Gibbon on olives

Again pushing his luck, and again pulling it off:

“The olive, in the western world, followed the progress of peace, of which it was considered the symbol. Two centuries after the foundation of Rome, both Italy and Africa were strangers to that useful plant; it was naturalized in those countries; and at length carried into the heart of Spain and Gaul. The timid errors of the ancients, that it required a certain degree of heat, and could only flourish in the neighbourhood of the sea, were insensibly exploded by industry and experience.”

With that last sentence I can’t help bursting into laughter; it’s almost too much.

I’m starting to wonder if Poe’s occasional hostility to Gibbon’s style isn’t of the order of “the anxiety of influence,” since this sort of allusiveness is precisely what Poe does so well in stylistic terms. (Lovecraft, obviously under Poe’s influence, sometimes does it even better.)

I’d like to know the history of this allusive style, which I doubt can be found in ancient authors. It’s something that English seems to do much more easily than other languages, and it’s a safe bet that Shakespeare is the central figure in its development.

Translate this passage on olives into French (I should check the French version of Gibbon) and I doubt it would come across the same way. French does different things well, such as wryly stating preposterous things as though they were ordinary. (All throughout Bataille’s Story of the Eye, for instance, and everywhere in Sade.)

But for the sort of allusiveness found in Gibbon, you need the massive vocabulary of synonyms in which English is so especially rich. Gibbon is closer to Shakespeare than to most other historians.