All critics agree that Gibbon's autobiography is a model in its way. Every autobiography is interesting, even when it unveils a mere time-server and hypocrite like Bubb Dodington. It is curious to know how a thoroughly mean nature is justified to itself. Other memoirs, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria for example, have a higher interest, because they record the aspirations of men of genius, who have yet wasted half their energy through the caprices of fortune or misjudgment of their own powers. But Gibbon's has the very rare and peculiar charm of recording complete success and what may in one sense be called perfection of character. I do not mean to attribute to Gibbon moral perfection in an absolute sense. He had his little weaknesses, and anybody who pleases may expatiate upon them for our edification. By perfection I only intend perfection relatively to a given purpose, and consequently that peculiar balance or harmony of all the faculties which enables a man to get the very greatest possible result out of given abilities. Moralists may perhaps maintain that there is properly only one ideal. I will not argue the point. But as a matter of fact, we may also say that there are many moral types, each of which has its value, and may play a useful
