ing him relate the circumstances of his life, undertook the charge of his present support and future establishment; and, till this last could be effected to his wish, invited him to come and reside with him.

'These,' says the grateful scholar, ́ were not words of course: they were more than fulfilled in every point. I did go and reside with him, and I experienced a warm and cordial reception, and a kind and affectionate esteem, that has known neither diminution nor interruption from that hour to this, a period of twenty years.' Part of this time, it may be remarked, was spent in attending the earl's eldest son, Lord Belgrave, on a tour of Europe, which must have tended greatly to inform and expand the mind of the scholar. Gifford appeared as an author in 1794. His first production was a satirical poem entitled 'The Baviad,' which was directed against a class of sentimental poetasters of that day, usually passing under the collective appellation of the Della Cruscan School-Mrs. Piozzi, Mrs. Robinson, Mr. Greathead, Mr. Merry, Weston, Parsons, &c.-conspicuous for their affectation and bad taste, and their high-flown compliments on one another. There was a specious brilliancy in these exotics,' he remarks, which dazzled the native grubs, who had scarce ever ventured beyond a sheep, and a crook, and a rose-tree grove; with an ostentatious display of "blue hills," and "crashing torrents," and 'petrifying suns. Gifford's vigorous exposure completely demolished this set of rhymesters, who were probably the spawn of Darwin and Lichfield. Anna Matilda, Laura Maria, Edwin, Orlandi, &c. sunk into instant and irretrievable contempt; and the worst of the number-a man Williams, who assumed the name of Pasquin for his ribald strains'-was nonsuited in an action against Gifford's publisher. The satire was universally read and admired. In the present day, it seems unnecessarily merciless and severe, yet lines like the following still possess interest. The allusion to Pope is peculiarly appropriate and beautiful:

66

Degeneracy of Modern Literature.

Oh for the good old times! when all was new,
And every hour brought prodigies to view,
Our sires in unaffected language told

Of streams of amber and of rocks of gold:
Full of their theme, they spurned all idle art,
And the plain tale was trusted to the heart.

Now all is changed! We fume and fret, poor elves,
Less to display our subject than ourselves:
Whate'er we paint-a grot, a flower, a bird,
Heavens, how we sweat! laboriously absurd!
Words of gigantic bulk and uncouth sound,
In rattling triads the long sentence bound;
While points with points, with periods periods jar,
And the whole work seems one continued war!
Is not this sad?

F.-"Tis pitiful, Heaven knows;
"Tis wondrous pltiful, E'en take the prose:
But for the poetry-oh, that, my friend,
I still aspire-nay, smile not-to defend.

You praise our sires, but, though they wrote with force,
Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse;
We want their strength; agreed; but we atone,
For that, and more, by sweetness all our own.
For instance-Hasten to the lawny vale,

Where yellow morning breathes her saffron gale
And bathes the landscape'-

P.-Pshaw; I have it here,

'A voice seraphic grasps my listening ear:
Wondering I gaze; when lo! methought afar,
More bright than dauntless day's imperial star,
A godlike form advances.'

F.-You suppose

These lines perhaps too turgid; what of those?
"The mighty mother'-

P.-Now, 'tis plain you sneer,

For Weston's self could find no semblance here:
Weston! who slunk from truth's imperious light,
Swells like a filthy toad with secret spite,
And, envying the fame he cannot hope,
Spits his black venom at the dust of Pope.
Reptile accursed!-O memorable long,
If there be force in virtue or in song,'

O injured bard! accept the grateful strain,
Which I, the humblest of the tuneful train,

With glowing heart, yet trembling hand, repay,
For many a pensive, many a sprightly lay!
So may thy varied verse, from age to age,
Inform the simple, and delight the sage.

The contributions of Mrs. Piozzi to this fantastic garland of exotic verse are characterized in one felicitous couplet:

See Thrall's gay widow with a satchel roam,
And bring, in pomp, her laboured nothings home!

The tasteless bibliomaniac is also finely sketched:

Others like Kemble, on black-letter pore,
And what they do not understand, adore;
Buy at vast sums the trash of ancient days,
And draw on prodigality for praise.
These, when some lucky hit, or lucky price,
Has blessed them with The Boke of Gode Advice,
For ekes and algates only deign to seek

And live upon a whilome for a week.

The ‘Baviad' was a paraphrase of the first satire of Persius. In the year following, encouraged by its success, Gifford produced the 'Maviad,' an imitation of Horace, levelled at the corrupters of dra matic poetry. Here also the Della Cruscan authors-who attempted dramas as well as odes and elegies-are gibbeted in satiric verse: but Gifford was more critical than just in including O'Keefe, the amusing farce-writer, among the objects of his condemnation. The plays of Kotzebue and Schiller, then first translated and much in vogue, he also characterises as 'heavy, lumbering, monotonous stupidity,' a sentence too unqualified and severe.

Gifford tried a third satire, an 'Epistle to Peter Pindar' (Dr. Wolcot), which, being founded on personal animosity, is more remark

able for its passionate vehemence and abuse than for its felicity or correctness. Wolcot replied with A Cut at a Cobbler,' equally unworthy of his fame. These satirical labours of our author pointed him out as a fit person to edit the Anti-Jacobin,' a weekly paper set up by Canning and others for the purpose of ridiculing and exposing the political agitators of the times. It was established in November 1797, and continued only till the July following. The connection thus formed with politicians and men of rank was afterwards serviceable to Gifford. He obtained the situation of paymaster of the gentlemen-pensioners, and was made a commissioner of the lottery, the emoluments of the two offices being about £900 per annum. In 1802, he published a translation of Juvenal, to which was prefixed his sketch of his own life, one of the most interesting and unaffected of autobiographies. This translation of Juvenal was attacked in the 'Critical Review,' and Gifford replied in a pamphlet, 'An Examination of the Strictures,' &c. which contains one remarkable passage:

A Reviewer Compared to a Toad.

