principle non multa, sed multum, and made his ground sure at every step. In other words, he had the true scholar's instinct, but duly controlled by the philosophic turn for meditation upon general principles. He would indulge in minute researches, but would never lose himself in the multiplicity of details. His mode of writing shows the same perception. He used, as he tells us, to 'cast a long paragraph in a single mould,' to 'try it by his ear,' and to 'suspend the action of the pen till he had given the last polish to his work.' Most of us, I fear, think that we have done enough when we begin a single sentence with an approximate guess at the way of getting out of it. The man who composes by paragraphs will also frame his chapters with a view to their position in an organic whole. The philosophy into which Gibbon was initiated was congenial to his method. The great writers of the day asked, above all things, for good, sweeping formulae, and they preferred such as could be packed into an epigram. The French influence, as Mr. Cotter Morison remarks, was especially valuable. A Frenchman, whatever his faults, always recognises the truth, too often forgotten elsewhere, that every chapter of a book should be written with reference
