SOURCE: Craddock, Patricia. “‘Immortal Affectation’: Responses to Gibbon's Style.” Age of Johnson 1 (1987): 327-46.

In the following essay, Craddock describes how critical assessments of Gibbon's literary style in the Decline and Fall have ranged from high praise to harsh denunciation, noting that the ongoing debate ultimately proves the work's lasting value.

I should like to start with a little autobiography. My own work on Gibbon's style began in outrage, some twenty years ago. In Gilbert Highet's well-known and then recent book, The Classical Tradition, I encountered the following passage:

Then there is what has been called “the immortal affectation of [Gibbon's] unique style”. Yet it is not unique. Individuality was not one of the chief aims of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stylists. It has often been praised, and it is truly praiseworthy as a feat of will-power. The difficulty is that, as the lady in Boileau said of Chapelain's poetry...