It is essentially
absent. Gibbon's private opinions may have been what they will, but he
has approved his high title to the character of an historian by
keeping them well in abeyance. When he turned his eyes to the past and
viewed it with intense gaze, he was absorbed in the spectacle, his
peculiar prejudices were hushed, he thought only of the object before
him and of reproducing it as well as he could. This is not the common
opinion, but, nevertheless, a great deal can be said to support it.
It will be as well to take two concrete tests--his treatment of two
topics which of all others were most likely to betray him into
deviations from historic candour. If he stands these, he may be
admitted to stand any less severe. Let them be his account of Julian,
and his method of dealing with Christianity.
The snare that was spread by Julian's apostasy for the philosophers of
the last century, and their haste to fall into it, are well known.
The spectacle of a philosopher on the throne who proclaimed
toleration, and contempt for Christianity, was too tempting and too
useful controversially to allow of much circumspection in handling it.
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