"In the same manner [says Longinus] as some children always remain pigmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely confined; thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we admire in the ancients, who, living under a popular government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted."
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Published in six volumes: vol. I in 1776; vols. II and III, 1781; vols. IV, V, and VI, 1788-1789. At least 36 entries in ESTC (1776, 1781, 1782, 1783, 1784, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1797).<br>
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See <u>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon, Esq; Volume the First.</u> (London: Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell, in the Strand, 1776). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/T78356">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;<br>
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Searching in  Edward Gibbon, <u>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, </u>ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols.