L. F. Spectacles, Beaux Arts, Nouvelles Litteraires.]
When the _Memoires Litteraires_ collapsed Gibbon was again left
without a definite object to concentrate his energy, and with his work
still to seek. One might wonder why he did not seriously prepare for
the _Decline and Fall_. It must have been chiefly at this time that it
was "contemplated at an awful distance," perhaps even with numbing
doubt whether the distance would ever be lessened and the work
achieved, or even begun. The probability is he had too little peace of
mind to undertake anything that required calm and protracted labour.
"While so many of my acquaintance were married, or in Parliament, or
advancing with a rapid step in the various roads of honour or fortune
I stood alone, immovable, and insignificant.... The progress and the
knowledge of our domestic disorders aggravated my anxiety, and I began
to apprehend that in my old age I might be left without the fruits of
either industry or inheritance." Perhaps a reasonable apprehension of
poverty is more paralysing than the reality. In the latter case prompt
action is so imperatively commanded that the mind has no leisure for
the fatal indulgence of regrets; but when indigence seems only
imminent, and has not yet arrived, a certain lethargy is apt to be
produced out of which only the most practical characters can rouse
themselves, and these are not, as a rule, scholars by nature.
Pages:
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98