Comment by 082349872349872

That the XVIII, with its love of symmetry: oft observed in contrast as well as in comparison, and with its love of ornament: ascending from initial observation; continuing through main example; and ending upon a final period, is well exemplified by Gibbon, who in this inimitable style filled not just one, nor yet three, but a full six volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), is a fact to which all must acquiesce, yet, even so, the "short-form" was also present during this era, perhaps most memorably in the tricolon, as brief as it was lacking in invention, with which Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, greeted Gibbon's second volume: "Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"