I have ten thousand apologies to make, for not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of your History. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives me to find, that by the universal assent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at present existing in Europe.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I have ten thousand apologies to make, for not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of your History. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives me to find, that by the universal assent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at present existing in Europe." in the context of "Adam Smith to Gibbon (10 December 1788), quoted in Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Vol. II, ed. Lord Sheffield (1796), p. 215" to mean that wisdom is timeless.