There is something truly epic in these latter volumes.
Tribes, nations, and empires are the characters; one after another
they come forth like Homeric heroes, and do their mighty deeds before
the assembled armies. The grand and lofty chapters on Justinian; on
the Arabs; on the Crusades, have a rounded completeness, coupled with
such artistic subordination to the main action, that they read more
like cantos of a great prose poem than the ordinary staple of
historical composition. It may well be questioned whether there is
another instance of such high literary form and finish, coupled with
such vast erudition. And two considerations have to be borne in mind,
which heighten Gibbon's merit in this respect. (1.) Almost the whole
of his subject had been as yet untouched by any preceding writer of
eminence, and he had no stimulus or example from his precursors. He
united thus in himself the two characters of pioneer and artist. (2.)
The barbarous and imperfect nature of the materials with which he
chiefly had to work,--dull inferior writers, whose debased style was
their least defect. A historian who has for his authorities masters of
reason and language such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus
is borne up by their genius; apt quotation and translation alone
suffice to produce considerable effects; or in the case of subjects
taken from modern times, weighty state papers, eloquent debates, or
finished memoirs supply ample materials for graphic narrative.
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