Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 4 (1897).djvu/553

APPENDIX 529 History of Bede (with his other works) has been edited by Mr. Plummer {1896)— a truly admirable edition ; and by Mommsen in the Chronica Minora, vol. iii., which also includes Gildas and Nennius. The chief work on Nennius is H. Zimmer's Nennius vitulicatus, 1893. 6. GIBBON ON THE HOUSE OF BOURBON-(P. Wo) "A Julian or Semiramis may reign in the North, while Arcadius and Honorius again slumber on the thrones of the House of Bourbon." Thus the passage ajjjjeared in the first quarto edition (1781). In his Auto- biography (]Iemoir E, in Mr. Murray's edition, 1896, p. 324) Gibbon makes the following statement in a footnote : — "It may not be generally known that Louis XVI. is a great reader, and a reader of English books. On the perusal of a passage of m}- History (vol. iii. p. 636), which seems to compare him with Arcadius or Honorius, he expressed his resentment to the Prince of B , from whom the intelligence was conveyed to me. I shall neither disclaim the allusion nor examine the likeness ; biit the situation of the late King of France excludes all suspicion of flattery, and I am ready to declare that the concluding observations of mj- third Volume were written before his accession to the throne." Gibbon, however, altered the words " House of Boui-bon " to " South " in his later edition, thus making the allusion ambiguous. VOL. IV. 34