His judgments on Greek authors are also, to say the least, singular.

When he had achieved the _Decline and Fall_, and was writing his Memoirs in the last years of his life, the Greek writer whom he selects for especial commendation is Xenophon.

"Cicero in Latin and Xenophon in Greek are indeed the two ancients whom I would first propose to a liberal scholar, not only for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for the admirable lessons which may be applied almost to every situation of public and private life." Of the merit of Xenophon's sentiments, most people would now admit that the less said the better.

The warmth of Gibbon's language with regard to Xenophon contrasts with the coldness he shows with regard to Plato.

"I involved myself," he says, "in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato, of which perhaps the dramatic is more interesting than the argumentative part." That Gibbon knew amply sufficient Greek for his purposes as an historian no one doubts, but his honourable candour enables us to see that he was never a Greek scholar in the proper sense of the word.
It would be greatly to misknow Gibbon to suppose that his studies at Lausanne were restricted to the learned languages.