Edward Gibbon vs. Samuel Johnson
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Edward Gibbon
1737 – 1794
Edward Gibbon was a British essayist, historian and minor politician. His most important and influential work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, to critical and commercial success. It is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organized religion.
"I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son."
Samuel Johnson
1709 – 1784
Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".
"Declamation roared, while Passion slept."
Connections
Both wrote about: