THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. BY EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. FOURTH AMERICAN FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION. COMPLETE IN SIX VOLUMES. VOL. IV. New-York: PRINTED BY J. & J. HARPER, FOR COLLINS & HANNAY, E. DUYCKINCK, COLLINS & CO., E. BLISS & E. WHITE, JOHN GRIGG, AND R. H. SMALL. 1826. PUBLIC PREFACE. I NOW discharge my promise, and complete my design, of writing the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, both in the West and the East. The whole period extends from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, to the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second; and includes a review of the Crusades and the state of Rome during the middle ages. * It was my first intention to have collected under one view, the numerous Authors, of every age and language, from whom I have derived the materials of this History; and I am still convinced that the apparent ostentation would be more than compensated by real use. If I have renounced this idea; if I have declined an undertaking which had obtained the approbation of a master-artist, my excuse may be found in the extreme difficulty of assigning a proper measure to such a catalogue. A naked list of names and editions would not be satisfactory either to myself or my Readers: the characters of the principal Authors of the Roman and Byzantine History, have been occasionally connected with the events which they describe; a more copious and critical inquiry might indeed deserve, but it would demand, an elaborate volume, which might swell by degrees into a general library of historical writers. For the present I shall content myself with renewing my serious protestation, that I have always endeavoured to draw from the fountain head; that may curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact was reduced to depend. * See Dr. Robertson's Preface to his History of America. I shall embrace this opportunity of introducir two verbal remarks, which have not conveniently ered themselves to my notice. 1. As often as I use the definitions of beyond the Alps, the Rhine, the Danube, &c. I generally suppose myself at Rome, and afterward at Constantinople; without observing whether this relative geography may agree with the local, but variable, situation of the reader, or the historian. 2. In proper names of foreign, and especially of Oriental origin, it should be always our aim to express in our English version, a faithful copy of the original. But this rule, which is founded on a just regard to uniformity and truth, must often be relaxed; and the exceptions will be limited or enlarged by the custom of the language and the taste of the interpreter. Our alphabets may be often defective; a harsh sound, an uncouth spelling, might offend the ear or the eye of our countrymen ; and some words, notoriously corrupt, are fixed, and, as it were, naturalized, in the vulgar tongue. The prophet Mohammed can no longer be stripped of the famous, though improper, appellation of Mahomet; the well known cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, would almost be lost in the strange descriptions of Haleb, Damashk, and Al Cahira; the titles and offices of the Ottoman empire are fashioned by the practice of three hundred years; and we are pleased to blend the three Chinese monosyllables, Con-fu-tzee, in the respectable name of Confucius, or even to adopt the Portuguese corruption of Mandarin. But I would vary the use of Zoroaster and Zerdusht, as I drew my information from Greece or Persia: since our connexion with India, the genuine Timour is restored to the throne of Tamerlane: our most correct writers have retrenched the Al, the superfluous article, from the Koran; and we escape an ambiguous termination, by adopting Moslem instead of Mussulman, in the plural number. In these, and in a thousand examples, the shades of distinction are often minute; and I can feel, where I cannot explain, the motives of my choice. At the end of the History, the Reader will find a General Index to the whole Work. |
