Gibbon's Silent Partner
Nollson, John
"Gibbon's Silent Partner" targeting recruitment efforts, revising admissions procedures where bias seemed likely, and making remedial instruction available where the lack of previous educational opportunity was the cause of...
...No one, so far as I know, has looked into the question of how the Great Man organized, collated, indexed, cited, and otherwise played around with the data and documents of his magisterial work...
...Gibbon seems utterly fascinated by this aspect of the work, to a degree which Mrs...
...Needless to say, Grynde received from the historian neither a mention nor an acknowledgement —nothing, we suspect, but the enduring gratitude of Mrs...
...We find at least a dozen notes to Algernon, requesting that he determine without delay the pre-Roman Belgian term for "chopped meat...
...He doesn't know any Latin...
...We find among these remembrances Gibbon's handwritten instructions to his researcher: 3 March 1774 Algernon—find out for me the following: (1) the Phrygian term for coitus interruptus (2) the Scythian tax lists for the third century, as rendered into contemporary units of account (3) the name of the inn where Julius Caesar entertained Vercengetorix (4) the editor at the Roman publishing house which first issued Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars (5) sales of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Roman Britain after the death of Hadrian (6) the name of Robert Graves' agent who negotiated his contract with Public Television for the production of I, Claudius (7) Who is Theodore Mommsen, and why does he hate me...
...As Grynde's notes make clear, Gibbon was in well over his head...
...Grynde received an introduction to Edward Gibbon, who had recently decided to investigate the causes for the collapse of the Roman empire...
...Grynde, who had never had smallpox, was too unblemished for Johnson and his circle...
...I have finally figured out why...
...8) What day would it be today if we still used the old calendar...
...Gibbon thinks there is a correlation between illegitimacy and Christianity, and he is trying to get to the bottom of it...
...Algernon also spent a fair amount of time transposing Roman numerals into Arabic ones...
...But he was a Whig, and Boswell didn't much care for him...
...Gibbon finds trying...
...John Nollson Gibbon's Silent Partner y investigations into America's Bicentennial continue to yield remarkable historical fruit, even as we now approach the second year after the great event...
...He agreed to hire Grynde for six months, at a wage of one pound per week...
...Seventeen seventy-six was a good year, seeing the publication of The Wealth of Nations, the Declaration of Independence, and Common Sense...
...Failing this spirit of realism, we may easily find ourselves in the predicament of having intensified invidious racial stereotypes as well as the health care deficiencies of minority communities precisely by means of our most energetic efforts to abate them...
...One of the forgotten figures of that era, Grynde nonetheless had a hand in the publication of another great work of '76, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...
...We have hisdetailed calculations of the changes in the rate of illegitimacy in suburban Rome as compared with the figures for the Midlands posited by David Hume...
...At this point, Grynde's notes are written in Greek, and I can make neither head nor tail of them...
...The Grynde notes are, in fact, a gold mine of social history, both late Roman and 18th-century British...
...I have now come into possession of more than 6,000 three-by-five index cards, once the property of Algernon Grynde...
...Grynde, who had gone up to Oxford to read Roman history, had to drop out when funds ran short...
...Indeed, this whole matter of Gibbon's research assistants has been something of a lacuna...
...24 The American Spectator March 1978...
...Gibbon shows thorough mastery of the secondary materials," jots Grynde, "but his familiarity with the primary sources is woeful...
...Grynde's notes and jottings are remarkably instructive on this point...
...Grynde was Edward Gibbon's research assistant and, as my own researches reveal, had much more to do with the great work than literary historians have hitherto supposed...
...This was especially important in grasping the significance of Roman tax collections...
...The particular problems addressed here—the gross displacement of academic considerations in ranking minority applicants even among themselves, and the lack of any assessment of the program —seem, in principle at least, readily curable...
...And a not insignificant cognate cost will be the loss of integrity of our most distinguished academic institutions...
...Indeed, it can be said that Grynde's role was such that only an excess of modesty prevented him from claiming coauthorship of the long book...
...The machine, which survives, has of course no numbered keys, but just the keys M, D, C, L, X, V, and It took me a long time to figure out how it works...
...Young Grynde deserves credit for designing the first hand-held calculator with an Arabic conversion key (which could be pressed for just this purpose...
...I find this altogether vexing," Grynde confides, "for everyone knows that chopped meat was not known to the pre-Roman Belgian peoples, the dish having originated in the Germanies, for which we have the testimony of Tacitus Germanicus himself...
...Gibbon, who soon came to enjoy the delights of the Gauls which Algernon had unearthed...
...What led to Grynde's resignation from Gibbon's service...
...We do not know how Gibbon reacted to this decision by young Grynde...
...Apparently, it had something to do with beef...
...targeting recruitment efforts, revising admissions procedures where bias seemed likely, and making remedial instruction available where the lack of previous educational opportunity was the cause of poor performance have succeeded in finding worthy minority candidates...
...In the process, we have come upon the first authenticated copy of a sex manual widely in use among the Gauls...
...Even the colonials in Boston and Philadelphia call them hamburgers, for God's sake...
...that by uncovering and developing previously overlooked talent, these changes have greatly strengthened the primacy of merit as the just and proper basis for advancement...
...Gibbon to take up a position at the publishing house then creating the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
...No more is needed than a spirit of realism that is willing to distinguish those practices included in "affirmative action" that are effective in discovering and nurturing previously neglected talent from those that regard technical proficiency as a lightly disposable detail in the gadarene rush to "social justice...
...Shortly after this uncharacteristic assertion of exasperation, Grynde left the employ of Mr...
...He had hoped to sign on with Samuel Johnson and pick up some extra money working on the Dictionary...
Vol. 11 • March 1978 • No. 5
