SOURCE: White, Ian. “The Subject of Gibbon's History.” Cambridge Quarterly 3, no. 4 (autumn 1968): 299-309.

In the following essay, White focuses on Gibbon's thematic concern with time in the Decline and Fall.

Studies of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire have, it seems to me, generally failed to bring out the most persistent and characteristic moral impression of the work. Perhaps the point has been thought too obvious, or to belong necessarily to the subject rather than the author, or not to be sufficiently a moral one. But it is one of those great commonplaces of which we never weary, or cease to need reminding; it receives explicit emphasis in the History, and its fascination shows itself in Gibbon's other writings; it explains his final preference of the subject of Rome to others he thought of taking; and it is the lesson, moral or not, which History, rather...