Note 425 — 366.
Reading edition
In 1778 appeared An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History, etc., by Henry Edward Davis, M.A., of Balliol College, Oxford. The author charged Gibbon with inaccuracy and plagiarism. He replied early in 1779 with his Vindication of some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Walpole calls it "the quintessence of argument, wit, temper, spirit, and consequently of victory."