The fervent heat of a poet's imagination may glow as brightly in poverty as in opulence, but the gentle yet prolonged enthusiasm of the historian is likely to be quenched when the resources of life are too insecure.[7] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: Scholarship has been frequently cultivated amidst great poverty; but from the time of Thucydides, the owner of mines, to Grote, the banker, historians seem to have been in, at least, easy circumstances.] It is perhaps not wholly fanciful to suspect that Gibbon's next literary effort was suggested and determined by the inward discomposure he felt at this time.

By nature he was not a controversialist; not that he wanted the abilities to support that character, but his mind was too full, fertile, and fond of real knowledge to take much pleasure in the generally barren occupation of gainsaying other men.

But at this point in his life he made an exception, and an unprovoked exception.

When he wrote his famous vindication of the first volume of the _Decline and Fall_ he was acting in self-defence, and repelling savage attacks upon his historical veracity.

But in his _Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the AEneid_ he sought controversy for its own sake, and became a polemic--shall we say out of gaiety or bitterness of heart?
That inward unrest easily produces an aggressive spirit is a matter of common observation, and it may well have been that in attacking Warburton he sought a diversion from the worry of domestic cares.