is eyes half shut. About a quarter before one he ceased to
breathe." He wanted just eighty-three days of fifty-seven years of
age.

Thus, in consequence of his own strange self-neglect and imprudence,
was extinguished one of the most richly-stored minds that ever lived.
Occurring when it did, so near the last summons, Gibbon's prospective
hope of continued life "for ten, twelve, or twenty years" is harshly
pathetic, and full of that irony which mocks the vain cares of men.
But, truly, his forecast was not irrational if he had not neglected
ordinary precautions. In spite of his ailments he felt full, and was
full, of life, when he was cut off. We cannot be sure if lengthened
days would have added much to his work already achieved. There is
hardly a parallel case in literature of the great powers of a whole
life being so concentrated on one supreme and magnificent effort. Yet,
if he had lived to 1804, or as an extreme limit, to 1814, we should
have been all gainers. In the first place, he certainly would have
finished his admirable autobiography. We cannot imagine what he would
have made of it, judging from the fragment which exists. And yet that
fragment is almost a masterpiece. But his fertile mind had other
schemes in prospect; and what such a diligent worker would have done
with a decade or two more of years it is impossible to say, except
that it is certain they would not have been wasted. The extinction of
a real mind is ever an irreparable loss.

As it was, he went to his rest after one of the greatest victories
ever achieved in his own field of humane letters, and lived long
enough to taste the fruits of his toil. He was never puffed up, but
soberly and without arrogance received his laurels. His unselfish zeal
and haste to console his bereaved friend showed him warm and loving to
the last; and we may say that his last serious effort was consecrated
to the genius of pious friendship.

In 1796, two years after Gibbon's death, Lord Sheffield published two
quarto volumes of the historian's miscellaneous works. They have been
republished in one thick octavo, and many persons suppose that it
contains the whole of the posthumous works; not unnaturally, as a
fraudulent statement on the title-page, "complete in one volume," is
well calculated to produce that impression. But in 1814 Lord Sheffield
issued a second edition in five volumes octavo, containing much
additional matter, which additional matter was again publish