That portion of his Memoirs in which he speaks of it is very short and fragmentary, and the defect is not supplied by his letters.

He seems to have worked with singular ease and mastery of his subject, and never to have felt his task as a strain or a fatigue.

Even his intimate friends were not aware that he was engaged on a work of such magnitude, and it is amusing to see his friend Holroyd warn him against a hasty and immature publication when he learned that the book was in the press.

He had apparently heard little of it before.

This alone would show with what ease and smoothness Gibbon must have worked.