But he had taken the best and only reliable means of securing
himself from the danger of these fluctuations of spirit. He finished
his reading and preparation before he began to write, and when he at
last put pen to paper his course lay open before him, with no fear of
sudden and disquieting stoppages arising from imperfect knowledge and
need of further inquiry. It is a pity that we cannot follow the
elaboration of the work in detail. That portion of his Memoirs in
which he speaks of it is very short and fragmentary, and the defect is
not supplied by his letters. He seems to have worked with singular
ease and mastery of his subject, and never to have felt his task as a
strain or a fatigue. Even his intimate friends were not aware that he
was engaged on a work of such magnitude, and it is amusing to see his
friend Holroyd warn him against a hasty and immature publication when
he learned that the book was in the press. He had apparently heard
little of it before. This alone would show with what ease and
smoothness Gibbon must have worked. He had excellent health--a strange
fact after his sickly childhood; society unbent his mind instead of
distracting it; his stomach was perfect--perhaps too good, as about
this time he began to be admonished by the gout.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115