THE PORTABLE GIBBON

edited by DeroA Saunders '35. The Viking Press, 1952;$2.50.

To compile a book of selections is always an hazardous task for the editor because he is open to the charge of indiscreet judgment. This may be true of The Portable Gibbon.

The fact that Mr. Saunders has condensed the last half of Gibbon's Decline and Fall into a single chapter may offend some who know Gibbon, because of the omission of certain favorite passages. This book is not for the initiated but for the layman.

The editor has been very judicious in his selection of passages "roughly, from the age of the Antonines to the end of the Empire." By treating it in this way he has achieved a continuity impossible had he drawn his passages from the entire work.

In editing a book of selections from Gibbon there are two things to be kept in mind: Gibbon as the historian, and Gibbon as one of the great prose stylists of 18th century English Literature. It is here that Mr. Saunders has done a masterly piece of work. Gibbon is all here his elegant style, his wit, his irony, his misjudgments, his acute judgments. And that is precisely as it should be.

Unfortunately, there are few who would undertake the formidable task of reading the Decline and Fall as a whole. But here it is possible to appreciate Gibbon as both artist and historian.

There is an excellent introduction by the editor and the book is. an excellent addition to the attractive series of "Viking Portables."