A few years ago I tried reading an unabridged version of Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, not taking into account that it had been written in the 1700s. Oh my head...trying to follow the complex English that Gibbon used was rough!
Gibbon's prose can be compared to a long draught of air, that having been drawn in a moment, and to a single purpose, is expelled with exceeding restraint, gently carrying the reader on its current, until it has dissipated insensibly into a swirl of verbiage, the object of which can neither be discerned nor recalled to mind.