During my apprenticeship, I enjoyed perhaps as many places as Scrub;* though I suspect they were not altogether so dignified: the chief of them was that of a planter of cabbages in a bit of ground which my master held near the town. It was the decided opinion of Panurge that the life of a cabbage-planter was the safest and pleasantest in the world. I found it safe enough, I confess, but not altogether pleasant; and therefore took every opportunity of attending to what I liked better, which happened to be, watching the actions of insects and reptiles, and, among the rest, of a huge toad. I never loved toads, but I never molested them; for my mother had early bid me remember that every living thing had the same Maker as myself; and the words always rang in my ears. The toad, then, who had taken up his residence under a hollow stone in a hedge of blind nettles, I used to watch for hours together. It was a lazy, lumpish animal, that squatted on its belly, and perked up its hideous head with two glazed eyes, precisely like a Critical Reviewer. In this posture, perfectly satisfied with itself, it would remain as if it were a part of the stone, till the cheerful buzzing of some winged insect provoked it to give signs of life. The dead glare of its eye then brightened into a vivid lustre, and it awkwardly shuffled to the entrance of its cell, and opened its detestable mouth to snap the passing fly or honeybee. Since I have marked the manners of the Critical Reviewers, these passages of my youth have often occurred to me.

Never was a toad more picturesquely treated! Besides his version of Juvenal, Gifford, translated Persius, and edited the plays of Massinger, Ford, and Shirley, and the works of Ben Jonson. In 1808, when Sir Walter Scot and others resolved on starting a Review, in opposition to the celebrated one established in Edinburgh, Mr. Gifford was selected as editor. In his hands, the Quarterly Review' became a powerful political and literary journal, to which leading

Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem. Act III.:

SCRUB. What d' ye think is my place in this family?

ARCHER. Butler. I suppose.

SCRUB. Ah, Lord help you! I'll tell you. Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on Wednesday I follow the hounds, on Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and on Sunday I draw beer,

statesmen and authors equally contributed. He continued to discharge his duties as editor until within two years of his death, which took place on the 31st of December 1826. Gifford claimed for himself

A soul

That spurned the crowd's malign control-
A fixed contempt of wrong.

He was high-spirited, courageous and sincere. In most of his writings, however, there was a strong tinge of personal ascerbity, and even virulence. He was a good hater, and as he was opposed to all political visionaries and reformers, he had seldom time to cool. His literary criticism, also, where no such prejudices could interfere, was frequently disfigured by the same severity of style or temper; and whoever, dead or living, had ventured to say aught against Ben Jonson, or write what he deemed wrong comments on his favourite dramatists, were assailed with a vehemence that was ludicrously disproportioned to the offence.

His attacks on Hazlitt, Lamb, Hunt, and others, in the Quarterly Review,' have no pretensions to fair or candid criticism. His object was to crush such authors as were opposed to the government of the day, or who departed from his canons of literary propriety and good taste. Even the best of his criticisms, though acute and spirited, want candour and comprehensiveness of design. As a politician, he looked with distrust and suspicion on the growing importance of America, and kept alive among the English aristocracy a feeling of dislike or hostility towards that country, which was as unwise as it was ungenerous. His best service to literature was his edition of Ben Jonson, in which he successfully vindicated that great English classic from the unjust aspersions of his countrymen. His satirical poetry is pungent, and often happy in expression, but without rising into moral grandeur or pathos. His small but sinewy intellect, as some one has said, was well employed in bruising the butterflies of the Della Cruscan Muse. Some of his short copies of verses possess a quiet, plaintive melancholy and tenderness; but his fame must rest en his influence and talents as a critic and annotator, or more properly, on the story of his life and early struggles-honourable to himself, and ultimately to his country--which will be read and remembered when his other writings are forgotten.

The Grave of Anna.

I wish I was where Anna lies,
For I am sick of lingering here:
And every hour affection cries,

Go and partake her humble bier.

I wish I could! For when she died,
I lost my all; and life has proved
Since that sad hour a dreary void;
A waste unlovely and unloved.

But who, when I am turned to clay,
Shall duly to her grave repair,

And pluck the ragged moss away, [there?
And weeds that have no business

And who with pious hand shall bring
The flowers she cherished, snow-drops
And violets that unheeded spring, [coid,
To scatter o'er her hallowed mould?

The above affecting elegiac stanzas were written by Gifford on a faithful attendant who died in his service. He erected a tombstone to her memory in the burying-ground of Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street, with the following inscription and epitaph :

Here lies the body of Ann Davies, (for more than twenty years) servant to William Gifford. She died February 6th, 1815. in the forty-third year of her age, of a tedious and painful malady, which she bore with exemplary patience and resignation. Her deeply afflicted master erected this stone to her memory, as a painful testimony of her uncommon worth and of his perpetual gratitude, respect, and affection for her long and meritorious services:

Though here unknown, dear Ann, thy ashes rest,
Still lives thy memory in one grateful breast,
That traced thy course through many a pa nful year,
And marked thy humble hope, thy pious fear.
Oh! when this frame, which yet, while life remained,
Thy duteous love, with trembling hand sustained,
Dissolves-as soon it must-may that blest Power
Who beamed on thine, illume my parting hour!
So shall I greet thee where no ills annoy,
And what is sown in grief is reaped in joy:
Where worth, obscured below, bursts into day,
And those are paid whom earth could never pay.