The obscure confusion of the age is aggravated into almost
complete darkness by the wretched materials which alone have survived,
and the attempt to found a dignified narrative on such scanty and
imperfect authorities was hardly wise. Gibbon would have shown a
greater sense of historic proportion if he had passed over this period
with a few bold strokes, and summed up with brevity such general
results as may be fairly deduced. We may say of the first volume that
it was tentative in every way. In it the author not only sounded his
public, but he was also trying his instrument, running over the keys
in preparatory search for the right note. He strikes it full and clear
in the two final chapters on the Early Church; these, whatever
objections may be made against them on other grounds, are the real
commencement of the Decline and Fall.
From this point onwards he marches with the steady and measured tramp
of a Roman legion. His materials improve both in number and quality.
The fourth century, though a period of frightful anarchy and disaster
if compared to a settled epoch, is a period of relative peace and
order when compared to the third century.
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