels us to admit that whether the result was
good or bad, the genius of men who could leave such lasting
impressions on the world as the Carolings did, must have been
exceptionally great. And this is what Gibbon has not seen; he has not
seen that, whether their work was good or bad in the issue, it was
colossal. His tone in reference to Charlemagne is unworthy to a
degree. "Without injustice to his fame, I may discern some blemishes
in the sanctity and greatness of the restorer of the Western Empire.
Of his moral virtues, chastity was not the most conspicuous." This
from the pen of Gibbon seems hardly serious. Again: "I touch with
reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a
respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series of
occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the
reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his
poultry, and even the sale of his eggs." And yet Gibbon had read the
Capitularies. The struggle and care of the hero to master in some
degree the wide welter of barbarism surging around him, he never
recognised. It is a spot on Gibbon's fame.

Dean Milman considers that Gibbon's account of the Crusades is the
least accurate and satisfactory chapter in his history, and "that he
has here failed in that lucid arrangement which in general gives
perspicuity to his most condensed and crowded narratives." This blame
seems to be fully merited, if restricted to the second of the two
chapters which Gibbon has devoted to the Crusades. The fifty-eighth
chapter, in which he treats of the First Crusade, leaves nothing to be
desired. It is not one of his best chapters, though it is quite up to
his usually high level. But the fifty-ninth chapter, it must be owned,
is not only weak, but what is unexampled elsewhere in him, confused
and badly written. It is not, as in the case of Charlemagne, a
question of imperfect appreciation of a great man or epoch; it is a
matter of careless and slovenly presentation of a period which he had
evidently mastered with his habitual thoroughness, but, owing to the
rapidity with which he composed his last volume, he did not do full
justice to it. He says significantly in his Memoirs, that "he wished
that a pause, an interval, had been allowed for a serious revisal" of
the last three volumes, and there can be little doubt that this
chapter