His account of Julian is essentially a modern account. The
influence of his private opinions can hardly be traced in the
brilliant chapters that he has devoted to the Apostate. He sees
through Julian's weaknesses in a way in which Voltaire never saw or
cared to see. His pitiful superstition, his huge vanity, his weak
affectation are brought out with an incisive clearness and subtle
penetration into character which Gibbon was not always so ready to
display. At the same time he does full justice to Julian's real
merits. And this is perhaps the most striking evidence of his
penetration. An error on the side of injustice to Julian is very
natural in a man who, having renounced allegiance to Christianity, yet
fully realises the futility of attempting to arrest it in the fourth
century. A certain intellectual disdain for the reactionary emperor is
difficult to avoid. Gibbon surmounts it completely, and he does so,
not in consequence of a general conception of the reactionary spirit,
as a constantly emerging element in society, but by sheer historical
insight, clear vision of the fact before him. It may be added that
nowhere is Gibbon's command of vivid narrative seen to greater
advantage than in the chapters that he has devoted to Julian.
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