astical antiquity, many will believe, or will affect to believe, that the success of their champion has been equal to his zeal, and that the serpent pierced with an hundred wounds lies expiring at his feet. Mr. Davis's book will cease to be read (perhaps the grammarians may already reproach me for the use of an improper tense); but the oblivion towards which it seems to be hastening, will afford the more ample scope for the artful practices of those, who may not scruple to affirm, or rather to insinuate, that Mr. Gibbon was publicly convicted of falsehood and misrepresentation; that the evidence produced against him was unanswerable; and that his silence was the effect and the proof of conscious guilt. Under the hands of a malicious surgeon, the sting of a wasp may continue to fester and inflame, long after the vexatious little insect has left its venom and its life in the wound. The defence of my honour is undoubtedly the first and prevailing motive which urges me to repel with vigour an unjust and unprovoked attack; and to undertake a tedious vindication, which, after the perpetual repetition of the vainest and most disgusting of the pronouns, will only prove that I am innocent, and that Mr. Davis, in his charge, has very frequently subscribed his own condemnation. And yet I may presume to affirm; that the public have some interest in this controversy. They have some interest to know, whether the writer whom they have honoured with their favour is deserving of their confidence; whether they must content themselves with reading the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a tale tale amusing enough, or whether they may venture to receive it as a fair and authentic history. The general persuasion of mankind, that where much has been positively asserted, something must be true, may contribute to encourage a secret suspicion, which would naturally diffuse itself over the whole body of the work. Some of those friends who may now tax me with imprudence for taking this public notice of Mr. Davis's book, have perhaps already condemned me for silently ac ́quiescing under the weight of such serious, such direct, and such circumstantial imputations. Mr. Davis, who in the last page of his work appears to have recollected that modesty is an amiable and useful qualification, affirms, that his plan required only that he should consult the authors to whom he was directed by my references; and that the judgment of riper years was not so necessary to enable him to execute with success the pious labour to which he had devoted his pen. Perhaps, before we separate, a moment to which I most fervently aspire, Mr. Davis may find that a mature judgment is indispensably requisite for the successful execution of any work of literature, and more especially of criticism. Perhaps he will discover, that a young student, who hastily consults an unknown author, on a subject with which he is unacquainted, cannot always be guided by the most accurate reference to the knowledge of the sense, as well as to the sight of the passage which has been quoted by his adversary. * Davis, p. 284. Abundant proofs of these maxims will hereafter be suggested. For the present, I shall only remark, that it is my intention to pursue, in my defence, the order, or rather the course, which Mr. Davis has marked out in his Examination; and that I have numbered the several articles of my impeachment according to the most natural division of the subject. And now let me proceed on this hostile march over a dreary and barren desert, where thirst, hunger, and intolerable weariness, are much more to be dreaded than the arrows of the enemy. I. TIONS IN "The remarkable mode of quotation which Mr. QUOTAGibbon adopts, must immediately strike every one GENERAL, who turns to his notes. He sometimes only mentions the author, perhaps the book; and often leaves the reader the toil of finding out, or rather guessing at the passage. The policy, however, is not without its design and use. By endeavouring to depriye us of the means of comparing him with the authorities he cites, he flattered himself, no doubt, that he might safely have recourse to misrepresentation."* Such is the style of Mr. Davis; who in another placet mentions this mode of quotation "as a good artifice to escape detection;" and applauds, with an agreeable irony, his own labours in turning over a few pages of the Theodosian code. I shall not descend to animadvert on the rude and illiberal strain of this passage, and I will *Davis, Preface, p. ii. + Id. p. 230. frankly frankly own that my indignation is lost in astonish ment. The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of my History are illustrated by three hundred and eighty-three Notes; and the nakedness of a few Notes, which are not accompanied by any quotation, is amply compensated by a much greater number, which contain two, three, or perhaps four distinct references; so that upon the whole my stock of quotations, which support and justify my facts, cannot amount to less than eight hundred or a thousand. As I had often felt the inconvenience of the loose and general method of quoting which is so falsely imputed to me, I have carefully distinguished the books, the chapters, the sections, the pages of the authors to whom I referred, with a degree of accuracy and attention, which might claim some gratitude, as it has seldom been so regularly practised by any historical writers. And here I must confess some obligation to Mr. Davis, who, by staking my credit and his own on a circumstance so obvious and palpable, has given me this early opportunity of submitting the merits of our cause, or at least of our characters, to the judgment of the public. Hereafter, when I am summoned to defend myself against the imputation of misquoting the text, or misrepresenting the sense of a Greek or Latin author, it will not be in my power to communicate the knowledge of the languages, or the possession of the books, to those readers who may be destitute either of one or of the other; and the part which they are obliged to take between assertions equally strong and peremp tory, tory, may sometimes be attended with doubt and hesitation. But, in the present instance, every reader who will give himself the trouble of consulting the first volume of my History, is a competent judge of the question. I exhort, I solicit him to run his eye down the columns of Notes, and to count how many of the quotations are minute and particular, how few are vague and general. When he has satisfied himself by this easy computation, there is a word which may naturally suggest itself; an epithet, which I should be sorry either to deserve or use; the boldness of Mr. Davis's assertion, and the confidence of my appeal, will tempt, nay, perhaps, will force him to apply that epithet either to one or to the other of the adverse parties. I have confessed that a critical eye may discover some loose and general references; but as they bear a very inconsiderable proportion to the whole mass, they cannot support, or even excuse, a false and ungenerous accusation, which must reflect dishonour either on the object or on the author of it. If the examples in which I have occasionally deviated from my ordinary practice were specified and examined, I am persuaded that they might always be fairly attributed to one of the following reasons. 1. In some rare instances, which I have never attempted to conceal, I have been obliged to adopt quotations, which were expressed with less accuracy than I could have wished. 2. I may have accidentally recollected the sense of a passage which I had formerly read, without being able to find the place, or even to transcribe from memory the precise words. 3. The whole tract (as in a re markable |