The History of English Poetry favourable response to the first edition. "The Gentleman's Magazine", reviewing the first volume, called it "this capital historical piece", and had no doubt that "every connoisseur will be curious to view the original, and impatient for the completion of it". Of the third volume the same magazine wrote that it "does equal credit to Mr. Warton's taste, judgment, and erudition, and makes us impatiently desirous of more". Edward Gibbon mentioned the "History" in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", saying it had been accomplished "with the taste of a poet and the minute diligence of an antiquarian". But
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the fall of the West Roman Empire (395-476), in his book "The Fall of the West: The Slow Death of the Roman Superpower" (2009). William H. McNeill, a world historian, noted in chapter three of his book "Plagues and Peoples" (1976) that the Roman Empire suffered the severe and protracted Antonine Plague starting around 165 AD. For about twenty years, waves of one or more diseases, possibly the first epidemics of smallpox and measles, swept through the Empire, ultimately killing about half the population. Similar epidemics, such as the Plague of Cyprian, also occurred in the 3rd century. McNeill