But what makes
this visit to Rome memorable in his life and in literary history is
that it was the occasion and date of the first conception of his great
work. "It was at Rome, on the 15th October, 1764, as I sat musing amid
the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline
and fall of the city first started to my mind." The scene, the
contrast of the old religion and the new, the priests of Christ
replacing the flamens of Jupiter, the evensong of Catholic Rome
swelling like a dirge over the prostrate Pagan Rome might well
concentrate in one grand luminous idea the manifold but unconnected
thoughts with which his mind had so long been teeming. Gibbon had
found his work, which was destined to fill the remainder of his life.
Henceforth there is a fixed centre around which his thoughts and
musings cluster spontaneously. Difficulties and interruptions are not
wanting. The plan then formed is not taken in hand at once; on the
contrary, it is contemplated at "an awful distance"; but it led him on
like a star guiding his steps, till he reached his appointed goal.
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